Our brain and central nervous system are critical for survival, therefore it makes perfect sense that there would be many layers of finely tailored protection. One of these layers is known as the blood-brain barrier.

The blood-brain barrier is a specialized layer of cells that controls or regulates “traffic” between the blood and brain, and contributes to the homeostasis of our brain microenvironment.

Some of its functions are to prevent foreign substances, ie. toxins, drugs, and microorganisms (such as viruses, bacteria, fungi, parasites) that may be circulating in the bloodstream from entering the brain. This protective semi-permeable shield is made up of tightly packed endothelial cells (tight-junctions) which “insulate” each capillary, and keep tiny dangerous substances out of our brain. In some cases, our own immune activation can pose a threat too, and the blood-brain barrier limits the immune cells that enter the brain to activated T cells.

The blood-brain barrier also allows molecules critical for survival, such as glucose which uses a transport protein, to enter the brain. Glucose is our brain’s primary metabolic fuel. Because our brain is roughly 60% fat, this means that lipophilic molecules (fat-soluble) can more readily pass into the brain.

In infants, the blood-brain barrier does not fully mature until 3 to 6 months of age. There is some debate over exactly how “leaky” the newborn blood-brain barrier is:

New evidence shows that many adult mechanisms, including functionally effective tight junctions are present in embryonic brain and some transporters are more active during development than in the adult. Additionally, some mechanisms present in embryos are not present in adults, e.g., specific transport of plasma proteins across the blood–CSF barrier and embryo-specific intercellular junctions between neuroependymal cells lining the ventricles. However developing cerebral vessels appear to be more fragile than in the adult. Together these properties may render developing brains more vulnerable to drugs, toxins, and pathological conditions, contributing to cerebral damage and later neurological disorders. In addition, after birth loss of protection by efflux transporters in placenta may also render the neonatal brain more vulnerable than in the fetus.

Even given some of the differences between embryonic, newborn and adult blood-brain barrier, there are situations that increase its permeability, i.e. opening up the tight junctions, enabling toxic substances in our blood to enter the brain, and potentially cause damage.

It’s natural to wonder then, why or how would it be safe to vaccinate a baby, knowing that their blood-brain barrier may not be fully mature? Or knowing that they would be more vulnerable to the toxic effects of a blood-born toxin, if it were purposefully injected there?

Vaccines are injections that contain numerous neurotoxic substances inserted directly into the muscle, which then disperses easily into the blood stream, as vaccine ingredients do not stay in the thigh.

Excipients in some vaccines include:

Infanrix (DTaP)

• Fenton medium containing a bovine extract
• modified Latham medium derived from bovine casein
• formaldehyde
• modified Stainer-Scholte liquid medium
• glutaraldehyde
• aluminum hydroxide
• sodium chloride
• polysorbate 80 (Tween 80)

Daptacel (DTaP)

• aluminum phosphate
• formaldehyde
• glutaraldehyde
• 2-phenoxyethanol
• Stainer-Scholte medium
• casamino acids
• dimethyl-beta-cyclodextrin
• Mueller’s growth medium
• ammonium sulfate
• modified Mueller-Miller casamino acid medium without beef heart infusion

Recombivax (Hep B)

• soy peptone
• dextrose
• amino acids
• mineral salts
• phosphate buffer
• formaldehyde
• potassium aluminum sulfate
• amorphous aluminum hydroxyphosphate sulfate
• yeast protein

ActHib (Hib)

• sodium chloride
• modified Mueller and Miller medium (the culture medium contains milk derived raw materials [casein derivatives])
• formaldehyde
• sucrose

*These are not the complete list of ingredients in these vaccines. Missing are the actual antigens, proteins, toxoids associated with each vaccine.

For example, each 0.5-mL dose of Infanrix vaccine would also include:

• 25 Lf of diphtheria toxoid
• 10 Lf of tetanus toxoid
• 25 mcg of inactivated pertussis toxin (PT)
• 25 mcg of filamentous hemagglutinin (FHA)
• 8 mcg of pertactin (69 kiloDalton outer membrane protein).
• See vaccine inserts for more complete ingredients list.

