Tag Archives: Toxins

Healthy and lucid from childhood to old age

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So you’ve been around for 70 years, and you’re still well enough to read this. Have you actually made it past 75, 80 or even 85? This is really great! Through a combination of different factors, various reasons, personal habits and choices, you have made this far.

Maybe because of your genetic makeup: Your parents and grand-parents all lived well into their 80’s or 90’s by following a kind of innate, traditional wisdom based on the understanding that we really are what we eat, in a very real sense, and you’ve done more or less the same, following in their footsteps.

Maybe because you have always been moderate in your eating habits: You’ve never been overweight; you’ve never eaten much sweets or deserts; you’ve never eaten much preserved meats and canned foods; you’ve never drank much alcohol; you’ve never drank sweetened soft drinks, juice or milk—mostly just water, always paying attention not to drink too much coffee or strongly caffeinated tea.

Maybe you have made it this far because you have also been moderately active throughout your life, never exercising too much or too intensely, but always quite regularly: Walking; doing light exercises for your joints (rotations of the arms for your shoulders, stretches for your neck and back, and exercises for your knees); riding a bike a couple times a week in the good season, not getting off the bike but instead riding up those hills; maybe you went skiing a week or two most years; went for long walks or even hikes in the mountains during holidays; or did a little swimming in the sea or in lakes when the occasion presented itself.

The golden middle, as my grand-father called it: everything is moderation. And he almost made it to 90 years of age! But no matter what the reason is, it is truly wonderful that you have indeed made it this far. Then again, you might be young or middle aged, but interested—maybe somewhat, maybe highly, but nonetheless interested—in being healthy and lucid for as long as possible, and hopefully well into your old age.

Either way, young or old, you live in this modern world like most of us. You live in a city, you drive a car, you work in an office, you fly or flew often on business trips, maybe even several times per week. You eat meat and fish; bread, potatoes, rice and pasta; fruits and vegetables, all from the supermarket.  And so you have, throughout your life, been continuously exposed to increasing amounts of chemicals, heavy metals and various other toxins in our environment, most of which have been accumulating in your tissues. You live in the modern world like most of us, and so you have taken medication on various occasions during your life: antibiotics a few times, maybe some pain killers, maybe some sleeping pills, maybe simple anti-histamines when you had a cold. Maybe you are and have even been taking medication on a daily basis for some “minor” but “chronic” condition.

You live in this modern world and so you have been told to drink plenty of fluids and that salt is bad and should be avoided. You’ve been told that fat in general, but especially saturated fats and cholesterol, are bad because they cause heart disease: they cause your arteries to clog up with fatty plaques that eventually block them to give you a heart attack. You’ve been told to avoid them as much as you can, and instead to consume polyunsaturated vegetable oils, plenty of whole grains and cereal products, legumes, plenty of fruits and vegetables, and so you have done that: you have decreased or almost eliminated your intake of butter, eggs, fatty cheese, fatty yoghurt, red meat—never ever eating the fatty trimmings, and also of the fatty skin on chicken or fish.

Consequently, you have increased your intake of morning cereal—but only sugar-free whole grain cereal like muesli; increased your intake of bread—but usually whole grain bread; increased your intake of rice—but usually brown rice; increased your intake of pasta—but usually also whole grain pasta; and increased you intake of potatoes—but never fried, only baked, steamed or boiled potatoes.

Maybe your total lipoprotein levels are around 220 or 240 mg/dl, and you have been told that this is too high, and for this reason you have tried to further reduce your fat intake, and are even taking statins or other cholesterol-lowering drugs, every day, just like hundreds of millions of other people in this modern world.

