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Tag: endocrine disruptors - Organic Lifestyle Magazine Tag: endocrine disruptors - Organic Lifestyle Magazine

I Used To Be Anxious

I used to have terrible anxiety. Throughout high school, I had panic attacks so severe I felt like I couldn’t breathe. At my worst, I would shut down, in tears, unable to take a deep breath, while my whole body shook. The pit in my stomach would get so heavy I was sure I would be sick. Sometimes, I did get sick.

Image credit: Antonioguillem/Adobe Stock

I remember the progression from being a nervous person to realizing I had anxiety, to being able to recognize I was having a panic attack. Yet, I didn’t even realize how bad it was because I was used to living with chronic pain. But when I was 16, I had a severe panic attack, severe enough that I finally thought to myself, “This is not normal, and I am not okay. I can’t live like this.” It was another two years before I fixed the root of the problem.

For two years after that debilitating panic attack, I would practice deep breathing, and on rare occasions, take an anxiety pill to try and help calm my nerves. Unfortunately, my endocrine system was so messed up, there wasn’t much I could do to quell the anxiety without fixing the root of the problem.

I also used to weigh 320 pounds. I woke up anxious; I went to bed anxious. Every moment of my life was full of anxiety. After graduating from high school, I began to learn about the endocrine system. I’ve learned how my toxic lifestyle (diet, prescription drugs, and poor sleep habits) caused my hormonal imbalance and was at the root of my anxiety and numerous other health problems. If you would like to take a deep dive into how hormones work and how to fix the endocrine system, check out the following article:

The endocrine system is the collection of glands and glandular organs that produce hormones to regulate metabolism, tissue function, growth and development (which includes repair), sexual function, reproduction, sleep, mood, the immune system, and more.

HOLISTIC GUIDE TO HEALING THE ENDOCRINE SYSTEM AND BALANCING OUR HORMONES

My anxiety was caused by two major things that were totally within my control:

  • Poor diet
  • Poor sleep

I’ve learned that my endocrine system was functioning so poorly because of my diet and poor sleep, which was also affected by my poor diet.

Diet

Diet is imperative to fixing the endocrine system and getting rid of anxiety. Just like with most everything else, it starts in the gut. When I eliminated refined sugars, gluten, and processed foods, I felt better within days. When I started eating a salad and drinking a gallon of cranberry lemonade every day, my life changed for the better, irrevocably.

We have an excellent article about the hormonal system that I urge anyone to read if they want to learn how to balance and heal the endocrine system. It goes into why diet is paramount to healing the gut, the endocrine system, and chronic illness in general:

As OLM always says, it starts with diet. Supplemental therapies are much more effective with a healthy diet, and for most people, the right diet is all they need. But there are plenty of people who do not have access to healthy foods, and there are many who have such a depleted endocrine system that the body is just plain going to need a lot of help.

HOLISTIC GUIDE TO HEALING THE ENDOCRINE SYSTEM AND BALANCING OUR HORMONES

Two months after fixing my diet, I decided to fast for a week. Within days my depression was back. I wasn’t as anxious as I had been, but the anxiety made it difficult to talk about how I was struggling. I had stopped eating vegetables, and I had stopped working out. I don’t think my gut was healthy enough for me to reap the benefits of fasting. A week later, the first thing I ate was a salad. I felt better immediately. As I incorporated exercise back into my life, my anxiety continued to fade.

I start to feel a little anxious when I don’t eat well enough as well as when I don’t take time to get enough sleep. When I say I’m not eating well I should be clear. My idea of junk food is stuff like homemade pesto with brown rice pasta, or organic brown rice chips with a chunk of goat cheddar cheese. Sometimes we make raw food chocolate pie or sourdough bread. While the average person wouldn’t notice any problems with these foods, and may even feel better compared to a typical diet, I get anxious when I eat wheat or pre-packaged processed “healthy” snack foods.

Sleep

Throughout high school, I would regularly sleep between 12-14 hours a day. I would often joke with my friends about how much sleep I got. While they were on one end of the spectrum, pulling all-nighters, I was on the other end, sleeping as much as possible. None of us were healthy. I struggled with depression throughout high school. I was always exhausted, no matter how much I slept.

