The Dangers of Glyphosate and How to Protect Yourself from Toxicity
Key Points:
- After a recent ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals, the EPA must reevaluate the herbicide glyphosate and its health effects on humans and endangered species.
- This is a win for our food system, environment, and public health, but for now glyphosate is ubiquitous in our food, water, and even air.
- There is copious amounts of research indicating that glyphosate causes cancer, infertility, birth defects, impairs and harms good gut bacteria, and more.
- PC helps protect your cells from glyphosate damage by supporting your cell membranes, mitochondria membranes, and GI mucosa.
Recently, the Center for Food Safety (CFS) overturned the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) 2020 ruling that glyphosate is safe for humans and endangered species via the U.S. Court of Appeals.
What does this mean? Essentially, the court, specifically the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, has now acknowledged that glyphosate is actually harmful, after decades of evidence that it is destroying our health. (And years after the World Health Organization classified it as a probable carcinogen in 2015.) EPA now has to redo its 2020 glyphosate analysis, including a new toxicity assessment.
This is a small win in the fight for environmental health, but it does not impact farmers' ability to use glyphosate and other harmful pesticides in the U.S.
We wanted to take this chance to give an update on glyphosate and its extremely dangerous effects on human health and the health of our planet. It degrades our soil (even while some are fighting to protect and restore it via regenerative agriculture), and we are seeing more and more detrimental health effects from glyphosate use.
It’s more important than ever to be aware of the dangers of glyphosate and how you can protect yourself and your family.
Table of Contents:
- What is Glyphosate?
- Glyphosate in Food, Water, and Everywhere in Between
- Glyphosate and Gut Health
- Glyphosate Causes Leaky Gut
- How Does Glyphosate Affect my Cellular Health?
- Alternatives to Pesticides and Glyphosate
- Protect Yourself From Glyphosate With PC
- Stay Up-to-Date on Glyphosate
What Is Glyphosate? Is it Safe?
Glyphosate is a broad-spectrum herbicide used in agriculture, forestry, and lawn management across the U.S.
You know it best as the main ingredient in the weed killer, RoundUp.
Since it was brought to market in the 70s by Monsanto, glyphosate has been sprayed by the ton across farmers’ fields throughout the U.S. It was originally marketed as a “less toxic” pesticide, the safer of many evils. We know now that this claim was completely false advertising, and we are feeling the effects.
Among the consequences of glyphosate contamination are various types of cancer, infertility struggles, and a range of birth defects. But as an endocrine disruptor and toxin, there are likely dozens of other negative effects that we aren’t yet aware of, even at low levels.
Glyphosate in Food, Water, and Everywhere in Between
Glyphosate has become ubiquitous in our food system, water, air, and pretty much everywhere you can think to look. Babies are born with it in their systems. It has infiltrated our soils, plant foods, and livestock.
Even the most diligent organic-certified producers can’t avoid it, since they grow their crops with contaminated water and may be subject to glyphosate exposure just from being near conventional fields.
Organic produce is still preferable, since they are not being directly sprayed with the herbicide. But we have a long way to go to get glyphosate out of our food system.
Glyphosate and Gut Health
One of the worst effects of glyphosate may be its effect on our gut microbiome.
Glyphosate disrupts a certain enzyme pathway in plants called the shikimate pathway, suppressing an enzyme that is supposed to produce metabolites like aromatic amino acids (AAA) and many other key biological molecules for health.
Glyphosate’s supposed safety was based on the fact that human cells do not have this key enzyme pathway. But our gut bacteria do.
And we now know that our gut bacteria are the ones who are producing many key nutrients for us (the host), including:
- Vitamins such as B vitamins
- Short-chain fatty acids
- Neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin.
Glyphosate severely restricts our microbiome’s ability to make these key nutrients for us, resulting in widespread damaging effects.
Not only are our gut bacteria not producing these metabolites for us and making us sick, glyphosate is making them sick as well. Glyphosate particularly targets Lactobacillus and Bifidobacteria, two of the most abundant types of good bacteria in the human gut. It’s not surprising that gut issues across our population have worsened dramatically over the last few decades alone.
Glyphosate Causes Leaky Gut
Another severe side effect of glyphosate is that it causes leaky gut, the loosening of tight junctions between gut cells in the intestines. Your gut lining is just one cell thick, to allow passage of nutrients from your food into the bloodstream. But this layer is meant to keep much larger food particles, toxins, and even pathogens in the gut as well.
Glyphosate increases the expression of another enzyme called zonulin, which weakens the gut barrier, allowing these larger particles and pathogens into the bloodstream. This is a quick path to chronic inflammation and disease.
How Does Glyphosate Affect my Cellular Health?
Despite the claim that glyphosate does not directly harm human cells, it severely weakens mitochondria, the energy factories of the cell.
Glyphosate disrupts the mitochondrial membrane, which is harmful to cellular energy production. It can also chelate (bind) key minerals required for the creation of energy. Interestingly, more severe effects on the cellular level have been observed at smaller concentrations.
