Are Toxins Undermining Your Best Efforts to Get Healthy?

Is this your story?

You're trying to get healthy. You eat fruits and vegetables, exercise regularly and take your vitamins every day. You've got a few pounds to lose, and they won't seem to budge no matter how hard you try. You're beginning to think your hormones hate you. At this point, you're deflated and starting to feel depressed that you don't have the willpower to fix the situation.

Or maybe this is it...

You're young and you should be getting out and socializing but you just don't feel well. You're joints ache and you have constant fatigue you just can't beat. You eat a vegan diet so you know you're healthier than most, but the bottom line is that you still can't do the things you love to do.

Or is it this...?

You're constantly saddled with digestive issues. Every time you eat, you wonder if you will have to make the mad dash to the bathroom. Aside from urgency, you have gas and bloating that make doing most things not only unpredictable but uncomfortable. Your belly is dictating your life.

The truth is these are all fairly common scenarios.

You can be doing lots of great things for your health without realizing that there are factors working against you.

One of the biggest of these factors is not habit-related but environment-related. I'm talking about toxins. In this day and age, toxins are ubiquitous. The air, water and soil are loaded with contaminants that find their way into our bodies and compromise how they function. These include chemicals like pesticides and herbicides, plastics, heavy metals, prescription meds and even electro-magnetic frequencies.

Everyone's ability to release toxins is unique

Most of us are born with some inherited toxins and then, over the years, chemicals we're exposed to accumulate on top of these.

Your liver is your body's main detoxifying organ and it’s not an exaggeration to say it’s a bona fide super star. Its primary job is to filter and balance the chemicals in your blood. Blood leaving the stomach and the intestines passes through the liver where it processes nutrients and extracts harmful substances. Toxins and unfriendly microbes get packaged up and sent along to either the kidneys for elimination in urine or the intestines for removal via, yep, you guess it, poop. The liver will even store toxins and microbes that it can’t eliminate safely.

Among other jobs, the liver is responsible for:

· Producing bile for the breakdown of fats

· Converting food into nutrients

· Removing old and damaged cells

· Regulating blood sugar

· Changing dangerous microbes and chemicals into more manageable substances and shuttling them safely out of the body.

The liver’s work impacts digestion, energy, immunity and almost all major body systems. That makes it an especially vital organ.

Today’s modern lifestyle takes a considerable toll on our livers. The foods we eat, the amount of stress we endure, the lack of sleep and the sheer number of toxins we encounter all tax and exhaust our livers, making them function sub-optimally.

Imagine you have a stack of work you must complete every day. On top of this, you have routine maintenance you are supposed to be doing on your file server to ensure it’s functioning properly. Everyday you aim to tackle the maintenance and clean-up work, but the daily load continues to pile up and you can never fully complete the cleanup. One day, your file server crashes. It hasn’t been properly maintained and there are too many resources being used at once. It just can’t handle the demand.

That’s what it’s like for the liver. It’s taking care of it’s daily load, producing bile so it can process fats, turning sugars into glycogen for stored energy, regulating amino acids and clearing the blood of toxins and dangerous invaders. When we eat high fat and processed foods, for instance, the liver must work harder to break down the fats and clear away the toxins in the food. With a continued onslaught over time, the liver gets tired and bogged down. It can’t quite produce all the bile necessary to process fats properly and it becomes less effective at clearing toxins, viruses and bacteria safely.

Your body begins to pay the price. Perhaps you begin to absorb nutrients inefficiently and you show signs of nutrient deficiencies. Or maybe you develop a food sensitivity that wreaks havoc on your digestion, or a dormant viral infection flares up, compromising your thyroid function.

Not only the food you eat but the quality of the water you drink, the household products you use to clean and even electromagnetic frequencies from the electronics you use can exacerbate the liver’s exhaustion, making it harder for it to do its job of keeping you healthy and safe.

We are each unique in our ability to detoxify, but we can all benefit from a concerted effort to limit toxic exposures.

What you can do

To start, here are some areas of your life that are probably loaded with toxins and suggested alternatives that can help bring the cumulative toll down a notch.