Unfortunately, you have not been told that you should be drinking water; not fluids in general, and that there are many reasons water, ageing and disease are intimately connected—the lack of water, that is. In addition to that, you have not been told that it is not enough to drink some water sometimes: it is essential to drink water before meals. Unfortunately, you have not been told that sodium is one of the most important minerals for health: why else would the kidneys, without which we cannot live for more than a few days, go to such great lengths to prevent its excretion in the urine, and keep it in the blood if it wasn’t? But even more unfortunately, you have not been told that minerals in general, are essential for health, and that unrefined sea salt contains all naturally occurring trace minerals is proportions that closely match those of several of our bodily fluids. And that furthermore, proper bodily function depends intimately on the balance of the minerals available, and that our salt-phobic and calcium-phillic society has led to most of us becoming completely over-calcified while growing more and more deficient in the rest of the trace minerals, and in particular magnesium. The link between generalised magnesium deficiency and minerals, ageing and disease are now everywhere painfully obvious.

Unfortunately—and indeed very sadly—you have not been told that cholesterol is absolutely vital for life and good health: that it forms the membrane of every single cell in your body and in that of every animal, that your entire nervous system and especially your brain are built using cholesterol and depend intimately on the availability of plenty of cholesterol, that your hormonal system relies completely on cholesterol for building hormones, and that your best defences against infectious and inflammatory pathogens are in fact the lipoproteins carrying around the precious cholesterol throughout your body. You have not been told that cholesterol is so important that it is manufactured continuously by our liver to keep up with the body’s needs, and that therefore, the cholesterol we eat does not in any ways raise lipoprotein concentrations. You have not been told that in addition to cholesterol, fat is also essential for building hormones, essential for absorbing minerals from the intestines into our bloodstream, essential for the binding of these minerals into the bones and teeth, essential for energy production in every cell of our body.

Furthermore, you have not been told that saturated fats like those found in animal products and coconut oil are molecularly stable, whereas unsaturated and particularly polyunsaturated oils such as those that make up all vegetable oils are molecularly unstable, some more than others, for the double bonds between carbon atoms in the chain that forms the fat molecule are weak and readily broken to permit some other unstable molecule seeking a free electron to attach in order to make the final molecular configuration stable. But that those unstable compounds are actually scavenging around for any electron to bind to, and unfortunately most of the time if not always, these free-radicals will attach themselves to healthy tissue without proper enzymatic action to guide them in the proper place and position, thus damaging our tissues.

In fact, you have not been told that all large studies that have been conducted to evaluate the “health-promoting” properties of polyunsaturated fats have not only failed to do so, but instead have shown that the more polyunsaturated oils we consume, the more atherosclerotic plaques develop in our arteries, and therefore the more likely we are to suffer a heart attack or stroke. And that on the contrary, the more saturated fats we consume, the less plaques we have, and consequently, the less likely we are to have a heart attack or a stroke (see any of the books about cholesterol in Further readings).

You have not been told, that for millions of years our species has evolved consuming most of its calories in the form of saturated fats from meat and animal products—in some cases exclusively from these, from coconut and palm oil (where these grow), and to a much lesser extent from polyunsaturated fats, and this only in whole foods such as fish, nuts and seeds—never concentrated into vegetable oils.

Unfortunately—and indeed very sadly—you have not been told that we were never meant to eat simple or starchy carbohydrates: that eating such carbohydrates always triggers the pancreas to secrete insulin in order to clear the bloodstream of the damaging glucose in circulation, that chronically elevated glucose levels lead to chronically elevated insulin levels that in turn lead to insulin resistance—first in our muscles, then in our liver, and finally in our fat cells—which leads to type II diabetes, to heart disease from the buildup of plaque in the coronary arteries and vessels, and to Alzheimer’s and cognitive degradation from the buildup of plaque in the cerebral arteries and vessels.

Unfortunately—and indeed very sadly—you have not been told and have not considered that all the multitude of chemicals and heavy metals that we are exposed to in the medications we take, in the air we breathe, in the water we drink, in the food we eat, in the soaps and shampoos we use, and in the household products we employ to keep our house sparkling clean and bacteria-free, accumulate in our bodies. They accumulate in our fat cells, in our tissues, in our organs, in our brains. They burden, disrupt and damage our digestive system, our immune system, our hormonal system, our organs, tissues and cells. Sometimes they reach such concentrations that we become gravely ill, but none of the doctors we visit in seeking a solution and relief understand why. Most often, however, we don’t get gravely ill but instead start developing different kinds of little problems: we get colds more often and take longer to recover, we get mild but regular digestive upsets that we can’t explain and that seem to get worse with time, we get headaches and have trouble sleeping, we feel depressed, tired, alone, helpless, not acutely but enough to disturb us enough that we notice it.

