A few months ago, I made my way to a presentation to hear Peter Greenlaw speak. Peter is ‘a researcher of researchers’, having dedicated the last 10 years of his life gathering and piecing together information on the effects of environmental toxicity on the human body.
If you’re into facts and stats – Peter is your guy. In 90 minutes, he seemed to share enough information to fill a 300 page book. And in fact, Peter has just co-authored a book with a medical doctor which is to be released some time in the next few months. After hearing him speak last week, I can hardly wait.
My head was absolutely spinning at the end of his lecture. There’s only so much the brain can absorb in 90 minutes. However – I did take some good notes, and I thought some of you might find this information to be interesting and informative.
The rest of this post is a summary of his lecture, with some of the stats and figures Peter shared.
Below is a brief clip from his lecture.
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So here it is – a detailed summary of Peter Greenlaw’s Lecture, ‘Toxicity in North America’.
The State Of Our Health
In 1930 less than 3000 in North America people died of heart disease. This year roughly 1,000,000 people will die of the same cause.
In the year 1990, 1/50 women got breast cancer. Today, it’s 1/8. Ten years from now, it is projected that 1/3 women will get breast cancer.
In the year 1990, 1/10,000 children were born with Autism. In 2010, it is 1/100 and 1/70 boys.
1/3 babies born today will develop diabetes in their lifetime.
What Kind of Air are we Breathing?
Peter explained that in a given space the ideal percentage of Oxygen should be 25%. He also noted that if this drops below 5%, we can’t survive. In big cities around North America such as Chicago, New York, Toronto and Los Angeles, the Oxygen levels are already dropping to as low as 17%. He told a brief story about a time when he was speaking in Hong Kong and on the day he was there, the Oxygen levels had dropped to 7%.
Peter’s Tip: The Breath of Fire
Stand up and start to take deep breathes through your nose. Begin slowly, and steadily increase the speed of the breathes over a 20 second period. On the last breath hold it for just a few seconds and release your air on the sound ‘Pahw’. According to Peter, if you do this just a couple of times per day (first thing in the morning, and right before you go to bed) it will have a significant impact on your health, and it fuel your body Oxygen.
He risked his life!
10 minutes into his lecture Peter held up a glass of water and announced, ‘I am about to risk my life right now, by drinking this tap water’. After sipping the water he explained that on average he had just consumed 700 chemicals. He shared that water treatment plants are now having to build screens in their systems to take out the plastic pill capsules moving through our water and that Gastroenterologists are finding pills in their colon cleanses. Not only have these pills not been digested and absorbed, but in many cases they can still read the labels.
And finally, Peter polled the room about the use of nutritional supplements. When 95% of the room raised their hands he responded, ‘Congratulations. Welcome to the world of expensive urine’.
His point was this: the biggest problem we have with drugs, supplements and food is absorption. In other words, how much is actually getting to where it needs to be? Through his research, he’s concluded that because we are so toxic, our ability to absorb nutrition is dropping significantly.
What is a Calorie?
The next topic was one we all love – diets. He asked the room to give him the definition of a Calorie. Nobody was able to.
He was kind enough to share the real definition: A Calorie is the amount of heat it takes to raise 1 gram of water, 1 degree centigrade.
Then, the message: “Do you understand that the body cannot count calories? It doesn’t know what they are! The only thing your body can measure and use is nutrition”. He explained that most of the calories we’re eating today look like a donut – they are empty. We’re eating and eating, but we’re never full because there’s no nutrition. “And the more bankrupt our food becomes, the more we eat, the bigger we get, the sicker we get, the more tired we get because we don’t have any fuel”.
Some quick facts about our food (in point form)
* Lettuce grown in the fall and winter months in Southern California or Arizona may contain higher levels of toxic rocket fuel than is considered safe by the US Environmental Protection Agency.
* If you eat a normal serving of fruits and vegetables on a daily basis in North America this year you will drink approximately 1 Gallon of Herbicides and Pesticides.
* Showing up in our fruits and vegetables and now showing up in mother’s breast milk – traces of of jet fuel
* Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein is a chemical made from junk vegetables that are unfit for sale and it is added to tons of the processed food we see in our grocery stores today
* The amount of HVP in a single bowl of commercially available soup is probably enough to cause blood glutamine levels to rise higher in a human child than levels that predictably cause brain damage in immature animals
* The food industry has substituted nutrition, with sugar
What’s going on with our soil?
I personally found this next point to be somewhat shocking. Peter picked up a report and read, “The leading authorities of the day would sound the alarm that depleted soils are causing a significant decline in the nation’s health, as evidenced by a steady increase of degenerative diseases. Most of us today are suffering from certain dangerous diet deficiencies which cannot be remedied until the depleted soils from which our foods come are brought into proper mineral balance.
The alarming facts that fruits, vegetables and grains now being raised on millions of acres of land no longer contain enough of certain needed minerals. They are starving us no matter how much of them we eat.
It is bad news to learn from leading authorities that 99% of American people are deficient in these minerals, and that a marked deficiency in any one of these important minerals actually results in disease”.
As if this wasn’t enough, after he read this Peter shared that this was from a report published in the year 1936!!
What effect is this having on us directly?
He read from a report recently published by the American Red Cross: ‘…the average baby tested an average of 287 contaminants in their umbilical chord blood. Of the 287, we know that 180 cause cancer in humans or animals, 217 are toxic to the brain and nervous system, and 280 cause birth defects or abnormal development in animal tests”.
Peter noted that today in North America we now have 100,000 chemicals in commercial use and that only 563 of these chemicals have been tested for their effect on humans. Furthermore, it is the chemical companies who do the testing.
Here are a few more stats he shared (again, in point form):
* In China, a 2001 study found that 85% of University students that were tested were completely infertile
* Among 8-year-old girls in the US, Britain and Australia, 1/6 have already entered puberty (Just a generation ago it was 1/100)
* Today, nearly 2 out of every 100 girls are showing signs of sexual development at just 3 years of age
When you come to his lecture there will be more information shared by Peter Greenlaw as well as a very informative question and answer period.
