Why are all the kids so sick? This is a question I get asked quite often in my DMs on my Instagram account (Findingforrester4). It’s a good one too. It is relevant and real.
I’ve spent the last 5 years trying to figure this out. The scales tipped for me back in 2014 when Raleigh first got sick, or at least that is when he showed signs of sickness with his tree nut allergy. He only declined from there: tree nut allergy turned into multiple food allergies and sensitivities, eczema, edema and asthma. Each ailment prompted me to search for answers and here is what I found.
There is a genetic predisposition to all ailments, at least in part, and I would be remiss not to say that first. We are predisposed to certain things just due to our genetics. However, we are not bound by our genetics — we are not destined for cancer or autoimmunity just because our parent or grandparent was plagued with the illness. Our decisions matter. What we eat matters, our stress level matters, our toxic burden matters.
The world we currently reside in is abundant in toxins. There are far too many to list here, but I’ll highlight some of the biggest offenders. Glyphosate and other pesticides and herbicides are sprayed everywhere; from neighbor’s lawns to kill dandelions all the way to the very food we consume on a daily basis. Glyphosate (aka Round Up) does exponential damage to the gut lining. The gut lining should not have holes in it, but chemicals such as glyphosate punch holes in the lining and that allows food and toxins to seep into our blood stream and cause havoc in our bodies.
Glyphosate is sprayed on many things; especially the three biggest crops in America: Corn, Soy, and Wheat. These three foods are what make up most every packaged food in the middle isles of the grocery store. The typical American who consumes cereals, macaroni and cheese, and poptarts is consuming large amounts of these heavily sprayed crops.
But the chemical sh*t storm doesn’t stop there, unfortunately. There are chemicals that off-gas from the furniture in your house: your couch, your bed, the flooring, the paint, the wall paper. Many children’s pajamas are coated in flame retardants that their little bodies soak up while they sleep. Check the tags, they list this stuff! When you sleep your body heals, but how can it do so if it’s breathing in and soaking up chemicals?
Chemicals are a huge part of why the kids (and all of us) are so sick.
Antibiotics — It’s fairly well known that antibiotics are over prescribed these days. It is also fairly well known that superbugs are now in existence that are resistant to antibiotics because of their overuse; and this leaves the person very vulnerable to catching something that could kill them.
Antibiotics can be life savers but should only be used when it is a matter of life or death. The reason for this is the fact that antibiotics go in and kill not only the bad but also the good. Our gut microbiome is meant to be diverse with good bacteria and when it is carpet bombed by antibiotics the good gut bugs get wiped out along with the bad. We need the good to keep the bad in check. The more antibiotics that are used, the more sterile the gut becomes, and a sterile gut environment is a breeding ground for pathogenic (bad) bacteria.
Over-sterilization — Put down the hand sanitizers. STAT. Stop wiping surfaces and cleaning with bleach.
Vaccines — This is obviously an incredibly sensitive subject these days. My stance: It should be everyone’s personal choice to vaccinate or not to. I will never take out personal choice. That being said I am very against vaccination, and the reason for this is I believe vaccination played a pivotal role in Raleigh getting so sick. He is vaccine injured. He doesn’t have autism or seizures (the types of vaccine injury that get pay outs from VAERS) but food allergies, asthma, and eczema are 100% vaccine injury. Vaccine injury is far more common that you may think or want to believe. And my stance on this issue has only grown in it’s intensity in the past few years due to my personal experience, my research into brilliant doctors and physicians who’ve written extensively about this, and hearing testimony after testimony from other parents. At some point, anecdotal evidence becomes real evidence.
Vaccinations in and of themselves are well worth looking into. They contain many questionable ingredients from aborted fetal cells (yes, that is aborted babies), formaldehyde, aluminum, mercury, monkey kidney cells, MSG, and more. They are full of toxins, many of which the body cannot detox from. Check out http://www.learntherisk.org for more information. Also, the Vaccine Conversation podcast with Dr. Bob and Melissa is incredibly informative.
Every generation is progressively getting sicker. This is an undeniable fact. Each generation is passing on less good gut bacteria due to years of vaccines, increased chemical exposure and consumption, toxic birth control, toxic beauty products, over use of antibiotics and on and on. The good gut bacteria is what keep us healthy and all of these things have been slowly destroying our beneficial bacteria. Each generation is losing microbes and on the heels of their loss come illness.
