How Toxins Could Be Damaging Your Health

By Dr. Kenneth Orbeck

When your ability to detoxify is compromised — due to excessive toxin exposure, oxidative stress, genetic predisposition or any other reason — toxins begin to build up in your system. These toxins lead to further oxidative stress, causing you to be even more susceptible to further toxin exposure. This can have a detrimental effect on your health, causing chronic inflammatory conditions.

To evaluate your underlying toxic tolerance threshold, take a functional approach and look at several different factors:

1. Genetic predisposition – Are you genetically inclined to toxin sensitivity? Are there any genetic snips or amino acid deficiencies in your genes that don’t allow you to detoxify properly?

2. Environmental load – What kind of toxins are you exposed to? How potent are they? How often are you exposed?

3. Nutritional health – Do you have any nutritional deficiencies that are preventing you from detoxifying properly?

4. Hormonal balance – Hormones are the messengers that enable cellular communication. If they’re not balanced, your body functions — including detoxification — won’t work properly. Are your hormones balanced?

5. Allergies and sensitivities – Do you have any allergies or food sensitivities that may be compromising your nutritional health?

6. Presence of infection – Infections cause inflammation that can interfere with detoxification and other body functions. Are there any infectious agents in your system?

7. Psychosocial factors – Your mental health can affect your overall physical health, so are there any psychosocial factors interfering with your ability to handle toxins?

Think of your tolerance to environmental toxins as a cup. Each of these factors independently may fill the cup a small amount, but when you put them all together the cup may overflow. When this overflow occurs, you are suffering from true toxicity that can have a serious affect on your health and lead to chronic disease. The goal is to find out the best way to drain the toxins before you start feeling their overwhelming effects.

Detoxification

Your body has many pathways in place to remove toxins from your system and prevent you from getting sick. However, in order to detoxify the body, all of these pathways must be functioning properly. Healthy liver, kidneys and bowel function are absolutely vital for detoxification.

To remove toxins, your body must convert them from fat-soluble to water-soluble molecules. This occurs in a two-phase process in your liver. Once the toxins have been converted, they are released into a water-soluble environment, such as your bowels, and then passed out of the body.

This process relies heavily upon nutritional support. You must have the proper amounts and types of antioxidants, vitamins and minerals to act as cofactors and coenzymes. If these nutrients are missing, your system undergoes oxidative stress and detoxification is impaired. In addition to providing your body with the proper nutrition, do your best to avoid toxins whenever you can.

Read the full article: Today’s Toxic World