A U.S. Congressman is seeking a DOJ investigation of glyphosate

The U.S. Congressman Ted Lieu has called for a Department of Justice investigation of the chemical glyphosate used in the herbicide Roundup. There may have been collusion by an EPA worker and Monsanto to suppress investigation of the chemical’s health risks. It has been labeled a likely carcinogen.

“New questions about the safety of Monsanto weed killer Roundup are deeply troubling. I worked on the glyphosate issue last term and I believe consumers should immediately stop using Roundup, whose core ingredient glyphosate has been labeled a likely carcinogen and has been linked to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. We need to find out if Monsanto or the Environmental Protection Agency misled the public.”

-U.S. Congressman Ted Lieu,  “US Congressman Calls for DOJ Investigation into EPA-Monsanto Glyphosate Collusion” Mar 17 2017 – by Sustainable Pulse

Read more: http://sustainablepulse.com/2017/03/17/us-congressman-calls-for-doj-investigation-into-epa-monsanto-glyphosate-collusion/#.WMv1yjvytPb

Disclaimer: Opinions are my own and the information is provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of fair use. While I am a Registered Dietitian this information is not intended to provide individual health guidance. Please see a health professional for individual health care purposes.

Glycine, Cheerful Juice, and testing for glyphosate

My experiences with taking a larger dose of the free amino acids glycine and methionine proved to my satisfaction that they are indeed essential for physical and mental health. In definition methionine is considered essential, we can not synthesize it and need an external source while glycine is considered nonessential, we can make it from other chemicals. For someone who can’t properly breakdown either though they might both be considered essential for health. It has been helping my mood and health.

I’ve continued to take the amino acids in a half teaspoon dose since the evening I took the full teaspoon dose late at night and couldn’t get to sleep. Essential nutrients can often have ranges for how much is helpful; too little or too much of many things can cause different types of symptoms. The taste isn’t better but I’ve (almost) acquired the taste for it — the astringent tang of a Pinot Noir was the closest taste I could think of —  which does turn out to contain free amino acids, including methionine and glycine. [http://skipthepie.org/beverages/alcoholic-beverage-wine-table-red-merlot/compared-to/alcoholic-beverage-wine-table-red-pinot-noir/#proteins]

Probably a few people can relate to the idea of red wine being a “Cheerful Juice,” it turns out that the free amino acids may have something to do with it.

What I did find is that having a genetic defect in the metabolic pathway of an essential amino acid such as glycine can have significant negative effects on mood and energy level and that simply adding an external source of the missing nutrient can have significant positive effects.

The genetic defect that I have may be rare, I don’t know, but if glyphosate is able to substitute for glycine within physiology then an external source of purified glycine may also be beneficial for anyone eating foods based on ingredients that may contain traces of glyphosate.

Testing for the presence of glyphosate would not be as simple as testing for the free amino acid however; if it had been incorporated into proteins in place of glycine, then the glyphosate would only be discovered by the lab test if the longer protein chains were broken down first into the free amino acids — and glyphosate if it had been incorporated into the protein instead of glycine.

Another way to test to see if glyphosate is being incorporated into the structure of proteins in place of glycine would be to add radioactively tagged glyphosate into a system capable of assembling proteins and then test the new mixture to see whether the radioactively tagged glyphosate was used in place of glycine within the newly synthesized protein chains.

Glyphosate was found within vaccinations that were independently tested by a non-profit group, Moms Across America, but the company Monsanto has since stated that the lab screening that was used was invalid and the testing system Monsanto used found no residue of glyphosate in vaccinations. [http://monsantoblog.com/2016/09/13/monsanto-responds-to-flawed-study-by-samsel-claiming-glyphosate-in-vaccines/] — A test for free amino acids wouldn’t find glyphosate that had been incorporated into proteins of agar gelatin or viral proteins.

Series on glycine and use as a supplement for genetic defect–nutrigenomics:

  1. Glycine is an Amino Acid with Neurotransmitter Roles, 10/15/2016,  http://transcendingsquare.com/2016/10/15/glycine-is-an-amino-acid-with-neurotransmitter-roles/
  2. Cheerful Juice Lives Up to its Name, 10/20/16,  http://transcendingsquare.com/2016/10/20/cheerful-juice-lives-up-to-its-name/
  3. Cheerful Juice; the morning after,  10/20/2016,  http://transcendingsquare.com/2016/10/20/cheerful-juice-the-morning-after/

/Disclaimer: This information is provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of fair use. While I am a Registered Dietitian this information is not intended to provide individual health guidance. Please see a health professional for individual health care purposes./