Years ago we blinded ourselves to the danger of DDT.
Now we are blinding ourselves to the danger of silicon
dioxide—a supposedly inert compound that in various
forms is known as glass or sand; but also is used as a
powerful agent against cellular adhesion. That’s good
for food processing machines. . . and bad for your
body. As bad as DDT? Quite possibly.

[Using "we" in this collective manner without specifying a particular group as
its referent is not conducive to clear, unbiased and logically persuasive
communication. It tends to impugn all people with the implied errors or faults
of others. Furthermore, your statement appears to assume that there were no good
reasons at all to take the particular action that you are now railing against.
DDT may have done a lot of harm, but it also did a lot of good by saving
countless lives from disease (mainly malaria, which is more of a problem when
substitutes for DDT are used) and starvation when the methods of doing so were
much more limited than they are now. --Paul]


We already know cellular adhesion allows cancer cells
to clump and in effect circle the wagons against
cancer killing drugs.

[Again who is the "we" that knows this information? Certainly *I* don't know it
and I resent having you or anyone else tell me that I either know something that
I don't or don't know something that I do (particularly before the meaning of
"know" is thoroughly defined - something that you have also failed to do). Where
is your scientific evidence for this supposed fact of reality which is "known"
(ie highly probable to be true)? Your writing style is far more like a
politician trying to gain an unthinking emotional response from an audience than
like a person making a thoughtful reasoned presentation of facts and arguments.
--Paul]


Combating that without damaging
normal cells has been a problem. But ironically this
may be exactly what silicon dioxide is doing to the
delicate one cell thick linings of our intestines:
breaking down the ability of these cells to adhere to
one another.

Just like they did for DDT, scientists and physicians
pooh pooh this threat. ‘After all isn’t silicon
dioxide inert?’ they will say. Others, however, look
to the increasing prevalence of symptoms commonly
associated with “leaky gut syndrome” and wonder.

[Since the cause of this "leaky gut syndrome" is not fully known, it could be
any number of things and even very different for different people. Unless there
is some evidence, even multi-person anecdotal, that it is caused by silicon
dioxide, I see little point in researching whether it might be or not. Research
money and time are scarce commodities that must be put towards the most likely
causes of most harmful dysfunctions and diseases first. --Paul]


But
there is one symptom that I, anecdotally, have proven
beyond any reasonable doubt that ought to get the
attention of a lot of seniors.

[Anecdotal evidence is the weakest form of proof and a one person anecdote is
weaker than for many persons. Therefore it is completely incorrect to say that
you have proven something by its anecdotal action on yourself. You can say that
"you know" it to be true (a relative and subjective statement), but that is not
the same as saying that it is proven (an objective statement). --Paul]


Let me tell you how I discovered it.

Twenty years ago, at age 45, I took a camping trip
with a relative to a remote mountain state park in
early Fall. At night it cooled to the low teens and we
each used two sleeping bags, one inside the other, to
stay warm. Waking in the middle of the night for a
bathroom trip outside the tent was a huge deal. The
first night it happened twice to me. The next five
nights thankfully not even once.

On the sixth day we made the forty mile run to a small
store, and I bought and ate one of a package of iced
pastries. That night I struggled five times in and out
of my complicated cocoon in the frigid air. I woke
totally dissipated and spent much of our last day
hunched over and trying to stay warm in the cab of our
truck. The experience is vivid in my memory to this
day. It was almost a year, however, before I could
with certainty identify what ingredient in those
pastries had caused the problem.

Before my camping trip I had become adjusted to one or
two trips to the bathroom during the night, but that
frigid experience fixed my determination to find a
cause for this other than just ‘getting old’. For a
day or two it was reasonably possible to eliminate
nearly all chemical additives from my diet. I would
not eat at restaurants, and I would note the additives
from one packaged food that I would eat, and any
consequences that evening, or the next. But untangling
this mystery has been difficult—not the least because
the FDA allows silicon dioxide and four other so
called ‘anti-caking’ compounds (silicon dioxide,
calcium silicate, Yellow King of Prussia, and iron
ammonium nitrate) to be used in some food ingredients
without labeling. Sucrose, a form of sugar used
commonly in icings, for example, is allowed by some
arcane FDA logic to contain these additives without
labeling.

For the years that followed this experience I simply
tired to control my diet to minimize my exposure; and
I was successful a bit more than half of the time. The
nights I slept straight through made up for the
inconvenience of the others. I would catalog problem
menu items and problem restaurants. I was offered
FloMax by my doctor even though my prostate was
normal, but recoiled at using pharmaceuticals with
un-nice side effects to overcome a food additive. But
starting about a year ago the problem exploded.

It was becoming almost impossible to stay away from
the additives even though I watched the labels of
processed foods and stuck to ‘safe’ menu items at
restaurants. It was an experience like getting sucker
punched day after day, and I was reeling. Then I read
where the FDA had allowed approved anti-caking
compounds to be used in seasonings, and again in some
cases without labeling. I was stunned. But the worst
shock was some time later when after a month of second
guessing virtually everything I was eating at home and
my family beginning to think I was going crazy, I
picked up the familiar blue cylindrical package of
Moron’s salt and noticed it. There it was—slipped into
the most pervasively used seasoning: “INGREDIENTS:
salt, silicon dioxide.”

