What Do Measles, Tuberculosis, and Grains Have in Common?

What do measles, tuberculosis, and grains have in common? For that matter, what do anthrax, influenza, and brucellosis also share in common with grains? All the conditions listed are examples of zoonoses, i.e., diseases contracted by humans from animals. When humans first invited domesticated grazing creatures–cows, sheep, goats–into our huts, adobe homes, or caves, often sleeping in the same room, using them for milk or food, we acquired many of their diseases. These diseases were essentially unknown prior to the human domestication of grazing ruminants. The process of animal domestication changed the course of human civilization, providing a source of calories from their meat and organs, products made from the milk from their mammary glands, and led to the technology of fermentation, cheesemaking,  and even to putting at least some of these animals to work as beasts of burden. And so did the acquisition of zoonoses from the same animals, such as the massive epidemics of tuberculosis that have plagued humans. Grazing ruminants graze on grasses. Curiously, the human consumption of the seeds of grasses–i.e., “grains”–coincides with the domestication of grass-grazing ruminants. It is therefore tempting to speculate that the period of global climate change (increased temperature and dryness) recorded by geologists that caused a shortage of food for humans approximately 9000-12.000 years ago provided the motivation for hungry, desperate humans...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - Category: Cardiology Authors: Tags: Wheat-Free Lifestyle barley corn gluten grains measles rye tuberculosis zoonoses Source Type: blogs