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LC,

Thought this would be of interest to you. If you are drinking bottled water or eating a lot of foods from plastic containers, maybe that is why you can't get your insulin level down.

gwa

Medical News Today
Link Found Between Bisphenol A And Metabolic Syndrome In Human Tissue
07 Sep 2008

New research from the University of Cincinnati (UC) implicates the primary chemical used to produce hard plastics - bisphenol A (BPA) - as a risk factor for metabolic syndrome and its consequences.

In a laboratory study, using fresh human fat tissues, the UC team found that BPA suppresses a key hormone, adiponectin, which is responsible for regulating insulin sensitivity in the body and puts people at a substantially higher risk for metabolic syndrome.

Metabolic syndrome is a combination of risk factors that include lower responsiveness to insulin and higher blood levels of sugar and lipids. According to the American Heart Association, about 25 percent of Americans have metabolic syndrome. Left untreated, the disorder can lead to life-threatening health problems such as coronary artery disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes.

Nira Ben-Jonathan, PhD, and her team are the first to report scientific evidence on the health effects of BPA at environmentally relevant doses equal to "average" human exposure. Previous studies have primarily focused on animal studies and high doses of BPA.

They report their findings in the Aug. 14, 2008, online edition of the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. This scientific data comes just before a key Federal Drug Administration meeting about the safety of the chemical in consumer products scheduled for Sept. 16, 2008.

"People have serious concerns about the potential health effects of BPA. As the scientific evidence continues to mount against the chemical, it should be given serious attention to minimize future harm," says Ben-Jonathan, a professor of cancer and cell biology at UC who has studied BPA for more than 10 years.

"Experimenting with human tissue is the closest we can come to testing the effects of BPA in humans. It's a very exciting breakthrough because epidemiological studies looking at BPA effects on humans are difficult since most people have already been exposed to it," she adds.

Scientists estimate that over 80 percent of people tested have measurable BPA in their bloodstream. The UC study was designed to mimic a realistic human exposure (between 0.1 and 10 nanomolar) so that a more direct correlation between human exposure and health effects could be drawn.

To conduct this study, the UC team collected fresh fat tissue from Cincinnati patients undergoing several types of breast or abdominal surgery. These samples included three types of fat tissue: breast, subcutaneous and visceral (around the organs).

Tissue was immediately taken to the laboratory and incubated with different concentrations of BPA or estrogen for six hours to observe how the varied amounts of BPA affected adiponectin levels. The effects of BPA were then compared to those of estradiol, a natural form of human estrogen.

They found that exposing human tissues to BPA levels within the range of common human exposure resulted in suppression of a hormone that protects people from metabolic syndrome.

"These results are especially powerful because we didn't use a single patient, a single tissue source or a single occurrence," she adds. "We used different fat tissues from multiple patients and got the same negative response to BPA."

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Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release.
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UC's Eric Hugo, PhD, Terry Brandebourg, PhD, Jessica Woo, PhD, J. Wesley Alexander, MD, and Christ Hospital surgeon Jean Loftus, MD, participated in this study. The study was funded by grants from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

Source: Amanda Harper
University of Cincinnati

Article URL: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/120456.php

GWA--Thank you SO much for posting this article! I had not seen this info and never would have (since I do not regularly read that source).

I am still unsuccessful at lowering my insulin level. My problem may well lie in this BPA; I have used bottled water exclusively (not only for drinking, but even for brushing my teeth!) for years. I cannot see a problem with other containers--I have been leery of those forever, it seems.

I will definitely review my situation; thanks again.

Heres some plastic trivia:

If you leave a plastic water bottle in the sun for 20 min. the chemicals in the plastic will discharge into the water.

If you have plastic pipes in your house (most newer houses do) and your water heater is set high that causes a chemical reaction as well.

To the other extreme -

If you freeze three bottles of water and keep them in your refridge freezer your utility bill will drop.

In my opinion, bisphenol-a is the poster child molecule of corporate tyranny. I will leave the following link active for the next day or two. It's an interview with Dr. Frederick vom Saal who is a research biologist specializing in endocrinology. Dr. vom Saal has published several papers on the physiological dangers of bisphenol-a and he has also appeared on the National Geographic series "Strange Days on Planet Earth" in a segment which discussed the problems associated with plastics pollution in the environment. The audio file is from 2006 and it's about 13.5 MB. To download the file, right click on it and select "Save link target as..." or whatever option your browser provides.

NHE


(Note: the link to the above mentioned file has now been disabled)

Very frightening to say the least. Thanks for posting the link.

gwa

Yes, thank you. Another one to increase the paranoia or skepticism about, well, everything!!!

_________________
3 years antibiotics, 06/09 bilateral jug stents at C1, 05/11 ballooning of both jug valves, 07/12 stenting of renal vein, azygos & jug valve ballooning,

Here's a link to Frederick vom Saal's papers via PubMed (many of which are freely available).


NHE

I just sent him an email and asked whether he thinks this substance stays in the body permanently. It seems like a substance that is impossible to stay away from due to the plastic pipes currently used in homes.

The video is one of the most scary things I have watched.

gwa

Hi GWA,

Have you heard back from Dr. vom Saal yet? It would be great to know his response to your question.

On a side note, since becoming aware of the problems with bisphenol-a, I've taken steps to reduce my exposure to plastics. For example, I no longer heat food in the microwave using plastic containers. I also no longer drink beverages from suspect plastics, e.g., PETE and Polycarbonate. I also gave up using styrofoam cups for hot beverages. I go to a meeting every week and I now bring my own ceramic mug with me for hot tea. On the rare occasion that I do wind up using a styrofoam cup, I can really taste the difference now. I also went on a search through about 4 different stores to try to find a HDPE tippy cup for my young niece and nephew to replace the unlabeled, hard, clear (likely polycarbonate) tippy cups that they were using (I just couldn't see any logic in exposing a growing male toddler to a known chemical estrogen). I was surprised at how hard it was to find a suitable tippy cup that was actually labeled with the type of plastic it was made of.

NHE

I have not gotten a response from Dr Saal yet. The things you are doing are the same that I have been doing for a long time. I had read about the plastic problem years ago, but did not realize the full extent of the problem until I watched the video.

If Bush really shut down the research on the polycarbonate materials, that defies comprehension.

gwa

The thing that scared me when reading this was the use of Bp-a in plastic baby bottles. There have been studies showing breast feeding leads to a reduced rate of autism and ADD, but these studies related to the benefit of increased LCPs (long chain polyunsaturated fats) found in breast milk. Add the double whammy of Bp-a exposure with plastic feeding bottles and lack of LCPs, and you've got an epidemic of childhood neurological illness and juvenile diabetes...kind of what we have today.
food for thought,
AC

_________________
Husband dx RRMS 3/07
dx dual jugular vein stenosis (CCSVI) 4/09
dual stents placed 5/09
CCSVI in MS

Here is an article from Yahoo News today discussing the FDA and plastics containing BP-A. Dr Saal is also mentioned in the article.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080916/ap_ ... nol_safety