Human microbiome
First, lets get a good understanding of what the microbiome is and why its critical for human health. The term ‘microbiome’ is a relatively new description referring to the whole ecosystem of living organisms within us. It is composed of thousands of different species of bacteria, fungi, and parasites. Scientists at the forefront of this research (human microbiome project) explain that we are in a paradigm shift in the medical field with regards to how we look at ‘bugs’ or ‘germs’ within us and around us. We’ve learned that we are merely a host for these organisms where foreign DNA greatly out numbering our own DNA (nonhuman DNA compared to human DNA by at least a factor of 100)1. We know that not all bacteria and other microbes are bad. In fact, some scientists argue that there are no bad ‘bugs’, rather an imbalance i.e., infection or overgrowth. When our microbiome is out of balance, we are out of balance. When the organisms die within us, we cannot survive. We need to be a good host and nourish these microbes, not destroy them. We’ve learned that these organisms, specifically in our gut play a role in 70-80% of how good our immune system functions and that the more diverse the microbiome is, the healthier we are. We know that ‘normal’ microbes in the gut produce B vitamins, help clear waste, decrease inflammation, aid in digestion that maintains a healthy gut lining.2 If you’ve heard about probiotics, this is the premises of why companies started manufacturing them. Probiotics are supplements said to contain live beneficial bacteria, which advertise to promote gut health or immune support in general. Why in the last decade or two has the need for probiotics become important, when before that, it was unheard of? I’ll come back to this topic in article 4.
In article 2, I explain how glyphosate kills the plant via a pathway (shikimate) that plants use to produce the amino acids tryptophan, tyrosine, and phenylalanine, but many bacteria in our guts rely on that same pathway. A study out of Finland found that 54% of species found in the gut are susceptible to glyphosate and possess the shikimate pathway.3 If most of our immune system relies on healthy microbes in our guts, and more than half of the species in our guts are killed by glyphosate, how can Monsanto say this chemical has no effect on humans or animals? Arguably most if not all chronic disease today is a cause of inflammation, i.e., cancer, autoimmune, diabetes, heart disease, depression, but most often conventional medicine cannot address the root of the problem. Where is the inflammation coming from? I’ll give you a quick lesson on inflammation and the immune system. Inflammation is a process that your immune system initiates in response to injury. Most people can identify with scraping your knee on concrete. The immune system initiates signs that an injury has occurred, i.e., redness, swelling, pain. This is the same process that is going on in most people’s body, where manifestation of the diagnosis of a chronic disease is chronic injury or inflammation that has been going on for a long period of time. If you scrape your knee, you tend to it, take care of it until it heals (the miracle work of the immune system) and the inflammation resolves. When you are not aware of the injury, i.e., in the gut lining, the blood vessel lining, etc., the immune system works to repair. When there is constant injury i.e., through toxin exposure, the immune system is constantly initiating the inflammatory response. When the inflammatory response is constantly activated, the result is forever damaged tissue that cannot heal, especially when the tools needed for repair are not present, i.e., nutrients. Damaged tissue that cannot heal is disease. If 70-80% of our immune system is regulated by our microbiome and most of them are killed by glyphosate, what would happen if we started to lose healthy functioning of our immune system? An immune system that can’t tell self from non-self or autoimmunity. We would lose the ability to kill cancer cells wandering in our body. My point is, without a healthy microbiome, our chance of living a healthy life is non-existent.
