Consumable Toxins

If You Ingest More Toxins Than Your Body Can Process, Poor Health Can Be The Result

As a consumer, you're the target of hundreds of chemical companies trying to sell you products that contain toxic ingredients.  Your mouth is their bullseye.  The amount of toxins that surround you can seem overwhelming at times.  But your vigilance is the first line of defense.  Taking one step at a time, you can make important choices—little changes that add up to a significant decrease in your exposure.  Those steps begin with awareness. Toxins found in food and water enter your system by way of your mouth.  With consumable toxins, you decide what goes in, but do you know what's toxic? 

The first area to be aware of is water-borne toxins.  Water can be an integral part of a successful detox plan—six to eight glasses a day will flush toxins from your body and aid your natural detox systems—but only if that water is pure.  Do you know what's in your drinking water?  Most "tap" water, though meeting governmental health standards, contains chemicals which add to your toxic load: including, of course, chlorine and often flouride.   Chlorine is toxic to humans.  Fluoride has been found to inhibit enzymes crucial in the digestive process.  The readily available alternatives, including bottled spring water, filter systems and purified water, are worth the expense.  Be careful with drinking distilled water, as it lacks essential minerals (unless you take a carefully designed selection of  mineral supplements].

Here's some basic information to help you to decide which water source can meet your personal requirements in terms of quality, cost and convenience. 

Foods can also be toxic, particularly for people with food allergies.  Undiagnosed food allergies affect millions, but physicians are often reluctant to test for food allergies—many doctors have been educated to believe that allergies are not "real" illnesses.   But we all can recognize that foods affect different people in different ways.  Lactose intolerance, which puts milk products off-limits for many people, is one example.

Foods can add to your toxic load in other ways.  Many people simply get too much of a good thing, particularly when it comes to high-fat foods or meats.  The liver has to metabolize the fatty acids delivered by the bloodstream after fats in the diet are broken down and absorbed in the small intestine.  The more energy the liver has to expend in this final process of the digestion of high-fat foods, the less it has available for other detoxification work. Here more information about your liver.

Even if you limit fats, many toxins come in the form of chemical additives in packaged foods and beverages.  Immunologists advise individuals who are immune-suppressed to eat only fresh food.  You may want to do the same.  Preservatives and chemicals that ensure fresh color or appearance can be toxic.  Foods like white flour and white sugar rob your body on two levels ö failing to provide real nutrition while depleting nutrients used in their digestion.   It is best to minimize the consumption of  processed foods, especially desserts, snack foods and fast foods.

The Italian Model can show you how to enjoy life without ingesting too many toxins.

And reconsider the old adage "An Apple a Day." 

While most citizens of the developed nations avoid thinking about the dangers of junk food, most now understand the health risks from tobacco.  Whether you smoke yourself or you have friends, family or colleagues who smoke in your presence, smoking is one more factor in environmental toxins.  In addition to the toxins it directly imparts to your body, smoking also harms the cilia, which the resiratory system uses as a transport mechanism to help detoxify your body.  It is ironic that tobacco, which was used very sparingly by Native Americans as a sacred ceremonial herb, has now become the industrialized world's most widely abused intoxicant.  If you do smoke (or chew or dip) tobacco and aren't ready to quit, it is even more important that you balance out your toxin load in other areas, and take supplements to replace nutrients depleted by the tobacco.  The best source of information we've found on either quitting or giving yourself additional nutritional support until you do comes from Eldon Haas, M.D. book, The Detox Diet. 

Though alcohol can never be called healthful, moderate amounts of alcohol—one or two glasses of wine or beer daily—may not be overly harmful.  Nonetheless, it still places a detox load on your liver.  Immoderate drinking of alcohol over-stresses the liver and its detox capacity.  Recently,  medical studies have shown that some of the constituents of red wine can be helpful to the body, though the alcohol it contains still must be detoxed, and unless the wine is organic, it may also contain toxic pesticide residues.  People who want the benefits of red wine without the toxins can drink (dark) grape juice, or try one of the "red wine" or "grape-skin extract" supplements now on the market.  If you drink, you may want to read more about Eldon Haas, M.D.'s special detoxifying program, in The Detox Diet, which has been created especially for minimizing the negative effects of alcohol 