Fixing your sleep schedule can be difficult or impossible if you’re not taking care of yourself in other ways. I sleep well when I eat well. Exercise helps, too. When I mess up my sleep schedule (which doesn’t happen often, but it does happen), I find that exercise is the best way to help me get back on track. No matter how mentally tired I am at the end of the day, I can still have a hard time falling asleep if I don’t go for a run or work out in some other way.

I also find that having a set bedtime and wake-up time helps. I generally go to bed by 9:30 or 10:00 every night. My wake-up time is not yet as consistent. Sometimes I’m up at 6:00 am, but other times, if my REM sleep is off, or I’m working out very hard, I can sleep past 8. I’m almost always awake by 9.

I find that my sleep schedule and my endocrine system are intertwined. It can be a vicious cycle when things aren’t going well! An unhealthy endocrine system makes it difficult to impossible to fix one’s sleep schedule, and a messed up sleep schedule makes it difficult to impossible to have a healthy endocrine system.

I find it interesting to pay attention to what happens when I don’t get enough sleep, and I get to experiment with this regularly. I have friends in college who often aren’t ready or able to talk or hang out until 8:00 or 9:00 pm when I’m ready to go to bed. And sometimes I can’t help myself, and I find I’ve pulled all-nighters or had too many consecutive days running on 3-4 hours of sleep while sticking to my very healthy diet.

when I don’t get enough sleep, the first thing that happens, obviously, is exhaustion. I have a hard time focusing and I feel very drained. Then I notice the anxiety. I notice a small pit in my stomach at the thought of doing something I don’t want to do. Something as simple as going on a run when I don’t want to can cause a slight twinge of anxious nausea.

The longer I go without sleep the worse my anxiety gets. It goes from that small twinge of nausea to a constant knot in my stomach at the thought of the unknown. My heart rate will spike unnecessarily at any unease. Happy excitement can turn into anxiety very quickly.

After one all-nighter or 2 days with less than 6 hours of sleep, I notice the bags under my eyes. They’re faint. Someone who doesn’t know me might not even notice them, but they’re there. Shortly after the sun comes up, I can barely see the purple-blue hues beginning to appear under my eyes.

I also experience dizziness when standing up if I’m not getting enough sleep. Recently, for two weeks, I did not get nearly enough sleep and was alternating between all-nighters and getting a couple of hours of sleep a night. Every time I stood up I would get lightheaded. I nearly fainted twice. There are multiple factors that go into this, but I believe that had I been getting proper sleep, it wouldn’t have been a problem. Since correcting my sleep schedule, the issues have gone away.

Conclusion

I remember what it was like to have severe anxiety. I know how hard it can be to treat. I find that like almost all other things health related, it starts in the gut. Fixing anxiety can take time. My panic attacks went away within days of fixing my diet, but it took months of regular exercise and a healthy diet to fix my endocrine system enough to alleviate my anxiety completely.




Tea Bags Serve a Side of Microplastics As Well

It might be time to switch to loose leaf tea.

A study from researchers at McGill University in Canada has found that a single tea bag releases 11.6 billion microplastic particles and 3.1 billion smaller nano plastic particles. Those numbers are much higher than the amounts of plastics measured previously in other foods and beverages.

Researchers tested 4 different types of plastic commercial tea bags by cutting them open, washing them, and steeping them in almost-boiling water for 5 minutes. Researchers then analyzed the tea bags and their particles using electron microscopes and spectroscopy.

Recommended: Best Supplements To Kill Candida and Everything Else You Ever Wanted To Know About Fungal Infections 

The Canadian team tested the potential toxicity of the microparticles released from the tea bags by exposing water fleas to the contaminated water, finding the particles had behavioural effects and developmental malformations on the fleas.

Milk? Sugar? Microplastics? Some tea bags found to shed billions of particles

Teabags were commonly made out of natural fibers and many still are, however many tea bags made out of natural fibers are sealed with plastic. It’s becoming more and more common for teabags to be made out of heat-safe plastics. These are most common in the pyramid-shaped tea bags that tend to be a bit more heavy-duty.

Microplastics are tiny pieces of plastics less than five millimeters long. Microplastics are the most prevalent type of marine debris, and can also be found in the rain, the wind, and even inside our own bodies. Microplastics come off of out clothes, plastic bottle fragments, cigarette filters, beauty products, and many other plastic materials. The particles then breakdown into nano-plastics, even smaller particles of plastic.

