Sickness Is A Slow Descent From Health

Sickness is a slow descent from health

Every day, our bodies are bombarded with food additives, chemicals and plethora of substances that degrade health.

No wonder eventually something breaks down, just like a car running on dirty fluids and filters, and the wrong kind of oil and gasoline.

You may not realize how much the world throws at your body every day. Let’s take a look:

• Fred wakes up, having slept on a mattress manufactured with flame retardants (polybrominated diphenyl ethers). Laboratory studies using animals have linked the chemicals to behavior changes that bear an uncanny similarity to attention-deficit and hyperactivity disorders common in children. New research has found that flame retardants have an ability to mimic thyroid hormones; it is thought that by acting hormonally, the chemicals wreak havoc in laboratory animals, where exposures have been linked to hyperactivity, impaired learning and decreased sperm counts.[1]
• He brushes his teeth with fluoride, never noticing that his tube of toothpaste contains a warning from the FDA that he should not swallow the toothpaste and to call a poison center if he does. Modern studies link fluoride to arthritis, allergies, kidney and thyroid dysfunction, bone damage and cancer even at the low levels dentists claim is optimal to reduce tooth decay.[2] As he brushes his teeth, his silver amalgam (mercury) fillings released a little mercury vapor as they do every time he chews. He is unaware that in 1991, the World Health Organization acknowledged that the predominant source of human exposure to mercury comes from fillings. His dentist hasn’t told him that study after study shows that mercury negatively affects the heart – he could be setting himself up for a heart attack.
• He showers in chlorinated water where he absorbs more chlorine through his skin than if he were to drink eight glasses of tap water. According to the U.S. Council of Environmental Quality, “Cancer risk among people using chlorinated water is as much as 93% higher than among those whose water does not contain chlorine.” Joseph M. Price, MD, warned that “Chlorine is the greatest crippler and killer of modern times. It is an insidious poison.”[3]
• He washes his hair, unaware that 93 percent of shampoos possibly contain harmful impurities linked to cancer or other health problems, and that 76 percent of conditioners contain ingredients that are allergens. The sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) and sodium laureth sulfate (SLES) found in many shampoos and conditioners and may cause hair loss and scalp irritation.[4]
• He puts on clothes that his wife washed with fabric softener that emits a “springtime fresh” smell. Fabric softeners contain chemicals like chloroform, benzyl acetate and pentane that are known to cause cancer and/or damage to lungs, brain, and nerves. About 95% of the chemicals used in fragrances are made from petroleum products.
• For breakfast, Fred eats bacon and eggs. The bacon, like many processed meats, contains sodium nitrite to add red color. It is known to cause cancer. The eggs came from “factory chickens” which never saw the light of day and were fed a grain and soy-based chicken feed laced with hormones and antibiotics to prevent the growth of disease-causing bacteria – which are now less sensitive to antibiotics as a result.
• He washes it down with coffee laced with a powdered “creamer” concoction of hydrogenated oils – trans fats which cause heart disease, nutritional deficiencies, general deterioration of cellular health, and much more.
• Fred is proud of his new car. As he inserts the key, he breathes in that new car smell. He doesn’t think that what he is really filling his lungs with is a toxic brew of fumes from adhesives, sealers, carpeting, lubricating compounds, and phthalates (plastic softeners) with chemical names like ethyl benzene, xylene, formaldehyde and toluene.
• Later at the office, Fred reaches for a diet soda and a health bar from the vending machine. The soda contains aspartame, a chemical additive which is the source of more FDA complaints than any other food additive. In the body, it converts to formaldyhyde which has been shown to cause cancer in animals and is listed by the EPA as a probable human carcinogen. It is an excitotoxin which harms nerve cells, over-exciting them to the point of cell death. The “health” bar contains the excitotoxin MSG hidden in safe-sounding ingredients like yeast extract.
• On a scale of 1 to 10, Fred’s nutritional intake so far today is at about a 2. He is unaware of the “Triage Theory” that says natural selection favors short-term survival over the long-term, and that our short-term survival is achieved by prioritizing the allocation of scarce micronutrients. In other words, to stop us from falling over from a lack of iron today, for example, iron is pulled from non-essential sources. Thus illnesses like heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimer’s may be unintended consequences of mechanisms developed during evolution to protect against episodic vitamin/mineral shortages.
• He goes to the restroom where there is a chemical air freshener. It contains benzene, a carcinogen that’s been linked to leukemia – and xylene, a toxic petroleum byproduct that has been associated with headaches and cognitive impairment. He washes his hands in antibacterial soap containing triclosan which promotes the emergence of bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics. TV ads have made him afraid of germs; he is unaware that even the American Medical Association and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advise against non-clinical use of antibacterial soaps, which may lead to bacteria resistance and don’t clean any better than ordinary soap.[5]
• He returns to his office which emits formaldehyde from particle board cabinets and insulation in between the walls. Formaldehyde is associated with respiratory inflammation, watery eyes, burning mucus membranes, cough, skin rash, and even cancer. This is the chemical made infamous by the trailers provided by the gederal government for those whose homes had been destroyed in New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
• In the afternoon, Fred has a dentist appointment for a root canal. Dr. George Meinig, author of Root Canal Cover-Up, could tell Fred how “Root-canal-filled teeth always remain infected no matter how good they might look or how good they might feel.” When bacteria get into the tooth’s bony socket, the bacteria also get into the blood supply of the jaw, allowing the bacteria to metastasize and travel to another gland, organ and tissue and cause a new infection.”

