The New Vulnerability

W.H.O. Panjandrum Ted Ghebreyesus recently declared Monkeypox to be a public health emergency of international concern. The 2022 outbreak was linked to 140 deaths worldwide (a mortality rate of approximately 0.04%) and the new strain, which is described as being more dangerous and which is emerging just a little too late for the 2024 USA election, will likely kill more.

Unless it loses virulence over time …

Loss of virulence is not inevitable, but commonly occurs as an emergent pathogen evolves towards an ‘optimal level’ of virulence which overcomes host defenses sufficiently to allow multiplication in the infected individual, but does not kill the subject too quickly to prevent transmission. This is one reason why the widespread use of medications which increase patient survival, or the excessive use of certain types of vaccine during an epidemic, can favor increasing virulence (ie 1, 2 and see 3 also).

Monkeypox took its name from the monkeypox virus, first identified as a cause of disease in Danish lab monkeys in 1958. In the more rarified era of 2022 it was rebranded as ‘mpox’ because, according to the World Health Organisation, the original name was ‘racist and stigmatising’ (presumably to monkeys).

‘Moneypox’ is probably more appropriate, because the W.H.O, the drug cartels and those who own them love this kind of health problem. It scares the public and, as with Covid, there are huge profits to be made and plenty of opportunities for increased social control.

A far more serious health problem, in my view, is the ongoing and near-universal rise of chronic degenerative diseases which kill tens of millions every year, and the antiparallel decline in the average age of onset of many of these conditions.

Consider, for example, the dizzying increase of colon cancer in young people. Between 2002 and 2019, new cases in under-55s rose from 11% to 20% (4). These data derive from the USA, and are in line with an increase in many cancers in younger patients (5-7).

As cancer cells frequently form inside us, the increase in clinical cancer implies that the normal balance between cancer formation and cancer suppression has shifted, and not in our favor. While increased exposure to carcinogens likely plays a role (ie 8), my thesis is that changes in our exposome have impaired our many defences against cancer (ie 9); and that this might be an example of a more general case.

For example, we have become more vulnerable to physical trauma (10) because our natural defences against physical harms have been degraded by the modern diet (10). I believe that our growing physical fragility is also manifest in the increasing incidence of sarcopenia, osteoporosis and (probably) dermatoporosis. These trends are linked to an ageing population and increasing co-morbidity, but they are also undoubtedly being driven by declining levels of physical activity and the pro-inflammatory, nutrient-depleted industrial diet (11-13).

We have become more vulnerable also to psychological trauma (14, 15), and dietary decline is involved here too (14). This is one reason, in my view, why deaths of despair are rising – so far – only in the USA (16), where the industrial diet has taken strongest hold.

Our increased susceptibility to epilepsy, which rose by a third between 2009 and 2017 (17), tells a somewhat similar story; the balance between faster spread of meaningful information within the brain, and those protective mechanisms which prevent uncontrolled and disruptive neuronal activation, is increasingly off-kilter.

The removal of 1-3, 1-6 beta glucans and other non-virulent PAMPs from our diet and environment has undoubtedly made us more vulnerable to infection and allergy (18, 19), and the increasing 6:3 ratio of fatty acids in our diet has made us all more vulnerable to inflammageing.

If this admittedly diffuse argument has any merit, and if our multiple defense systems and reserves are indeed being eroded, might this mean that we are also becoming more vulnerable to toxins?

One class of toxin, in the broadest sense, is constituted by the pharmaceuticals. These compounds are undoubtedly toxic, as measured by their therapeutic indices, and by the fact that they are a common cause of morbidity and death (20).

British research suggests that between 2004 and 2022, the frequency of hospital admissions due to adverse drug reactions almost tripled, from 6.5% to 16.5% (21, 22). Sticklers (and I like to think I am one) will argue that more patients are presenting with multiple health conditions and taking a greater number of medications (23), both of which factors inevitably increase the risk of an ADR. But is it also possible that we are less able to detoxify these drugs than we used to be?

Dietary compounds which up-regulate detoxifying phase-2 enzymes in the liver, such as the glucosinolates and isothiocyanates, have been greatly reduced in the modern diet (ie 24). The intestinal phase-3 enzymes have probably also been impacted (24, 25) by falling prebiotic fiber intakes (26) and the subsequent increase in dysbiosis (26). These changes would be expected to make many pharmaceutical drugs more hazardous.

What of our favourite non-pharmaceutical drugs/toxins, alcohol and nicotine? Have we become more vulnerable to them also?