1. Food. Certified organic produce means that no synthetic fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides were used in growing the crop. Since these chemicals are linked to cancers and other health conditions, it’s always best to avoid them when you can. Buy organic when your budget allows, but don’t avoid fresh produce if you can’t buy organic. Just wash thoroughly by rubbing and scrubbing to remove as much residue as possible. One smart guideline is to buy organic versions of produce whose skin you eat and buy regular versions of fruits and veggies that you peel. You can also use the Environmental Working Group’s (EWG’s) Guide to Pesticides in Produce for more specific guidance, based on annual testing. (The EWG is an independent body whose mission is to empower people to make better health choices through breakthrough research. Empowerment is key, so I encourage you to explore the EWG website and see how its research may influence your choices).

Preservatives and artificial colors and flavorings are also detrimental to your health. Some chemical additives like high fructose corn syrup and trans/hydrogenated fats were created in a lab and are added to foods to make them tastier, have a greater shelf life and be more addictive. Read labels and avoid highly processed foods with tons of ingredients. Instead, opt for foods with few ingredients—ones you recognize and can easily pronounce. The phrase whole foods refers to foods that are closest to their original form, such as potatoes as opposed to the highly processed potato chip. Eating whole foods means thinking about how many “hands” have touched your food and how many steps were needed to turn it into the final product. You want there to be as few steps as possible, so you are getting all the goodness that nature intended rather than some adapted food-like substance a group of food execs want you to eat to make their company more money. Doing this is YOU advocating and fighting for YOU and those you love.

2. Water. Water is a tricky one because almost all water is contaminated in some way. Even rainwater has heavy metals and other pollutants that have evaporated into the atmosphere. Our tap water typically comes from wastewater that has been treated and purified. It has fluoride added to it and, even after treatment, it usually contains prescription medications, heavy metals like aluminum, copper, iron and lead, as well as arsenic, plastics, pesticides and what’s considered safe levels of fecal matter (a.k.a poop). Water filters come in all shapes and sizes, all levels of effectiveness and are available for all budgets. Rather than give recommendations for specific products, I encourage you to do some homework and see what fits your budget and priorities. There are carafe filters that you fill and then put in the fridge, sink filters you attach to your faucet, under-sink filters that run your water through multiple stages of filtering before adding it to a storage tank you can access from a separate spigot on your sink, and even countertop models that filter and then re-mineralize the filtered water. Do your homework and be sure you understand just what chemicals your filter can effectively eliminate. You can also use the EWG Tapwater Database to see what’s in your tap water and download their Water Filter Guide.

3. Household products. This category includes everything from cosmetics and beauty products like shampoo, toothpaste, deodorant, moisturizers, perfumes and make-up, to dish and clothing detergents, as well as glass, furniture, oven, floor and carpet cleaners. It also covers lawn and garden products like fertilizers and weed killers. When you look at this category, it’s easy to see how daily toxin exposures can add up to wreak havoc on your health. Many of the ingredients we use daily disrupt our hormones, cause headaches, irritate our skin and eyes, induce respiratory problems and act as neurotoxins. Together, they take a cumulative toll on our bodies. Begin by looking at what you put on your body every day. Try entering your most-used products into the EWG’s Skin Deep Guide to see their safety rating and check out their Guide to Healthy Cleaning for help with reading labels and suggested “greener” cleaners. Please note that artificial fragrances are especially harmful to your body, so avoid cosmetics and skin-care products with fragrances. Also avoid air fresheners and scented candles, as they are loaded with phthalates, aldehydes and benzene derivatives, which are known endocrine disruptors and carcinogens. Opt instead for products that use essential oils to make them smell fresh and clean. Finally, know that weed killers like glyphosate are also known to cause cancer and they have been found in the umbilical cords of newborn babies. That’s proof that our collective effort to avoid these chemicals helps you and your family as well as everyone on the planet! That’s huge.

The road ahead

Chances are you’re not exactly like the people in the three scenarios up above. But it's likely you have your own set of issues and symptoms plaguing you. Choose one big category of toxins to reduce over the next month and see if it makes a difference in how you feel. There are many factors that go into making us sick and many factors that play a role in making us well. Know that, by taking these steps to reduce your toxic exposures, you’re empowered to create real change in your body. And that’s something to celebrate.

For a go-to guide, check out this infographic on eliminating toxins. Better yet, share it with those you love so they can heal too!