Can 'being healthy' make you sick?

If you have been fully vaccinated, wash your hands regularly and take antibiotics when you are sick, most would consider that a picture of 'health.' But there could be a cruel irony in this: are we actually sicker because of it?

Does it seem like it's getting
 to the point where you can name
more people with cancer than without?
Photo credit: Virus,
Andrzej Pobiedzinski

Last month was Brain Tumor Awareness Month, and this month is Congenital Cytomegalovirus Awareness Month. What do the two have to do with each other? Apparently a lot.

I've read two interesting articles that link the two - one is a common virus that produces flu-like symptoms and occurs in many children and about four out of five adults; another is a potentially deadly condition that claims the lives of adults every day. Back in April my husband and I said goodbye to a friend who had suffered through treating brain cancer, losing his battle after about 14 months (the average) and at age 40. In reading up on his condition, I was alarmed to learn that this type of brain tumor, a glioblastoma, is the most aggressive form of brain cancer there is and affects about 10,000 people per year.

Groundbreaking research has been ongoing to determine the cause of these tumors, with fascinating results. One physician took his own time, off the clock, to analyze the tumors of dozens of victims. What he found was no doubt shocking: each tumor was "riddled" with CMV, or cytomegalovirus. Could the cause of these invasive tumors be viral?

The samples that Dr. Cobbs studied came from

mostly older, well-educated and from higher socioeconomic backgrounds. Their “hyper-hygienic” lifestyles had possibly left their immune systems susceptible to more common viruses, such as the human cytomegalovirus, or CMV, a herpes virus so ubiquitous that it infects 4 of 5 Americans.

His research - and an article by Dr. Amy, of all people - asked the same question I was thinking in my mind: would treating these tumor patients with an antiviral medication improve their outcomes?

The words "older, well-educated, higher socioeconomic background" and "hyper-hygienic" made me think of a type of person in particular: someone who is educated, reasonably affluent with a good job - and good insurance. Someone who is likely to have regular access to a physician when they are sick, perhaps asking for antibiotics - and a regular source of income to pay for those medications.

Could be a hunch, but I'm sure there are lots of us - myself included - who probably fit that mold.

Now doctors are seeing more and more of these aggressive cancers in young people - especially among teenagers. According to this article, the numbers are steady despite increased mobile phone use, and some teens don't even use, or own, a cell phone. Could the cause of tumors in people so young be congenital CMV - acquired before they were even born?

One thing that has increased since our parents and grandparents were small: the sheer number of vaccinations each generation is "required" to get. My kids are vaccinated, and I think some are necessary, but the absolute absurd number of shots that you're expected to give your child is insane, and if I had it to do all over again I would definitely reconsider. I'm obviously not a pathologist, but one thing that caught my attention was the fact that this virus is also part of the herpes simplex virus - which is in the same family as chicken pox. Is it merely a coincidence that kids old enough to receive the first line of chicken pox vaccine back in 1995 also have a prevalence for these types of tumors?

In the 1980s, the "yuppie flu," or Epstein-Barr virus, made the news, fitting a similar profile to those who Dr. Cobbs studied. Several factors could be considered: our changing population tends to rely heavily on antibiotics and medicines now more than ever; more people tend to have more sexual partners (as the virus can be spread through bodily fluids, including through sexual contact), and vaccines are used more widely. Antibacterial hand soaps, in use since the 1980s, could have an impact on upsetting the balance of good bacteria in our bodies and our response to illness. And on top of that, now we have hand sanitizer (made with good old fashioned grain alcohol, which our kids can promptly lick off their hands and get drunk off of - wonderful).

Interestingly enough, researchers have found that there is virtually no decline in illness despite the widespread use of antibacterial hand soaps. Realizing that eating your pound of dirt was probably good for my kids, I stopped using them altogether.

It strikes me that perhaps those "yuppies" most afflicted are people with decent jobs who make good money and have great benefits - who don't want to lose work. Down time from an illness takes you away from projects and important business events, and means time lost - I don't begrudge anyone that. The chicken pox vaccine, for example, also seems more like a way to "guarantee" no lost work time taking care of a child, and no lost school days, either.

But what if the tremendous load on our bodies - whether it be from crap in our food that our body doesn't know how to process or get rid of, to the good-germ killing soap we bathe in, to the medications we take to keep us "healthy" - is actually doing more to kill us than keep us well?

Just because your arm didn't swell up, wither and fall off days after you received a vaccine or antibiotic doesn't mean that in the course of a lifetime or two the damage isn't being done, silently, invisibly, inside our own bodies. Years of "research" and studies that tell us one thing are being refuted - ideas are continually being challenged about what 'healthy' means, and how it can be obtained when we are so engrained, so entrenched in a world that is full of chemicals, pesticides, substances that surely have to be changing us - maybe not for the better - with every passing year, every decade, until we no longer recognize who we are and have no idea how to get back to the "roots" of our ancestors: because we can't. When the very fiber of our being - our unborn selves - is now contaminated with something we can't identify, how can you ever go back?