Related: How to Detox From Plastics and Other Endocrine Disruptors

The effects of microplastics on human health are largely unknown due to a lack of research. That being said, plastic is toxic and has been proven to cause cancer. Microplastics are everywhere, and we really have no way to filter them at this point. Check out this article to learn more about plastic toxicity and how to detox from it, and other endocrine system disruptors.

For alternatives to tea bags, try compostable tea bags, loose leaf tea, or metal reusable tea ball strainers.




How Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals Exacerbate COVID-19

Age and preexisting health conditions are the two of the biggest factors that determine how susceptible you are to COVID-19. Auto-immune diseases reduce immunity. Diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and high blood pressure are all preexisting conditions that make you more susceptible to COVID-19.

Unfortunately, in today’s environment, more and more young people are susceptible to these diseases than ever before. This can be credited to a number of factors, one of which is a large increase in endocrine-disrupting chemicals.

A huge body of research into a family of chemicals that alter hormone action, called endocrine-disrupting chemicals, has increasingly established them as significant contributors to the risk of these very diseases: diabetes, obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, reduced immunity, and more.

Confronting the Chemicals That Are Worsening COVID-19 – Organic Consumers Association

Related: Holistic Guide to Healing the Endocrine System and Balancing Our Hormones

A report was released in 2012 by the World Health Organization and the United Nations Environmental program showed that endocrine-disrupting chemicals are a global health threat. Studies have been published over the last 20 years linking these chemicals to the same health problems that exacerbate COVID-19. BPA’s, PFOA’s, and many different pesticides are among some of the chemicals that are pointed out in this research.

This will not be our last pandemic. Due to the environmental implications of our lifestyle, the Earth will continue to release viruses as a biological defense. So how do we take better care of ourselves for the next pandemic, and for the future? An article by Organic Consumers talks about the importance of the FDA and the EPA regulating chemicals and better establishing what is safe and what isn’t. Additionally, they point out the importance of producing materials that are safe in the next generation of materials produced for consumers.

First, regulatory agencies like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency need to use modern science to establish what is safe and what is not.  

Second, we need the next generation of materials used in consumer products to be inherently safer than what we have today, because many of those products contain, and emit, endocrine-disrupting chemicals. 

Confronting the Chemicals That Are Worsening COVID-19 – Organic Consumers Association

Recommended: How to Eliminate IBS, IBD, Leaky Gut 

On an individual level, the best thing you can do to protect yourself is to have a healthy gut through a healthy diet and lifestyle.

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Atrazine Found in Water Supply of 30 Million Americans

Glyphosate isn’t the only harmful herbicide in the water supply. An investigation from the Environmental Working Group (EWG) found that atrazine, a Syngenta product used on corn, sugarcane, and lawns, is in the tap water of over 30 million people in the U.S. 76 millions pounds of atrazine were sprayed in 2014, making it the second most commonly used herbicide (after glyphosate) in the United States. Several studies have identified the chemical as an endocrine disruptor, and it has also been linked to cancer and birth defects. The new EWG study is only a snapshot of how hard it is to avoid atrazine.

EWG’s Tap Water Database, which aggregates water testing data from utilities nationwide, shows that nearly 30 million Americans in 28 states have some level of atrazine in their tap water. Environmental Protection Agency data for 2017 show late-spring and early-summer spikes of atrazine in drinking water commonly are three to seven times higher than the federal legal limit, but these exceedances are not reported to people in the affected communities…”

Related: Foods Most Likely to Contain Glyphosate

Previous Litigation and Discovery

Syngenta is aware of the problems with atrazine and water contamination. In 2012, Syngenta was sued by 23 cities and towns in the Midwest. These municipalities alleged that Syngenta knew about but didn’t inform their communities about atrazine and its potential for groundwater contamination. Syngenta settled that class-action suit for 105 million dollars, enough to properly filter the atrazine from the towns water sources. The company did not admit any fault and maintains that atrazine is safe.

Related: Why Romaine Lettuce and Spinach Keep Trying To Kill Us, and What We Can Do About It

Even if that is the case, many areas where the herbicide is used (the most commonly treated crop is corn) are still drinking far more than the Environmental Protection Agency’s recommended maximum amount of 3.4 parts per billion of atrazine in surface water. Atrazine doesn’t break down readily in water. According to the chemical’s toxicological profile issued by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry,

Atrazine tends to persist in surface and groundwater, with a moderate tendency to bind to sediments. Slow or no biodegradation occurs in surface water or groundwater environments, respectively…Depending on the availability of sunlight, oxygen, microorganisms, and plants, the half-life of atrazine in water tends to be longer than 6 months; in some cases, no degradation of atrazine has been observed in aquatic systems.”

