BECOMING A PARENT – ANOTHER WAY TO SEE AND PREPARE FOR THE GIFT OF LIFE
Neither too much nor too little by Danièle Starenkyj © 2015 www.publicationsorion.com
Starting in 1930, the whole world heard that spinach gave iron health. Brave Popeye, everyone believed you and still does! And since then, iron supplementation for pregnant women and iron fortification of infant formula and cereals have become commonplace, if not mandatory. Fear of iron deficiency hovers in the Western subconscious, but what is unaware is that excess iron carries even more serious dangers.
This trace element, essential for transporting oxygen from the lungs, is a pro-oxidant that generates free radicals, which, in excess, can attack certain structures in the body, damage genes, activate heart disease, and promote cancer.
Excess iron destroys lipids and proteins, thus leading to cell death—it rusts us. In 2003, an American researcher, building on the established fact that excess iron leads to neurodegeneration, hypothesized, published in Medical Hypothesis, that excess iron is the root cause of autism and allergies in childhood. (See Becoming a Parent, pp. 305-306.) In 2008, French researchers linked excess iron to neuron degeneration in Parkinson's disease.
How can a child have excess iron? The answers are simple: the mother during pregnancy took a daily iron supplement despite constipation, nausea, and potential complications during delivery; the baby, rather than being breastfed, received iron-fortified formula and, in addition, often, a supplement.
iron. The child was quickly offered iron-fortified cereals, and finally, he was given red meat, sometimes daily.
Good results have been achieved in autism and allergies with iron chelators. Yet nature has provided for everything: the phytic acid present in whole grains and legumes is a natural iron chelator. Life is serious. To allow it to flourish, let's understand that unprocessed, whole, complete plant foods are the only honest foods to consume during pregnancy, breastfeeding, and from weaning onward.
How much more suffering will we have to uncover before we give up our urban/industrial diet?
Danièle Starenkyj© 2015, Orion Publications
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