Dr. Stephanie Seneff, a well-known expert on the effects of glyphosate, speculates that this may be because smaller concentrations are just enough to fool and hijack certain cell receptors, where larger concentrations may trigger a defense mechanism that would not allow the glyphosate to infiltrate the cell. But this is still just a theory for now.
Alternatives to Pesticides and Glyphosate
To completely rid ourselves of glyphosate use and to detoxify it from our environment, there really is only one option: a return to traditional farming methods and regenerative agriculture.
Regenerative agriculture goes one step beyond certified organic — it seeks to replenish and rejuvenate the soil we need to grow healthy food and sustain our livestock. In fact, it incorporates livestock as a key part of the process, rotating animals (primarily cows) through sections of farms to graze and fertilize the land the all natural way.
This gives the land time to recover and replenish nutrients post-harvest. After a crop is harvested, cover crops are also planted to protect the soil from nutrient depletion and erosion.
This is the way we grew food for thousands of years before we began to rely on chemically supported agriculture. It also happens to be our best solution for climate change, restoring global health, and returning a sense of pride, purpose, and wealth to our farming community. Win, win, win.
Protect Yourself From Glyphosate With PC
One way to protect yourself from glyphosate exposure is with BodyBio PC.
PC is a phospholipid complex that supports cell membranes, mitochondrial membranes, and the gut lining, all places where glyphosate can do some serious damage.
PC helps restore and detox damaged cell membranes and mitochondria as well as GI mucosa damaged by glyphosate. PC has also been used by doctors and researchers to clear cellular debris (toxins, chemicals, etc.) that attach to our nuclear and mitochondrial DNA — Glyphosate is just one of many types of cellular debris that attacks our cells.
Other types include Agent Orange, pesticides, yard chemicals, inhaled diesel fumes, soot, unprocessed dead cell parts, dirty pharmaceuticals, food additives that include artificial ingredients, and much more.
A few other tips to reduce glyphosate:
Buy organic — and regenerative organic if you have access to it — as much as possible
Make sure your detox pathways are open: gut, urinary, lymph, and skin.
Support your liver (major detox organ) with supplements like N-acetyl cysteine, milk thistle, BodyBio PC, TUDCA and liposomal glutathione. (Consult with your practitioner.)
Filter your water with a reverse osmosis system
Invest in high quality air purifiers for your main living spaces
You don’t have to do everything at once, but the good news is that all of these tips address multiple issues, not just glyphosate. These days, making sure you have clean food, clean water, clean air, and good detoxification are the minimum for good health.
Stay Up-To-Date on Glyphosate with Bodybio
We’ll continue to follow developments on glyphosate and its effects on global health; join our email list below to stay informed!
You can also sign this petition started by Dr. Zach Bush to ban glyphosate for good.
In the meantime, do the best you can to combat glyphosate exposure by choosing organic and regeneratively grown food, filtering your water, and of course never using products like Roundup on your lawn or garden. Stay healthy!
References
“Dr. Stephanie Seneff, PhD on How Glyphosate Is Impacting Gut and Immune Health,” Capital Integrative Health Podcast. July 5, 2022.
Strilbyska, O. M., Tsiumpala, S. A., Kozachyshyn, I. I., Strutynska, T., Burdyliuk, N., Lushchak, V. I., & Lushchak, O. (2022). The effects of low-toxic herbicide Roundup and glyphosate on mitochondria. EXCLI journal, 21, 183–196. https://doi.org/10.17179/excli2021-4478
Neto da Silva, K., Garbin Cappellaro, L., Ueda, C. N., Rodrigues, L., Pertile Remor, A., Martins, R. P., Latini, A., & Glaser, V. (2020). Glyphosate-based herbicide impairs energy metabolism and increases autophagy in C6 astroglioma cell line. Journal of toxicology and environmental health. Part A, 83(4), 153–167. https://doi.org/10.1080/15287394.2020.1731897
Van Bruggen, A., He, M. M., Shin, K., Mai, V., Jeong, K. C., Finckh, M. R., & Morris, J. G., Jr (2018). Environmental and health effects of the herbicide glyphosate. The Science of the total environment, 616-617, 255–268. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.10.309
Milesi, M. M., Lorenz, V., Durando, M., Rossetti, M. F., & Varayoud, J. (2021). Glyphosate Herbicide: Reproductive Outcomes and Multigenerational Effects. Frontiers in endocrinology, 12, 672532. https://doi.org/10.3389/fendo.2021.672532
Soares, D., Silva, L., Duarte, S., Pena, A., & Pereira, A. (2021). Glyphosate Use, Toxicity and Occurrence in Food. Foods (Basel, Switzerland), 10(11), 2785. https://doi.org/10.3390/foods10112785
Samsel, A., & Seneff, S. (2013). Glyphosate, pathways to modern diseases II: Celiac sprue and gluten intolerance. Interdisciplinary toxicology, 6(4), 159–184. https://doi.org/10.2478/intox-2013-0026
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