From The Doctor’s Desk: Who Needs To Detoxify? Detoxification Part 2
Dr. Nathan Goodyear
Ever wonder if you need to detoxify? My first recommendation is look at and listen to your body. The body will tell you if it is in trouble or imbalanced. How? Physical signs or symptoms are our bodies’ message that all is not right. Here’s how to know if you bodies’ signs and symptoms are saying that you might be suffering from toxic build up. Here are some symptoms of toxin buildup.
- Headaches
- Muscle aches and pains
- Fatigue
- Asthma
- Allergies
- Skin disorders
- Chronic infections
- Altered mood
- Altered cognition
- Weight gain
- Altered stress tolerance
- Altered libido
- Infertility
Where do toxins in our bodies come from? Remember the quote from last week’s post? “For the first time in the history of the world, every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception until death. In the less than two decades of their use, the synthetic pesticides have been so thoroughly distributed throughout the animate and inanimate world that they occur virtually everywhere.” — Rachel Carson from her book Silent Spring, published 1962.
Toxins are everywhere. The sources can range from toxins like Dioxins to prescription medication. Adverse reactions to prescription drugs have been ranked as the 4th to 6th leading cause of death in the US according to the Journal of American Medical Association. This amounts to over 100,000 deaths per year. The cause of adverse drug reactions is an overloaded pathway in Phase I of detoxification (CYP3A4), the pathway that detoxifies over 50% of all drugs in your system. The costs associated with adverse drug reactions has been estimated at up to $4 billion. With the rising costs of health care, treating the cause of these adverse drug reactions in addition to decreasing prescription drugs are two excellent ways to prevent complications and lower costs.
The most dangerous sources of toxins are environmental. Organochlorine pesticides, industrial chemicals, and unintended chemical byproducts surround us everyday and expose us to unwanted toxins. Widespread production of pesticides began less than 80 years ago. Recently, the EPA estimated that more than 4 billion pounds of chemicals were released into the grounds natural water sources in the year 2000. In addition to pesticides and chemicals, the average American eats, unknowingly I might add, 124 pounds of additives per year. Frightening to think of it, isn’t it? And over 2.5 billion pounds of pesticides are used on crop lands, forests, lawns, and fields. The unfortunate fact is this: we live in a toxic world.
How can you decrease your daily exposure to toxins? Here are some great ways.
- Avoid processed foods
- Avoid fats
- Avoid tap water — use filtered water
- Avoid excess caffeine
- Avoid excess alcohol
- NO tobacco
- Limit chronic medicine, if possible
- Daily exercise
- Avoid exposure in your workplace
- Avoid living near industrial plants
- Avoid liver dysfunction
- Avoid kidney problems
- Avoid intestinal dysfunction
The first ten suggestions are steps you and I can take every day to decrease our toxin exposure. But the last three require a bigger step: detoxification. By detoxifying your body, the liver, kidney, and intestines can operate more efficiently and effectively.
So, the question is not who needs detoxification, but who does NOT need detoxification? The answer? EVERYONE will benefit from a periodic detoxification program.
From the Doctor’s Desk: The Sludge Pool of Toxins–Detoxification Part 1
Dr. Nathan Goodyear
“For the first time in the history of the world, every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception until death. In the less than two decades of their use, the synthetic pesticides have been so thoroughly distributed throughout the animate and inanimate world that they occur virtually everywhere.”
While this quote sounds like a line from a recent news report, it is actually an excerpt from Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring published in 1962.
Detoxification seems to be a buzz word these days. Just google detoxification. You will find everything from water detoxification to colon cleanses.
So what is detoxification? The official definition of detoxification is this: the chemical changes of a xenobiotic, a phytochemical or an endogenous (one your own body makes) compound that renders it less toxic and ready to be excreted. In layman’s terms, detoxification is the way our body protects us from things that we take in that could damage our body.
The ideal situation is toxins in and toxins out, right? If the body is working as designed, then it should be toxins in and toxins out. And how does the body get toxins out? There are many organs that detoxify. The skin (through sweating), kidneys (through urination), but the liver is the most important detox organ. The liver detoxification mechanism involves 2 main processes: Phase I and Phase II detoxification.
Phase I detoxification involves the cytochrome P-450 system in the liver. This is the first line of defense against all toxins. Toxins are tagged and altered for further detoxification, which then occurs in Phase II. Any break down in this process will result in increased toxin load on the body. We will talk more in-depth about the detoxification process in my next two posts.
We are what we eat, drink, breath, and touch. But did you ever think that we are what we don’t eliminate? Without elimination of the toxic chemicals we take in and produce every day, our bodies swim in a sludge pool of toxins.
This increased toxic load on the body leads to inflammation, the balance between pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory substances. The balance between Omega 6, a pro-inflammatory subtance, and Omega 3, an anti-inflammatory substance, is the perfect example.
It is the chronic imbalance of pro-inflammatory substances that then leads to disease.
Shouldn’t the aim of all health care be to prevent inflammation and, therefore, disease? It is in fact, one of the main focuses of the Seasons approach to health and wellness.
In my next two posts, I will cover what detoxification is, who needs detoxification, and how one detoxifies.
