The compelling finding of Mycobacterium avium paratuberculosis (MAP) circulating disproportionately within the bloodstream of type 1 diabetics was subsequently confirmed by culturing it straight out of their blood. MAP infection and type 1 diabetes appear to go together, but we didn’t know which came first. Does the infection make kids more susceptible to diabetes? Might diabetes make kids more susceptible to infection? Maybe this MAP bug just likes hanging out in sugary blood. In that case, we might expect to also see it in type 2 diabetics, but, no: Paratuberculosis infection is not associated with type 2 diabetes, which makes sense since type 2 is not an autoimmune disease.

In order for the idea of MAP infection triggering type 1 diabetes to be sound, there would have to be an immune response mounted to the bug, and, indeed, there is. Researchers in Sardinia found an “extremely significant” antibody response against paratuberculosis (paraTB) bacteria in type 1 diabetics.…

Read More »

Type 1 diabetes “arises following the autoimmune destruction of the insulin-producing pancreatic β [beta] cells…[and] is most often diagnosed in children and adolescents, usually presenting with a classic trio of symptoms” as their blood sugars spike: excessive thirst, hunger, and urination. They need to go on insulin for the rest of their lives, since their own immune systems attacked and destroyed their ability to produce it. What would cause our body to do such a thing? I examine this in my video, Does Paratuberculosis in Milk Trigger Type 1 Diabetes?

Whatever it is, it has been on the rise around the world, starting after World War 2. “Understanding why and how this produced the current pandemic of childhood diabetes would be an important step toward reversing it.” A plausible guess is “molecular mimicry, whereby a foreign antigen (bacterial or viral) provokes an immune response, which cross-reacts” with a similar-looking protein on our pancreas such that when we attack the bug, our own organ gets caught in the cross-fire.…

Read More »

“Endometriosis is a major cause of disability and compromised quality of life in women and teenage girls.” It “is a chronic disease which is under-diagnosed, under-reported, and under-researched…[and for patients, it] can be a nightmare of misinformation, myths, taboos, lack of diagnosis, and problematic hit-and-miss treatments overlaid by a painful, chronic, stubborn disease.”

Pain is what best characterizes the disease: pain, painful intercourse, heavy irregular periods, and infertility. About one in a dozen young women suffer from endometriosis, and it accounts for about half the cases of pelvic pain and infertility. It’s caused by what’s called “retrograde menstruation”—blood, instead of going down, goes up into the abdominal cavity, where tissue of the uterine lining can implant onto other organs. The lesions can be removed surgically, but the recurrence rate within five years is as high as 50 percent.

Endometriosis is an estrogen-dependent disease, so might the anti-estrogenic effects of the phytoestrogens in flaxseeds and soy foods help, as they appear to do in breast cancer?…

Read More »