Roundup is designed to kill a plant by suppressing the expression of the EPSPS gene that allows them to perform this trick. It's a clever avenue of attack, since human cells don't have the gene. Just plants ... and microbiota.
You don't have millions of these microbiota in your gut. You don't have billions. You have trillions of these little microscopic machines! They're not part of you; they're not even human cells, they are their own organisms, they just happen to live inside you, doing their thing.
You got them from your mom, if you weren't a c-section, and from the food you eat, and all the times you put your fingers in your mouth when you were six. And a majority of them have the EPSPS gene, and they rely on it to survive. Unless glyphosate is there, turning it off.
What are they up to? For one thing, "recycling" testosterone before it's excreted from the body. With the help of microbes, these androgens might cycle through your body several times. But if they're dead or disabled, all your hard-won T is going straight into the toilet.
So what has glyphosate in it? Everything. Every Coke, every Gatorate, everything with corn syrup. It's in your linguine at Olive Garden, your black beans at Chili's, your sweet potato at Outback, and yes, at Whole Foods too, in your bakery wheat bread and carrots.
Now, the feds aren't entirely asleep at the wheel here - the case for Roundup is that it's not dangerous to your cells. And with certain exceptions (like the dangerous accumulation of the stuff in groundwater and rivers, from all the agricultural runoff) that's true!
Plus, to be fair, it is Roundup and chemicals like it that have allowed us to largely defeat famine! Organic food is more expensive, it's harder to produce in quantity, it's often grown in arid climates using irrigation from scarce rivers. Not everyone can afford Whole Foods.
But are you eating this stuff in sufficient quantities to mess with your microbiota? You know, the ones that allow you to recycle your testosterone? Yes! We have research showing how its presence changes the types of gut microbiota that thrive and those that perish.
So what does all this add up to? Well, nothing, yet. We haven't proven anything. We're doing science, and we're going to find out. But it looks really bad, we're talking lead pipes bad. For myself, I'm cutting all nonorganic foods out my diet.
And! I'm going to measure my testosterone levels with the help of @tparty__, my gut microbiota, and glyphosate levels while I do it, to see if I can observe any trends in a little supersize-me n=1 experimental trial.
@tparty__ But I'm not a scientist. If you're interested in this alarming mystery, you should follow @StephenSkolnick, who writes about the cutting-edge discoveries being made about the gut microbiome, and @tangjeff0, who's starting a company dedicated to the testosterone problem.
@tparty__ @StephenSkolnick @tangjeff0 I've jotted down my notes and made them available here, and I'll try to keep them up to date as I learn more. Good luck out there, boys. Eat organic, train hard (bonner.jp/posts/glyphosa…)