Finally, and maybe most importantly, you have not been told how truly essential vitamin B12 really is, but how, for a variety of different reasons, blood concentrations B12 decrease with age, and eventually dwindle to very low levels. That B12 is essential most crucially to preserve the myelin sheath that covers all of our nerves healthy, and thus crucially important for everything that takes place throughout the nervous system, which means, everything in the body and brain. Levels of B12 should never go below 450 pg/ml, and ideally should be maintained at 800 pg/ml throughout life, from childhood to old age hood.

Can we do anything about all this?

The most fundamental point to understand is that everything about your health depends on the state of health of your digestive system. All absorption of nutrients and elimination of waste happens in the digestive system. Since our health depends on proper absorption and efficient elimination, the digestive system should be our first as well as our main concern.

The first step is to rebuild and establish a healthy intestinal flora of beneficial bacteria (breakdown and absorption), and at the same time begin to detoxify the body and clean out the intestines (elimination). This is done by taking high quality probiotics to supply beneficial bacteria on a daily basis, high quality chlorella to both supply a lot of micronutrients and pull out heavy metals, and water-soluble fibre like psyllium husks to clean out the intestines by pushing out toxins and waste products. If you are not already taking these, read Probiotics, chlorella and psyllium husks.

The second step is by far the most important, and in fact, crucial dietary change necessary to achieve optimal metabolic health. It is to eliminate simple and starchy carbohydrates from you diet, and replace them with more raw vegetables—especially green and leafy salads and colourful vegetables such as red and yellow peppers, more nuts and seeds—especially raw and soaked, more good and efficiently absorbed protein—especially eggs, fish and raw cheeses, and much more saturated fats—especially coconut oil (at least 3 tablespoons per day) and butter. Doing this is  essential for the systemic detoxification, rebuilding and then maintaining a healthy digestive system. Everything should be organic: you obviously don’t want to be adding to your toxic load while trying to detoxify.

And the third step is to supplement our now-excellent, health-promoting diet with a few essential and very important nutrients that are, for most of us, difficult to obtain. The only such supplements that I believe to be essential, and that my family and I take daily, are: Vitamin B12 and vitamin D3—the most important supplements to take for overall health, but in which we are almost all deficient; Krill oil—a high-quality, animal-based omega-3 fat with its own natural anti-oxidants, highly absorbable, and particularly important for proper brain function; Ubiquinol—the reduced and thus useable form of coenzyme Q10, critical for cellular energy production, and a powerful lipid-soluble anti-oxidant that protects our cells from oxidative damage, but both of whose synthesis as CoQ10 and conversion from CoQ10 to ubiquinol drop dramatically after about age 30-40; Vitamin K2—essential for healthy bones but very hard to get other than from fermented foods, which we typically eat little of.

In addition to these, we usually always take Astaxanthin and turmeric—very powerful antioxidants with amazing general and specific anti-ageing health benefits, and also sometimes take a whole-foods-multi—basically dehydrated vegetables and berries made into a powder and compressed into a pill for extra micronutrients. (You can read about all of these supplements on Wikipedia or any other page you will find by doing an internet search.)

I tend to buy our supplements from Dr Joseph Mercola, (whose website also provides a lot of info about these and other supplements, as well as about a multitude of other health-related issues and conditions), because I trust that his are among if not the best on the market: there’s really no point in buying cheap supplements at the pharmacy, and risking doing yourself more harm than good, as would happen with a rancid omega-3 supplement, or a synthetic Vitamin D, for example.

