So after watching the VAXXED documentary that was posted here earlier, I decided to do some personal research into glyphosate. What I found revealed a DEEP rabbit hole that I have only begun to explore. Great thanks go out to Dr. Stephanie Seneff who is single-handedly leading the frontier on glyphosate research. Her background in artificial intelligence allows her to scan thousands of research articles and make connections that few others are able to make. I truly believe this is the future of scholarship as an interdisciplinary approach to knowledge is the next step for human progress. I have a bachelor's degree in neuroscience, which has helped me to understand the studies I have read, but I do not claim to be an expert. I would love to collaborate with anyone who has an interest in the issue of glyphosate.

TL;DR version: Glyphosate causes deficiencies of things we need and accumulation of things we don't like.

Intro:

Glyphosate is the active chemical used in the herbicide Roundup, created by Monsanto in 1970. Glyphosate works by inhibiting the shikimate pathway which produces the essential aromatic amino acids tyrosine, tryptophan, phenylalanine, and histidine. Without these, plants die. About 90% of GMO crops are modified to be resistant to glyphosate, so that the entire field can be sprayed without affecting the crops. Surfactants are used to increase glyphosate's ability to penetrate plant's cell wall, meaning that washing your produce will not remove glyphosate.

How glyphosate might harm you:

Inhibition of Shikimate Pathway:

Humans also need tyrosine, tryptophan, phenylalanine, and histidine, but because we don't have the Shikimate Pathway, we must get them from our diet. Our gut microbes have the Shikimate Pathway, and are once source for these amino acids. It is unclear from my research how much of these amino acids come directly from the diet and how much comes from our gut microbes. Any help here would be great. In any case, glyphosate can inhibit the shikimate pathway in gut microbes, lowering our amount of aromatic amino acids, particularly tryptophan. Tryptophan is very important because it is the precursor to serotonin and melatonin. Gut microbes have been shown to be affected at concentrations of .001 mg/ml while glyphosate has been been detected in humans at levels up to .071 mg/ml.

Inhibition of CYPs:

Cytochrome P450 enzymes (CYPs) are crucial for a number of reasons. They synthesize and metabolize hormones, maintaining homeostasis. They synthesize cholesterol. They metabolize vitamin D. And most importantly, they also metabolize potentially toxic compounds. Glyphosate has been shown to inhibit CYPs. Without CYPs the many toxic compounds we encounter on a daily basis can not be broken down and will accumulate.

Inhibition of serum sulfate transport:

Sulfate is critical to the body for several reasons. Sulfate is needed for bile acid synthesis, lysosome function, and joint tissue function. Both sulfate and glyphosate are kosmotropes, with glyphosate having stronger kosmotropic properties. Kosmotropes promote water-water interactions, making water more viscous as well as making other compounds, such as proteins, less soluble. This is called "salting out" and it is not something you want too much of because when compounds are insoluble in the blood, they are not available to the body. Fortunately sulfate alone is not too bad. However, in the presence of glyphosate, a strong kosmotrope, the gut does not want to put sulfate into the blood because it will aggravate the problem that glyphosate is causing. Instead one thing it can do is to oxidize aromatic amino acids, such as tryptophan, into various phenolic compounds that can bind to sulfate and take it into the blood in a non-kosmotropic form (this is another potential cause of tryptophan depletion). Once the sulfate has been transported to its destination it detaches from the phenol. These phenols are toxic as they can breakdown phospholipid bilayers and DNA.

Accidental insertion into proteins in place of glycine (this one is only theoretical):

Glyphosate is a synthetic form of glycine. Its chemical name is actually N-(phosphonomethyl)glycine. The only difference is that glyphosate has a phosphonomethyl group attached to it. Because of this it is possible that during the process of protein synthesis glyphosate is mistaken for glycine and inserted into the polypeptide chain. Glycine is one of the most important amino acids. It serves roles in active sites and it also provides flexibility in proteins as occurs in ligament tissue. The phosphonomethyl group would prevent both of those activities. When faulty proteins are created, they must be broken down by the cell causing oxidative stress. In addition, glyphosate's inhibition of CYPs reduces the cells ability to break down these faulty proteins causing accumulation which can cause cell death. While this accidental insertion has not been proven, Monsanto's own long term studies showed that animals were exhaling the radioactive C-14 (pg. 9) that they put into the glyphosate that was given to animals, suggesting that it is being metabolized and utilized in vivo.

Transport of heavy metals, such as aluminium, across the blood brain barrier (BBB):

The structure of glyphosate and citrate are similar in that they both have 3 OH groups (citrate has 3 carbonyl groups, while glyphosate has 1 carbonyl group and 1 phosphonyl group). These OH groups allow citrate to chelate aluminium and carry it across the blood brain barrier. Al citrate is the most prominent form of Al in the brain. Aluminium chloride has been shown to inactivate glyphosate, indicating that Al is also chelated by glyphosate. Because glyphosate is so similar to glycine, it can cross the BBB carrying the aluminium with it. Glyphosate also opens up the gut barrier, allowing more of the heavy metals we encounter to enter the bloodstream, along with many other toxins. Although the brain gets rid of Al citrate faster than it takes it up (I assume the same is true for Al glyphosate) a fraction of the aluminium separates from the citrate and is retained, leading to accumulation(source1 source2).

Additional things to consider:

The problems described above are associated with:

• diabetes
• obesity
• asthma
• autism
• chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
• pulmonary edema
• adrenal insufficiency
• hypothyroidism
• Alzheimer’s disease
• amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)
• Parkinson’s disease
• prion diseases
• lupus
• mitochondrial disease
• nonHodgkin’s lymphoma
• neural tube defects
• infertility
• hypertension
• glaucoma
• osteoporosis
• fatty liver disease
• kidney failure

Among others

Glyphosate has been detected in vaccines. The highest bioaccumulation of glyphosate occurs in bone and bone marrow which is the source of gelatin. Gelatin is used to create vaccines, so this is likely the way glyphosate gets into vaccines.

Possible fraud in current and future glyphosate studies:

Typically the government does not accept studies that use the ELISA method of detecting glyphosate, so liquid chromatography mass spectroscopy (LC-MS) is preferred. When researching this method I came across this study which claims to have developed the best method for detecting glyphosate with LC-MS. Two out of four researchers are Monsanto employees. Also in the acknowledgments the authors thank Monsanto and Covance for method development and validation. So Monsanto told them how to do the study AND used its own labs to determine that the results were valid. This seemed pretty fishy to me. Unsurprisingly, three months later the same scientists (plus one more Monsanto employee) did another study using this detection method to determine that glyphosate was NOT detected in breast milk. These studies were done earlier this year and I would not be surprised if this method is used more to show that glyphosate does not get into humans.

With the recent acquisition of Monsanto by Bayer there is concern that glyphosate could start showing up in our drinking water.