Participants: Tim Arnott, Don Mackintosh
Series Code: HFAL
Program Code: HFAL000140
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00:46 Hello, and welcome to Health for a Lifetime.
00:48 I'm your host, Don Maclntosh. 00:49 We're glad you've joined us today. 00:51 Today we're going to be talking about a disease that has put 00:55 fear in many people in Europe and now recently has also been 00:58 something that has come on to specter in America 01:01 and perhaps other places around the world. 01:04 We're going to be talking about this disease with 01:06 Dr. Tim Arnott. 01:08 He is a physician at the Lifestyle Center in Oklahoma. 01:12 That's actually a place where people go to address the common 01:16 killer diseases of America, diabetes, high blood pressure, 01:19 all these different things, and address those diseases through 01:23 lifestyle means. 01:24 He's a medical doctor whose practiced for about 14 years. 01:28 Dr. Arnott we're glad you're with us today. 01:30 - Thank you, it's good to be here. 01:31 - Now what is this disease that is striking some fear in the 01:34 hearts of Americans that has also been something that 01:37 the Europeans have struggled with. 01:38 - Well, many people are familiar with bacteria, viruses, fungus, 01:43 as infectious agents. 01:45 Things that you could transmit from one organism to another. 01:49 But there is a new agent that most people now are familiar 01:52 with and that is a protein - an infectious protein. 01:56 - And what is this infectious protein? 01:58 It's an infectious protein that if you've studied 02:01 physiology at all, biochemistry, you understand 02:04 that proteins have a specific shape that 02:07 gives those proteins their unique function. 02:10 And you also understand if you study biochemistry that if you 02:15 change one amino acid in that protein chain it will change the 02:19 shape and give you a new function. 02:21 - So what is this variant protein that 02:22 we're worried about? 02:24 It's called a prion protein. 02:26 And it's a protein that all of us have, we all have 02:28 the prion protein. 02:30 But in the case of this disease that we are going to be talking 02:33 about, this prion protein takes on an abnormal shape. 02:37 In fact the shape of the normal protein has much of the coil 02:42 structure that we find. 02:43 Ok, so what is this? 02:44 You're killing me here... what is this 02:46 thing we're going to talk about? 02:48 - We're going to be talking about mad cow disease. 02:50 - It's a prion, it's a protein that's not shaped the right way 02:54 and causes problems? 02:55 That's right. 02:56 This prion protein is abnormal protein got into the food supply 03:01 of the cattle and sheep over in Great Britain. 03:04 Because they were rendering or taking the remains of a sheep, 03:09 the remains of a cow and they were removing that sending it 03:13 to the rendering industry and then they were reprocessing 03:17 that into a high protein food supplement, 03:20 feeding back to the animals. 03:22 - So they were feeding the animals 03:23 and this caused the problem? 03:25 That's right. 03:26 That re-infected more and more sheep, more and more cattle with 03:29 the abnormal prions. 03:30 - So why are people so concerned about this? 03:32 What does this do? 03:33 - We've discovered, it was thought there was a 03:36 species barrier and that humans where not able to get infected 03:41 by the abnormal prion in the sheep or in the cattle. 03:44 But as we have learned over in Great Britain in 1996, 03:47 if you ate meat that was infected with these 03:51 abnormal prions, in the form of a hamburger, for example, 03:55 especially the hamburgers that came from meat that was 03:59 processed using a highly mechanized method that was able 04:03 to invade the spinal cord and some of the brain tissue 04:07 and include that in that hamburger, those individuals 04:10 picked up high amounts of these abnormal prions and came down 04:14 with a human form of the disease, which we call CJD or 04:18 Creutzfeldt Jacob's Disease, 04:21 in their teens, 20's and 30's. 04:23 And did they live? 04:24 - It's always fatal, no treatment. 04:27 - So this is why people are so upset because it's something 04:30 that's hard to watch an animal go through but 04:32 if you get it you die. 04:33 So people are just really interested in this, especially 04:38 of course over in Europe it changed things and now 04:41 coming here to this side of the country and probably in other 04:45 parts of the world people are also watching this closely. 04:48 What effect has this had, the discovery of this disease, 04:53 on physicians? 