Turtles All the Way Down is a great book, and a must have for every personal library.

Could these injections result in some untoward, unexpected health events due to unwanted toxins gaining access to parts of an infant’s brain, during important developmental stages of life? Even just in some infants?

Curiously, we see SIDS cases tend to cluster around 2 to 4 months of age, and then substantially drop after 6 months of age. Could the (lack of) integrity of the blood-brain barrier have a direct relationship with the incidence of SIDS?

What does a healthy blood- brain barrier keep out?

• Viruses
• Bacteria
• Large molecules
• Molecules that have a high electrical charge are slowed
• Many pharmaceuticals, certain antibiotics, chemotherapy
• Biologics that contain large recombinant proteins, monoclonal antibodies (but that doesn’t mean any of the ingredients within biologics are incapable of transporting across–just the large proteins)
• Pitocin (thus it doesn’t stimulate an endorphin release typical of birthing experience)

What does a healthy blood-brain barrier allow in?

• Water
• Oxygen
• Glucose
• Omega-3 fatty acids
• T-cells
• Components of breastmilk (brain-derived neurotropic factor)
• Caffeine
• Alcohol
• Cannabis
• Drugs in an epidural (bupivacaine, chloroprocaine, lidocaine, fentanyl and sufentanil) all cross the blood-brain barrier, and the drugs in an epidural DO reach the baby.
• Acetaminophen (tylenol)
• Nicotine
• Antihistamines
• Cocaine
• Barbituate drugs
• Methamphetamine
• Opioids
• Fluoride
• Aluminum (source)
• Ethylmercury (thimerosal) (source)
• Lipid (fat) soluble molecules
• Polysorbates
• Anti-depressants
• Some blood pressure medications (Captopril, fosinopril, lisinopril, perindopril, ramipril, and trandolapril)
• Nanoparticles (for example, nanoparticles are small sized (1-100 nm) particles derived from transition metals, silver, copper, aluminum, silicon, carbon and metal oxides)
• Microplastics

What situations does the blood-brain barrier increase in permeability?

• Maternal immune activation (source)
• Stress (source)
• Fever (source)
• Obstructive sleep apnea
• REM sleep restriction
• Early newborn period
• Mild hypoxia
• Gut inflammation
• Aluminum (source)
• High blood pressure
• Cytokine storm (inflammatory condition)
• Acute and chronic hyperglycemia
• Microwaves
• Radiation
• Viral or bacterial infections
• Brain trauma
• Brain inflammation, encephalopathy
• “Live virus” vaccines in infant or nursing mother (case report)
• Aluminum containing vaccines
• Neonatal hepatitis B immunization (source)

What parts of the brain are not protected by a blood-brain barrier?

• Pineal gland (secretes melatonin and neuroactive peptides.
• Posterior pituitary (releases neurohormones like oxytocin).
• Area postrema (located in the medulla oblongata, this is known as the vomiting center. When a toxic substance enters the bloodstream it will get to the area postrema and signal a person to throw up.
• Subfornical organ (regulates of body fluids).
• Vascular organ of the lamina terminalis (A chemosensory area that detects peptides and other molecules)
• Median eminence (regulates anterior pituitary through release of neurohormones.

What’s interesting to me about the list of “what can” and “can’t pass” through the blood-brain barrier is on the one hand, certain molecules that can and do pass have specific functions and roles in our brain environment. For better or worse, they have receptors named after them (endocannabinoid receptor, opioid receptor, nicotinic acetylcholine receptor, alcohol binds to GABA receptor)–which have for centuries had some kind of therapeutic effect on humankind, and some kind of neurotransmission purpose or function.

Whereas the list of “what can’t” appear to be relatively newer pharmaceuticals, man-made substances, that appear to have no natural target or receptor.

But what about aluminum?

