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Celiac.com 12/18/2020 - This understanding of viruses is actually the culmination of my study—and the reason why my book has not been written—yet. I have been waiting for the “punch line” and this is it—how we actually reap what we sow in our physical lives. All it takes is a brief review of virology and what these little guys do in nature—which is vital to the creation and its moment-by-moment operation—and then we can see the truth about why it has all gone wrong. Am I over-dramatizing? I don’t think so. Simply put, viruses were made to adapt. They also are integral in the variation we see in nature. The other essential piece of information you need is how they incorporate their genetic information into ours. Once again, it is a scientific FACT that we have more viral information in our double stranded DNA than we do genes. Wow—does that answer a lot! So, do the genes that code for your eye color or the fact that you have two rams, two legs, one liver, and one nose suddenly mutate and give you a “genetic” disease? No, it is the viruses embedded in that DNA that do this. They have been there for generations and new ones are added with each generation. The acquisition of viruses was meant for good—to help us to adapt to our ever-changing environment. So, we should really thank someone who gives you a virus, shouldn’t we? If we were optimally healthy, we would acquire the guy and get on with our healthy lives. BUT, because of what we have done to ourselves, the environment, and the animals that harbor many of these viruses, some of the viruses have become “virulent”. Yes, they have been FORCED into adapting into something stronger because of what we have done. Once again, we reap what we sow. Then, as we become more and more unhealthy while continuing to challenge our viral inhabitants with lectins, chemicals, pollution and “carcinogens”, we reach critical mass. Our immune system IS the governor of this situation and is constantly trying to control this situation. We have all heard it said that we are fighting cancer at every moment of every day. Yep. So, what happens when we “assassinate our governor” by doing what we do? Yes, the poor nutrition, malabsorption syndromes caused by the “big 4” food intolerances, the lack of sleep, the chemicals, and more are ALL bullets that were firing away at our governor. Once again, we reap what we sow. With an ineffective, bullet-riddled governor and the continuation of the virus-challenging process, we lose our grip while the viruses are forced to adapt into something more powerful just to survive (which again is what they were charged with from the beginning—to adapt at all costs—even to our detriment if it came to that). Think of them as little robots. Well hey—look at them. Most of them LOOK like little robots. Have you seen them? They have a head that looks like the geodesic dome of the Epcot center. They have legs like a lunar lander and are very mechanical looking. So, the analogy is most accurate. Are they living or not? A great debate rages on about this. I think they have to be, just not by the standards that we normally use for “living”. Think of them as androids. Yeah, that’s it. And yes, once backed into a corner, they play their ultimate card—to induce a tumor that protects them and the cells in which they reside—a fortress that walls itself off from these continued challenges. I used to think they were trying to escape the immune system—now I know better. And, does a single tumor in a lung lobe or lymph node kill anyone? Hmmm—how about the drugs and radiation designed to kill that tumor? Hmmm—again. Oh oh. And what’s more, what does a virus get forced into doing if its new cocoon is threatened? MOVE, right? Yes, that is called metastasis. So simple, so clear—right? Question: Would cancer resolve IF we did enough right by stopping what we are doing that is driving these viruses crazy? We know we can prevent cancer by doing these things, right (Unfortunately, it is more appropriately put that we can accelerate cancer by doing enough bad things)? But could we take a person who has cancer (or any chronic viral disease), move them to a pristine location, feed them perfectly, give them unpolluted water, and alter their lifestyle so that they sleep well and get plenty of exercise and have that cancer or condition resolve? I believe the answer is a resounding YES, YES, YES. There is plenty of evidence of this. We hear stories of people curing themselves of cancer, MS, and other serious conditions and dismiss them because we simply don’t believe that we can recover from such things. What an attitude, eh? Where did that come from anyway? When did we lose faith in this miraculous body? And when did we start the process of literally handcuffing its attempts to heal itself by taking all of this symptomatic medication (e.g., NSAIDS to reduce fevers caused by viruses)? I know when and it fits like a glove into man’s history. I no longer put any limitations on what this body can do, only one what WE can do for our body. Does that pristine environment exist? Can we eat perfectly with what we have done to our food supply? The good news is that we don’t necessarily have to be perfect. The absolute worst of the worst do, unfortunately. But everything I have learned about medicine in the past six years screams at me that we are made to recover. We just start too late and rarely do enough—right? But once we see that disease is a “spectrum disorder”, with its victims ranging from the “best of the best” to the “worst of the worst”, we can easily see why some people get better with “holistic” treatment and others do not. Have those that don’t done enough right? So, what IS the cure for cancer? Does the answer lie in the laboratory? Is it hidden in the jungles of South America? OR does it lie within us all? I think we all really know the answer to this one now, don’t we? And once again—how cool is that?

