Over the Counter Natural Cures (5 page)

 

 

 CHAPTER 2 

I'm no health saint. Every now and then, I do something really dumb. That's rare, but I've been known to drink too much wine or beer—and even indulge in the occasional cigar. All of these are toxic, and as a rogue chemist turned consumer health advocate, I'm not proud of it. But it's my choice. And that's the point. Exposing yourself to toxins should be a choice. But modern-day society rarely allows this and even exposes you to toxins daily without your choice.

Our health is endangered by a rash of new toxic threats, courtesy of modernization. Brush your teeth, and absorb the cumulative poisons sodium lauryl sulfate and fluoride. Grab a quick glass of tap water, and guzzle the fuel additive methyl tertiary-butyl ether (MTBE). Enjoy that scrumptious apple, and poison yourself with atrazine. Slather on sunscreen, and expose yourself to cancer-causing benzophenones. Smear on the makeup, and rub your skin with wrinkle-inducing parabens. Follow doctor's orders, and trash your liver with statins. Never before have we been exposed to so many toxins.

Nobody is safe from the mass contamination. Newborn babies have tested positive for more than two hundred industrial toxins,
courtesy of modern society!
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A 2005 report by the Environmental Working Group, a consumer advocacy group, found that tap water in forty-two states contained many contaminants that were dangerous, if not technically illegal. Of the 145 contaminants identified in the report, fifty-two have been linked to cancer, forty-one to reproductive toxicity, thirty-six to developmental toxicity, and sixteen to immune-system damage.
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Your best bet of avoiding the toxic onslaught is to minimize exposure while protecting your liver with Mother Nature's detox cure. To do this, you need to understand the top toxic threats and learn how to use a natural supplement that works overtime to protect your liver from toxic onslaughts.

YOU GOTTA LOVE YOUR LIVER

Your liver is the chief organ responsible for allowing you to occasionally “toss a few back” and enjoy your wine buzz without getting overtly sick.

Once consumed, alcohol instantly turns the volume down on life. Working directly on the central nervous system, it takes our minds off everyday hassles while relaxing our muscles.

After eliciting its euphoric effects, alcohol races to the liver for detoxification. Once the alcohol arrives there, substances known as liver enzymes help convert it into harmless carbon dioxide and water. This enzyme action wards off the dreaded hangover. Without it, we would succumb to poisonous effects of alcohol such as headaches and, long term, cancer. The liver understands this, which is why it works so diligently to metabolize alcohol into something that is not detrimental to our health. The liver contains innumerable amounts of enzymes designed specifically to protect us from alcohol and a host of other toxins.

THE OVERACHIEVING ORGAN

The liver has a multitude of chemical strategies for neutralizing toxins and escorting them out of the body and into the toilet—where they belong. But in protecting us from hangovers and toxins, the liver is an overachiever. My father learned this the hard way.

You've seen the commercials; you've heard the risks. Every ad for cholesterol-lowering drugs ends with the caveat that “routine liver tests must be performed.” Ignoring the caveat, many are too eager to follow doctor's orders and take cholesterol-lowering drugs. My dad was. A few weeks later, like so many others, his routine liver test showed positive for “liver enzymes.” This meant that his liver was being damaged by cholesterol-lowering drugs.

Just like alcohol, cholesterol-lowering drugs race to the liver. Inundated with the foreign molecules, the liver can fail. This is best seen by enzyme spillage into the blood. My dad's liver functions were being compromised, if not totally shut down, which explained why he felt terrible. Oh, the wonders of modern medicine. Freaked out, he frantically attempted to learn what was going on.

Unbeknownst to him, his liver is his top weapon against toxic exposure. Just as it wards off a hangover, the liver removes or neutralizes toxins from the blood. The liver also is needed to boost immunity and protect the body from viral and bacterial infection. A biological pharmacy, the liver produces its own proteins that regulate blood clotting, while at the same time it manufactures bile to help absorb fats and fat-soluble vitamins. My dad learned that the liver is quite important—an over-achiever of sorts.

You can survive a few days without water, but not a single one without your liver. But it's not invincible. When the liver is bombarded with too many toxins—like cholesterol-lowering drugs—it goes from being
squishy and protective to being hard and ineffective. It eventually stops working due to enzyme spillage.

Hardening of the liver is technically known as cirrhosis. It's one of the ten leading causes of death in the United States.
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Without a properly functioning liver, you can easily succumb to modern-day toxic threats while risking a host of other medical complications. Diabetes, heart disease, and cancer—and whatever else a toxic compound can induce—can become a harsh reality. This threat goes virtually unnoticed, but not by my dad.

Once he internalized the importance of liver function, he never again swallowed a cholesterol-lowering drug. To further ensure that his liver didn't take a dive, I taught him how to navigate the treacherous waters of today's top toxic threats, while at the same time using a natural supplement to help strengthen and detox his overachieving liver.

The liver is known for its ability to rejuvenate itself—if it's not sideswiped by toxins. Today, my dad doesn't have liver enzymes floating aimlessly throughout his bloodstream. Thanks to getting off his cholesterol-lowering drugs, he has a liver that performs perfectly. Cholesterol-lowering drugs are not the only threat to our liver. Our environment is teeming with toxins, most of which go unnoticed until it's too late.

