I’ll answer that and say “Yes you are!” with 100% confidence and certainty.

There is no doubt. I’m sure you’ve been hearing about it in the news for the past several decades. Heavy metal toxins like mercury in fish, arsenic in fish, lead in pain and gasoline. Toxins from the plastic in water bottles, in that convenient plastic wrap and zip-up bags that we store food in. Toxins in our water from industries in our area. Pesticides in our water and food from our agriculture. Even pharmaceutical drugs in our water from the pills that our neighbor flushed down the toilet (or urinated into the toilet). They’re everywhere!!! They’re everywhere!!! (And they’re affecting your health).

The Center For Disease Control, the health agency of the United States government assigned to monitor and protect the health of US citizens has done a number of studies of the toxins that are accumulating in our bodies. It is tested the urine and blood of Americans on four separate occasions between 2000 and 2009. Each time it tested about 2500 Americans for anywhere from 212 to 287 known chemical toxins of concern. What it found is consistent with other studies done by non-governmental groups. Our bodies are full of toxins. The average American contained a wide spectrum of toxic chemicals in their tissues, including mercury, arsenic, lead, fire retardants, pesticides, PCB’s and many more. Other comparable studies found that the average American has over 100 toxins in their body. The problem is that these studies can only test for a small percentage of the toxins that we know are in our environment–in the air we breath, the water we drink and the food we eat. There are many more toxins that are almost certainly circulating in our bodies that we don’t know about–what their effects are individually, and also what the cumulative effect of so many of them together may be. What we do know is that human health is declining in spite of massive expenditures on health care. It’s because we have yet to address some of the real causes, one of them being our toxic environment.

When we’re overwhelmed by something a common response is to do nothing.

We become paralyzed in the face of overwhelming information, feel hopeless and do nothing about it. I believe this is a universal response. At least, at first it is. Often the next step is learning about the problem and then finally we devise the best strategy to deal with it. My goal here is to define the problem of body toxicity clearly enough so that you’ll stop denying that it exists. I’m going to give you the bad news with the hope that it will motivate you to take action and detoxify your body before there is a large impact from these toxins on your health.

The bad news is that every living thing on our planet earth is full of toxic chemicals.

This is not something that any body is arguing about any more. The argument is more on the line of how much are these toxins affecting our health and what can we do about it? You have to realize that this is a completely unfamiliar territory that we’re in. There is no precedence. Our planet’s industry is dumping untold tons of toxins into the air and water daily. Fortunately toxins are not new to our bodies. We do have defenses. What is unprecedented is the total toxic load of all of these chemicals in our food, our air and our water. It has been called the “body burden”. It’s a body burden because our detox system can only take so much. When it becomes overwhelmed our health begins to pay the price.

Think of what happens when you come down with a cold or the flu. If your body’s immune system is strong, you’ll fight off the cold or flu virus quickly and you won’t be out of commission too long. Toxins are dealt with in much the same way. The body’s primary organ of detoxification is the liver. Toxins are routed to the liver where they are modified (neutralized as much as possible) so they are less toxic and also so that they can be excreted more easily. They are excreted in the bile which is secreted by the liver into the gall bladder and passes out of the body through the stool. Or they are secreted in urine after being filtered out of the blood by the kidneys.

Our body’s detoxification system doesn’t have unlimited resources. Just as the immune system struggles to contain a virus when you have a cold or the flu, your body’s detoxification system now struggles constantly to keep up with the load of toxins coming in through our food, air and water. It’s not great news.

What are the toxins that we’re being exposed to?

Toxins come in many shapes and forms. Toxicology is an entire area of study within medicine. When I allude to toxins here, I am referring to environmental toxins. These toxins are unique to modern life, to life in an industrialized society. The scary part is that it no longer matters where you live on this earth, in an industrialized nation or otherwise. Atmospheric air currents carry air pollution across the globe. Ocean currents carry toxins dumped in one area across the ocean. No one is immune to exposure to toxins anymore. Having said that, there are certainly places that are more toxic than others.

Toxins can be classified in a different ways. One way to classify them is based on how they affect our body. This is based on the different ways in which toxins can impact our health.

• Toxins can be carcinogenic or cancer causing. Toxins damage the DNA or genetic material in our cells. The DNA controls things like when the cell divides or reproduces itself. When the DNA is damaged by toxins, cells may start dividing out of control which is a cancer.
• Toxins can be teratogenic, meaning that they can cause birth defects. Remember thalidomide? It was prescribed to pregnant women suffering from morning sickness by doctors in the late 1950’s. It caused sever birth defects in babies (it was teratogenic).
• Toxins can interfere with normal development in childhood, or can lead to damage of the reproductive organs and the ability to reproduce.
• Toxins can act like hormones in the body and disrupt the body’s inherent hormonal balance. With hormone balance thrown off, many health problems can result.
• These are just a few of the categories of how toxins can impact our health. Toxins impact our health in many ways that we are just learning about. There are neurotoxins (brain, nerves), immune system toxins (weaken our immunity), kidney and liver toxins (damage our detox organs lessening our ability to detoxify) and more.

There is good news too-you can help your body detoxify itself.

The good news is that holistic health providers are finding very effective ways to detoxify the body. The trouble is that people don’t bother to detoxify their body until their health begins to suffer. If the Weather Channel announces that there is a tornado or hurricane coming, you probably wouldn’t wait for the wind to pick up before going into the house and taking cover. But this is what most people are doing. We are playing croquet our in the yard while the storm clouds move in. Wouldn’t it be better to go inside and make sure that the flashlight has batteries? Or that the storm windows are securely fastened? Wouldn’t it be better to detoxify your body now and improve the chances of remaining healthy until a ripe old age? Why pay in premium for health insurance every month but do nothing more? In this day and age, one must be proactive to live a long and healthy life. Take the time to learn how to detoxify your body today.