Environmental Stressors
Each year an estimated 4.5 billion pounds of the herbicide and crop desiccant glyphosate (the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup) is deliberately sprayed on our home. It is water soluble, which means that in addition to being sprayed on the crops, it is absorbed into the soil, into the water table, and by extension, everything else. It acts on the shikimate pathway in plants, interrupting the synthesis of 3 essential amino acids (tryptophan, phenylalanine, and tyrosine). There are 9 essential amino acids, termed such because humans cannot produce them and need to obtain them from food. We make important hormones and neurotransmitters, such as serotonin, dopamine, and epinephrine, among many others from the 3 essential amino acids that this chemical blocks in plant biosynthesis. Even though human cells do not have this pathway, the bacteria in our gut do.
The EPA states that glyphosate is safe and there are “no risks of concern to human health from current uses of glyphosate.” On a related note, it took the EPA 30 years to identify, acknowledge, and then ban the use of the insecticide DDT owing to adverse environmental, wildlife, and human effects. One of the more interesting correlations with the end of the polio epidemic in the United States in the early 1960s other than the introduction of the Sabin and Salk vaccines, was the phasing out of DDT domestically. DDT was known to poison nerve tissue, specifically the anterior horn cells of the spinal cord, producing the same clinical presentation as paralytic polio. Correlation does not equal causation and there is always more than one reason for why a virus appears to “cause” serious and scary illness. It behoves us to consider a larger perspective: one that includes the impact of introducing significant quantities of toxic chemicals into the environment, directly or indirectly into our bodies.
The EPA position is an interesting one, since glyphosate is devastating to the human gut biome and damages the tight junctions of the cells that line the gut and the blood-brain barrier. The mucosal linings of our body and the microbes that symbiotically host us are two of the primary ways we maintain balance with the environment. They are cornerstones of our immune system. I believe we are seeing the cumulative impact of nearly 50 years of progressively increasing the use of chemicals that are toxic to water, soil, and the biological systems that maintain life on our planet. The mainstream conversation about climate change and greenhouse gas emissions has largely ignored the carbon capture and storage afforded by healthy soil. Perhaps more importantly, I think the terrestrial information substrates (e.g. mycelia and microflora) that know how to create and sustain life on this planet live in the soil.
We are not separate from nature. Ecosystem describes the relationship of living things to their environment; oikos from the Greek “house, or dwelling.” To continue on this course of chemical escalation in an hubristic attempt to control nature is not simply absurd, it is obviously and profoundly dangerous. Our ability to inhabit our planet in a healthy and meaningful way starts at home.
Things you can do:
Grow your own food
Buy local, organic, and regenerative
Don’t spray Roundup
Encourage your neighbors to not spray Roundup
Combining concentrated vinegar and epsom salt is great anti-“weed” method
Nostalgia
The holiday season trades heavily in the currency of nostalgia. From music to movies, to the decorations and traditions, there is a strong reference to a sentimental version of the past. While this can facilitate cheer and goodwill, unless we deliberately pause to center and orient ourselves, we can be swept up in the frenzied commercialism that has come to define our current culture.
In Greek, nostos means “homecoming.” Many of the chapters in The Odyssey are referred to as the Nostoi since they recount the trials and tribulations of Odysseus and his fellow Greeks on their return from the Trojan War. The suffix -algia means pain. If you have ever revisited your home after time away, especially if years have elapsed and/or you have journeyed, what you remember and what you see in present time are no longer the same.
In the current usage of nostalgia we tend to focus on the sweet, warm remembrance of the past, conveniently omitting the grit in our desire to return to something known and unchanging. In times of uncertainty and upheaval, it is natural to yearn for something simpler and safer. The overwhelming possibilities of the present can incline our attention toward a sentimental but ultimately incomplete version of the past. I contend that what we are actually yearning for are the qualities and values of connection that seem so much more difficult to find in present time. It requires less vulnerability to see them in the past, to know how the story unfolds, than to confront the many and increasing challenges of today.
To choose to turn toward connection is to author a new chapter in what will one day be the past. From Ebenezer Scrooge to George Bailey, we are given the impression that a single night of reckoning will yield illumination and course-correction from the brink of catastrophe. Yet the invitation to reframe how we see points to a practice, not a singular experience. The essence of the holiday spirit is calling ourselves, the pieces of our past, and each other back home. This is how we unwrap the gift of the present, no matter what time of year it is.
For more on how chiropractic supports our ability to connect, I recommend this post.
Commemoration
On July 4th, Americans have a tradition of commemorating the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Commemorate means “brought to remembrance” and implies respectfully doing something to celebrate this memory. I have adopted a tradition from my uncle of reading the document each year. I find consulting primary sources an invaluable exercise. While doing so may not be as showy as a fireworks display, it successfully avoids the hazards of polluting the air, risking wildfire, terrorizing animals and children, and creating toxic trash.
The Declaration is a powerful and enduring document. Its assertion that “all men are created equal” is a principle but not a practice in the American experiment of democracy. About a decade after the Declaration was signed, another document was drafted to codify the arrangement of a federal government. The Preamble of the Constitution opens with “We the People” - powerful, enduring, and more inclusive than the language in the Declaration. As with any text, there is more than one way to interpret this document. We have seen a landmark example of interpretation this past week.
It is often the case that order matters. The order in which things are listed can reveal the priority of the authors’ values. The Preamble continues,
…to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
All of these values are processes, not ends. Can the people of today endeavor to keep a unity of spirit in the bond of peace? Can we recognize, practice, and codify that there can be diversity without division and unity without conformity? I think the revolution confronting us now is to include but go beyond the Enlightenment values and institutions of the 18th century. If we desire to secure a posterity that would commemorate us, we must ensure that the blessings of liberty apply to all.