People want to believe that what you eat doesn’t matter, but in fact it matters greatly. Just a few generations ago our great grandparents were fermenting cabbage, making soups out of meat stocks, getting their hands dirty in the Glyphosate-FREE soil, sleeping without WI-FI surging through their bodies at night. Autoimmune diseases were incredibly rare or nonexistent. Every generation since has shown a greater level of sickness than the one before, and if you think it’s bad now, well hold on to your butts — it’s going to get worse. Kids are going to get sicker. Adults are going to get sicker. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
I now know more than a dozen women in their 20s and 30s who cannot conceive. This is not normal. I know double that amount who have had miscarriages or multiple miscarriages. That is not normal. The body is intelligent; God made it so. The body will not sustain a pregnancy if the body is too toxic for the growing fetus. It will also not sustain a pregnancy if it does not have enough of the fat-soluble vitamins needed to properly grow the fetus. Pregnancy is serious business. The body sees the fetus as a chance to unload toxins (yep. toxic dump) and it does, each and every pregnancy. How is that for handing your precious new baby a very large toxic load right at the beginning of his or her life?
Think of it this way. It’s like we each have a rain barrel. Toxins slowly fill it up…you drink cokes daily, you spray your lawn with pesticides, you eat cereal every morning with skim milk, you had vaccines as a child and get the flu shot, you get a round of antibiotics every year for this or for that, you buy a new mattress…the rain barrel slowly fills. What happens when it overflows? Inevitably it will overflow, and I’d argue most people today are overflowing. When it overflows you get a cancer diagnosis, you get diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, you can’t focus and have ADHD, you develop seasonal allergies, your anxiety and depression are crippling, you develop eczema; all of which leads you to pharmaceutical drugs that further damage the gut lining.
Babies are now being born with their rain barrels overflowing because their mother’s have passed on so much toxicity. They have no chance even from day 1 when they are vaccinated with Hepatitis B and Vitamin K and given an antibiotic eye goop right out of the womb. Tell me, what baby needs Hep B the day of or after birth? Is that baby going to sleep in a gutter of putrid filth and feces? Probably not, unless maybe they’re born in California. But still, it’s doubtful.
The poisons come at us every which way they can, and they’re not going to stop. The vaccine schedule is growing, the chemicals around us are everywhere, our food is poisoned with chemicals and sugar — all things that break down that precious gut lining. But if you’re born with a huge chemical load, from a mother with a damaged gut, you inherit a broken and sick system just by default. It’s a hard reality. But it is necessary to understand this in order to change it…and we can change it.
Our bodies weren’t meant to sustain this load of toxins and all of these illnesses and symptoms are the body’s way of crying out and telling us something is wrong, something needs to be fixed. We need to stop normalizing auto-immunity, asthma, eczema, food allergies, ADHD, anxiety, depression — these things are NOT normal.
So how do we fix it? Food. Food is medicine. Slowly detoxing from all of these poisons, getting back into nature, embracing dirt, not fearing germs but knowing we have a magnificent immune system that needs to be challenged by microbes found in dirt and germs to keep us healthy. This obsession with sanitizing every aspect of our lives is going to make this situation even worse. Every pump of hand sanitizer is killing precious good bugs that live on your skin and help keep the pathogenic bacteria in their place.
I look at Raleigh and see a miraculous transformation in the near 3 years we’ve been on GAPS. We have made some significant changes to our lifestyle, the foods we choose to eat, removing chemicals as best we can, changing how we view germs and all of these things have improved our health significantly. We are reversing syndromes, losing weight, gaining health and strength.
As with everything worth doing — these things take time and dedication. Perseverance. Health is wealth. But don’t take my word for it. Go research. Question everything. Find answers.
Here are some of the books I’ve read and some valuable resources for those of you who would like to look into this:
Vaccines, Autoimmunity and the Changing Nature of Childhood Illness by Dr. Cowan
Dissolving Illusions by Dr. Suzzane Humphries
Deep Nutrition by Catherine Shanahan
Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A Price
What’s Making Our Children Sick? by Michelle Perro and Vincanne Adams
http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com
Gut and Psychology Syndrome by Dr. Natasha Campbell McBride
I’d love to know your thoughts.
Blessings,
Danielle