Staying healthy and lucid is, in reality, quite easy and simple. Unfortunately, most of us, including, and maybe especially our medical doctors, just don’t know how. And so, medical diagnostic and high-tech treatment technologies continue to improve and develop, and medical expenditures continue to rise throughout the modern world, but we are sicker than ever: more obesity, more diabetes, more strokes, more heart attacks, more cancers, more Alzheimer’s, more leaky guts, more ulcers, more liver failures, more kidney failures, and on and on. There is more disease, more pain, more suffering and more premature deaths. And all of it is completely unnecessary and avoidable by such simple and inexpensive means as those outlined herein. The only critical point is that only you can do it; nobody else can do it for you.

When you eliminate insulin-stimulating carbohydrates

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Eliminating insulin-stimulating carbohydrates will have a profound effect on your health. What are insulin-stimualing carbohydrates? All simple sugars: white sugar, brown sugar, unrefined sugar, dehydrated cane sugar juice, coconut sugar, honey, molasses, corn syrup, agave syrup, fructose, and also fruit whose calories are typically half glucose half fructose. And all starchy carbohydrates: potatoes, rice, bread, pasta, all grain products and whole grains alike. That’s quite a lot of things we tend to eat, isn’t it? But the truth is that We were never meant to eat simple or starchy carbohydrates in the first place. And the fact that we do is enough to explain why we are all so fat and so sick.

The first and most noticeable immediate effect will be deep detoxification by starving off and killing of the colonies of pathogenic bacteria and fungi in the intestines, all of which live off simple sugars supplied either by your eating of refined carbohydrates or the breakdown of starches to glucose. All these bad bacteria will starve and die, which will temporarily increase the toxins that need to be eliminated from the body. For this reason it is very important to drink plenty of water (see Water, ageing and disease), on an empty stomach, and preferably about 30 minutes before meals (see Why we should drink water before meals) together with probiotics and chlorella supplements, as well as plenty of unrefined sea or rock salt because the body excretes more sodium when it is burning fat. You may very well not feel so good for the first few days or maybe even the first couple of weeks depending on the state of toxicity of your body and its ability to detoxify. But once past this initial detox phase, you will feel great—really great.

The second most noticeable effect will be the transition from using glucose as the primary cellular fuel to using fat instead. As glucose concentrations will fall, so will insulin concentrations. At the beginning, your body is unable to burn fat because it hasn’t had to for a long time. Instead, it will try to manufacture more glucose in the liver to sustain its energy needs. When this source runs dry, the body, now desperate for sugar because still unable to tap into the plentiful fat stores throughout, will turn to muscle tissue, and break down the proteins to manufacture glucose. This is what insulin resistance, even in the mildest of forms, leads to: more fat storage, less fat burning, and breakdown of muscle tissue whenever glucose concentrations drop. What varies depending on the level of insulin resistance is the pace at which fat is stored, the relative difficulty with which fat is burnt, and the speed at which muscle tissue is broken down.

Fortunately, the body is truly amazing, and although you will have periods, some short and some longer, during which you feel weak, tired and sleepy, within days the metabolism will begin to make the switch to fat-burning as the main source of cellular fuel and energy. Then, you will start to melt all of the excess fat that has been accumulating both on the surface of your body (the visible bulges under your skin), as well as the fat that has been accumulating internally between and around all of your organs, especially in the abdominal cavity, but also around tendons and ligaments, and even within the tissues or your liver and heart, and in between muscle fibres—we all know the difference between lean meat and fatty meat, and will have had or at least heard of the french delicatessen “foie gras” (fat liver).

