Born Toxic: Placenta Transfer

As parents we all want the best for our children and we have images in our heads of perfect pregnancies, deliveries and children. Of course this is never going to be the case for everyone but there has been a trend in recent decades of all kinds of issues ranging from delayed development, birth defects, autism and ADD to list but a few. It would seem that there is something amiss and it is not a sudden shift in our genetics: it is coming from our environment.

Placenta transfer is a concept that not everyone is familiar with. In the past we believed that the placenta was an impenetrable fortress and nothing negative could get across this from mother to child. Unfortunately this is proving to be far from the truth. Science has confirmed that while the placenta is excellent at keeping larger things like bacteria out of the baby, it is not so good at keeping out chemicals and metals. This is abundantly clear from the assessment of hair tissue mineral analysis of little infants that have never eaten regular food or water. Toxic metals and chemicals pass right through the placenta from mother to child during pregnancy.

So what does that mean for our children?

It means that our health, prior to getting pregnant and carrying a baby is critical for the health of the child. If we are mercury toxic we need to be aware of this and do what we can before we get pregnant to best insure the health of our children.

Copper overload is another big issue with newborns. Copper is, in my opinion, a hidden epidemic in the population. As such it is becoming an epidemic with our children. Copper is actually designed to cross the placenta in all mammals and stockpile in the liver. This is because copper and zinc are direct antagonists. Copper in excess causes zinc to lower and vice versa, too much zinc would cause a copper deficiency. Our bodies in their wisdom then ensure that the breast milk is loaded with zinc to offset the copper that was stored during pregnancy. When the level of copper is normal in the mum the whole system works beautifully.

A newborn with too much copper would potentially reject the breast milk if the mum was inadvertently passing even more copper. Another potential issue with too much copper is the vastly increased risk of jaundice. Unfortunately our health professionals are not being trained to look for these issues as there is a great lack of understanding of congenital placenta transfer and specifically copper overload. As time goes on, these children experience immune system weakness, allergies and recurring infections. Interestingly high copper is linked to depression and as such the mother is at greater risk of post-partum depression.

The problem goes even deeper than this unfortunately. The main reason we are seeing high levels of copper in people is due to exposure to chemicals that mimic estrogen. These are things like pesticides, petroleum products, plastics, birth control and other hormones. These cause the level of copper to rise in the body as they prevent it from being properly eliminated. The problem that is really starting to become apparent is the accumulation of copper and other metals and chemicals across MULTIPLE generations.

Let's go back to your grandmother and for illustration purposes say she was a farmer who used DDT as it was the "best" chemical pesticide to every be invented. The DDT would have inevitably raised her copper level. This copper would have then been passed to your mother. The issue is that the concentration of copper, by body weight, would now be higher in your mother. When your mum had you the concentration of the copper would have gone up yet again, and when you have a child the same thing happens. We now have a fourth generation "copper head" with much higher copper levels than her great grandmother ever had.

We are only now starting to reap the negative consequences of a hundred years of environmental damage and lunacy. The accumulation of copper is likely to produce an epidemic of physical and psychological problems.

Unfortunately as grim as that picture is there are many more toxicities that can be passed from mother to child.

The light at the end of the tunnel is that this problem can be fixed. First we must recognize it exists. Then we must get tested for these chemical and imbalances with a hair tissue mineral analysis and any other relevant tests. Then we must do everything we can to prepare our bodies for pregnancy. When on a Nutritional Balancing program we use seven different methods simultaneously to address detoxification.

They are

1) improve your energy level
2) provide support for the organs of elimination
3) inhibit the sympathetic nervous system
4) reduce exposure
5) supplement with heavy metal antagonists
6) supplement with natural heavy metal chelators
7) recommend other natural detoxification.

The addition of daily near infrared saunas will also significantly speed up the elimination of many dozens of chemicals and toxins.

It is my opinion, that if a woman is looking to become pregnant, she needs to spend 6 months to a year to properly prepare her body. While this may not be popular or well accepted I do believe it to be the truth and the results of hundreds of hair mineral analysis of parents and kids certainly would seem to confirm this.