How to remove contaminants from our bodies

The environment is full of PCBs, organochlorine, solvents, pesticides, heavy metals, dioxin and worse. They are in the air, the water and the food. We know contaminants and pollutants are bad for us. But how can we get them out of us? Here are some practical ways to remove contaminants from our bodies.

How environmental contaminants hurt us

Environmental pollutants and contaminants damage DNA. If our immune systems do not quickly ‘fix’ damaged DNA, this leads to pre-cancerous ‘foci’ cells. Precancerous foci become tumours, if not stopped by our immune systems. Tumours are symptoms of cancer which can spread. Cancer may cause early death.

The other way these contaminants hurt us is by depleting our bodies of nutrients. This means our bodies are unable to detoxify the rubbish and protect us as well as they should. Particular concentrations of particular nutrients are needed for our bodies to be able to detoxify pollutants most effectively.

How our bodies take care of these things

There is a dance playing out continually between three things:

1. The level of our exposure to environmental contaminants and pollutants
2. The health and vitality of our immune systems to fix the damage as it occurs, and
3. The capacity of our body’s detoxification systems to neutralise or remove the contaminants and pollutants.

We remove contaminants from our bodies by maintaining a strong immune system and eating and living in such a way to have well-functioning kidneys, digestive system and liver. These are the three key parts of our detoxification system.

Don’t get sidetracked by the small stuff

Environmental pollutants are a hot topic. There is plenty of emotion surrounding them. And there should be.

There are a lot of people concerned about parabens in shampoo and bleaches in tea bags and mercury in some vaccines and so on.

It’s true that we should be aware of these things; however, there are things we do in our lives every day that bring about MUCH greater exposure to environmental contaminants. These are the things we should FIRST be paying attention to.

What follows is a list of the three main things to minimise or eliminate from our lives if we wish to remove contaminants from our bodies.

Large fish

The Australian government warns us to consume large fish only once or twice a year, and not at all if pregnant, wanting to conceive, or breast-feeding.

That’s because large fish carry heavy metals in their flesh (including fish oils) in amounts that are known to cause the type of DNA damage that can lead to cancer. Fish caught from contaminated zones in heavy industrial areas or near large cities contain higher levels of heavy metals.  Fish breeds highest in heavy metals are swordfish, mackerel, shark, salmon, tuna and, surprisingly, sardines.  

The problem with heavy metals is that they can build up in our bodies. That’s when our liver, kidneys and digestive system can’t keep up with the clearing process and get overloaded. That sets us up for ill health.

The mercury in one small can of tuna is equal to the mercury emitted daily from a mouthful of 29 amalgam fillings.

Some vaccines used to contain thimerosal (a mercury derivative) as a preservative. Most no longer do. But for those that do, the amount in one vaccine dose is roughly the same as the elemental mercury you’d get from eating 90g (3 oz) of canned tuna. That’s one of those tiny lunch-sized cans. Many people eat that every single day – then lobby against mercury in vaccines!

Our bodies are very efficient at getting mercury out. As long as we aren’t continually putting it back in!

You can read <here> of some other reasons I rarely eat fish.

Factory farmed animals

Animals in confinement operations are dosed with antibiotics and other drugs in their feed to keep them from becoming ill. This is not because of kindness for the animals, but for economic reasons – so they grow fatter faster and don’t get sick and die.

They are also regularly given poor-quality foods to achieve economic goals.  All this poorer quality food, and these drugs, end up in their fat.

In the 1940s, chickens in the USA were fed an arsenic-based drug to make them grow faster and keep their flesh pinker. This drug has been banned. It takes a long time, however, for it to no longer be in use across the board. <This 2016 study> shows that chicken eaters still have higher arsenic in their urine than non-chicken eaters.

Why not just cut off the fat?  You can’t.  Fat in animals is not only under the skin in a thick layer. It lies throughout the meat, between the muscles.  You can’t separate the animal muscle from the animal fat.

Every mouthful of meat, eggs or milk from an animal raised in a confinement operation will contain some of these environmental contaminants.

Dioxin typically concentrates in these large animals with fish, eggs and cheese being the biggest culprits. Arsenic is still endemic in American chicken products. Although not found in Australian chicken, there are enough other real problems with it (not for this post) to be of concern.

Cigarette Smoke

We are coming to the last large pollutant to eliminate if we wish to remove contaminants from our bodies.

It’s smoking.  Smokers get more chronic diseases than everyone else and take longer to recover from acute (short-term) diseases.  The heavy metals and other carcinogenic chemicals in cigarettes damage every body organ. None escape. This causes the body to use up more of every vitamin and mineral to try to keep up with detoxification. And even that is not enough. Smokers usually die ten years before their peers at least.

Majoring on Minors

The chemicals found in all of the above three groups can cause cancer. That is a fact.

However, the chemicals used in most personal care products have NOT been proven to cause cancer – at this stage. If we use them according to the package directions, to the best knowledge we have, those amounts are safe.

Here are things we know:

Smoking, eating large fish and regularly eating animals and their products from agricultural confinement operations – can lead to our bodies becoming damaged by storing up too many pollutants and contaminants for health.

It is a waste of time and effort concerning ourselves with smaller things which do NOT appear to cause damage to us – if we have not yet applied the things we DO know.

In our modern society, we tend to want to major on the minors and close our minds off to the majors – the things that would  REALLY make a difference to our health. Majoring on minors is easier and requires less life change.

We do not need to worry about underarm deodorant, shampoo and bleached tea-bags – which have not been proven to be any major health risk – while we are still eating foods and practising lifestyle habits that have been proven to be major risks.

We cannot avoid all carcinogens

How best can we remove contaminants from our bodies? Since we can’t avoid all carcinogens completely. That’s impossible.

Inuit women in the Arctic, who never even encountered Western civilisation, have higher concentrations of heavy metals and PCBs from plastics found in their breast milk than Western women. In fact, levels many times above safe levels for babies in the West.  And these women have never even used plastic or heavy metals.  It’s coming from all the fish they eat from those “pristine” Arctic bays and rivers.

My Plan

My plan is to avoid those contaminants I KNOW are carcinogenic (the BIG 3 listed above) and not concern myself so much with the rest. If we major on the majors,  the minor things should pose fewer problems for us.

And if we look after our liver, kidneys and digestion with healthy eating and living, they will be in much better shape to get rid of the rubbish as it comes in. And in case you were unsure, kidneys, liver and digestion are three major things that good nutrition helps.