Fire Resistant Fatty Livers

We live in an age of epidemic metabolic disease without clear answers for why. Many point fingers at dietary factors like sugars and trans fats. Others point fingers at lifestyle factors like sedentary life without exercise. While functional MD’s like myself acknowledge these factors, we also look at toxic contributors to diabetes, heart disease, and fatty liver. The confluence of these and other factors likely synergize to drive this epidemic but why?

Researchers in the journal, Epigenomics, provided a plausible mechanism for the effects of flame retardant toxins on the development of fatty liver in offspring of exposed animals. By looking at rats who were exposed to the banned flame retardants, PDBE, during a pregnancy, they followed the health effects on the rat pups born to these moms.

While the PDBE has been banned for several years, their slow breakdown means that we will be exposed maybe another 50 years in the environment. This underscores the importance of knowing more about a chemical’s long-term impact before approving it for mass production. It took us a few years to realize how back PDBE’s were and now we are left with effects for decades. The PDBE’s were found in a variety of products from “pajamas to plastics and furniture”. They have been linked to increased diabetes and heart disease risks.

The rat pups showed changes in 33 different DNA regions regarding patterns of methylation. Methyl groups are carbons with 3 hydrogens which turn down the expression of a particular gene based on their attachment to the DNA. They also found differences in 15 miRNA sequences. The related genes were connected to lipid and carbohydrate metabolism, and thus are prime candidates for explaining how the rat pups could be pre-programmed by PDBE exposure in utero for later metabolic diseases.

As we wait for further research to confirm these findings and look for ways to reverse the effects, at Sanctuary we constantly remind our patients that the toxins we allow in our body have long lasting effects. This is even more true for women prior to conception and pregnancy. Removing toxins and keeping the body free of new ones may prevent your children from heart disease, diabetes, and fatty liver decades later. Just another part of helping others live a healthier more abundant life.

Original Article:
Alexander Suvorov, Vladimir Naumov, Victoria Shtratnikova, Maria Logacheva, Alex Shershebnev, Haotian Wu, Evgeny Gerasimov, Anna Zheludkevich, Jonathan R Pilsner, Oleg Sergeyev. Rat liver epigenome programing by perinatal exposure to 2,2′,4′4′-tetrabromodiphenyl ether. Epigenomics, 2019; DOI: 10.2217/epi-2019-0315

Thanks to Science Daily
University of Massachusetts Amherst. “Perinatal exposure to flame retardant alters epigenome, predisposing metabolic disease.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 13 December 2019. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191213115438.htm>.

Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.