04:54 - Well, the Centers for Disease Control publishes a 04:57 weekly report, The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 05:02 out of the Centers for Disease Control. 05:04 In one of the most recent issues in January published a report of 05:09 the very first mad cow that was discovered in this country 05:14 and we got the confirmation that it was indeed a mad cow from the 05:19 International Reference Laboratory in Great Britain 05:22 on Christmas Eve of last year. 05:30 of it, the government has moved very quickly to reassure the 05:34 public that they are taking steps to prevent the spread 05:37 of this kind of disease, but the CDC wanted to let physicians 05:41 know that they should be on the alert for patients that may have 05:46 symptoms indicative of variant CJD. 05:50 - So they've been communicating with the physicians 05:52 and I suppose... well, if the disease is fatal if you get it, 05:55 it's not because they want them to treat it, 05:57 because there's no real treatment for it, but they want 05:59 to know whether or not there's a problem. 06:02 - They want to know if there's a problem. 06:03 They want to know how wide spread it is. 06:04 They want to know indeed, ok we've got a mad cow, what about 06:07 the effect in humans? 06:08 Do we have humans in this country who are dying of 06:11 the variant form of CJD which is the form that you develop 06:16 when you eat an infected prion? 06:19 In fact, recently in the state of Washington, a gentleman died 06:23 in his, about his fourth decade, so very young, who had an 06:29 inconclusive test for the variant form of CJD, 06:35 but he had the diagnosis of CJD. 06:38 So we're not really sure. 06:39 People are developing these diseases and we're not really 06:44 sure if it's the variant form or if it's the more sporadic form. 06:47 - Well this has come more on the radar screen, and you know, 06:51 sometimes people watch a program and they'll say, "Oh, they're 06:54 just trying to hype this and get everybody frightened. 06:56 I'm sure you're not trying to do that, but as a physician you 07:01 really think people should be aware and take steps that 07:05 can protect them of getting this disease. 07:08 Is that the reason? 07:09 - One of the reasons that we talk about this at the 07:11 Lifestyle Center of America is that we want individuals 07:15 to know the fringe benefits of adopting a plant based diet. 07:20 - Fringe benefit, you mean it's not a big concern, 07:22 but it is there? 07:23 Yes, exactly. 07:24 I mean this is not a huge issue. 07:26 It was estimated that probably a million cattle 07:30 in Great Britain were infected with these abnormal prions 07:34 and yet only 150 Great Britain's actually came down with the 07:38 overt variant form of the disease. 07:42 Probably a lot of people were exposed 07:46 that didn't come down with it. 07:47 - Lots of governments have taken steps in dealing with this. 07:51 I know that some of them will just say, "Hey, wait until 07:54 you get that taken care of. " 07:55 "We can't allow your product to come into our country" 07:58 and these different things. 07:59 So many different governments relate in different ways 08:02 and different people around the world will be watching 08:04 the program and thinking about it from their perspective. 08:07 What has the United States done to try and make sure that this 08:11 doesn't spread? 08:12 - Well, one of the most highly at risk cattle groups, 08:16 if you will, are what we call downer cows. 08:19 Now, downer cows are those cows that are disabled to the point 08:23 where they're not able to walk any more. 08:25 They're not able to stand up. 08:27 And one of the presenting symptoms of mad cow disease 08:31 is a cow that is neurologically compromised to the point 08:35 where it can no longer stand up. 08:37 And so if you've got cattle that are having that problem, 08:40 that's where you want to do your testing. 08:43 That's where you want to put your focus. 08:45 Previous to Christmas Eve of 2003 we were allowing these 08:50 100,000 plus downer cows to go into our food supply 08:55 in this country. 08:56 One of the first steps that the government took in reaction 09:00 to finding a mad cow in the United States was to say, 09:02 "Ok no more downer cows can enter the food supply. " 09:06 - And they were actually allowing 100,000 09:09 a year to go in? 09:10 They were falling down and all that stuff? 09:12 That's correct. 09:14 What else have they done? 09:15 The other thing that they were doing, 09:19 and that they're now not doing, fortunately, 09:21 is that if they took a cow out, they suspected perhaps it may 09:25 have mad cow disease, and they pull it out, 09:28 and they would sample its brain tissue, send it to the lab, 09:31 and the rest of the carcass would be stamped USDA approved 09:39 and it would be sent on into the human food supply 09:43 even before the test results were back. 09:45 So now we're requiring that the test results get back before the 09:49 cow carcass is released for entry into the human food chain. 