More reading:

Cancer cells? Brain Tumor Numbers Steady Despite Increased Mobile Phone Use: Scientific American
Viral brain cancer theory comes of age - Mind Hacks

Milwaukee co-sleeping ads: a fear-mongering lack of information

I'm sure I'm like the zillionth blogger to talk about this, and for good reason: those stupid Milwaukee Department of Health ads are over the top. They're making national headlines now as the AP has picked up the story and the public's reaction to it. And as usual, they also come with a million comments from idiots who think that people who do this should have children removed from their custody, blah blah blah.

As I searched for photos online about the project, I found a few of them - besides the butcher ones that ran recently. This campaign, from what I can tell, is not "new" - another blog posted various photos from it as early as last year. It seems like only now is it really drawing any widespread criticism.

I don't even co-sleep, and can probably count the number of times I have on one hand. And I still find them absolutely ridiculous. I should add that, for my second and third children, they slept in a bassinette/Pack 'n Play thingy in our room for at least a full six months before we moved them into their own beds.

What a nice touch. But where are your
sources? 

You see similar ads that encourage - coerce, guilt - you into vaccinating, for everything under the sun. The bottom line of these campaigns is not only that you should vaccinate for every illness that comes down the pike, but that a government entity knows more about raising your children than you do. Granted, some people do need help in that department, sadly, but the majority of people who co-sleep responsibly have probably got that figured out by now.

The ad campaigns are disturbing on many levels - of course, no parent would let their child play with a knife. However, how many news articles do you read about toddlers finding a loaded weapon in the home, accidentally discharging it and causing fatal injuries? According to this article, as of 2009 there was at least "one gun crime per household in West Milwaukee." How many of those households had young children living in them? It seems that co-sleeping is the least of their worries.

Another very disturbing fact about these ads is that they lack just that: facts. Where is the information that says co-sleeping can be safe? Where is the data that suggests certain people should not co-sleep with their child, or the suggestions on how to do it more safely? You won't find them here. That you'd have to get from the Big Bad Internet or your pediatrician (good luck with that).

It seems the only pediatrician who will give you good advice is Dr. Sears, who, with a family of eight children, is already bucking the traditional system when it comes to the politics of parenting. His recommendations are on his website. He says,

Worldwide research shows that the SIDS rate is lowest (and even unheard of) in countries where co-sleeping is the norm.

On countries where there just is no Babies 'R Us and cribs are probably an anomaly, what do they do? They share the family bed, of course. Does the United States think they are the only nation of people who has ever co-slept with their child?

Seriously? 

I question these statistics, and so do other studies.
They call it "crib death" for a reason, don't they?

Dr. Sears goes on to note:

The Consumer Product Safety Commission published data that described infant fatalities in adult beds. These same data, however, showed more than 3 times as many crib related infant fatalities compared to adult bed accidents. 

He does say, however, there is an exception: if mom is a smoker or abuses alcohol. Both of which are reasons not to co-sleep. This blogger also pointed out that

most babies in Milwaukee die because they were born too early, or because they have birth defects. Only 19% of the infant deaths are the result of SIDS or accidental suffocation, according to a 2010 report. And only a fraction of those deaths occurred in infants that were sharing a bed.

The city's report on infant mortality - which is around 11.1 deaths per 1,000 births - says that "Of these deaths, the majority died in an unsafe sleep environment." They do not say, however, what percentage of those environments contained risk factors for SIDS.

Ways to lower your risk include breastfeeding - something many serious co-sleeping parents do in order to better facilitate nursing at night. Since these mothers are already breastfeeding, it is unlikely they would willingly ingest drugs or alcohol that would compromise their sleep patterns, because of the fact that it would come out in their breastmilk. Similarly, they are probably less likely to be smokers, because it is obviously unhealthy around an infant, but can diminish milk supply.

(This interesting study also suggests that mothers who do smoke and breastfeed are more likely to have babies with disrupted sleep, due to the nicotine in their breastmilk.)

One thing I take issue with is the designation of SIDS for obvious cases of suffocation. True SIDS has no known cause, but according to PubMed Health:

Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is the unexpected, sudden death of a child under age 1 in which an autopsy does not show an explainable cause of death.

If you wake up and find your baby wedged between the bed and the wall, that's a very explainable cause of death, don't you think? While accidentally falling asleep with your child in an unsafe place is unadvisable, accidents do happen - and safe, long-term co-sleeping hardly falls into this category. This is similar to the number of deaths that happened because of unsafe cribs that were often improperly assembled. While tragic, would they dare call that SIDS? I doubt it.

Among the risk factors for true SIDS are being born to a teen mother (Milwaukee apparently has the highest rate of teen pregnancy in the entire nation), mothers who smoke or use illegal drugs, late or no prenatal care and living in impoverished conditions. Last year, Milwaukee was ranked the fourth-poorest city in the nation. It could be a long-shot, but I'm guessing the average co-sleeping parent doesn't fit this profile very well.

Either way, this is not an adequately objective campaign on how to inform parents of both the potential risks and benefits of co-sleeping. It's already hard enough to get unbiased information as a parent on things like vaccinations, circumcision, breastfeeding and formula use and a myriad of other parenting issues, especially when you seek to do things in a non-conventional manner that breaks tradition and the norm. This isn't helping, other than to create more "mommy wars" hostility and spread even more misinformation.

More reading:
Scientific benefits of co-sleeping - Dr. Sears
Infant Mortality Rates - City of Milwaukee