In 1996, Clifford J Hawkins BSc PhD DSc changed careers from long term academia and the medical industry after having developed and sold rapid diagnostic tests for a range of important diseases. He changed in order to focus his research on food intolerance and nutrition because his own family members, especially his grandchildren, were suffering serious ill-health from food intolerances. Working on the thesis that all disease begins in the gut, Hawkins went on to make several discoveries about the relationship among proteins and viruses and developed a range of products under the label Biohawk.We have reproduced Hawkin's thesis covering the major part of his work, as written and presented by him in order to explain how it works. Hang in. It's worth the read.
The key parameter in this thesis is the role of the amino acid proline, which is unique amongst the common amino acids that make up the structure of proteins, in that it causes the protein chain to be fixed in a 90 degree bend. Proteins are normally very flexible and can adapt their three-dimensional structures to fit a particular protease enzyme’s active cavity so that the protein can be digested. The fixed structure imposed by the proline makes it impossible for the usual protease enzymes to digest proline-rich proteins and that includes the protease digestive enzymes in our bodies. If our bodies cannot digest a protein, that protein becomes a threat and our immune system looks to destroy it and it will become hypersensitized if it has the gene that recognizes a proline-rich proteins.
Viruses and bacteria evolved long before man. For those organisms to function and to invade hosts such as the earlier evolving animals, they expressed on their surface membranes proteins that could not be digested within their hosts. An influenza virus has hairs on the surface, two proline-rich proteins called hemagglutinin and neuraminidase that interact with host cells to allow the virus to enter the host cell and multiply. The hosts’ digestive systems cannot remove these proteins from the virus’ membrane. Over the evolution of these organisms they have conserved their prolyl peptides in these proteins while undergoing regular mutation and changes to the other amino acids in the proteins’ structures.
Throughout the evolution of Homo sapiens up until the end of the last ice age and the Palaeolithic periods 10 thousand years ago, those people with the HLA DQ2 or DQ8 immunity gene that gave them an innate immunity to proline-rich proteins on the membranes of viruses and bacteria, became the dominant proportion of people on earth. People with different immunity genes succumbed to these microorganisms. The Palaeolithic people selected their food carefully so they remained healthy and ate mainly lean meat, seafood, starchy tubers such as yams, some leafy vegetables, some fruit and some nuts all of which did not make their immune systems hypersensitive and cause autoimmune diseases. Our aboriginal people came from the same genetic stock and were healthy and fit before Europeans gave them wheat flour and alcohol. Prior to the Europeans, they chose their food very carefully to ensure they remained healthy. The other animals evolved to have similar immunity genes to Homo sapiens.When plants evolved, they protected themselves against animal predators including insects by laying down proline-rich proteins within their structures. They encapsulated their starch, oils, vitamins, minerals and even their main flavour components within a capsule coated with proline-rich proteins. Palaeolithic man was able to select through trial and error natural plant foods that were available that did not hypersensitize their immune system and make them sick. A major change in the evolution of mankind occurred at the end of the last ice age 10 thousand years ago. New grasses grew all over the world: a corn variety in the Americas, rice in Asia, and wheat near the Black Sea. People recognized that these new grasses could be easily cultivated, that the grains gave excellent flour, and that wild yeasts were able to make alcohol from the flour. The people also recognized that these grains were a good feed for animals and it was now possible to domesticate cattle and other animals on a large scale. This was the beginning of agriculture and the concept of agribusiness: these grains, their flour, the alcohol and the domesticated animals and their milk could be traded. Income became more important than the health impacts of the food on man and the animals. Sadly wheat and corn had high concentrations of proline-rich proteins. Rice proteins were not so bad and could be more easily digested. Wheat was traded in a westerly direction because rice was successful in the east. The people with the special gene that recognized proline-rich protein progressively died off from autoimmune diseases and a reduced fertility reducing the proportion of people with this special gene. People in Africa recognized the problem, and when wheat entered Africa, they learnt to remove the problem by fermenting the grain before using the flour. Some tribes refused to eat wheat in modern Lebanon, in Sardinia, and in the Celtic regions of western and Northern Europe.
The proline-rich foods have only been introduced to these people’s diets in relatively recent times and the HLA DQ2/8 gene still dominates. This gene has been re-introduced into Eastern Mediterranean and Eastern Europe countries over the past few thousand years through the Mongol invasions and the movement of people from Africa and the Middle East into these regions.The HLA DQ2/8 gene is handed on to progeny 100 percent and so in a country such as Australia, those people with this gene mostly come from the Celtic and Eastern Mediterranean peoples as well as from Asia, Africa and our own Aboriginal people. The percentage varies across the country with high percentages where Scots settled such as in Tasmania, and for example in New England, and where the Irish settled, and where there are high numbers of people with Aboriginal or Islander descent. The percentage is certainly greater than 30 percent averaged over all of Australia. These are the people who at very high risk of food intolerance, and the associated autoimmune diseases including the full range of cancers.