09:55 - That sort of doesn't make sense to let it go without 09:57 really testing it out. 09:58 But they're really looking at it now. 10:00 That's right. 10:01 A lot of good things are coming out of this. 10:03 One of the other things that's coming out of this is that 10:06 previously they were allowing certain high risk tissues to 10:10 enter the food chain. 10:12 Currently, if a cow is over 2.5 years of age, there a number 10:18 of different tissues that are not allowed to enter the 10:21 human food chain. 10:22 Such as the spinal cord, the skull, the trigeminal ganglion, 10:28 in other words different nervous tissues. 10:30 - Parts of the brain and parts of the nerves. 10:32 Well, if those things are affected how do they know 10:34 it's not infecting other parts? 10:36 - Well, see that's the thing, if you're test isn't very 10:40 sensitive, you can miss the prion in muscle, for example, 10:45 and think it's not there. 10:47 That's why adopting a plant based diet, or at least a 10:52 largely plant based diet, is just a win- win because 10:57 you can avoid many of the animal diseases, 11:00 the diseases that is, that are in animals. 11:02 - Well, we've talked about this disease, we've called it mad cow 11:06 disease but we've also called the human form, something called 11:10 CJD, but then I also hear this acronym BSE. 11:16 I don't know what to think. 11:18 - Well, BSE is the scientific, sophisticated form of 11:24 mad cow disease. 11:25 Bovine for cattle, spongiform because when you take a slice of 11:30 the brain and look at it, it look like a sponge and 11:34 encephalopathy, a brain disease. 11:36 - And what's then CJD, are they the same thing? 11:39 - CJD is the equivalent disease in the human, caused by the 11:44 prion, the abnormal prion, but it's the form in a human being. 11:48 - So give me just a little history of this 11:49 BSE that led to CJD. 11:54 - Basically back in the 1700's they had mad sheep disease 12:00 which they called scrapie because the sheep would become 12:03 infected with the prions, and by the way, 12:05 it's not really known how the sheep initially were infected 12:09 with prions. 12:10 You can actually have a genetic disorder where you 12:14 have a deformed prion protein just from birth, 12:18 from your parents - you inherited it. 12:19 That's a rare situation. 12:21 But somehow the sheep got these abnormal prion proteins 12:25 back in the 1700's. 12:26 Then as time went by we were doing the rendering of the sheep 12:31 - In other words, feeding animals to animals. 12:33 - Feeding animals to animals which led to spread of the 12:36 disease, spread of this infectious prion 12:39 into other sheep, sheep are being fed to cattle, 12:42 cattle picked it up, cattle being fed to cattle, 12:45 so it spread in the cattle population, and in the 12:48 late 1980's humans actually started picking it up. 12:53 So that's kind of the history of how we got it. 12:56 Now there's 20 countries in Europe that have mad cow disease 13:01 and Israel, and Japan also had a few cases, 13:06 Japan's had about 3 cases, Canada of course, most of us 13:09 are aware, had a case recently, and then now 13:12 we have our own case. 13:13 - They talk about variant and then classic CJD. 13:17 What does this mean? 13:18 - Well, for decades we have had CJD in this country. 13:22 We've had Crujsfalt Jacobs disease - a prion disease. 13:26 But typically it occurred in individuals who are about 13:30 70 years of age, the mean age about 68, and these individuals 13:36 would actually succumb very quickly in a matter 13:40 of 4, 5, or 6 months at most. 13:43 And the presenting symptom, the initial symptom, was a frank 13:48 dementia. 13:49 These individuals developed a very bad dementia, very quick 13:54 clinical course. 13:55 So that's the classic form? 13:56 That's the classic form. 13:58 If you do an EKG of the brain the electroencephalogram, 14:03 where they put the electrodes, put those wires everywhere, 14:06 you get these classic spikes in that sporadic. 14:10 - So that's been around a long time, but what's variant? 14:14 - Variant is the same kind of disease, caused by prions 14:18 it has this progressive neurologic deterioration, 14:21 but there are some differences. 14:23 It occurs in young people. 14:25 The mean age is 28 years of age not 68. 14:30 People can last almost 2 years before they die. 14:34 - And there's no chance of reversing it once you have it. 14:36 That's exactly right. 