Why You Should Stop Counting Calories and Start Counting Chemicals
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Most of us have been conditioned to look at the calories we eat as the primary reason why we might be getting a little thick around the middle, and while it is true that too many calories aren’t good for maintaining a healthy weight, far too many individuals have overlooked an important aspect to keeping fit and vital – toxic chemical overload.
A chemically burdened body is more likely to harness fat than a ‘clean’ body. Practitioners of ancient natural medicine have known for a long time that detoxing is vital to keep diseases of obesity at bay. But just last January, the government’s National Toxicology Program met to review the science on environmental chemicals and obesity and diabetes. The panelists published their review in an issue of Environmental Health Perspectives.
In brief, the study showed that environmental chemicals are changing how our brains regulate our feeding behavior. Heavy metals in drinking water and even apple juice, BPAs in the plastics made from petroleum, Dioxin, Atrazine, Aspartame, Phthalates, Perchlorate, substances like DDT, Monsanto’s glyphosate, and other pesticides are turning our endocrine systems into a mosh pit at a car crash competition.
Instead of keeping our digestive systems healthy, our neurological instinct to eat when we are hungry and stop when we are full, and instead of maintaining the ability to remove toxic buildup from our bodies while fighting foreign invaders like bacteria and viruses, our bodies are starting to attack themselves.
The dirty dozen chemicals in our environment also bio-accumulate; what one chemical does to damage our bodies is exponentially supported by chemical reactions to other chemicals. Their effects are essentially compounded.
These chemicals aren’t just in the packaged foods and produce we eat from the grocery store either, but are in our lakes and rivers, where we get our fish. These fish dine on macroinvertebrates, which then dine on smaller fish, which then dine on bigger fish, and each level of the food chain is contaminated. When livestock eat feed that has been treated with pesticides and herbicides, the same phenomenon occurs. This is bioaccumulation of chemicals in action.
Chemicals Accumulate in the Body
Many chemicals are also ‘presistent,’ which means they don’t break down for a very long time. When you add in chronic barium, strontium, and aluminum exposure from aerosol spraying or chemtrails, along with mercury and thimerosal in vaccines, and the unsavory effects of many pharmaceutical drugs on the body’s ability to metabolize food correctly, it is no wonder we are an obese nation. The rest of the world is following right along with us, too. Obesity rates globally are some of the highest they have been in hundreds of years, even while many people are starving to death!
“There is a long list of research demonstrating mercury’s effect as an endocrine-disrupting chemical, as referenced in the paper authored by Dr. Tan of the EPA in March 2009 (Tan, Shirlee W., Meiller, Jesse C. and Mahaffey, Kathryn R., “The endocrine effects of mercury in humans and wildlife,” Critical Reviews in Toxicology,39:3,228-269).”
A recent Harvard study has said that over 500 million people worldwide are obese. Chris Rangel, MD, says:
“It’s a uniquely modern problem. We have the most obese impoverished population in the history of the planet and its been called the “hunger-obesity paradox.” Even the homeless are now more than likely to be overweight with over 32% being officially obese. Think about that.”
The food industry is just as responsible as chemical companies and biotech for making us fat.
“Contrary to standard belief, eating healthy and nutritional food actually costs more than eating so-called “junk food”. This is not by accident. The food industry has become very good at producing high caloric and high energy but low cost processed food that is of low nutritional value. I.e. they include things like saturated fats and high carbohydrate amounts that make the food taste great while eliminating more costly and less tasty nutritional ingredients.”
A ‘Dirty’ Body can Halt Nutrient Absorption
But here’s the kicker. Even if you eat an organic salad once in a blue moon, and don’t regularly and actively detox your body from all these environmental poisons, your body can’t absorb the nutrients from good foods. The scientific proof of this fact is overwhelming:
- High fructose corn syrup consumption leads to an impairment of digestion and absorption of nutrients, leading to obesity.
- Plastic water containers, trash bags, and even baby bottles are also making us fat with endocrine disrupting Bisphenol A (BPA).
- Malabsorption of nutrients and important trace minerals happens when our guts are wracked with gluten, GMOs, glyphosate, pesticides, and other chemicals. Additionally, nutrients are likely not being absorbed in your stomach or GI tract due to flora imbalance.
