By Kate Barnes
Toxins are ubiquitous. We can’t escape them…
- A BILLION kilograms of chemicals are released into the environment every year!
- There are over 80,000 chemicals currently used in the US that haven’t been regarded as safe. They are used in our personal hygiene and beauty products.
… and that’s just a sample.
We are exposed to toxins daily – our air, food and water. Nearly 2 million years (Chris Organ – Harvard University) of relative purity has not prepared us for the post-industrial toxic burden. 300 years of ‘progress’ vs 2,000,000 years of evolution.
So how do we KNOW if we are detoxing and these toxins aren’t accumulating in our body, messing with our cells, our bio-synthesis, our neuro-pathways, our minds and our children’s health?
Some clues. Do you have stubborn weight or belly fat you can’t lose no matter what you do? Feel bloated? Experience mysterious lethargy, moodiness, unstable blood sugars? Have excess gas? Irregular bowel movements? Or kids who are anxious, moody or exhibit unruly behaviour? Or perhaps you feel like something just isn’t right?
Most of us don’t realise that some of these ailments can be the result of a body weighed down with toxins.
Why? The body cleverly stores toxins in our fat cells or organs as a protective mechanism when in overload.
Most of our organs e.g. lungs, skin, liver and kidneys are known for some form of detoxifying mechanism. If we’re exposed to a lot of toxins our organs can become clogged or sluggish, and we can’t properly filter these inflammatory and disruptive toxins efficiently – hence their ‘fallback’ storage in our fat cells.
What happens? Toxins can then re-enter our bloodstream rather than being naturally excreted from our body. When in the bloodstream, the body does the next best thing and stores the toxins in our fat tissue until the body CAN efficiently excrete the toxins.
We may be healthy and eating well but if our liver and organs aren’t working at full capacity, our ‘systems’ – immune, nervous, endocrine (hormone), respiratory, lymphatic, reproductive, circulatory, digestive, etc – can be impacted … which helps explain WHY:
- we can’t reach our ideal weight, and in fact mysteriously keep putting weight on!
- our energy remains unexplainably low
- our digestion is weak and we experience bloating, constipation, reflux or irritable bowel symptoms
- our immunity is compromised. We seem to be constantly sick or get every bug ‘going around’
- we feel uncharacteristically irritable or anxious or
- our stress response is hard to manage and more akin to a short fuse.
Could it all be so intricately linked to this one menace … toxins? Yes! Especially if you’ve tried everything else to ease your ailment, it could be time to consider detoxification.
Our children
My biggest concern is for our children who are likely to have inherited or been exposed to the recent onslaught of industrialised toxins.
Here’s how. Some toxins stored in our fat tissue are then cleansed from our bodies in breast milk while nursing our babies. Toxins are also transferred in the womb, through the placenta. As our children tend not to carry a lot of fat, these toxins can then quietly sit in their organs, e.g. the liver and the brain, the fattiest organ of all. Heavy metals like mercury, aluminium, cadmium, arsenic and lead. These are toxins that I have (had) and both our children and at disruptive levels.
Our experience is another reason I feel it’s so important to share and be aware of this information. Not alarmed. The more we know the better we can do.
So if the body cleverly stores these toxins – why worry? Because life is full of change and at times stress, and these triggers can compromise our immunity and with our protective mechanisms down, we fall sick. Perhaps I’m over simplifying, but if there are toxins we can control, let’s do that – for ourselves and especially for our children.
Prevention is better than the cure.
Some common everyday toxins we’re exposed to include;
- heavy metals
- radiation
- chemicals and other environmental pollutants. There are so many to include here. Most common exposures are in the household including cleaning, personal hygiene and beauty products
- inflammatory foods
- microbial infections
- stress and toxic thoughts.