Aluminum from oral and injected intake both make their way into our brain, whether we like it or not. Aluminum was shown to increase lipophilic permeability of the blood-brain barrier. Because aluminum is regarded as a neurotoxin, and that part is not debated, it might really behoove us to limit our exposure to known toxic substances as a general, common sense principal.

Downplaying the risks of injecting aluminum aren’t going to improve confidence in vaccination. There are two incompatible long-standing assumptions that vaccine supporters often use: the injected aluminum adjuvant is either quickly excreted by the kidney and liver and therefore poses no problem, or it’s loaded in the muscle, forms a “depot” and stays put, causing an immune response intended by the vaccine, but no other untoward event is remotely possible.

Other times they will make claims about how we consume much greater quantities of aluminum, while the amounts in vaccines are so infinitesimal–thus we should not worry. But they fail to take into account the basic differences between oral and injected exposure to harmful substances, and also the size of the person we are talking about: for example, a 6 pound newborn is routinely injected with 250 mcg of aluminum via the hepatitis B vaccine, sometimes before their own mother’s milk has “come in.”

While aluminum is considered ubiquitous in our environment, gastrointestinal absorption of aluminum from oral exposure (ie. water, formula, antacids, baking goods) is modest; only around 0.3% of ingested aluminum is absorbed into the blood stream through the intestinal wall (the rest is excreted before entering the blood stream), whereas 100% of injected aluminum is absorbed within the body.

The low oral bioavailability of aluminium results both from the insolubility, at neutral pH, of most naturally occurring aluminium compounds and from the protective barrier that the body’s gut wall presents to the uptake of potentially toxic metal ions (Priest, 2004).

Aluminum adjuvants (which are injected into muscle) are not quickly excreted, if that were the case they would make a terrible adjuvant, because everyone knows it takes several weeks to “respond” to a vaccine. But the aluminum adjuvant in vaccines can stay even much longer than that.

Animal studies has shown that even one single injection that contains 850 mcg of aluminum accumulates in the brain. For example, following intramuscular administration of aluminum hydroxide or aluminum phosphate vaccine adjuvants in rabbits, increased levels of 26Al (they added a radioactive isotope to aluminum to be able to track it) were found in the kidney, spleen, liver, heart, lymph nodes, and brain (in decreasing order of aluminum concentration) (Flarend et al. 1997).

Aluminium can enter the brain through the blood–brain barrier and through the blood–cerebrospinal fluid barrier. Aluminium is also able to cross the placental barrier, reaching the foetus, and has been reported to distribute to some extent to breast milk. (source)

In some cases, granulomas may form at the injection site, it has been shown that smaller amounts of injected aluminum are more likely to not form a “depot” but rather are engulfed by immune cells and trafficked to lymph nodes, where they recruit more immune cells by creating danger signals (DAMP, damage associated molecular pattern).

Once in the blood, most of the aluminum binds with transferrin, outcompeting iron, and is transported across the BBB this way as well as excreted. In some cases aluminum, engulfed in immune cells, is transported through lymph fluid as mentioned above. The understanding of how aluminum adjuvants work is still in its infancy, which isn’t reassuring. Science learns by making mistakes, but when it comes to my loved ones, I don’t give my consent for them to be an experiment.

Problematically, aluminum has no known biological function, no receptor of its own, no perceived or assumed benefit. Rather, it’s a potent neurotoxin. And it’s found in perilous amounts in the brains of those with severe neurological disease.

Commonly used in nearly all “non-live” vaccines (for example, DTaP, Hep B, PCV13, HPV, Hep A, Hib, etc.) as an adjuvant, which is a euphemism for cytotoxic, aluminum is associated with an accumulating list of health conditions, including seizures and epilepsy, encephalopathy, ADEM, auto-immune disease, asthma, SIDS, Alzheimer’s Disease, ASIA autoimmune/inflammatory syndrome, macrophagic myofasciitis syndrome, Gulf War syndrome, multiple sclerosis, autism and more.