According to immunologist Lewell Brenneman, M.D., Ph.D. of San Francisco, some of the most difficult detox cases he's ever encountered have been those of individuals detoxing from pharmaceutical drugs.   Just because your doctor prescribes a drug doesn't mean it's not treated as a toxin by your body (like red wine, something can be both helpful and toxic).  Rather than being a passive ingester of whatever drug is handed your way, take personal responsibility to work actively with your physician and your pharmacist.  Make sure that you are taking only pharmaceutical agents that are absolutely necessary.  Even for necessary drugs, a lower dosage may still be effective.  Ask your doctor whether you can safely experiment with taking a reduced amount.  Make sure you understand any risks and possible side-effects associated with drugs—especially if they are prescribed for long-term use, or if you take multiple medications.  You can check them out yourself in the Physician's Desk Reference, available at most libraries. Also, remember that, through consultation with an alternative medicine-oriented M.D. or naturopathic physician, many people have found alternative therapies or lifestyle changes which can eliminate or reduce the need for pills. 

Over-the-counter (OTC) drugs become part of your toxic load as well.  Occasional use of an OTC remedy may have no ill effects, but be careful about long-term or repeated exposure to any chemical agents.  Again, work with your pharmacist and learn all you can if you believe you need over-the-counter medications for more than occasional use.  The same can be said of illegal drugs which also have to be detoxified by the body.  All substances, legal or illegal, prescribed or over-the-counter, need to be considered possible contributors to your toxic load, as well as monitored to avoid adverse drug reactions.

Finally, more and more information is being discovered about the negative effects of toxins absorbed from dental work.  So-called "silver" fillings, which are really a mercury amalgam made of mercury, tin, copper and zinc, have actually been declared a hazardous waste by the Environmental Protection Agency.  Yet, the American Dental Association still approves them for use in your mouth.   The World Health Organization indicates that a single filling can release from 3 to 17 micrograms of mercury a day, and mercury toxicity has been associated with anorexia, depression, fatigue, insomnia, arthritis, multiple sclerosis, irritability, memory loss and gum disease, among other disorders.   Though it is costly and unpleasant, you may want to consider gradually replacing "silver" fillings with newer, less toxic materials.  Certainly you should ask for these materials if you or your children are going to have new fillings.  You can also be tested for allergic responses to dental materials prior to having significant dental work done—such testing is now available from many dentists.   

The upshot of all this?  Good News!  When it comes to consumable toxins, you are in the driver's seat.  You can control your exposure to many toxins just by watching what you put in your mouth ö water, food, alcohol, pharmaceutical and other medications, or dental work.  It's a lot to consider, so take it one step at a time.  Here are a few strategies for eating a more Healthy Diet.  You can begin making the informed decisions that limit your toxic exposure.  Knowing how the body detoxes is also extremely helpful.  Awareness and information give you greater control.  Once you have developed a good idea of your toxic load in terms of consumable toxins, you're ready to look at the next circle of exposure ÷ toxins absorbed by your skin.   Personal Care Products. 

Related Articles: Water Sources   Liver, The Detox Diet,  Healthy Diet   How the body detoxes   Personal Care Products). 

  .  Stoff, Jesse A., and Pellegrino, Charles, R., Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: The Hidden Epidemic, New York: HarperPerennial, 1990, 211.

  .  Baker, Sidney MacDonald, Detoxification & Healing: The Key to Optimal Health, New Canaan, CN: Keats Publishing, Inc. 1997, 41-42.  Baker writes, "allergy was not considered a respectable pursuit.  The pediatric allergy clinic at Yale was the only specialty clinic that was under the leadership of practicing pedatricians from the New Haven community as opposed to full-time academics who, by the early 1960s, had come to dominate medical education in all the major medical schools."

  .  Horne, Ross, Cancerproof Your Body, New York: Angus & Robertson, 1996, 140.

  .  Personal communication with the author,  18 February 1998.

  .  Goldberg, Burton, ed., Alternative Medicine Guide to Chronic Fatigue, Fibromyalgia & Environmental Illness, Tiburon, CA: Future Medicine Publishing, 1998, 190.

  .  Ibid.

  .  One such testing service is Clifford Material Reactivity Testing Report, from Clifford Consulting & Research, Inc., 2275-J Waynoka Road, Colorado Springs, CO 80915-1635, (719)550-0008).

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