Which Of These Toxins Are Playing Havoc With Your Body & Health?

Heavy Metals

Heavy metals are one of the most overlooked triggers of reproductive problems, diseases and neurological issues as your medical doctor doesn’t test for heavy metal levels in your body, but with my at home lab testing you can test for 5 key metals – lead, aluminum, mercury, cadmium and arsenic.   This year I’ve seen quite a few tests come back with high levels of mercury (often due to mercury fillings in the mouth that have cracked and started leaking) and aluminum as it’s in our water, deodorants, cookware, pop cans etc.  I’ve seen cadmium high in smokers as well as those who no longer smoke.  All of these metals wreak havoc at the cellular level on our body and cause massive inflammation, which if you recall from episode 80 then triggers your genes to turn on disease. When we reduce the inflammation we don’t trigger our genes to turn on disease – so it’s important to test for heavy metals in your body and then remove them with a simple heavy metal detox, using binders and detoxifying herbs that help draw them out of your cells and out of your body.

GMOs (Synthetic Food)

These are foods made in a laboratory by man in order to make the food better able to withstand high levels of pesticide spray! In order to do this, new genes are inserted into the DNA of natural food crops.  The problem is that they have no additional health benefits, but can be harmful as they absorb the heavy spraying of pesticides.  There is a lot of research now linking GMO foods to fertility issues, gut dysfunction and autoimmune diseases.  It is best to simply avoid them.   Top GMO foods to avoid:   beets & beet sugar (95%) / Canola Oil (93%) / Cottonseed oil (93%) / Soy (93%) / Corn (86%) / Hawaiian Papaya (80%).  The percentage after the crop indicates how much of that crop is now GMO. So 95% of all beets and beet sugar on the market is now a GMO version.  Read your labels and always buy NON-GMO. 

Pesticides and DDT

We’ve known for years the damaging effects of pesticides on our health, and the organic food industry has been created as a result.  The problem is our governments continue to allow products like glyphosate to be used, despite being aware of research showing it’s links to cancers, such as leukemia, non-hodgkin’s lymphoma, brain, bone, breast, ovarian, testicular, and liver cancers.  It should be banned globally and yet it isn’t, and we all live in one atmosphere, so even if you are eating all organic,  some of the glyphosate or other pesticide may blow over to the organic farm.  I know this sounds depressing, but this is why I say that we are at a place today where we unfortunately cannot avoid the toxins, and instead we have to choose to support our body in getting them out.     You can also check out the EWG “Dirty Dozen / Clean 15 and ensure you always buy the dirty dozen as organic, at the very least!

Tap Water

Your municipal tap water often has chlorine added to help clean it, as well as fluoride and aluminum.  The problem is the chlorine is so powerful it will wipe out good bacteria in your gut, and it’s linked to low thyroid as it causes iodine to become depleted in the body.  Fluoride is a known neurotoxin, not to mention is negatively impacts the health of your thyroid,  and has also been linked to brittle bones, weakened digestion, eczema, psoriasis and more!  So we don’t want to be drinking this day in and day out!   Yes I know it was added to benefit the health of your teeth, but since then so much more has been learned about the negative impact and yet fluoride is still added to tap water in many cities and towns across the globe.   Pharmaceutical drugs are also ending up in your tap water, as they go down the toilet and don’t get fully removed in the water treatment plant, so tests are showing up low levels of blood thinners, blood pressure meds, hormones from birth control and more in tap water!  We are told this is still safe as it’s a very small amount – but is it really safe, if we are drinking tap water day in and day out for all of our lives – has that testing been done? Or was the test done on a low level of these drugs over a short period of time?  And what happens when you have these toxins getting into your body on top of all the others ones, have they tested for that?  No they haven’t, we are the test right now, as we go through our daily lives exposed to all these toxins and all the chronic illness we have today that we didn’t have 100 years ago shows the result of all this toxic exposure!   So we have to take action to help remove the toxins from our body!

Stress

Even before the pandemic the world was the most stressed out it’s ever been – everyone is in their do-do-do mode trying to get it all done and stuck in a state of fight or flight, whether they realize it or not! The problem is that when we are in the stress state, the brain is trying to get us to safety, pumping out adrenalin and cortisol so we can fight or flee!  To do this, the body shuts down other systems in order to have the energy needed in the moment, and it shuts down our immune system, our digestive system among others.  In order words we aren’t in a state of “rest and digest”, which means our body isn’t in repair mode.   So if your body is struggling with all these toxins, it now isn’t in a position to try doing anything about it, as it can’t repair itself unless we get out of the stress state!   So being stuck in the stress state is another form of toxicity that adds to our inflammation levels in and of itself.   What do you do every day to help your body calm and get into your rest and digest state? If you aren’t sure what you should do, please reach out, as I can definitely help you with this.  It is something I had to learn after being let go from my corporate job and went into health coaching, as I realized I was that person stuck in fight or flight!