More recently, researchers in Italy performed a detailed neuropathological analysis of infants who died of SIDS and controls, and found surprising amounts of several metals in the brains of all infants who died, but infants who died of SIDS had higher amounts, and their brains also contained many brainstem developmental alterations, such as abnormal expression of neurochemicals (serotonin, orexin and nicotinic acetylcholine receptors). 

Some of the particles identified showed surprising amounts of aluminum alloys (Figure 3C & E) or aluminum and phosphorous (Figure 3A). This is at least intriguing, as today it is known that aluminum has no known role in biological systems [23]. The authors speculate that its sources could be aluminum cutlery, aluminum-containing pharmacy products or immunotherapy vaccines containing aluminum derivatives dissolved in Na–Cl, whose crystals are seen enriched with aluminum. Since the mother can transfer blood contaminants to her fetus, aluminum particles, known to be able to travel long distances [24], could have reached the brain tissues, as aluminum has a keen ‘tropism’ toward complex fatty tissues [25]. Furthermore, samples contained metallic deposits made of iron (Figure 2), silver (Figure 4), gold or titanium. Considering blood as a carrier of environmental pollution nanoparticles that cross vascular epithelia into the tissues [26–28], and the presence of metallic debris inside fetal blood vessels (Figure 2E), it seems that the particles reach their destination via bypassing the blood–brain barrier [29].

If you follow my posts, you will notice I believe that the cholinergic pathway plays a critical part of the fatal SIDS cascade, either through an abnormal cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway response, or inhibition of acetylcholinesterase, or an cholinergic-immune-mediated damage to the part of the brain stem that controls respiration–or all three. All in response to an “immune challenge.”

While we cannot prove that every vaccine is dangerous for every person all of the time, we also cannot prove it is unquestionably safe for everyone, all of the time.

Even if a very small amount of toxic substances, whether it’s aluminum adjuvant, or a pertussis toxoid, or some other complex reaches the brainstem of a vulnerable infant or child only some of the time–like a perfect storm–and potentially is the cause of SIDS, or some other demyelinating or degenerative condition that is rare or not so rare–I’m not willing to take that risk.

Research into the safety of vaccines is ongoing, deeply debated, and definitely not “settled science.”

Cochrane protocol for review: Aluminium adjuvants used in vaccines

Aluminium has no known biological or physiological role (Reinke 2003). It is absorbed into the blood through the gastrointestinal tract, and rapidly eliminated by the kidneys and the liver (Reinke 2003). While aluminium is generally considered safe and is regularly ingested in food and water, it can be toxic based on the concentration, chemical form, and the environment (Kisnieriené 2015). In the blood, aluminium is bound to transferrin with high affinity, where it competes with iron at the binding site (Kisnieriené 2015). Aluminium affects cellular processes and physiological functions (Kisnieriené 2015). For instance, aluminium competes with magnesium for membrane transporters; disturbs calcium metabolism; increases oxidative stress; binds to the phosphate groups of nucleoside di- and triphosphates; and binds to metal-binding organic compounds (amino acids) and membrane lipids (Kisnieriené 2015). At high concentrations, aluminium predominantly accumulates in bone and brain tissue (Yokel 2000; Malluche 2002). Based on findings from animal and human studies, it is known to act as a powerful neurological toxicant and provoke toxic effects in foetuses and embryos if exposed during pregnancy (Reinke 2003). This is supported by recent data indicating that aluminium is able to cross the blood-brain barrier by directly affecting the cerebral blood vessels (Chen 2008; Sharma 2010). Very high aluminium concentrations have been observed in histological brain samples from children with autism, potentially implicating aluminium in the pathogenesis of this disease (Mold 2017).

Read the full review here.

To learn more about Aluminum, please read these articles:

The Terrible Truth About Fluoride (and Other Chemicals)

6 Documentaries on Aluminum Toxicity

Vaccines and Seizures

Detox Success Story: Baby Is Seizure Free After Aluminum Detox