- The World Health Organization (WHO) has reported that roughly three million pesticide poisonings occur annually, resulting in 220,000 deaths worldwide. In some cases, it has been suggested that diseases such as cancer, allergies, neurological disorders, and reproductive disorders may be connected to pesticide exposure. Pesticides also disrupt our endocrine system, which is absolutely necessary for regulating hunger and preventing obesity.
While we don’t need to be scarfing down double decker burgers with soda and eating so many calories we could feed a family of four with our intake, we do need to be mindful of eliminating toxins from our environment and detoxing them from our bodies in order to overcome the obesity epidemic plaguing the world. Stop counting calories, just for a moment, and count some chemicals, and if you really want to make a difference, educate others about what these toxins are doing to their health.
 | Christina Sarich is a humanitarian and freelance writer helping you to Wake up Your Sleepy Little Head, and See the Big Picture. Her blog is Yoga for the New World. Her latest book is Pharma Sutra: Healing the Body And Mind Through the Art of Yoga. |
Also, I have suspected for a long time that toxins stored in fat cause your body’s defensive mode to turn on. As the fat burns, the toxins get re-released into our blood stream and the exposure symptoms return. I suspect to slow this process down, your metabolism may also slow down fat burning as a form of self-protection. Also fat burning during breast feeding would then cause accumulated toxins to get excreted in breast milk.
Just a hunch, and observations from my own experience. I’d love it if someone would officially do some research into this.
You are correct, I have experienced the same. I get sick every time I lose 3-4 lbs. Using the bubble gum theory that like substances attract, I have now lost 70 lbs. Eat good fat, lose bad fat. Cutout all bad carbs, bad fats, eat a good clean high fat diet and the pounds melt away. Anything with the word ‘Hydro” in it is one molecule away from being plastic. They put the plastic in your gut by mixing it with bad fat, so you eat good fat to attract the bad fat with plastic, lose the carbs so you burn the fat and the good fat takes the bad with it. If you lose weight by starving yourself and exercise you will get sick with gouty arthritis. So enjoy organic grass-fed dairy with full-fat, pork belly, good quality bacon and I’ve read this also helps children with autism
Agreed. Or in the case of pesticides and metals, eat tons of cilantro to release the metals, then use fiber, selenium and chlorella to bind them and remove them from your system.
Autistic children have already surpassed their limit for toxin exposure, so your insight in regard the meats makes perfect sense. I also found out that metals can be stored in bone, which can be leached and taken up by the fetus during the third trimester, especially during subsequent pregnancies. They focus on testing genetics for autism affected families, but they never seem to do toxicity tests on the mother. Hair would reveal the toxic load, but if a doctor runs a toxicity test, they only test blood, which won’t show past exposure stored in tissues.
while I am all for science talking about dangerous chemicals like aluminum and mercury for sure lets not go overboard and start scaremongering and targeting innocent chemicals. and start saying all these chemicals we commonly use are necessarily causing obesity, or anything else, sure the load might be heavier but our bodies are designed to detox naturally without any special considerations provided we are eating enough nutrient dense foods and supplements. many chemicals are just cheaper copies of natural chemicals found in nature, we eat fruits and veggies they are full of chemicals we call phytochemicals in fact most veggies we eat have natural pesticide in them, these were bred out or reduced so they wont be so bitter to eat which means the bugs like them too so you have to reaply chemicals that were bred out, so our bodies expect there to be chemicals that is why we have so many chemicals that deactivate them, there are so many variables in addressing illness that everyone wants to point at modern day chemcials or living or whatever (such as we are fat because we drive to much stuff like that)while there are chemicals that are definitely deadly to us like arsenic the food industry is not running to the gov to allow them to use it in our food and products we use everyday. the biggest killers of man’s life, spirit and welfare is stress, the stress of everyday living, working jobs long hours, low pay little vacation time, family breakups and lack of unity among the family and community, high taxes, wars, dealing with a world where are sense of justice is constantly being hammered by a world of injustice and the sense of helplessness over it. our food supply has dwindled in quality (long storage and poor growing etc) and we eat way to much processed foods, myself included find that I am more drawn to junkier food then healthier fare. we have stress of dealing with creepy people at work at home in leisure, spending a lot of time stuck in traffic living in the city where it is noisy, more polluted then in the outskirsts hotter in summer, bumper to bumper people (ever look at new York? crowded as heck) just imagine what it is like to have to dodge people all day long due to living in crowded areas. yuck!! that would make anyone sick.
Try breaking up long passages with paragraphs.
You lost me at “innocent chemicals.”