To suffer from food intolerance, three conditions are necessary. The first necessary condition is that you have to have the HLA DQ2 or DQ8 gene. The immunity gene expresses a pair of associated proteins that have a cavity with a geometry that allows a specific antigen to be bound and for DQ2/8, this has to be a prolinerich peptide. The pair of proteins and the bound antigen are expressed on the membrane of a special white cell. This causes the release of immune T cells and B cells designed to respond to this protein complex. The T cells express molecules called cytokines that activate the B cells to express antibodies such as IgG or IgE that target the antigens to remove the threat through macrophages taking up the antigenimmunoglobulin complex. The second necessary condition for food intolerance is your immunity gene has to be activated. It may never be activated in your whole life. Your first serious infection will cause an immune response, for example, an influenza or scarlet fever infection. Your HLA DQ2/8 gene will prevent you having a second infection, irrespective of which virus or Gram-positive bacterium you are exposed to. Vaccination with a proline-rich membrane protein or a live vaccine will turn on your HLA DQ2/8 gene, and in Australia the very successful vaccination program has turned on the HLA DQ2 or DQ8 gene in those children with the gene under 20 years of age in 2013. The vaccination program is very important for the total population to reduce the risk of major outbreaks of serious diseases, but it is also important for governments and the medical profession to understand that for a very significant proportion of the population with the food intolerance gene, they are now at a higher risk of having their immune system hypersensitized at a much earlier age than in the past (before the effective vaccines were created) by the food they eat daily and they are at a higher risk of having autoimmune diseases early in their lives. Stress including stress from over-exercise will turn on your immunity gene. The third necessary condition for food intolerance is you eat food with proline-rich proteins. Wheat is given most of the blame. It has about 50 percent of its proteins proline-rich. They are called gluten proteins. Other cereals such as barley have similar proteins. They encapsulate the starch, the minerals and their vitamins in a capsule stopping you gaining access to their energy source necessary for germination. If your HLA DQ2/8 gene has been turned on, your immune system detects the proline-rich proteins such as gluten and if you eat wheat or other cereals each day, you are effectively being vaccinated each day. The same applies to other proline-rich foods.Your immune system becomes hypersensitized and your health is compromised. Your digestive enzymes cannot digest gluten and related proteins and this encapsulated energy passes into the hind gut where bacteria ferment it making your hind gut become acid killing off your good gut bacteria and allowing your bad bacteria to prosper putting toxins and different to normal fatty acids into your blood. The second food people blame for food intolerance is milk from cows, goats and sheep. The health industry often blames lactose but this is a relatively small problem in Australia, specifically for people with the autoimmune disease called Coeliac Disease who have had their small intestine villi, where lactase is produced, seriously damaged and for people who have not been given animal milk after weaning from their mother's milk and their body has forgotten how to produce lactase. The latter problem is common for people from Asia. All people with food intolerance react to milk's proline-rich proteins called casein and beta-lactoglobulin if their gene is turned on. In Australia this is over 30 percent of the population. People with food intolerance often go on a gluten-free and dairy-free diet, but this does not solve the problem. As stated above plants lay down proline-rich proteins to protect them against predators. People often tell me they only eat healthy vegetarian food and cannot understand why they still have food intolerance. The answer is simple: a vegetarian diet is not necessarily healthy for a person with food intolerance because many of the so-called healthy foods are rich in proline-rich proteins with structures even worse than gluten, for example carrot and beet root. SPECIAL MENTION SHOULD BE MADE OF SPIRULINA WHICH IS HAILED AS A VERY HEALTHY PRODUCT BUT IT HAS AN EXCEPTIONALLY HIGH LEVEL OF PROLINE.
The aim with Biohawk was to find a food that was rich in an enzyme that was designed by nature to specifically and efficiently digest only proline-rich peptides. A special blend of rhizomes from the ginger family was found to be able to do the job and digest proteins such as gluten and casein making it safe for people to eat bakery products made from wheat flour and to drink milk, and the hind gut was brought back to neutral within 3 days according to studies with race horses. A small amount of the Biohawk ginger was able to digest the proline-rich proteins in all these other foods. The ginger enzymes are unique in their specificity and efficacy in digesting the proline peptides with a hydrophilic amino acid next to it. The cavity in the ginger enzymes which binds the protein resembles closely the HLA DQ2/8 gene cavity and is able to digest the protein one amino acid away from the proline. Only a bent protein at proline can fit in the active site. This applies to all proline-rich proteins: food proteins, the membrane protein on viruses, bacteria, and cancer cells, and proline-rich toxins such as prion, the cause of mad cow disease.
Foods that cause food intolerance include all cereal grains including chia, all legumes, all animal milk including human milk, many vegetables and fruits including their juices, coffee, chocolate, wine, whisky and beer. Asians ferment soy to overcome its problems. Eastern Mediterranean people condition their legume grains such as chick pea and lentils. The problem can now also be easily removed by treating each of these foods with the Biohawk ginger products. One example is the digestion of the milk casein means there is no longer a difference between a1 and a2 milk:YPFPGPIH Beta casein a1 (bovine casomorphin 8 with BCM7 underlined) YPFPGPIP Beta casein a2 (bovine casomorphin 8 with BCM7 underlined)Casomorphin 8 is the only difference between a1 and a2 milk, and is the key peptide of concern. For both forms of milk, casomorphin is digested by Biohawk’s ginger between F and P eliminating this problem casomorphin. The ginger digests the casein (and beta-lactoglobulin) much more extensively than at the casomorphin making the milk much more nutritious.
The most common are:
A few percent of people with food intolerance have Coeliac Disease which causes significant damage to small intestine villi that are involved in the uptake of nutrients in the small intestine. The failure to take up nutrients means the people are usually very thin with no fat laid down as listed above. The alpha protein in the HLA gene is slightly different to that in other people with food intolerance and people with CD have a severe reaction to gluten as they utilise tissue Transglutaminase to deaminate some glutamines in the gluten proteins so they bind more strongly to the gene than for the other people with food intolerance. People with CD react to the other proline-rich foods and it is not sufficient to have a gluten-free diet.
The basis of Hawkin's work means that it has application across a broad range of seemingly unconnected diseases and conditions. If you have survived reading this far, you can find the rest of this presentation online and a number of Hawkin's papers on Researchgate.