Roundup Herbicide May Be Most Important Factor in Development of Chronic Disease. Stephanie Seneff, MIT (GlyphCCD)

Disrupts protein digestion, causes leaky gut, results in autoimmune and neurological conditions, which are proliferating.

Disrupts collagen digestion causing joint problems and vascular problems; also impairs health by causing imbalance in your gut microbiome, and by weakening your immune system.

“The neutrophils are unable to do their job and then the tryptophan gets squirreled away inside the macrophages as kynurenine, [which] then gets taken over to the brain, causing all kinds of trouble in the brain.

Shocking Glyphosate Statistics

Both glyphosate and EMF exposure have dramatically increased in recent decades. Between 1974 (the year glyphosate entered the U.S. market and just over two decades before GE crops were introduced) and 2014, glyphosate use in the U.S. increased more than 250-fold. Globally, glyphosate use rose nearly fifteenfold since 1996, two years after the first GE crops hit the market.

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Recent research shows that while few individuals had detectable levels of glyphosate in their urine in 1993, by 2016, 70% of them had it.

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 Overall, the prevalence of human exposure to glyphosate increased by 500% during the study period (1993 to 2016), while actual levels of the chemical in people’s bodies increased by an astounding 1,208%.

Glyphosate Increases Allergenic Potential of Proteins

Seneff has done a lot of research on glyphosate, teasing out a number of mechanisms by which it causes biological harm. Much of this was discussed in “Roundup Herbicide May Be Most Important Factor in Development of Chronic Disease.”

More recently, Seneff and her research partner, Anthony Samsel, a research scientist and environmental and public health consultant, have found a significant amount of circumstantial evidence suggesting the chemical takes the place of glycine (an amino acid) in proteins, thereby impairing trypsin’s function, which is to digest proteins.

This increases the proteins’ allergenic potential. Glyphosate also causes leaky gut, allowing undigested proteins access to your general blood circulation. The end result is autoimmune disease, as your immune cells go into overdrive. “We have an epidemic in all kinds of different autoimmune diseases and food allergies, and I think all of that traces back to glyphosate,” she says.

The “gly” in glyphosate actually stands for “glycine,” which is one of the most common and also the smallest amino acid. So, glyphosate is basically a glycine molecule with a side chain attached to the nitrogen atom, and even though it’s a modified glycine molecule, it’s still glycine. This is why it can replace the regular amino acid glycine in your system. Unfortunately, it’s now toxic. Seneff explains:

“Certain proteins have certain glycines that absolutely have to be glycine in order for them to work properly. A good example is myosin. Myosin in the muscles [allow for] muscle contraction. It's a really important protein in the muscles for movement. It has a glycine at position 699 in the amino acid sequence. If you change that glycine into alanine, which is to say you add one extra methyl group, it ruins the protein.

It only has 1 percent capacity to contract. It loses 99 percent of its capacity to contract. Really amazing. So, if you put glyphosate instead of glycine, you're going to have at least as bad an effect as you would with alanine, and probably worse. It will cripple the protein and maybe that's how you get chronic fatigue syndrome.”

Other Adverse Health Effects of Glyphosate

Collagen also contains large amounts of glycine, and we have an epidemic of joint pain, back pain, knee and hip pain. These too may well be the result of glyphosate exposure. Glyphosate also impairs health by causing imbalance in your gut microbiome, and by weakening your immune system. Seneff explains:

“The neutrophils are unable to do their job and then the tryptophan gets squirreled away inside the macrophages as kynurenine, [which] then gets taken over to the brain, causing all kinds of trouble in the brain.

So, there's this whole complicated thing that's going on between the brain and the gut — the gut-brain axis communication system — with the microbes being messed up by the glyphosate, the gut being leaky, and the leaky gut barrier introducing a leaky brain barrier.

So, the barriers are all leaky. The placental barrier is leaky too, so the placenta gets in trouble during pregnancy. All this stuff that's happening because of glyphosate. It’s such a cascade.”

Glyphosate also depletes food of tryptophan by impairing the shikimate pathway in the plant. As a result, food is becoming increasingly tryptophan depleted, leading to widespread deficiency. Eventually, you can get into a situation where the tryptophan gets totally depleted, and when your liver doesn't get enough, it cannot make enough N-arachidonoyl dopamine (NADA) — one of the most important signaling molecules in your body — because NADA depends on tryptophan.

Downstream, you may also end up with serotonin and melatonin deficiency in the brain, which can lead to sleep disorders, depression and violent or suicidal behavior. Aside from tryptophan, disruption of the shikimate pathway also decreases all of the other aromatic amino acids, including tyrosine and phenylalanine, along with all of their derivatives, which include dopamine and melanin and folate.