Every day his body works at detoxifying these kinds of things. It uses glutathione, folic acid, methyl groups, sulfate groups, liver enzymes and all the cellular machinery whose functions are to detoxify. The detoxifying agents are actually nutrients that we take in with food – if we are eating a nutrient dense diet. However, the Standard American Diet of pizza, fast food hamburgers, French fries and soda is not nutrient dense. Eventually the body runs low of detoxifying agents. At this point, the body continues to try to detoxify but when it doesn’t have the complete “medicine chest” with which to do that, dangerous free radicals are created. Free radicals damage cell walls and eventually the cell DNA. Now the stage is set for chronic disease and cancer.

If the detoxification systems are compromised, it is virtually impossible to restore normal metabolic function unless we first remove the toxins. At the Arizona Center for Advanced Medicine, we can test the body’s detoxification systems to determine how well they are functioning.

When President Richard Nixon launched his “war on cancer” some 40 years ago, a large body of scientific literature already existed that linked chemicals in the environment to cancer. There were also hypotheses, but little else, linking retroviruses to cancer. One would have expected that most of the $30 billion spent on the “war” would have looked at proving the chemical connection. Instead the entire amount went to the retrovirus theorists. They failed to prove that retroviruses cause cancer, and the “war” is today widely deemed a failure. Chemicals saturate our environment.[6] It is predicted that 1 in every 2 men will now contract cancer in their lifetime, as will 1 in 3 women.

Most of the chronic illness we see today is due to our environment and our food.

Our diets have changed tremendously in the past 100 years. Why don’t most physicians warn people of unhealthy eating? They aren’t food-oriented. Why have diabetes and obesity become rampant on their watch? Medical school gave them perhaps a scant 8 hours of nutrition study. The curriculum is shaped largely by the pharmaceutical industry. Med schools essentially train doctors to prescribe drugs to suppress symptoms. In many instances, looking for the root cause and using creative, new modalities to prompt healing are “outside the standard of care.”

Is it any wonder that so many people wander from one doctor’s office to another trying to find out what’s wrong and how to fix it?

There are many sources of health messages, including government agencies, professional health-related organizations, the food industry, and special interest consumer groups. Each of these has its own agenda, its own reasons for motivating you to believe a certain way and buy a certain product or ask your doctor for a certain test. The various disease-related and health-related organizations have funding sources to whom they are beholden which color their messages. The communications media disperse the barrage of messages to the public. The media have said eggs are good, eggs are bad; vegetable oils are good, vegetable oils are bad; soy is good, soy is bad… and it is no wonder the media’s coverage of so many competing agendas has increased public confusion about diet and health.

People will look to their 90-year-old grandparent who ate lots of “cholesterol inducing” red meat and butter and marvel at how fit that person is for 90. What they do not realize is that older person spent the first several decades of his or her life before WWII – before processedfoods and pervasive chemicals, ubiquitous wireless networks, and before the couch potato lifestyle that so many of us have adopted. They were outside in the sun getting good-sized doses of vitamin D. Their red meat and dairy were largely without hormones and steroids and the dietary hazards of today’s modern feedlot. This was an era before drugs were touted as the answer to every problem.

Fifteen million Americans take statin drugs to lower cholesterol for example. However, statins may inhibit your liver’s ability to make COQ10 and a deficiency of that may lead to heart troubles. Statin drugs are toxic to the liver. As levels of COQ10 fall, blood pressure rises and cardiovascular disease sets in.

And we are giving drugs to children more than ever before. American children take anti-psychotic medicines, for example, at about six times the rate of children in the United Kingdom.[7] Infants are born with an average of over 200 toxic chemicals in their blood.[8] So children come into the world with a significant body burden of toxicity.

Surely a precious newborn is innocent of such problems, yes? Unfortunately, no. Infants are born with an average of over 200 toxic chemicals in their blood.

According to a 1999 National Academy of Sciences report, half of all pregnancies in the nation now end in the loss of the baby or a child with a birth defect or chronic health problem that manifests by age three.[9]

It’s no wonder.

[1] Source no longer available. [2] Lawyer Paul Beeber, President, New York State Coalition Opposed to Fluoridation, Inc.[3] Joseph M. Price, Coronaries/Cholesterol/Chlorine, Jove Book, Alta Enterprises, 1969.[4] Environmental Working Group, Skin Deep, 2004 summarized at http://www.ewg.org/node/17855[5] see www.epa.gov/oppad001[6] National Health Freedom, Politically Motivated Disease Causation-the Biggest Epidemic of All, by Marcel Girodian, May 5, 2005 http://www.thenhf.com/articles_117.htm Accessed January 2007[7] Associated Press, U.S. kids prescribed more anti-psychotic drugs, May 5, 2008[8] Body Burden – the Pollution in Newborns II, Environmental Working Group[9] National Research Council. Hormonally active agents in the environment. National Academy Press; Washington DC. 1999. Also see http://www.protectingourhealth.org/newscience/birthdefects/2004-0501birthdefectspreview.htm, accessed February 2007