I, for example, a lean 35 year-old athlete who had always exercised extensively through a typically quite intense training programme in endurance, speed and strength since I was 12 (first running, then cycling, then both), with a peak during the university years, when I competed quite seriously first in cycling (road), then in duathlon (run, bike, run), and then cycling off-road, and another during my PhD, when I trained and competed running, with the most worthy achievements being the running of the Mont Saint-Michel marathon in 2:58, but training more or less steadily throughout my life, found the transition from glucose to fat-burning very quick and easy. That was about 4 years ago, and small details of momentary sensations tend to slip out of memory over such periods, but of course I had a few headaches and foul smelling stools. But within days, I had more energy, more endurance and better, longer-sustained concentration, and it’s been getting better ever since! None of my body measurements changed significantly: I was always pretty lean and my clothes didn’t fit differently. However, I lost 4 kilos (9 pounds): my weight went from of 61 to 57 kg, and has remained thus ever since, without any effort, and without hunger. Consequently, most of these 4 kg were surely in part sub-cutaneous, but necessarily in great part internal fat stores: intra-abdominal (between organs), visceral (within organs like the liver and heart), and intra-muscular.

Averagely overweight people typically lose a lot more fat than this. Like a friend who followed my advice closely, and lost more than 25 kilos (55 pounds) in about a year, without hunger. And she is still melting fat reserves that had been accumulating and that she had been carrying around for years. Beyond a certain threshold, as the body gets closer to its ideal weight and composition, the fat reserves naturally begin to melt a little slower every day. Nonetheless, it will continue until there is only the necessary reserves for optimal metabolic function—and that’s not very much fat.

There are thousands of examples such as this one, but this is not the point I want to make. The loss of fat is a trivial consequence of the body’s hormonal and metabolic recovery. It is everything else that happens to the glands, the hormones, the brain, the digestive system, the immune system, the cardio-vascular system, and all other systems, allowing more efficiently and better functioning, that is really important. You should always keep that in mind: it is not about getting thin, it is about getting healthy.

When fat-burning kicks in and especially when it kicks into high gear, all the toxins—heavy metals like mercury and chemicals of various kinds—that have been accumulating in your tissues will be released as the fat cells open up to free these energy reserves. It is crucial to drink a lot of water, especially first thing in the morning, to take plenty of unrefined sea salt to balance the increased need for and usage of electrolytes in elimination through the urine, and take plenty of chlorella throughout the day for it to bind to the metals and toxins, and excrete them from the body.

The third most noticeable effect of eliminating insulin-stimuating carbohydrates will be the gradual extraction and excretion of uric acid from all the soft tissues and organs. Since metabolising simple and starchy carbohydrates leads to acid formation, and that our kidneys—our primary blood filtration and thus acid-removing organ—never developed to handle the huge quantities of acid produced by a diet based on carbohydrates, it tries to filter it out of the blood, but simply cannot take it all out. To make matters worse, 90% of us are chronically dehydrated (see Water, ageing and disease). This not only prevents the proper dilution of the uric acid from the blood and its transfer to the urine, but it also severally stresses the kidneys that are continuously trying to filter this and other metabolic wastes from the poorly hydrated, and thus excessively thick and viscous blood, extracting what liquid they can from it to actually produce enough urine to excrete the wastes out of the body.

To make matter even worse, for years we have been told to avoid salt, and supplement with calcium. As a consequence, 90% of us are not only deficient in most essential minerals (see Minerals, bones, calcium and heart attacks), but also in sodium—probably the most important element for proper health and kidney function, and on the contrary, we are totally over-calcified. All of this makes both calcium and acid accumulate not just in our kidneys to the point of forming “stones” (about 80% of them are calcium deposits with crystallised uric acid seeds and 10% pure uric acid), but everywhere in our body, making all tissues gradually stiffer, from arteries and veins to muscles, tendons and ligaments. What a nightmare! And what a sad state of affairs it is when we realise that this is a highly accurate description of what happens to most of us, day after day, and year after year until our untimely and inevitably premature death.

The last straw is that we are all terribly deficient in magnesium, scarcely found in our soils and therefore in our foods, and this leads to severe problems over time. If you didn’t know or need convincing, read Why you should start taking magnesium today.

What do we eat when we eliminate what currently constitutes between 50 and 70 percent of our daily calories? I’ve written up some general guidelines with brief explanations in What to eat: Four basic rules. And here are some examples of daily meal plans: A simple meal plan for my friend Cristian and Vibrant health and long life.