 Let's say you really need to find reliable information about the best diet for high blood pressure or heart disease or diabetes. Where do you go? Do you go to a website sponsored by Big Pharma that wants to sell you pills to fix your problem? Or do you want to treat the cause? Welcome to the Nutrition Facts Podcast with the latest peer-reviewed research on the best ways to eat healthy and live longer. The average adult uses nine personal care products a day, and each of these products can have hundreds of chemical ingredients. And don't get me started on mad cow disease intestines. Here's our first story. The Food and Drug Administration recently reopened comments about their policy of allowing some intestines, but not others, into the US food supply. In the first few cases of mad cow disease started popping up. The FDA's gut reaction was to ban all guts from food and personal care products, but in 2005, USDA and FDA amended their draft rule to permit the use of the entire small intestine for human food if the last 80 unquilled inches going to the colon was removed. Since then, those studies have shown that infectious mad cow preons can be found throughout all parts of the intestine, from the stomach down to the cow's colon, raising the question of whether all entrails should again be removed. The North American Meat Association says no, wanting to keep all cattle inside the food supply. Similar to what we heard from the CTFA, the Cosmetic Toiletry and Fragrance Association, they protested that by banning from cosmetic downer and dead cattle, as well as brain skull eyes and spinal cord as well as intestines and tonsils, our nation's supply of cosmetics could be put in jeopardy. There could be a tallow shortage for soap, for example. The FDA may not realize that cosmetics and personal care products are a quarter trillion dollar industry worldwide. In the end, the FDA tentatively concluded that intestines should continue to be allowed in the food and cosmetic supply because only trace amounts of infectivity have been found throughout the bowels of cattle, a conclusion they have to make since otherwise all meat would have to be banned as well, because new research shows that mad cow infectivity is in the muscles too. And not just the atypical cases of BSE, like the last mad cow found in California, but now we know the typical BSE as well, a bovine spongiform cephalopathy, mad cow disease. Low levels of infectious prions found in the ribs, shoulder tenderloin, sirloin tips, and round cuts of meat. The latest estimates out of Britain suggest 15,000 people are currently incubating the human form of mad cow disease contracted through the consumption of infected meat. Fewer than 200 Brits have died so far of variant carciliacum disease, but the incubation period for this invariably fatal neurodegenerative disease can be decades, the time between eating the meat and one's brain filling up with holes. The fact that so many people are carrying it has important implications for the safety of blood transfusions. That's why many Americans who've lived in England are barred by the Red Cross from donating blood, as well as the safety of handling surgical instruments that may have cut into someone who's a carrier since it's so hard to sterilize anything once contaminated. Given these factors, it may be prudent to err on the side of caution when regulating which intestines are allowed on and in our mouths, but it's a balance as one meat company points out, guts are not just used for lipstick in testing its human food, providing us with a precious source of protein, which is evidently essential for our human population. In our next story, dozens of lipsticks and lip glosses are put to the test for lead contamination. Over the past years, the use of cosmetic products has evidently increased at an alarming rate due to unending pursuit for individual beautification. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, unless cosmetic products contain ingredients that may be linked to disease. Ingredients such as toxic heavy metals like lead. Lead has been found in a wide range of cosmetic products, from eye shadow, to skin cream, foundation, blush. I talked about henna before, but looking at the data, an important warning can be recognized. The presence of lead in lipsticks, because you end up inadvertently actually swallowing a little bit of it. It's been estimated that a woman may end up ingesting three pounds of lipstick over her lifetime. Moreover, lipsticks can be used by pregnant women or women of child-bearing age. Duh. Yes, lead is highly toxic, but how much lead can there be in lipstick? Surely it's a very minor source. Nonetheless, one should not exclude the fact that lead accumulates in the body over time, and so repetitive lead-containing lipstick application might lead to significant exposure, but you don't really know until you put it to the test. 32 lipsticks in lip glosses tested, and lead was detected in three-fourths of the products, suggesting public health concerns. But how much lead did they find? About half exceeded the FDA-recommended maximum level, a set for candy. Yeah, but come on, that limit is set for something kids may eat every day. Kids are not going to eat tubes of lipstick every day. Nevertheless, it's generally accepted that there's no safe level of lead intake. Ideally, we should get contaminant levels down to zero, and look, as a consumer group pointed out, a quarter of the lipsticks were lead-free. I mean, so we know it can be done. So maybe we should better regulate toxic metals and cosmetics to protect women's health in the United States, as it's already been done in Europe. Fair enough. The billion-dollar lipstick industry, however, wasn't happy. In an article that tried to downplay the risks, the scientists for a higher firm that once played villain in the real-life Aaron Brockovich case concluded that although lipstick may contain