14:38 It's known that the variant disease, the young people's 14:42 disease, is definitely associated with infected food. 14:46 There's not that definite knowledge of how we get 14:50 the other disease, but I will tell you that a recent cluster 14:55 of the old form of the disease, the sporadic CJD, occurred in 14:59 New Jersey recently, about 6 cases. 15:01 - That's the older form, the classic. 15:02 - That's the older form, but they all occurred in individuals 15:05 who lived in the same area and frequented the same 15:10 racing track there in New Jersey and ate meals there. 15:15 We really don't know what the cause is but it maybe that it's 15:20 just a lower level prion intake and it takes longer to show up. 15:23 - We're talking with Dr. Tim Arnott. 15:25 We're talking about mad cow disease and we're getting an 15:28 update on that. 15:30 There are some things to be concerned about. 15:32 There are some comforting things as well as we see 15:35 different governments taking steps, really wanting to get 15:39 a handle on this. 15:40 When we come back we're going to look more at this interesting 15:42 unfolding story, if you will, we hope you join us. 15:46 Have you found yourself wishing that you could 15:47 shed a few pounds? 15:49 Have you been on a diet for most of your life? 15:51 But not found anything the will really keep the weight off? 15:54 If you've answered yes to any of these questions, then we 15:58 have a solution for you that works. 16:00 Dr. Hans Diehl and Dr. Aileen Ludington 16:03 Have written a marvelous booklet called, 16:05 Reversing Obesity Naturally, and we'd like to send it to you 16:08 free of charge. 16:10 Here's a medically sound approach successfully used 16:13 by thousands who are able to eat more 16:15 and loose weight permanently 16:17 without feeling guilty or hungry through lifestyle medicine. 16:20 Dr. Diehl and Dr. Ludington have been featured on 3ABN 16:24 and in this booklet they present a sensible approach to eating, 16:27 nutrition, and lifestyle changes that can help you prevent 16:30 heart disease, diabetes, and even cancer. 16:33 Call or write today for your free copy: 16:46 Welcome back. 16:47 We've been talking with Dr. Tim Arnott. 16:48 We've been talking about mad cow disease. 16:51 We've been talking about what causes it, prions, and we've 16:54 talked about some things we know about it, some things we don't 16:57 know, like for instance we don't know how to treat it. 16:59 The Dr. today says once you get it, that's it. 17:02 That's why people are so concerned about it. 17:04 We're not trying to hype it and make you more and more 17:08 concerned, but we just want you to be aware 17:10 of the most resent updates. 17:12 And joining us to help us with that is Dr. Tim Arnott. 17:15 He is a physician at the Lifestyle Center of America 17:18 in Oklahoma where they treat many different diseases 17:21 that Americans struggle with, heart disease, diabetes, 17:24 hypertension, obesity, all these different things and he's with 17:28 us today giving us an update on mad cow disease. 17:31 Glad you're with us again and we've looked here at some of the 17:36 history of this and how there are classic forms of it 17:40 and there are variant forms of it, they're all very serious. 17:43 We've talked about how the different governments have 17:46 attempted to relate to this and our own government in America 17:50 here has attempted to relate to it. 17:51 It's a serious thing, but you've said something that 17:56 I want to pick up on. 17:57 You said that it's caused by prions and prion type diseases 18:01 like this have been around for a while in America. 18:04 Prions are those variant proteins that aren't formed 18:08 quite right and they cause problems. 18:10 Would you say we have a big prion problem in this country? 18:14 - Well, actually we do have an epidemic. 18:17 What's an epidemic? 18:18 - Well, we have millions of animals that have prion diseases 18:23 in this country. 18:24 But it's the wild animals. 18:25 It's the deer, the elk, and the antelope, including the 18:30 mule deer, and recently the white tailed deer. 18:35 As many as 1- 2% of the animals are infected with prions and 18:41 are developing this wasting disease. 18:43 The chronic wasting disease that we see in the wild animals 18:47 and Dr. Rice at the National Institute of Health 18:51 recently did a study where he looked at the prions that were 18:55 infecting mad cows, the prions infecting wild game in this 18:59 country, prions that were infecting sheep, and he tried to 19:03 look and see if there were differences enough so he could 19:08 subcategorized them. 19:09 Ok that prion has this little bit of a shape subtlety 19:13 we know that's a mad cow prion. 