Celiac.com 10/22/2019 - Many people use DNA testing services, like 23andMe, to check on their ancestry. However, such sites can also be helpful in revealing genetic risk for certain diseases. Take the case of Carol Mayes, a West Virginia woman, whose 23andMe test results led to the discovery of her celiac disease. Once tested, the simple saliva sample led Mayes to discover that she had an elevated risk for celiac disease. “I always had migraines that never went away and my dad said, ‘Why don’t you do Tylenol?’ I said, ‘Tylenol doesn’t work for me,'” Mayes explained. “I always try to donate blood and each time I can never do it because my iron was always low." When she put the DNA results together with her medical history of migraines, and low iron in her blood, Mayes pressed her doctor for a celiac blood test. "I asked my doctor, ‘Can you test me for Celiac disease?’ And I came back with my test results and I was positive for celiac disease.” Services like 23andMe can reveal genetic risk factors for many diseases, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and certain types of cancer, though they do not typically diagnose any health conditions. The IRS recently permitted tax deductions for DNA tests, like 23andMe, that are used for medical purposes.

Celiac.com 04/25/2019 - Part of our modern human DNA contains genetic material from a number of what scientists call 'admixture' events, or, more simply, mingling of DNA from Neanderthals that of different populations. Approximately 2–4% of genetic material in human populations outside Africa comes originally from Neanderthals who interbred with anatomically modern humans. Researchers have hypothesized that the first such events likely occurred in Western Asia shortly after humans migrated out of Africa. However, previous studies show lower Neanderthal introgression rates in some Western Asian populations compared with other Eurasian populations. A team of researchers recently set out to better understand the genome-wide and phenotypic impact of Neanderthal introgression in the region. Their research reveals, among other things, that the genes associated with celiac disease are inherited from our Neanderthal ancestors. The research team included Recep Ozgur Taskent, Nursen Duha Alioglu, Evrim Fer, Handan Melike Donertas, Mehmet Somel and Omer Gokcumen. They are variously affiliated with the Department of Biological Sciences, University at Buffalo; the Department of Biology, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey; and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, European Bioinformatics Institute, Wellcome Genome Campus, Hinxton, UK. To do so, the team sequenced complete genomes of nine present-day Europeans, Africans, and the Western Asian Druze at high depth. They then analyzed genome data from other populations, including 16 genomes from present-day Turkey. The team confirmed the depletion of what are thought to be functional sequences among Neanderthal-introgressed haplotypes. The team's results confirm those of earlier studies that show modern Western Asian populations, on an average, have lower levels of Neanderthal-mingled DNA relative to other Eurasian populations. A number studies have looked at the effects of Neanderthal alleles in non-Neanderthal populations. Some indicate negative effects, with putative links to various diseases as measured by genome-wide association studies (Sankararaman et al. 2014. Simonti et al. 2016). For example, according to the researchers: "One of these haplotypes is unusually long and harbors variants that affect the expression of members of the CCR gene family and are associated with celiac disease." Since the genome-wide association studies show that celiac disease is linked with the Neanderthal haplotype, we may have to thank our neanderthal cousins for this disease. Stay tuned for more on the implications of Neanderthal DNA on disease susceptibility in western and other populations. Read more at: Genome Biol Evol. 2017 Dec; 9(12): 3516–3524doi: 10.1093/gbe/evx216