There are some serious issues linked to atrazine and many questions surround its health and environmental implications.

Municipalities in states like Nebraska and Wisconsin shut down wells during peak atrazine season, typically in the spring. Multiple studies have linked it to disrupted growth, behavior, immune function, and gonadal development in fish and amphibians. A study from the University of Kentucky found a high likelihood of a connection between atrazine exposure and premature births. The Centers for Disease Control lists congestion of heart, lungs, and kidneys, low blood pressure, muscle spasms, weight loss, and damage to adrenal glands as potential side effects of atrazine exposure above the maximum contaminant level for short periods of time. Use of the herbicide was banned in the European Union in 2004.

Related: What’s the Best Water for Detoxifying and For Drinking?

Atrazine Needs to Be Examined

Atrazine, while effective at killing, weeds, has not been definitively proven to be safe for the environment or public health. Syngenta has thrown millions at the EPA and succeeded in having it declared otherwise. Yet the company was unable to prove the same thing to the European Union in 2004.

This news makes me sad for the farmers. To make a profit on the nutritionally-deficient crops they grow, they spray them in large quantities of harmful chemicals that then leach into their water supply. Make a living to live what kind of life?

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New York Bill Would Ban BPA Replacements in Children’s Products

BPA was banned from children’s products in 2010. Now the New York Assembly is attempting to ban the chemicals brought in to replace BPA. The newly proposed ban would expand the number of bisphenols prohibited in children’s items from one to seven, now including bisphenol AF (BPAF), bisphenol Z (BPZ), bisphenol S (BPS), bisphenol F (BPF), bisphenol AP (BPAP), and bisphenol B (BPB). Used to harden plastics, these chemicals have been shown in recent studies to exhibit the same or higher levels estrogenic risks as the already eliminated BPA. Michael Antoniou, a researcher at the Gene Expression and Therapy Group at King’s College London and senior author of a study on BPA alternatives, says,

Industry is working to replace BPA because of health concerns – but all these alternatives are also estrogenic…The plastics manufacturing industry have turned to alternative bisphenols to produce their ‘BPA-free’ products, often with little toxicology testing…”

Related: How to Detox From Plastics and Other Endocrine Disruptors

BPA and Hormones

BPA and its alternatives are frequently found in receipts, the lining of canned foods, and containers for food storage like water bottles. BPA has been linked to inflammatory bowel disease, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, breast and prostate cancer, and asthma, but it is most well-known for disrupting the endocrine system.

These chemicals do this by mimicking estrogen. They promote the growth of breast cancer cells. Researchers found that BFAP, BPB, and BPZ are better at mimicking estrogen than BPA. This leads to an increased activation of cancer genes in cells, especially cancers with a hormonal component to them. The people primarily affected by this proposed bill (young children) are more likely to develop breast, prostate, and testicular cancer later in life. Studies have also found higher levels of BPA to be a risk factor in early puberty and hormonal development.

Related: Microplastics In Tap Water and Beer Around the Great Lakes, and Everywhere Else

Part of You

More than ninety percent of Americans have bisphenols in our bodies. BPA and other endocrine disruptors are very stable and usually stay in the body for long periods of time. This begs the question, how do you get bisphenols out of the body?

You can’t avoid plastics in our modern world, but reducing plastic usage is a step in the right direction. Look for glass, metal, fabric, or other options whenever possible. Canned foods are another frequent source of these chemicals, so read the label on canned goods carefully, and look to see if the company mentions what the liner is made of. If it says specefically that it is BPA free that means it could be using other bisphenols. Invest in reusable, metal versions of items like razors to limit plastic exposure (better for us and the environment). Find a water filter that eliminates bisphenols from your water (we like the Berkey).

These tweaks limit your exposure to bisphenols, but if you live in the modern world you have to detoxify bisphenols from the body with a proper diet. This means eating lots of raw vegetables and having internal organs, especially the gut, in good working order. Check out How to Detox From Plastics and Other Endocrine Disruptors.