There is solid mechanistic evidence that alcohol is more harmful to us today than it has ever been. The industrial diet, which combines large amounts of fructose with low intakes of prebiotic fiber and key anti-inflammatory nutrients, has made generally pro-inflammatory metabolic patterns almost universal and generated metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) in almost half the world’s population (27).

If you have MASLD, alcohol imposes additional inflammatory stress on the liver and significantly increases the risk of progression to cirrhosis (28). By prejudicing hepatic function and health, the modern diet has certainly made alcohol more toxic.

An additional dietary factor likely increasing vulnerability to alcohol is our reduced intake of isothiocyanates (in cruciferous vegetables), and polyphenols such as resveratrol and ellagic acid in berry fruits and other plant foods. These compounds modulate the phase 1 enzymes primarily involved in the breakdown of alcohol (29) and the overall effect of the phytonutrient-depleted ultra-processed diet is likely to make alcohol even more damaging to the liver (30).

When it comes to tobacco, consider the Japanese (and Korean) paradox.

This well-known statistical anomaly describes the relatively low risk of cancer in Asian smokers, first identified around the turn of the millennium (31, 32). Various possible protective factors have been adduced to explain this. Lower tar tobacco was one such but marketing data does not entirely support this (33). The idea that Asian cigarettes are intrinsically safer because they tend to use charcoal rather than paper filters, is similarly shaky (34, 35, although see 36). Charcoal filter cigarettes are also sold in China and Hungary (37), which have the highest overall rates of lung cancer in the world (38).

This leaves genetic differences and dietary elements. There are some genetic differences which may well be relevant, but they are not considered to be sufficient to account for the totality of reduced risk (ie 39); so once again, I return to the kitchen.

Researchers have found that induction of the conjugative and detoxifying phase II enzymes, particularly the glutathione S-transferases, might protect against lung carcinogenesis (40, 41), and there was a window of time – now closing – when traditional Asian diets contained more phase-2-inducing compounds than industrial Western diets. These compounds include, as before, the isothiocyanates and polyphenols.

It follows that the nutrition transition has, by cutting intakes of these phase 2 inducers (and phase 1 modulators), made us more vulnerable not only to pharmaceuticals but also to tobacco and alcohol. And there is a further unfortunate twist in this tail. The modern diet may simultaneously make us more prone to addiction to these and other substances.

It is increasingly believed that there is a connection between neuroinflammation and addiction. The general idea is that addictive drugs interact with chronic inflammatory processes which contribute to brain dysfunction, impairing cognitive control and promoting sickness behaviours which encourage self-medication.

Specifically, there is emerging evidence of neuroimmunological involvement and the role of glial and possibly astrocyte populations in feed-forward mechanisms involved in the functional and structural neuroadaptations which develop and maintain addiction (ie 42-46). In support of this idea, scientists in many different labs have found various drugs that reduce neuroinflammation also reduce addictive behaviour (43).

The latest candidates are the glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1RAs), which reduce appetite, addictive behaviours (47-50) – and, very probably, neuroinflammation (51).

The industrial diet is linked to increased chronic inflammation, neuroinflammatory stress (52, 53), and impaired cognitive function (54, 55). It might therefore be reasonably expected to make consumers more prone to addictive behaviour, and to increase the number of those who succumb to it. This is broadly in line with current North American trends in addiction (ie 56).

Conversely, anti-inflammatory diets such as the Mediterranean or New Nordic diet should be associated with a lower incidence of addiction; and there are a few preliminary data indicating that this might be the case (57-59).

Anyone who has lost a partner or a child to addiction knows tragedy, and those with a chronic degenerative disease understand how unexpectedly dangerous life can be. The food multinationals are making life more tragic and more dangerous than it already is, and should be stopped in their tracks.

Dr Margaret Chan, W.H.O. director-general from 2006-2017, substantially criticized the food industry. The current place-holder tilts at monkeypox, but the clear and present danger lies elsewhere. The regulatory agencies originally designed to protect us have been corrupted and coopted by Big Pharma, now an integral part of the deep state (ie 60).

Meanwhile, the well-paid thugs we call politicians turn a blind eye to the poisoning of our people, the reverse opium war (61), forced deindustrialization, the waves of directed migration and the continuing and mysterious excess deaths in the post-Covid era (62) that are tearing Western societies apart.

I wish this need not have happened in my time. Or in my children’s time.

Losing ourselves in virtual reality while the real world crumbles around us doesn’t help but
Robert Kennedy Jr’s approach to public health (60, 63) provides, at least, a ray of hope. His approach to food and health, if it is ever allowed to develop, will make us less vulnerable.

Next week: Cool down. Take off your shoes, stay a while.

References

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