19:17 What he found was he couldn't distinguish 19:20 between the different prions. 19:21 They were so similar - the one that causes mad cow disease, 19:24 the one that causes the mad wild animal disease, 19:28 that he could not put them into separate categories. 19:31 You know that's a bit of a concern. 19:33 We have a major prion disease in this problem, but probably 19:37 the most important message here is if you are into hunting... 19:41 - You think you're going to avoid getting this by having 19:44 your own meat that you hunt, what you're saying is 19:47 that that's not really going to work? 19:48 You're exactly right. 19:50 I mean, a lot of people are saying, "Let's go to the wild 19:53 animals, they're lean, they don't have the fat content 19:55 of the beef, for example. " 19:57 But for example, we had a couple of hunters up in 20:00 north east Oklahoma, deer hunters. 20:04 These two individuals died with CJD, 20:08 one just shy of his 30th birthday. 20:12 If you have a young person in their 20's, 30's, 40's 20:16 who develops an Alzheimer's like dementia, that's a red flag 20:21 and that's an indication that that individual 20:24 has probably ingested a prion. 20:26 So if you're into hunting, don't eat what you shoot 20:30 and probably even better, avoid shooting. 20:32 - How do we stop the spread of this? 20:37 You said it's in the wild animal population, we've seen now 20:40 that it's also in some of the animals that we raise to eat 20:44 or rather raise to feed to other animals to eat 20:47 which we don't do anymore. 20:48 How do we stop the spread of this? 20:51 We already know it's here, how can we stop the spread 20:53 in our country? 20:54 - Well I think one of the most important principles is 20:57 illustrated by the discovery of a mad cow in this country 21:01 in 2003. 21:03 It led to an immediate, aggressive movement 21:07 by our government by other state authorities to deal with 21:12 this problem, to protect the public to an 21:14 even a greater measure. 21:15 So knowledge is power and the more you know about where you 21:19 stand with this problem the better you're going to be able 21:23 to protect the public and put into measures 21:25 that protect the public. 21:26 So the classic example of how best to protect the public 21:30 and to deal with this problem is illustrated by the Japanese. 21:33 What do they do? 21:34 - The Japanese test every cattle brain that goes through 21:41 the slaughter house. 21:42 In other words, every cow that's going to be slaughtered, get's 21:46 tested and it isn't sent out. 21:48 Doesn't that take a long time? 21:49 - Well actually they're using in Japan and they're using in 21:52 Europe a much more rapid test than we use. 21:55 We use a test that's just as sensitive, it's just as good 21:59 as what they're using, but it takes 2-3 days 22:02 to get the results back. 22:03 Whereas they can get results back in just a few hours. 22:06 So while that animal carcass is going down to temperature 22:09 in the freezer room, by the time it's in a frozen situation 22:15 they can have a test result back and they can either discard it.. 22:18 - They have a very small country I don't know if they even raise 22:21 very many cattle over there. 22:22 I mean it's not a very big country, they probably raise 22:24 some but we probably raise millions, don't we? 22:28 - We slaughter 35 million head every year so it would 22:32 be a major step for us. 22:34 But the reality is that we've got to do 22:37 better than we're doing. 22:38 We've only tested 60,000 cattle so far 22:42 in our history of testing. 22:43 You can see how you can underestimate the problem 22:48 and then not deal with it as aggressively. 22:51 - So you're suggesting more aggressive testing and so are 22:54 others suggesting that. 22:55 What about labels on foods or something? 22:58 Do they have anything helping us out with that? 23:00 Well actually yes. 23:02 If you see on a label just the word meat or meat food product 23:08 these are products that are higher risk. 23:12 In fact they are currently in the process of banning those 23:16 products but you may still see them on a store shelf 23:19 because those products are meat products that were obtained 23:23 using a mechanical method that can actually be more 23:26 invasive to the spinal cord, it's more likely to take a piece 23:29 of the spinal cord tissue where the prions are 23:31 concentrated or the brain tissue. 23:33 - In terms of our government what are plans that they 23:36 are putting into place? 23:38 Are they going to have more rapid testing and any 23:40 other things they're going to do? 23:41 Yes, that's one of the things. 