Home Sick / Sick Home Syndrome

Too much of a good thing can be a bad thing – and that is now true with our home building technology.  Homes are built so well now, sealed so tightly to stop cold air getting in, that we also don’t get any fresh air in AND we trap in the toxic chemicals used on our flooring, our couches, beds etc.  and we breathe it in all day every day. This can cause a myriad of skin issues, allergies, brain fog, watery eyes and respiratory issues that very often aren’t connected back to the home environment and drugs are given to mask symptoms.  A study in the UK showed 15.3 million homes having over 900 chemicals in the air within the home!    What about your home?  Is it tightly sealed or do you open  your windows to allow fresh air to circulate?  Of course if it’s forest fire season, the air outside might be worse in which case don’t do that, but the rest of the year, letting fresh air in to circulate in your home is important!   

I worked in a  building that was under renovation about 18 years ago, and soon after starting that part time job (2 days / week), I started getting migraines every day that I was there. I didn’t understand it, but decided the job wasn’t worth it, so I put in my resignation notice, giving a month’s notice.  The next time I was there, one of the construction workers came into the office and said “this building is riddled with mold!”.  When I heard that I was pretty sure I knew why I had been getting the migraines.   Soon after that they actually got the worst of the mold out and I was able to go to work and not get migraines, so that definitely proved my theory about why that job had been giving me migraines every day!  My body doesn’t like mold! No one’s body likes mold, but the symptoms will show up differently for many of us.   If you are concerned about mold, you might like to go back and listen to my podcast episode #25, with The Mold Medic. 

Personal Care Products

This industry is a nightmare!  There are just so many chemical toxins used in personal care products sold at your local pharmacies and grocery stores. You think because they are there, they must be safe – but they are not!  What’s worse, is we put these onto our skin and it only takes 26 seconds for it to then be absorbed into your blood stream. The average woman puts over 200 toxins onto her skin before she goes to work in the morning, between shampoo / conditioners / make up / deodorant / face wash / moisturizer etc..   The good news is that it’s really easy now to find clean products or make your own!  I make my own deodorant for instance, my eye make up remover is simply coconut oil – I buy all my personal care products from companies I trust that focus on bringing clean products to the market –  companies like Doterra, Young Living, Be Beauty, Arbonne and more.  You can find my recommendations on my website.

Pharmaceutical Drugs

I’ve touched on this already as they end up in our tap water, and unfortunately, they are over prescribed in today’s world.  Pharmaceutical drugs can save your life, which is amazing, but we don’t need them for every cold or ear infection or illness, and they aren’t helpful in working with chronic illness, they simply mask symptoms and then another symptoms shows up for which another drug is prescribed, instead of looking at the  deficiencies and imbalances in the body to understand the root cause of the illness, from which we can rebalance the body using natural herbs and supplements.  Ask your doctor or pharmacist for recommendations of natural remedies the next time you see them, as we’ve had plant based medicine for thousands of years, and it’s highly effective and save the pharmaceutical use for life threatening situations only.

Gut Bugs

Hippocrates said thousands of years ago that all disease starts in the gut, and modern science now knows that to be true, so focusing on our gut health is critically important and yet high stress, poor sleep, poor nutrition and toxins all lead to a weakened gut, which then leads to a weakened immune system as 70% of your immune system is housed in our gut, and we can end up with Gut bugs such as H.Pylori, Parasites, Candida – yeast or fungal overgrowth or bacterial overgrowth, all of which leave you with a myriad of symptoms of feeling unwell, low energy, brain fog, bloating and trouble digesting your food.  Again we can use at home functional medicine lab tests to test for these, so we know exactly what the problem is and then how to eradicate what we don’t want and guide your body back into balance so it can heal itself.

Don’t Feel Overwhelmed! I Can Help!

I hope you aren’t feeling overwhelmed by all of this, I know it’s a lot of information and a lot of sources of toxins, BUT just choose one area to focus on at a time, and choose to start helping your body release the toxins with a good functional medicine detox.  If you’d like to know more about my programs, please reach out to me by email at melissa@yourguidedhealthjourney.com or go to my website at www.yourguidedhealthjourney.com   You can also take my “Discover Your Toxic Load” quiz to discover your toxic load now as a starting point and then you can take it again after doing your first detox and see how much it comes down!   If your score is high, don’t worry, that is totally normal based on everything I’ve shared with you here – at least you will know your score and know what you can do to lower it and regain control of your health by taking proactive action!

Next week, on “Don’t Wait For Your Wakeup Call”,  I’ll be talking to Rick Olderman about chronic pain, he is a sports and orthopedic physical therapist to provide you more information on helping your body heal from chronic illness and chronic pain.