We know that the microbiome poses critical communication with our brain, known as the gut-brain axis and that’s why many modern diseases like Alzheimer’s, autism, depression, rheumatoid arthritis, and others are believed to have started in the gut. Researchers proposed that the cognitive impairment seen in a study from treating guts of mice with antibiotics was caused by gut dysbiosis (the imbalance of beneficial and opportunistic microbes and/or the lack of beneficial species and/or overgrowth of opportunistic microbes)4 and suggested that antibiotics can damage the brain.5 It’s also been shown that the more we have of the two bacteria species Lactobacillus and Bifidobacteria, the better.6 Sadly, these two species are most sensitive to the actions of glyphosate.6
We know that cutting an antibiotic course leads to resistance because the stronger strains take longer to kill. If you kill the weak strains and leave the strong ones, the stronger ones are left to replicate, creating a bigger problem. This problem results in the need for stronger antibiotics for longer duration. Glyphosate is an antibiotic. What might be happening when we are chronically exposed to low doses of antibiotics? It kills the weak bacteria, which usually are the beneficial ones to us, allowing for stronger ones, likely pathogenic or opportunistic bacteria strains to thrive (dysbiosis). Studies have shown that glyphosate decreases the effectiveness of common antibiotics, such as ciprofloxacin to strains such as E. Coli and Salmonella typhimurium.7
Other studies show the benefits commensal bacteria i.e., ‘good’ bacteria have on our health. The bacteria Bacteroides fragilis, for example protects the host from viral infections.8 That means that chronic exposures to glyphosate, i.e., antibiotics, increase the risk of other respiratory infections like the flu and Covid-19.2 Stephanie Seneff says, “In the war on weeds, our gut microbes are collateral damage”.2
Leaky Gut
Leaky gut is a term used when describing the increased permeability within the gut lining. Our gut lining is only 1 cell layer thick. The thickness is about the same as if you cut a piece of hair in half. The single layer of cells is held together by proteins (zonulin) that create tight junctions. Right behind this layer of cells is your immune system. We know that glyphosate disrupts the microbiome, which then induces leaky gut, loosening those tight junctions.9 The same tight junctions exist to protect our brain. Glyphosate disrupts the lining of the brain, causing leaky brain.10,11,12,13 If leaky gut and/or brain is present, substances can get through the lining that could not before, triggering an immune response, i.e., inflammation. When Hippocrates said, ‘All disease begins in the gut”, words couldn’t be truer today.
Soil Microbiome
Microbes in the soil manufacture minerals and nutrients, that allow the plants to take them up from the soil. This means that when the plant is deficient in these minerals/nutrients, the humans who consume them are deficient in them. Estimates published in 2018 say that 60% of people are not meeting the minimum daily allowance of magnesium each day.14 Magnesium is essential for detoxification, known to be involved in about 80% of metabolic functions14 and is essential for a long list of health promoting functions, such as nerve and muscle regulation, blood sugar regulation, blood pressure regulation and bone health. Magnesium is also the central atom in chlorophyll, that makes plants green. One study showed that glyphosate disrupts the synthesis of chlorophyll in ‘RoundUp ready’ soybeans, thus creating a magnesium deficient plant.15
Disrupting the shikimate pathway prevents the production of other molecules (polyphenols and flavonoids), which aid in the plants defense systems against stressors, i.e., pathogens, drought, pests, heat.16 Polyphenols and flavonoids are important antioxidants that provide us with the benefits when we consume them, but if the plant is lacking those nutrients, again, we are not benefiting from them when we consume them.
References
1. Catherine A Lozupone, Jesse I Stombaugh, Jeffrey I Gordon, Janet K Jansson, Rob Knight. Diversity, Stability and Resilience of the Human Gut Microbiota. Nature. 2012 Sep 13;489(7415):220-30.
2. Stephanie Seneff. Toxic Legacy. How the Weedkiller Glyphosate Is Destroying Our Health and the Environment. 2021
3. Lyydia Leino, Tuomas Tall, Marjo Helander, Irma Saloniemi, Kari Saikkonen, Suvi Ruuskanen, Pere Puigbo. Classification of the Glyphosate Target Enzyme (5-Enophyruvylshikimate-3-3-phosphate Synthase) for Assessing Sensitivity of Organisms to the Herbicide. Journal of Hazardous Materials. 2021 April 15;408:124556.
4. Esther E Frohlich, Aitak Farzi, Raphaela Mayerhofer, Florian Reichmann, Angela Jacan, Bernhard Wagner, Erwin Zinser, Natalie Bordag, Christoph Magnes, Eleonore Frohlich, Karl Kashofer, Gregor Gorkiewics, Peter Holzer. Cognitive Impairment by Antibiotic-Induced Gut Dysbiosis: Analysis of Gut Microbiota-Brain Communication. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity. 2016 Aug;56:140-55.
