Brunde and Knute And The Importance Of The Enzyme: Calcium ATPase

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Hours after my son, Knute, was born, I was in my hospital room breastfeeding when the nurse came in. Knute had fallen asleep, as peaceful as an angel. But as the nurse adjusted the blankets, a look of concern crossed her face. 

 “He’s turning blue,” she said and lifted him from my arms. “He’s not breathing right.”

She whisked away my son, who was only hours old, into the ICU where I couldn’t follow. I was horrified, panic-stricken. Was he okay? Would he die? What were they doing to him? 

Knute was kept in ICU that first week. The doctors ran scores of tests, but the only diagnosis they could come up with was sleep apnea. The solution was for him to wear an apnea monitor full time, every day, every minute. When it let loose its high-pitched beep, we had to check and make sure he was still breathing. Someone, usually me, was with him every second. 

Although we got the sleeping and monitoring under control (minus perpetual exhaustion), his feeding was difficult. He contracted pneumonia. His inflamed and narrowed airway gave way to stridor, the high-pitched wheeze of his struggling infant lungs. 

At four months, Knute had a swallow test. He’d been slobbering a lot, and as a new mother, well, I didn’t know what was happening. The test was to see if his milk was going down the esophagus or, more dangerously, into the lungs. The news wasn’t good. I now needed to thicken his milk with rice cereal so it would be solid enough for Knute to swallow without going into his lungs. We also had to start administering four nebulizer treatments each day just to control the fine balance of eating and breathing. 

He was always…droopy. It was hard to tell at that age, because babies are babies. But as he grew, he didn’t develop the core body strength he needed to hold himself upright in his stroller. At about six months, his eyelids drooped, too, especially on one side. 

Knute hit his developmental milestones, but always at the end of the normal period. Again, the doctors weren’t worried. “Let’s just wait and see,” they told me. “All kids progress at different rates.”  But I was his mother, and I knew something wasn’t right. 

When he was around nine months, I started expanding his diet with fruit puree, yogurt, Cheerios, Gerber treats, and other typical starter foods. Knute began to develop horrible little nodules all over his body. One doctor suggested it could be mites, so Knute received several mite treatments which consisted of covering his body in a lotion for several days—a lotion that I was unaware contained toxic pesticides.

We went through allergy testing, and everything came up negative. Knute wasn’t allergic to anything, yet after eating certain foods he broke out in nodules. And not just that, his mood changed as well, in ways only a mother can see. His asthma was triggered, his droopiness increased,   He was tested for rare muscle diseases, metabolic diseases, cystic fibrosis, mastocytosis, and more.None of the doctors could diagnose what was happening or knew what to do about it.  My sense of desperation deepened.  

All I knew to do was to keep trying to figure it out.  Why did the severity of  his symptoms fluctuate?  So I began to pay attention to everything he ate and was exposed to. After searching hundreds of medical journal articles, I found the common thread. Everything that made his symptoms worse had a negative impact on a key enzyme Calcium ATPase. Calcium ATPase is a vital enzyme that transports calcium within every cell of your body. Healthy levels enable your muscles to contract, your heart to beat, your brain to send impulses, your immune system to respond and many more cell functions..  Low Calcium ATPase results in dysregulated calcium levels which causes problems throughout the body. 

All kinds of factors contribute to inhibiting Calcium ATPase: a plethora of food additives and dyes, pesticides, off gasses, fire retardants, bisphenol, mercury, lead and many more. I thought back over the last couple of years and realized that I hadn’t paid any mind to those kinds of things. I hadn’t been providing organic, additive-free food. We had a flea problem that we treated with pesticide bombs. We had our wooden floors refinished, which gave off fumes for weeks. Our house was painted. Bathrooms were cleaned with bleach-based cleaners and our older house did not have much ventilation. From there, I decided to cut back on everything that inhibited the enzyme Calcium ATPase. When I cut out exposure to the inhibitors, he got better. It was as simple, and complex, as that. 

Calcium ATPase plays a key role in neurodevelopment for all children. Even if a child does not have obvious problems, you would never knowingly expose your kids to mercury or lead.  But many toxins reduce Calcium ATPase just like mercury and lead.  So why risk any exposure.

Here are some things things to be aware of. 

  • Pesticides: On food and for use in home and yard. Flea and tick collars.

  • Mercury in fish such as tuna sushi and swordfish.

  • Fire retardants: Jumpy pits; foam furniture, carpets

  • Charred grilled foods

  • Sunscreen with zinc and titanium dioxide nanoparticles

  • Vintage toys: Toys made before 2008 such as Thomas the Toy Engine and many Fisher Price toys contain lead.

  • Adult and teen costume jewelry and buttons

  • Peeling paint at playgrounds

  • Preservative BHT/TBHQ: Frosted Flakes, Rice Crispies, Frosted Mini-Wheats; Reeses Peanut Butter Cup, Snicker bars, Kellog Rice Crispy Treats

  • Aluminum baking powder: Ego waffles; Pillsbury Cookie Dough, McDonalds Chicken Nuggets. Also avoid cooking acidic foods in aluminum foil.

  • Bisphenol i.e. in food storage containers, canned foods.

I have written a book to help parents be aware of the importance of Calcium ATPase.  It is such a critical enzyme that it makes sense to avoid things that inhibit it.  You don’t have to be perfect, but every time you reduce your child’s exposure to Calcium ATPase inhibitors is a positive step towards ensuring you child’s optimal health.


When Brunde Broady’s infant son experienced an onslaught of health issues that conventional medicine could neither define nor treat, she began her own research-based quest for answers. Over the course of ten years, she pulled together hundreds of threads from scientific journal articles and revealed the importance of the enzyme Calcium ATPase. Broady has a Yale MBA and has received patents in both the United States and China related to her work on Calcium ATPase. She wrote The Calcium Connection: The Little-Known Enzyme at the Root of Your Cellular Health to share her knowledge with as many people as possible to help them make educated health and lifestyle decisions. You can find out more and purchase Brunde’s book at https://www.brundebroady.com/ and follow along on Instagram here @brundebroady