Crohn's disease, sick cows and contaminated milk

WorldNetDaily.com ^ | Friday, October 1, 2004 | Chris Bennett

[redgolum]

My soon to be father in law has had Crohns for 20 years, he raises cattle, and hasn't had any milk products for at least 10 years.

It has at least a partial genetic component to it. No one in my family has ever had gastointestional problems like this, but it runs in my bride to be's family.

Also, organic foods typically have a HIGHER pathogen count than most other store bought foods.

[jb6]

No one in either side of my family, going back 4 generations, has ever had Crohns, but here I am.

[Rubber_Duckie_27]

That's all we buy. We also do organic eggs, cheeses, and meats. It does cost more, but I don't want all those animal hormones and antibiotics getting into everything I eat.

[redgolum]

It is called Scours (sp?). It more similar to dysentery than to Crohn's, but you are right about the treatment.

Typically comes from a sick hog or an outside animal exposing younger pigs. It can wipe out whole herds in confinement buildings. We didn't have all that much trouble with it, but did have to give antibiotics for it every so often.

[Darnright]

Thanks for your input, Doc, for giving the rest of us some insight on the strides the Veterinary profession is making to connect the dots between Johne's and Crohn's, bringing us ever closer to eradicating this debilitating disease.

[jb6]

From what I understand, swine have an internal system extremely similar to humans, to include digestion. I love how egos often block research. Also, if the disease is spread in cow's milk, does an infected human female spread it the same way?

[Carry_Okie]

What about yogurts with digestive bacterias in them?

I asked the same question. This is what I found.

[jb6]

Oh how true. But don't worry there is always the female viagra model (forget it's name): first create the drug then create a condition (recognized by the subsidized Psycho..er..Psychiatric Association of America) for it.

[Carry_Okie]

In 3 weeks the animal would be just bones. I can't see ranchers intentionally keeping a cow like this that would infect the rest of the herd.

I agree that the case in the article is shrill.

[jb6]

I have never been against government funded skunk research, it is a must. Markets are great for delivering products, not necessarly new technology, especially when a link to a possible product is not directly in your face and the profit margins aren't great. Considering that 1. our CEO's long term planning is at most 1 year and 2. the Western holier then thou attitude to medicen (remember hypnosis and acupuncture were classified as vodoo), we are sometimes our own worst enemy.

[hellbender]

"The holier then thou attitude of so many doctors in America, their love of their own brilliance and God like powers, is aiding and abbetting an already bad situation.

How right you are! I noticed that many of the doctors around here had joined something called "Doctors for Dean." Liberals like to think of themselves as a priestly elite whose word should be taken without question.

Another problem is that doctors are under so much time pressure that they have little opportunity to think creatively, but must simply react quickly and move on to the next patient. This will only get worse under Kerry-care, Hillary-care, or socialized medicine by any other name.

[VadeRetro]

Did you ever receive sulfasalazine or mesalamine treatment??

Sulfasalazine just about killed me in 1990. It attacked my bone marrow and gave me an AIDS-like condition, agranulocytosis, a lack of certain kinds of white cells.

They told me I'd had a very rare (but already known) reaction. All kinds of opportunistic infections popped up all at once over a period of a few days. Fever, then chills. Halitosis (from painful gingivitis) to kill a horse. I staggered into the emergency room with a real sense that I was dying. They bombed me with antibiotics and took me off the sulfasalazine, which I had continued taking right up to that point.

You have to watch those anti-inflammitants. It's not nice to fool Mother Nature or mess too much with your immune system.

[editor-surveyor]

"Because the US milk supply is under pasteurized. Ever wonder why generic milk has a one to two week shelf life while super pasteurized (only $1 more) has 1 -1.5 months?"

Are you sure?

We normally keep our milk for about a month (due to buying two one-gallon bottles at Costco) with no difficulty at all; in fact, the milk seems to taste better, and is more digestible when it is over a month old. I won't even open a tub of sour cream, or cottage cheese, unless it is about two months old, because of the improvement in flavor.

As for bowel irritation, etc, I found out quite by accident while I was taking Orega-Max capsules for toenail fungus, that they completely eliminated it within about five or six days.

[editor-surveyor]

"Ultra-pasteurization will kill pathogens, but it is a cheap band-aid approach that hurts the nutritional value of the product. Healthy cows produce healthy milk. If the dairy industry would let their animals eat the grasses they are designed to eat instead of cheap soybeans and corn, and keep milk from sick animals out of the mix, this wouldn’t be an issue."

This deserves repeating!

[meatloaf]

I think the super pasturized milk is heated high enough and long enough that the bacteria don't survive. Obviously the bacteria in pateurized milk are not killed when milk has to be refrigerated and still spoils sometimes before the date on the container.

[Calpernia]

ping

[afnamvet]

I grew up on a cattle ranch/dairy in central California. I drank vast quanities of raw milk. I was not diagnosed with Crohn's until 1985.

I really beleive that it did not cause my Crohn's. I am involved with many clinical trials for promising medications for this disease. So far, Remecade is working well for me & other patients that I know. Remecade is now out of the "trial" stage and is widely avaiable.

[twigs]

Thank you for your response. Do you have any thoughts about what caused this?

[redgolum]

From what I understand, swine have an internal system extremely similar to humans,

Yep. Most of the avian flu strains jump to people via hogs.

Ten years ago my father's herd was wiped out by the "mystery disease", something that makes AIDS look like the flu. The virus (paraviro is the one if I remember right) jumped to hogs from birds. Our herd got it from a sick goose (long story).

We worked with a couple of PhDs on it, and one told me if this stuff ever jumped to people.. well what he said scared the daylights out of me. It never did, and you can get a vaccine for it now (thanks in part to may Dad shipping hogs to a couple of vet schools).