Not Lifestyle! Not the food habits!! What affects our wellness the most?
Active lifestyle, clean and healthy eating alone will not ensure your wellness.
India is diabetic capital of the world. Hypertension became a household terminology nowadays. We hear more and more medical conditions prevailing. Thanks to advancement in the medical field. Even though average life expectancy has increased over decades, the quality of life starting right from late 30s or even early 30s has gone down.
Set apart the mental well being, we all are thought many medical conditions are because of sedentary lifestyle or unhealthy food habits. Yes they do effect the wellbeing to a considerable extent, we can say 30% each summing up to 60% of the effect. Remaining 40% of the effect is because of other untold factor — “dietary Pesticide exposure — The level of pesticide residue that end up in our plate”.
If lifestyle is a major reason, sports personalities who are expected to have above normal physical work than others should have been away from them. Wasim Akram was diagnosed with diabetes when he was 29 and actively playing professional cricket. Arthur Ashe, 3 times grand slam winner was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Billie jean King, 20 times grand slam winner was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Borja Mayoral, Nacho among the current active football players have diabetes. Many farmers and daily construction labors, who most often engage in intense physical work, not overweight do end up getting diabetes.
The same holds true for having healthy diet. Even if you select the freshest of the veggies from the best supermarket around you can end up having diabetes or even cancer.
Then what?
The primary reason is, in order to feed the growing population, farmers started using synthetic fertilizers and chemical pesticides/herbicides/fungicides to grow crops (predominantly after green revolution) that we eat on day to day life.
Lets proceed with some of the top diseases/medical conditions that are prevalent in India.
Diabetes
Residual pesticide exposure triggers gut microbes to produce more glucose in liver, leading to high blood sugar or hyperglycemia in the body. Usage of hybrid seeds/Genetically modified seeds to increase food production for consumptions, which probably results in the production of food with more calories, but less essential nutrients. These might have affected systemic functions in the body and contributed to the development of chronic metabolic diseases such as type 2 diabetes.
Cancer
Ever wonder why many non smoking , non tobacco using person gets cancer? Chemicals can trigger cancer in a variety of ways, including disrupting hormones, damaging DNA, inflaming tissues and turning genes on or off. Exposure to certain banned pesticides increases breast cancer risk.
Some can act as breast carcinogens (cancer-causing agents) by causing gene mutations that lead to, or promote, growth of cancer, or they may act as endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) and disrupt sex hormones such as oestrogen — high levels of which can increase breast cancer risk.
Several pesticides are banned as they are known to harm human health or the environment. For instance, the insecticide DDT was banned in 1986, due to several health concerns, including an increased risk of breast cancer. Other banned pesticides that are EDCs and/or cause mammary tumors in animals include lindane, chlorpyrifos and parathion, which were all once used to control insects.
Commonly used examples are the insecticide deltamethrin and the herbicide glyphosate, (commonly known as “Round-up”) which cause mammary tumors in rodents , and interfere with oestrogen. In 2015 glyphosate and the insecticide malathion were classified as probable human carcinogens. They may also increase breast cancer risk, but more studies are needed to confirm this.
Children are especially at risk of developing cancer from pesticide exposure, Studies show that pesticide exposure during pregnancy and throughout childhood increase the risk of cancer among children. When either parent is exposed to pesticides before a child is even conceived, that child’s risk of cancer goes up as well.
Infertility
Possible complications with birth are also suggested in data including birth defects, low birth weight, and fetal death.
In a research done by JAMA internal medicines, it was found that on a cohort of 325 women undergoing infertility treatment with assisted reproductive technology, intake of high–pesticide residue fruits and vegetables was associated with a lower probability of live birth, while low–pesticide residue fruit and vegetable intake was not associated with this outcome.
Higher consumption of high–pesticide residue fruits and vegetables was associated with lower probabilities of pregnancy and live birth following infertility treatment with assisted reproductive technology. These data suggest that dietary pesticide exposure within the range of typical human exposure may be associated with adverse reproductive consequences.
Exposure to pesticides lowers sperm levels well below the limit for male fertility. Although it is proved that pesticide exposure is associated with infertility (Table 4), there are not large-scale studies assessing their relationships to human infertility.
Increasing number of growing fertility centers is the proof for growing infertility rates.
Abnormal growth/Obesity (predominantly women):
Atrazine is one of the commonly used chemical in the pesticides and herbicides. This disrupts our hormones in our body. It especially spikes the estrogen hormone, which is higher in woman and lesser in men. Because of this spike in estrogen hormone leads to hormonal imbalance, obesity, abnormal growth among woman, hyper and hypothyroidism, PCOS, pregnancy complications, early puberty etc. Foods like cabbage and cauliflower will help mitigate this by improving the liver function, but the saddest part is cabbage, capsicum and cauliflower are the top 3 vegetable crops where high level of pesticides are applied.
There are plethora of health ailments caused due to this dietary pesticide exposure. It leads to various problems of different scales starting from indigestion, sleep apnea to bigger problems like Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, dementia and other nervous problems.
Considering population of India, its impossible to stop usage of pesticides(at least in immediate term)in conventional farming. We need to know the ill effects of these practice and try to reduce their impact.
Some of the common ways we can mitigate these problems are:
- Know which fruits and vegetables are exposed to the highest levels of pesticide and try to avoid them
- Wash and/or brush fruit and vegetables well, to help remove pesticide residue.
- Buy organic fruit and vegetables as often as you can
- Have a kitchen garden/terrace garden and grow as much as possible of your own.
- Similar to having a family doctor or a lawyer, find a organic farmer and make him your family farmer. Ask him to produce local and organic produce which may guarantee him a good return for his work as well.
- Avoid processed food.
- Eat locally available, avoid off season fruits and vegetables