23:42 A recent commission, by the way our government enlisted 23:45 the services of an international commission to look 23:49 over our shoulder and see how we reacted to the 2003 discovery 23:55 of the mad cow and make some recommendations. 23:57 One of the recommendations they made was, yes, we need to start 24:00 using the rapid test so that we can more easily discover 24:05 the disease if it does exist. 24:07 They also suggested that mad cow disease is endemic 24:11 in this country. 24:12 What's that mean? 24:13 - Well, it means that we have it here, it's not just crossing 24:16 over from Canada, it's rooted here, 24:18 we have it, it's a problem we need to deal with and not 24:22 think that it just came as a visitor. 24:24 - That's quite an acknowledgement and also makes 24:26 us more aware and makes us safer just by saying that. 24:29 - Exactly and what it actually will hopefully do, is encourage 24:33 us to move to that plant based diet. 24:36 - What are the riskiest foods we could eat? 24:39 - Well, the riskiest foods that you can eat would be 24:41 foods that, such as the hamburger, the sausage... 24:47 Why are those so risky? 24:48 - Well those are foods that are taken from... after they remove 24:53 the steaks and the chops and the main muscle cuts, 24:57 then a lot of the things that are left are ground up 25:00 and put into those sausages into the hamburgers, for example. 25:05 You're more likely to get some of the nervous tissue that's 25:09 not in the muscle tissue. 25:10 - So what are the safest foods then? 25:11 - Well, the safest foods, of course, are going to be 25:14 plant foods, the beans, there's actually more protein in the 25:19 soybean then any meat, any steak, for example. 25:23 Beans are an excellent source of protein. 25:25 But if you eat meat... 25:28 - If you eat meat, then you basically want to avoid any 25:33 processed meats, any ground meats... 25:35 Any wild... 25:36 Any wild meats, exactly. 25:38 And you want to basically be looking for... 25:42 - Imported from Japan at this point. 25:44 - laughter - basically yes - laughter - 25:46 Now that you mention that, we should be aware that about 25:50 10% of the beef in this country is actually sold to overseas. 25:55 And it represents quite a chunk of money. 25:58 Right now the Japanese, for example, are not allowing 26:02 our beef into their country. 26:05 We need to watch some of these other countries and take how 26:09 their responding to our meat seriously. 26:11 - Someone that's been eating meat all their life and 26:14 different animal products, they're listening now and they 26:17 say, "Hey, I've been doing this all my life, 26:19 maybe I already have it. " 26:21 Can they decrease their risk by stopping now? 26:24 Or does the fact that they've been eating it all their life 26:26 just kind of, you know, they already have the risk? 26:28 - No, there's no question about that. 26:29 Remember over in Great Britain a million cattle will probably 26:34 affected with these abnormal prions and consumed by the 26:37 public over there. 26:38 And yet about only 150, mostly young people, came down 26:42 with the disease. 26:43 They've done some studies and they show that some of these 26:47 young people were eating the highest risk meats, hamburgers 26:51 that came into the food market in the most cheap method. 26:56 In other words, methods that were highly mechanical, 26:58 methods that were most likely to get the brain and spinal cord 27:02 tissue mixed in with that hamburger. 27:03 So probably the young people had gotten the highest dose 27:07 of these prions. 27:08 Those are the ones that came down with the disease. 27:11 We know in lab studies of animals that if you give them 27:14 greater amounts of prions they'll come down with 27:17 the disease more quickly - earlier. 27:19 - So if you're eating meat and you've heard this 27:22 and you're thinking about it and you think maybe I should 27:24 stop, it's probably a good idea, you can definitely 27:26 decrease your risk? 27:27 Absolutely! 27:28 In fact there is a genetic predisposition to the disease 27:31 and if you don't have that predisposition, then it may be 27:35 years before you ever get the disease. 27:37 - We've been talking with Dr. Tim Arnott. 27:39 He's a physician at the Lifestyle Center of America 27:41 in Oklahoma. 27:42 He helps people with many different Western diseases 27:46 as they do there at the Lifestyle Center of America. 27:48 Today we have gotten some very practical tips and an 27:51 update on mad cow disease. 27:53 We hope that today's program has been helpful to you 27:55 and as a result you'll have health 27:57 that lasts for a lifetime. |
Revised 2014-12-17