5. Luisa Mohle, Daniele Mattei, Markus M Heimesaat, Stefan Bereswill, Andre Fischer, Marie Alutis, Timothy French, Dolores Hambardzumyan, Polly Matzinger, IIdiko R Dunay, Susanne A Wolf. Ly6Chi Monocytes Provide a Link Between Antibiotic-Induced Changes in Gut Microbiota and Adult Hippocampal Neurogenesis. Cell Reports. 2016 May 31;15(9):1945-56.
6. Awad A Shehata, Wieland Schrodl, Alaa A Aldin, Hafez M Hafez, Monika Kruger. The Effect of Glyphosate on Potential Pathogens and Beneficial Members of Poultry Microbiota In Vitro. Current Microbiology. 2013 Apr;66(4):350-8.
7. Brigitta Kurenbach, Delphine Marjoshi, Carlos F Amabile-Cuevas, Gayle C Ferguson, William Godsoe, Paddy Gibson, Jack A Heinemann. Sublethal Exposure to Commercial Formulations of the Herbicides Dicamba, 2, 4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic Acid, and Glyphosate Cause Changes in Antibiotic Susceptibility in Escherichia coli and Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium. mBio. 2015 Mar 24;6(2):300009-15.
8. Kailyn L. Stefan, Myoungjoo V Kim, Akiko Iwasaki, Dennis L Kasper. Commensal Microbiota Modulation of natural Resistance to Virus Infection. Cell. 2020 Nov 25;183(5):1312-1324.e10.
9. Jim Parker. A New Hypothesis for the Mechanism of Glyphosate Induced Intestinal Permeability in the Pathogenesis of Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. Australasian College of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine Journal. 2015;34(2):3-7.
10. Daiane Cattani, Vera Lucia de Liz Oliveira Cavalli, Carla Elise Heinz Rieg, Juliana Tonietto Domingues, Tharine Dal-Cin, Carla Ines Tasca, Fatima Regina Mena Barreto Silva, Ariane Zamoner. Mechanisms Underlying the Neurotoxicity Induced by Glyphosate-Based Herbicide in Immature Rat Hippocampus: Involvement of Glutamate Excitotoxicity. Toxicology. 2014 Jun 5;320:34-45.
11. Qian Wang, Jeff Holst. L-type Amino Acid Transport and Cancer: Targeting the mTORC1 Pathway to Inhibit Neoplasia. American Journal of Cancer Research. 2015;5(4):1281-94.
12. Hui Gao, Jing Chen, Fan Ding, Xin Chou, Xiaoyan Zhang, Yi Wan, Jianying Hu, Qing Wu. Activation of the N-Methyl-D-Aspartate Receptor is Involved in Glyphosate-Induced Renal Proximal Tubule Cell Apoptosis. Journal of Applied Toxicology. 2019:1-12. 54.
13. Daiane Cattani, Patricia Acordi Cesconetto, Mauren Kruger Tavare, Eduardo Benedetti Parisotto, Paulo Alexandre De Oliveira, Carla Elise Heinz Rieg, Marina Concli Leite, Rui Daniel Schroder Prediger, Nestor Cubas Wendt, Guilherme Razzera, Danilo Wilhelm Filho, Ariane Zamoner. Developmental Exposure of Glyphosate-Based Herbicide and Depressive-Like Behavior in Adult Offspring: Implication of Glutamate Excitotoxicity and Oxidative Stress. Toxicology. 387. 2017:67-80.55.
14. Jayme L. Workinger, Robert P Doyle, Jonathan Bortz. Challenges in the Diagnosis of Magnesium Status. Nutrients. 2018 Sept;10(9):1202.
15. Pedro Diaz Vivancos, Simon P Discoll, Christopher, A Bulman, Liu Ying, Kaveh Emami, Achim Treumann, Caroline Mauve, Graham Noctor, Christine H Foyer. Perturbations of Amino Acid Metabolism Associated with Glyphosate-Dependent Inhibition of Shikimic Acid Metabolism Affect Cellular Redox Homeostasis and Alter the Abundance of Proteins Involved in Photosynthesis and Photorespiration. Plant Physiology. 2011 Sept;157(1):256-68. 54.
16. Geza Hrazdina. Biosynthesis of Flavonoids. in: R.W. Hemingway and P.E. Laks (eds.), Plant Polyphenols, Basic Life Sciences series. Boston: Springer 1992;59:61-72.