Toxins Among Us and How to Eliminate Them

Here at Comprehensive Naturopathic Care, we place a great deal of energy into helping you eliminate toxins, waking up your immune system to do the job of removing the toxins that are creating ill health, and rebuilding and rejuvenating your body.

Considering the magnitude of chemical compounds, microbes and parasites in the environment and their effect on human physiology, it is difficult to ignore the profound power these external agents exert over health. The combination of four million synthetic compounds together with thousands of natural compounds must be taken as a serious potential threat to our health.

Diseases caused by environmental toxins are estimated to cost between $568-793 billion in the United States and Canada annually. These toxins include heavy metals, pesticides, chemicals and various industrial compounds. They are a causative factor in many cancers, Parkinson's Disease, Alzheimer's Disease, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Environmental Illness (Multiple Chemical Sensitivity), Heart Disease, and many Autoimmune illnesses.

It is suggested that at least 80% of cancers are due to these toxins. For example, between 1973 and 1997, the incidence of Hodgkins Lymphoma has increased by 30% and brain cancer in children has increased by 21%.

Random tissue samples in diverse populations of humans and animals show that all of us are contaminated. One study looking at residential toxin exposure detected the presence of 33 different carcinogens implicated in breast cancer in common house dust. Arctic polar bears carry many of the same toxins.

Detoxification refers to a broad spectrum of bodily processes that help maintain the body’s health when exposed to harmful substances. The body’s primary detoxification systems are the intestinal mucosal wall and the liver.

Over the past ten years, extensive research in detoxification has enhanced our understanding about how toxic substances affect individuals and how to overcome toxicity.

Toxicity results from

• environmental poisons absorbed with foods (pesticides, heavy metals, toxic synthetics, disease-producing organisms),
• water (chlorine, trihalomethanes, soil-water-air pollutants), and
• air (dust, smog, ozone, nitrous oxide, molds, bacteria);
• from street and pharmaceutical drugs and food additives;
• from synthetic substances used in paints, carpets, tiles, countertops, and adhesives;
• from tobacco and alcohol;
• from toxic allergic reactions;
• and from normal metabolic functions.

Toxicity results in

• changes in the way our body functions,
• increased free radical production and its pathology, and
• reduced energy.

Heavy Metals:

Toxic metals directly influence behavior by impairing brain function, influencing neurotransmitter production and utilization, and altering metabolic processes. Gastrointestinal, neurological, cardiovascular, and urological systems are areas in which heavy metals can likely induce impairment and dysfunction. Even minute levels of toxic elements can detrimentally affect the body. The most common metals that cause toxic illness are mercury, lead, cadmium, arsenic, aluminum and nickel.

Industrial Chemicals:

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2002, over 7.1 billion pounds of 650 different industrial chemicals were released in the air and water, 266 of which are linked to birth defects. Worldwide, the estimates approach 80 billion pounds of toxins released annually. Some of these toxins affect human health in microgram doses.

Most toxicity research has been done on the effect of a single toxin on a single organ system. Recently research has begun on combinational toxicity of multiple toxins on multiple organ systems. The combination of chemicals causes neurological damage while by themselves or in pairs may have no effect. According to the January 2005 issue of Environmental Toxicology and Pharmacology, the combination of bromoform, chloroform and tetrachloroethylene cause neurological damage while by themselves or in pairs they have no effect even in doses 1000 times greater than when all three are mixed together.

Neurotoxins:

Neurotoxins are substances attracted to the nervous system. They are absorbed by nerve endings and travel inside the neuron to the cell body. On their way they disrupt vital functions of the nerve cell, such as transport of nutrients, functioning of the mitochondria (responsible for food metabolism and production of the body's energy) and our genes working appropriately. The body is constantly trying to eliminate neurotoxins via the available exit routes: the liver, kidney, skin and exhaled air.

The liver is most important in the toxin elimination process. Here most elimination products are expelled with the bile into the small intestine and should leave the body via the digestive tract. However, because of the nature of the neurotoxins, most are reabsorbed by the abundant nerve endings of the nerves in the intestinal wall and re-toxify the body.

Common neurotoxins include:

• Heavy metals, such as mercury, lead, cadmium and aluminum
  
• Biotoxins, such as tetanus toxin, botulinum toxin (botox), ascaridin (from intestinal parasites) unspecified toxins from streptococci, staphylococci, lyme disease, Chlamydia, tuberculosis, fungal toxins and toxins produced by viruses. Biotoxins are minute molecules containing nitrogen and sulfur. They belong to a group of chemical messengers which microorganisms use to control the host’s immune system, host behavior and the host’s eating habits.
  
• Xenobiotics (manh-made environmental toxins), such as dioxin, phthalates, formaldehyde, insecticides, wood preservetives, PCBs , etc.
  
• Food preservatives, excitotoxins and cosmetics, such as aspartame (diet sweeteners), food colorings, fluoride, methyl- and propyl-parabin, etc.

Mercury in its different chemical forms has a synergistic amplifying effect with all other neurotoxins. When mercury is removed, the body starts to more effectively eliminate all other neurotoxins, even if they are not addressed.

Any illness can be caused by, or contributed to, or exaggerated by neurotoxins. Fatigue, depression, insomnia, memory loss and blunting of the senses are common early symptoms.

Independent risk factors which can either cause accumulation of metals in an otherwise health body, or slow down, or inhibit the body’s own elimination process, are as follows. This list was put together by Dietrich Klinghardt, MD, Ph.D:

• Genetics
• Occupational exposure to toxic material
• Prior illnesses
• Surgical operations
• Medication or “recreational” drug use
• Emotional trauma, especially in early childhood
• Social status
• High carbohydrate intake combined with protein malnutrition (especially in vegetarians)
• Use of homeopathic mercury
• Food allergies
• The patient’s electromagnetic environment (mobile phone use, home close to power lines, etc)
• Constipation
• Compromise of head/neck lymphatic drainage (sinusitis, tonsillectomy scars, poor dental occlusion)
• Number of dental amalgam fillings over the patient’s life time, number of the patient’s mother’s amalgam fillings.

Microbes

“Microbes have always been with us,” said Dr. Klinghardt. “They are not the enemy. It is we who have altered the environment so severely and in a way which facilitates the growth of lower evolved species like cell wall deficient microbes and viruses, and ends life for many more evolved species. Lyme disease is a messenger. If we do not change, we may be on the endangered species list someday not too far from now.”

Dr. Klinghardt explained that when people have heavy metal toxicity, the immune system lets microorganisms grow and bind with the heavy metals. What we call a healing crisis, said Dr. Klinghardt, is acute heavy metal toxicity once the microbes have been eliminated. And insulin resistance is more about toxicity than about sugar in the blood, said Dr. Klinghardt. If a patient is detoxed, their insulin resistance goes away.

The increase in neurological diseases we are seeing today has to do with the increase of microbes inside us, said Dr. Klinghardt. He explained that insects carry microbes because of changes in our environment. For example, he said, we do not have the kind of cold winters we used to have. Sprays kill people and make the bugs more resistant.

What else contributes to toxicity?

• Refined white flour
• Sugar and dairy products
• Foods polluted by herbicides, pesticides, chemical fertilizers,
• Hydrogenated oils
• Oxidized foods
• Fumes from automobiles
• Mercury from amalgams in our mouth
• Mixed metals in our mouth
• Household cleaners
• Beauty products

What effects do we feel from toxicity?

• Cognitive difficulties
• Suppressed immune systems
• Headaches
• Gastric disorders

What does toxicity lead to?

• Cancer
• Serious diseases
• Autoimmune disorders
• Environmental illness (multiple chemical sensitivity)