lead, the concentrations are so low that they would not be expected to pose any health risk to adults or children. Children's blood lead levels are influenced more by background lead exposure in the air-dust water food than by lipstick exposures. Okay, but just because our environment is so contaminated doesn't mean we need to add to the problem. In fact, because there's so much lead around anyway, maybe it's that much more reason to cut down on additional exposures. But they calculate that an adult would need to apply lipstick over 30 times a day to raise their blood lead level to even the most stringent limits and 695 times a day to get blood levels up to more concerning levels. Ah, but this was based on an assumption that lipstick would only have about one part per million lead, or at the extreme end, maybe two or three. But by 2016, about 10 times more lipsticks were tested and they averaged nearly 500 parts per million, with 10% over 1,000, all the way up to 10,000, with more than one out of five exceeding FDA and even Chinese safety limits on lead in cosmetics. Lip gloss was worse than lipstick, orange and pink and more lead than brown, red or purple, and all the really contaminated ones were the cheaper ones under 5 bucks. But wait a second, 10,185 milligrams, that's 10 grams per kilogram, which means the lipstick was 1% pure lead. That means a single application could expose a grown woman to perhaps 12 times the tall of bold daily intake. And if she's interested in having children, then that poses a particular concern as lead accumulates in your bones and may then be released into the bloodstream during pregnancy where it can slip through the placenta or into the breast milk. The good news is that the FDA is considering lowering the maximum allowable lead levels in lipstick from 20 down to 10, something Canada arrived at a decade ago, but without enforcement, I mean, doesn't matter. I mean, moving the legal limit from 20 down to 10 would just mean that instead of 23% of the lip products exceeding legal levels, 27% would be exceeding legal levels. Finally, today we ask, is there a risk of lead and PPD contamination of red and black henna? For recent decades, we started to recognize that some topically applied substances can penetrate into or even through human skin and end up circulating throughout our bodies. Take the toxic heavy metal lead, for example. To see if lead could be absorbed through the skin into the body, researchers applied lead to someone's left arm, and then they measured the lead in the sweat coming off their right arm over the next few days. There was a big spike proving nearly 30 years ago that lead can be absorbed through the skin and rapidly distributed throughout the body. This led to public health authorities to recommend parents avoid using cosmetics, at least on their children that could be contaminated. Which cosmetics might those be? Lead has been found in a wide range of cosmetic products because it's a natural constituent of many color pigments. The FDA has set an upper limit for lead at 20 parts per million, and though only some samples of henna exceeded that, because henna is used for temporary tattoos, these quantities of lead can remain on the skin for a long time and may not be safe. Because studies show that lead may have no identifiable safe exposure level, with even the lowest level shown to affect the brains of developing children, thus the use of henna, especially among children, may constitute a public health risk. So increasing awareness of henna's serious toxic implications may help end or at least reduce the use of such hazardous material, especially when children are involved. Now, traditionally henna was just the dried powdered leaves of some plant, but more recently other ingredients have been added to give it a stronger color, added ingredients such as lead. One of the most common and egregious additives in henna. But not as common as PPD, paraffiniline diamine. The red paste traditionally used, known as red henna, rarely produces adverse effects, but to achieve a darker pigment, known as black henna, various additives may be used, including animal urine, but better pee than PPD, a cold tar derivative that can cause nasty skin reactions such as blistering and scarring. PPD has added to speed up the process from as long as 12 hours down to less than 2 hours. So while the use of black henna is maybe tempting, it has the potential for both short and long-term side effects. How common are these reactions? The best estimate is about 2.5%, so 1 in 40 kids that gets a black henna tattoo may have an allergic reaction. Unfortunately, this practice has become fashionable, thanks a lot, Spice Girls. There's no such thing as natural black henna, so perhaps it would be best to respect the more traditional practices lest a temporary tattoo turn into a permanent scar. The problem is that PPD can be found in products labeled as red henna, too. So just because it's red doesn't mean it's not risky. Bad news for the $100 million dollar industry. Because henna of all colors is so often adulterated under FDA guidelines, henna shouldn't be applied to the skin at all. We would love it if you could share with us your stories about reinventing your health through evidence-based nutrition. Go to nutritionfacts.org slash testimonials. We may share it on our social media to help inspire others. To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, or studies mentioned here, please go to the Nutrition Facts Podcast landing page. There you'll find all the detailed information you need, plus links to all the sources we cite for each of these topics. For a timely text on the pathogens that cause pandemics, you can order the e-book, audiobook, or hard copy of my last book, How to Survive a Pandemic. For recipes, check out my second to last book, My How Not to Diet Cookbook. 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