TOP TOXIC THREATS

Most toxins are invisible. They are tasteless or odorless and sometimes are administered under the guise of medicine. Each toxin is a wild card, passing through the liver on a crash course. The toxic soup around us is seeping into us and consists of the following top toxic threats:

ACCUMULATIVE POISON IN YOUR HOME

Many people are unknowingly poisoning themselves with man-made industrial toxins. The accumulative poison triclosan is one example. Triclosan is used in an array of household products, including tooth-pastes, soaps, and lotions. And it was recently approved for use in more than 140 household products despite its real and present danger!
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Synthesized more than thirty years ago, triclosan was once thought to be a safe and effective antibiotic. But results from a recent study at the University of California, Davis, have sounded the alarm.
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Researchers discovered that triclosan accumulates in the body—even when applied on the skin topically—to eventually disrupt hormone activity and cause liver tumors. When it is applied externally, the toxin rapidly penetrates the skin and is absorbed into the blood to throw thyroid and sex hormones out of whack. This potentially leads to obesity, infertility, cancer, and age acceleration. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control found that 75 percent of people from a random sample tested positive for triclosan.
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The best way to avoid this and many other toxins is to choose organic products. Natural soaps and the safe antibiotic zinc oxide work as well as triclosan at beating infection. And neither of them can accidentally poison you.

ARE YOU SMEARING THIS AGE ACCELERATOR ON YOUR SKIN?

You might not have heard about parabens. But odds are you've been spreading this group of toxic chemicals on your skin. As preservatives and antifungal agents, they have been added to shampoos, commercial moisturizers, shaving gels, personal lubricants, toothpaste, and spray tanning solutions. Look for them on ingredient lists as:

• Methylparaben
  
• Ethylparaben
  
• Propylparaben
  
• Butylparaben
  

Even in the smallest amounts, like 1 part per trillion, parabens shift metabolism and elicit key changes in brain structure and function. For example, these toxins can cause teenage girls to grow into adulthood faster than usual. For the rest of us, parabens just help us age really fast. Ironically, parabens are common ingredients in antiwrinkle creams and lotions! Few cosmetic companies recognize that parabens accelerate aging or can even act like estrogen imposters to elicit breast cancer. Avoid them by carefully reading the labels of shampoos, creams, and lotions.

WASTE PRODUCTS DUMPED INTO CITY WATER SUPPLY

Since 1945, fluoride (as sodium fluoride or silicofluoride) has been added—about 1 part per million (milligrams/liter)—to our municipal water supply. Most of the fluoride comes from recovered waste products of the phosphate fertilizer and aluminum industries. Sound yummy? Despite what we've been told, there aren't any health benefits to consuming waste products—quite the contrary. When the fluoride level in drinking water reaches 1 to 5 ppm, disturbances can be seen in the liver, kidney, and nervous systems that can manifest as irritability, depression, and even cancer.
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Avoid filthy fluoride by filtering your tap water.

TRIHALOMETHANES

Fluoride isn't the only chemical added to drinking water. Chlorine is, too. Mass chlorination of municipal water protects us from bacteria, parasites, and viruses. But the practice gives rise to a new risk: THM exposure. THM stands for trihalomethanes, which are chemical by-products of chlorination. A common one is known as bromodichloromethane.

Any level of THM exposure is dangerous. Tap water is estimated to contain 80 to 100 parts per billion of THM—bottled water, too!
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Drinking five or more glasses of water daily that contain THM has resulted in damage to the heart, lung, kidney, liver, and central nervous systems. Scientists at the Environmental Working Group have shown that THM exposure causes as many as 9,300 cases of bladder cancer each year.
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A growing body of science also links THM to miscarriages and birth defects, including neural tube defects, low birth weight, and cleft palate.
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An easy fix for this potentially deadly problem is to stop drinking bottled water and filter your tap water. And since THMs are volatile and therefore more apt to be inhaled, you'll want to filter your shower water, too.

PCBS: BANNED SUBSTANCE STILL LURKING

Just because something is banned doesn't mean it no longer poses a threat. A poignant example is that of PCBs, technically known as polychlorinated biphenyls. PCBs have been used in a slew of products such as coolants and insulating fluids for transformers and capacitors, pesticide extenders, flame retardants, hydraulic fluids, sealants (used in caulking), adhesives, wood floor finishes, and paints. PCBs have made their way into the water supply, poisoning us through tap water or from eating wildlife that drank tainted water.

If ingested, PCBs can disrupt thyroid hormone activity, cause damage
to the nervous system, causing obesity, loss of muscle control and tremors, and poor brain function, and elicit the growth of cancer. Recognizing PCBs' high toxicity to the liver and many other areas of the body, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) banned these toxins in the early 1970s. But PCBs still persist in water and streams. To avoid them, filter your water and make sure you're not consuming any game that has come from polluted regions.

WORSE THAN WHISKEY

If you thought drinking whiskey was bad, try perchlorate. As many as 20 million people are swallowing this rocket fuel. It has been found in drinking water in quantities up to five times the safe upper limit.
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Once in the body, perchlorate interferes with iodine uptake, throwing your thyroid hormones out of whack. Municipal water, groundwater, and cow's milk can be tainted with it. Filter your water, and make sure your milk isn't loaded with this gas additive.