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Neonicotinoids Affect Hormone Production in Humans

Neonicotinoid pesticides are known worldwide for their negative effects on bee populations, but a new study finds that this popular agricultural chemical may also be responsible for elevated levels of a key enzyme in estrogen production. This is big and scary news, as these chemicals are in a huge portion of the food supply. Nearly a quarter of insecticides sold are neonicotinoids. The majority of corn grown in the United States is treated with these chemicals, and a third of all soybean fields have been treated with them. Neonicotinoids are causing serious health issues in bees and other pollinator populations, and research is confirming that what’s bad for the bees and birds is bad for us – in more ways than we had previously confirmed.

Pesticides, Estrogen, and Cancer

This new study focuses on an important enzyme in estrogen production, aromatase (also referred to as CYP19), and how the hormone process is influenced by neonicotinoids, specifically thiacloprid and imidacloprid (both manufactured by Bayer CropScience). Previous research has shown that neonicotinoids act as estrogen disruptors in newly emerged bees and winter bees. There hasn’t been much research exploring the link between these pesticides and human health, but Professor Sanderson and Ph.D. student Élyse Caron-Beaudoin from Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique in Quebec have now identified it as an endocrine disruptor. Discussing the study’s findings, Caron-Beaudoin says, “Endocrine disrupters are natural or synthetic molecules that can alter hormone function…They affect the synthesis, action, or elimination of natural hormones, which can lead to a wide variety of health effects.”

The enzyme in question, aromatase, turns androgens into estrogens. Aromatase levels are susceptible to environmental influences, and higher levels of the enzyme have been linked to unusually early puberty in girls and endocrine disorders boys. Increased aromatase has also been linked to cancer, and this is where Sanderson and Caron-Beaudoin make their most significant conclusion.

We demonstrated in vitro that neonicotinoids may stimulate a change in CYP19 promoter usage similar to that observed in patients with hormone-dependent breast cancer.”

Neonocontinoid Regulation Worldwide

The European Union is doing something about the harm caused by neonicotinoids, banning the use of the insecticide outside in the next six months. This is a more stringent ban than the previous measure, which prohibited the use of neonicotinoids on flowering crops that attract bees. It’s a step in the right direction and good news for European people and pollinators.

On the other side of the pond, the Environmental Protection Agency plans to wrap up an official review of the risk neonicotinoids pose to pollinators by the end of 2018. Studies suggesting the link between the insecticides and bee decline have been available since the 1990s, and evidence linking the two has only grown since then. Despite this, the current EPA is unlikely to find in favor of the bees. In contrast to the European ban on neonicotinoids, Americans will have to wait until the lobbies for almonds and other heavily bee-dependent crops are willing to spend more than Bayer.

A Complete Lack of Surprise

Hindsight can be frustrating, even to the point of rage sometimes. The EPA knew the decline of the bee population was a definite possibility, thanks to neonicotinoids. Yet they allowed the pesticides to move forward with no special dispensation. The current EPA, while extremely terrible, is of our own making. Big agricultural companies have set the stage for this, and they continue to call the shots. We know that these things are bad for us, but they are accepted as a cost of doing business. Well, guess what…the price keeps increasing. At point will we be unable to pay it?

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How to Detox From Plastics and Other Endocrine Disruptors

The soles of your shoes, the fabric of your clothing, your contact lenses, your chewing gum, your phone, food containers, mattresses – all are made with plastic. It’s everywhere. It’s in our salt and it’s in our water. Plastic may be the most insidious and enduring product we’ve ever produced.

While plastic improves our daily life in countless ways, it is also suffocating our planet and causing catastrophic pollution, much of it hidden and microscopic. Just how bad is it?

Bottled water samples were collected and analyzed by scientists over a ten-month investigation. The study analyzed 259 bottles from 19 locations in nine countries across 11 different brands and found an average of 325 plastic particles for every liter of water being sold.

In one bottle of Nestlé Pure Life, concentrations were as high as 10,000 plastic pieces per litre of water. Of the 259 bottles tested, only 17 were free of plastics, according to the study.” – Drinking Bottled Water Means Drinking Microplastics

This study comes just after a damning study of plastic found in sea salt brands was published in the scientific journal Scientific Reports. Theyanalyzed seventeen commercial salt brands from eight different countries on four continents for plastic particles. They found plastics in all but one brand.