“Thank God, they labeled it!” I remember thinking
after my initial anger, and I hurried to my Whole
Foods Market and found one brand of washed Portuguese
sea salt that did not have an anti-caking compound
added. At home, with salt shakers and barbecue rubs
all redone with this safe salt, I paused to
contemplate what this meant; and the dismay I felt has
prompted this attempt to promote public awareness.
Writing a book like Silent Spring was out of the
question, but using the internet seemed like a
reasonable project, and so here I am.

I have two causes: to get out this story, and to
inspire some researcher somewhere to do a controlled
study to both confirm what I know anecdotally and to
explore the greater dimensions of the problem.
Frequent and urgent urination is most likely not the
only physiological effect on the body that these
anti-adhesion agents are causing. I believe there are
other damaging effects to our general health besides
the ‘leaky gut syndrome’ mentioned above such as
stamina and difficulty concentrating, but until some
research is done we will know nothing beyond the
obvious anecdotal cause and effect.

It should be relatively simple to do a trial with men
(with healthy prostates) and women that are
experiencing urgent and frequent urination. My
experience is that it only takes twelve hours or less
to notice a major relief of symptoms, and one weekend
sequestering under controlled diet should produce an
immediate and undeniable scientific correlation of the
damage that silicon dioxide and its cohorts are doing
to our bodies.

Please feel free to contact me by return email. God Bless

Don Carpenter

[Most men over 45 stop being able to go all night without the need to urinate.
There are several reasons for this of which reduced bladder flexibility and
prostate hypertrophy are likely the major ones. Sufficient prostate hypertrophy
can be present to cause this effect without it being able to be detected with a
standard rectal exam by a physician. I would be the last person to say that
silicon dioxide is not a cause of your urinary urgency, however, you have
provided no evidence or reason related to its properties (particularly that of
molecule adhesion prevention - which is not the same at all as cellular adhesion
prevention) for any mechanism by which it would cause urinary urgency. Thus, it
may have little relevance to the cause of needing to urinate at night for other
men. Furthermore, urinary urgency (as opposed to urinary incontinence, a quite
different dysfunction) is not very common at all in women, and generally implies
a urinary tract infection. --Paul]

[No mention of urinary/bladder disorder in animals or humans is reported in
studies using silicon dioxide for WHO's (World Health Organizaton's) report,
"Toxicological evaluation of some food additives including anticaking agents,
antimicrobials, antioxidants, emulsifiers and thickening agents" in 1973
http://www.inchem.org/documents/jecfa/jecmono/v05je04.htm

A more recent (2003) report is available from a UK government agency and
concludes much the same; no toxicity is reported or adverse affects at dosages
used for additives. More recent findings on the value of silicon are included.
http://www.food.gov.uk/multimedia/pdfs/evm_silicon.pdf

While I did not do an exhaustive web search (search string: "silicon dioxide"
(urine OR urinary OR bladder)), I did not find any reports of bladder (or
intestinal) disorders associated with the ingestion of silicon dioxide, although
it's inhalation is acknowledged as a factor for certain respiratory disorders.

Having had many bouts of bladder infections during my adult life (as well as my
~15 years as a RN), I have become quite familiar with the terms associated with
urination problems. Frequent urination is the need to empty one's bladder more
often than usual. Urinary urgency is a typically sudden severe need to urinate
accompanied by bladder (technically - suprapubic - above the pubic bone)
discomfort. Together, these two are classic (but not the only) symptoms of lower
urinary tract (bladder) infection (UTI).

Most people can sleep 6 to 8 hours without urinating, assuming not having drunk
large amounts (especially caffeine or alcohol containing fluids) shortly before
and urinating right before going to sleep. Nocturia is the term for having to
urinate at night (or when one regularly sleeps); it is quite common for men
starting in middle age to need to urinate once during the night. Having been a
young child with a bedwetting problem, I had to train myself to awaken during
the night to urinate. At that age I also restricted my fluids before bedtime,
but since, as an adult with UTIs a periodic problem, I purposely keep my fluid
intake high and therefore rarely sleep 8 hours without having one trip to the
bathroom. Many with bladder "problems" (in more recent years often termed as
"overactive bladder") complain that their symptoms are increased in cold
weather, with sound of running water and with emotional stress.

I would recommend that someone with urinary frequency and urinary urgency have
as a minimum a urinalysis (clean catch/midstream specimen) to determine if there
are signs of a bladder infection. (I periodically use 10 parameter urine test
strips that most physicians use in their office to quickly screen for nitrites
and leukocyte esterase, both of which are indicative of bacteria present, which
is not normal.) Someone with continuing or even periodically recurring such
symptoms would best to consult a urologist since renal involvement is not
something to dismiss casually. **Kitty]

[For men, for whom UTIs are not very common, the general problem past middle age
is an enlarged prostate which often prevents complete emptying of the bladder
and thus faster buildup to the stage of needing to urinate. The answer to this
is to take a combination of several effective supplement remedies, to drink less
liquids within 3-4 hours of bedtime, particularly none containing caffeine,
alcohol or other diuretics, and to be certain to urinate just before retiring.
--Paul]