The average umbilical cord has over 200+ toxins in it.

The average umbilical cord has over 200+ toxins in it. Nobody gets a clean start anymore.

Does it mean something that the most affluent, resourced and medically advanced society in the world also has the highest rate of chronic childhood illness? We spend the most money on health care, and get the worst outcomes. Something doesn’t add up.

There is a real problem here coming to light with our individual access to more and more information.

Just a generation ago, obesity, diabetes, autism, developmental delays and digestive diseases were rare. They even had names for them like “adult onset” that had to be renamed since babies were getting them. Today, more than half of U.S. children have at least one diagnosed serious chronic health condition.

The number of child illnesses have been linked to number of environmental stressors (duh), but these toxins include things we think of as harmless, like shampoos, [non-organic] clothing and food, diapers, mattresses, carpet/paint/cheap furniture off gasses, etc. Basically everything in your home or that you put on your baby’s body that is not natural is causing harm, ESPECIALLY in the doses we use. Nothing we do is in moderation, as much as we like to tell ourselves so.

Key Highlights:

1. Total load matters. The more toxins a child is exposed to, the worse their health. This confirms the “total load” hypothesis. Minuscule amounts add up, and small, consistent exposures can even be worse than single mega exposures.

2. All stages of the life matter. Exposures at all stages of a child’s life make a difference — prenatal, neonatal, childhood, adolescence and yes, even as we grow into adults.

3. Toxins and stressors multiply off each other. While an individual toxins on their own may not make a child acutely sick, when combined with other toxins, their effect can be multiplied. Most published studies only look at one thing at a time, but fail to imagine a real life scenario of thousands of chemicals introduced all the time. The cumulative effect of constant exposure to the SMALLEST amounts of toxins or stressors can be insidious (go unnoticed) and slowly overwhelm a child’s body. This is when symptoms MAY start to emerge.

Some statistics:

• Rates of autism have risen over the last few decades:

  • from 1 in 10,000 in our parents’ generation

  • to 1 in 45 children today (1 in 30 in some states, 3x higher in boys, possibly due to slower development of their immune system compared to girls)

• Asthma affects 1 in 8 children, and as many as 1 in 6 African American children.

• 1 in 3 American children is either overweight or obese

• 1 in 14 children has a life-threatening food allergy.

• 1 in 30 children is diagnosed with pediatric depression.

• Estimates of over 10% of American children have ADD/ADHD and 17% are labeled as “learning disabled.”

Costs

• Autism costs the U.S. $268 billion every year, with the potential to reach $1 trillion by 2025.

• Asthma costs the U.S. $56 billion per year.

• Obesity-related medical costs account for $190 billion or 21% of medical spending in the United States

  • Childhood obesity alone costs $14 billion a year in direct medical costs

• The U.S. spends $83 billion a year on depression.

• ADHD is estimated to cost the US upwards of $100 billion per year.

While technologically sophisticated and scientifically rich, our current health care model is not equipped to deal with the tsunami of complex chronic illnesses we are seeing today. And we can look to our babies and our elders to see our own futures. Our babies show how our next generations are being effected (the future of our species), and the chronic problems seen in our grandparents only tell us what we are going to go through ourselves as we get older. This means more medications for more chronic pains.

We are treating our kids are the “canaries in the coalmine,” and they are telling us the way we are living is not good for any of us. But there is hope. We can use the tools of science and the power of media to illuminate root causes and prevent and reverse these problems that start in our children. If this hypothesis is true, we have the opportunity to profoundly impact the future of our entire species and planet.

Resources:

• Documentinghope.com - participate in a study to see what toxins you are adding to your baby’s overall load, or just read the results from other parents!

• PODCAST discussing the project and intention behind it, Essentials of Healthy Living

• Medical and Scientific Literature, Evidence and Consequences