Limited Toxins, Unlimited Health?

Our bodies are equipped with amazingly sophisticated detoxification and cleaning systems. Your skin releases toxins and waste products through sweat. Your lungs release carbon dioxide waste when you breathe out. Your kidneys and liver filter and remove harmful toxins from your body, as do your lymphatic system and colon.

However, the toxic burden in the 21st century is overwhelming our defenses with insults from every direction—and our bodies can’t keep up. From the air we breathe to the water we drink, the products we put in our skin, the food we eat, the medications we take, and the chemicals in our furniture, carpets, and paint (you get the picture), toxins are everywhere.

This leads to illness, shortens our healthspan, and decreases our life span. But don’t lose hope—there’s a lot you can do to avoid and help your systems detoxify from these insults.

Assessing Your Toxic Burden

As we dig into toxins, I want to make one thing clear: you don’t need to stress over small exposures; stressing can actually make matters worse. Our bodies come equipped with detoxification systems for a reason—to remove toxins! Your body can handle small amounts of environmental toxins without issue. It’s when the toxic burden becomes overloaded that problems arise.

That being said, excess toxins are a reality for many, if not most, of us. The first question to ask is, how can you know what your toxic burden looks like? You can take two approaches to get an idea: monitoring/assessing typical symptoms and getting tested.

Symptoms of Excess Toxins

Many symptoms are associated with excess toxins—too many to exhaustively cover in a newsletter. However, some of the main factors correlated to toxic overload include:

• Getting frequent headaches

• Carrying extra weight or fat (visceral or subcutaneous)

• Struggling with blood sugar imbalance

• Having trouble falling or staying asleep

• Having amalgam (mercury) dental fillings

• Using plastic containers and bottles

• Having new carpet, furniture, or mattresses

• Driving a car that’s less than five years old

• Drinking excess alcohol (more than seven drinks per week or more than three drinks in a single setting)

• Dealing with poor digestion, constipation, or bloating

To be clear, none of these symptoms or factors by itself is necessarily indicative of toxic overload, but the more of these you have, the higher chance you’re dealing with excess toxins.

Testing for Excess Toxins

If you want to know objectively how well your detoxification systems are functioning, you can order tests to determine your numbers.

You can get a pretty good idea of your liver status, for example, through tests that your doctor can run, like Aspartate aminotransferase (AST), Alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and Gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase (GGT).

You can also look at Functional Medicine tools like the DetoxiGenomic Profile or Organic Acids Test by Genova to get a more holistic look at your toxin load.

3 Focus Areas to Make Your Life Less Toxic

This topic can feel daunting. When we look at all the places we find toxins, it can feel overwhelming to make changes to reduce this load. I want to emphasize that every little bit helps. If you can switch out a single thing each week or month, it will add up. And the more small steps you take to reduce the toxins in your life, the less overwhelming it will feel. Just take it one day and one item at a time and stick to it.

With that, let’s discuss three areas to focus on to reduce the toxins in your system and environment.

1. Identify and remove toxic inputs. There are a number of problematic products and foods many people routinely purchase that add to their toxic load—usually without the person realizing it. Some of them you can reduce or eliminate include:

• Personal care products like shampoos, conditioners, and deodorants. These products often contain harmful chemicals. You can use the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep App to help identify problem ingredients and safer alternatives.

• Plastic bottles and containers. Plastics often contain chemicals that are endocrine disruptors that can leach into our food and drinks over time. Swap out your plastic for glass, stainless steel, or bamboo.

• Nonstick cookware. Manmade chemicals in these products can leach into your foods and remain in your body for a very long time. Use stainless steel or ceramic instead.

• New furniture, carpet, cars, etc. New purchases like these often release nasty off-gasses that have been linked to numerous adverse health outcomes. Look for items labeled Low- or No-VOC and consider buying used when possible.

• Nonorganic foods. Studies show nonorganic foods (including conventionally raised meats) have higher levels of toxins, chemicals, artificial hormones, antibiotics, and heavy metals. Opt for organic when possible. If not possible, follow EWG’s Clean Fifteen.

1. Treat your heavy metal and toxic burden. As you may already be quite familiar with, there are only a few ways things can exit your body: poop, pee, sweat, and breath. So, this focus area is all about how to move toxins from your fat cells to your liquid, solid, or gas waste.

• Exercise often. Yet another of the myriad benefits of movement is that it can increase the breakdown of fat cells, which can help release stored toxins.

• Sweat via exercise or sauna. Sweating also helps remove toxins from the body.

• Have consistent bowel movements. If you’re not pooping frequently, you’re not releasing toxins. In fact, your poop is quite toxic by itself, and when it’s stuck in your colon, those toxins can reabsorb, which is no good! Be sure to eat plenty of fiber to stay regular.

• Drink adequate water. Drinking water helps to flush toxins out of your kidneys. It also helps with encouraging regular bowel movements. I encourage you to aim to drink at least half your body weight (in pounds) in ounces daily.

1. Support your natural detoxification systems. There’s so much you can do to support your natural detoxification systems. Here’s a simple list:

• Focus on a whole-food diet. Try to eat organic when possible. If not possible, try to stick with the EWG’s Clean Fifteen and Dirty Dozen lists.

• Incorporate tons of fiber-rich, prebiotic, cruciferous veggies, including broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, and spinach, among others.

• Drink green tea, which helps boost the production of detoxification enzymes.

• Cook with garlic, turmeric, and herbs like cilantro, parsley, and basil. These ingredients help enhance detoxification and protect DNA from damage—and they make your food taste delicious!

• Use supplements wisely. Supplements that can help with your toxic load include N-acetyl-l-cysteine (NAC), alpha lipoic acid (ALA), selenium, and zinc, all of which are crucial to support the body’s defense and immune systems. Always work with a practitioner before supplementing.

While it’s true that toxic exposures are unavoidable and overwhelm our natural detoxification systems, it’s also true that there’s a lot we can do to reduce our toxic exposures and boost our detox systems. By making small changes and modifications, little steps can add up. It’s impossible to be completely toxin-free, but we can work to limit incoming insults and help fortify our bodies against those inevitable invaders.