Contents

BPA’s Replacement, BPS, Likely No Better

BPA is the starting material for producing polycarbonate plastics. We found out it leaches into the ground and water and causes all kinds of problems. Of course, the manufacturers denied and lied until the mounting evidence was incontrovertible. Then BPS was developed, and was a favored replacement; they thought BPS was more resistant to leaching. But BPS is leaching. Nearly 81 percent of Americans have detectable levels of BPS in their urine. Once it enters the body it can affect cells in ways that parallel BPA.

Microplastics, Endocrine Disrupters, and the Environment

Microplastics are most likely, to varying degrees, already in all of our drinking water and in all of our bodies. Microplastics absorb toxic chemicals linked to cancer and other diseases and release those chemicals into animals that consume it, like fish and humans who eat those fish. Experts say since these fibers have been found in most of our water supply, they have to be in our food as well. From fish to organic vegetables, microplastics are everywhere. At this time, there is no known way to completely filter or contain them.

Plastic waste doesn’t biodegrade. Instead, it breaks down into smaller pieces of itself, down to the nanometer scale (one billionth of a meter). Science knows that particles of this size migrate through intestinal walls and travel to lymph nodes, glands, and bodily organs.

Plastic is toxic. It has been proven to cause cancer. Plastic toxicity weakens the immune system, metabolism, and affects people’s skin, weight, behavior, and much more.  Plastic particles will leach into food and drink and is also absorbed through skin and lungs. Plastics leach endocrine disruptors, meaning plastic screws up our hormonal system.

Most plastic products, from dishes to plastic bags to food wraps, have been proven to release estrogenic chemicals. These chemicals are endocrine disrupters that act like the sex hormone estrogen, according to a study in Environmental Health Perspectives. Excessive estrogen, estrogenic chemicals, and other endocrine disruptors have been linked to cancer, fertility problems, male impotence, heart disease, and many other conditions.

Endocrine disruptors (EDs) are chemicals that mimic our own hormones. They bind hormone receptors and disrupt the body’s normal hormonal actions. Endocrine disruptors may cause a more powerful response than the natural hormone would have or a diminished response. In some cases, they cause a completely different response than its natural counterpart would have created. EDs are typically measured in parts per trillion, which is indicative of the fact that very small amounts can have a disrupting effect on us. EDs are very stable. They don’t break down quickly. This is, in large part, why they are in so many products. They also get stored in our fat cells. They tend to stick around for a long time.

The dangers of plastics have not been studied adequately, and the plastic industry has no desire or intention of doing so. A study looking into the effects of BPA on rat testicles found that lipoic acid exerted antioxidant effects that can protect against BPA damage. In the study, BPA was shown to reduce testosterone, testicular weight, protein content, antioxidant activity, and beneficial enzyme activity, while damaging the mitochondria. Fetal exposure to BPA has been associated with obesity, altered reproductive function, and cancers later on in life. BPA was accidentally discovered to be carcinogenic when medical researchers came to find that rats were getting cancer during a study for something else.  They found out that it was caused the BPA in the water bottles. And now we are supposed to trust BPA free plastics?

How to Avoid Plastic Toxicity

Many manufacturers have stopped using BPA to harden plastics, replacing it with “BPA-free” alternatives like the most common replacement, BPS (Bisphenol S).

Our research showed that low levels of BPS had a similar impact on the embryo as BPA. In the presence of either BPA or BPS, embryonic development was accelerated. Additionally, BPA caused premature birth.” –Nancy Wayne

You probably can’t avoid plastics. Even if you go to another planet plastic is going to take you there and contaminate that ecosystem. But you can limit plastic consumption and keep your body in a homeostasis state that detoxifies itself at all times.  And the good news is that with the right diet and a healthy body, BPA and BPS can be flushed out of your system quickly, some say within 24 hours. A properly working body can process and dispel a lot of toxins. An unhealthy body rids itself of toxins at a slower rate than the toxins are consumed and produced.

Ways to Limit Plastic Contamination & Plastic Use

  1. Keep your home clean, and vacuum regularly
  2. Filter tap water
  3. Always avoid artificial fragrances
  4. Stay away from warm or hot plastics, don’t even breathe near them
  5. Avoid canned foods
  6. Avoid conventional personal care products like shampoos, soaps, moisturizers, makeup
  7. Avoid conventional and big-ag produce (pesticides and herbicides have plastic residues)
  8. Cook your own foods using whole-food ingredients
  9. Stop using plastic straws, even in restaurants
  10. Purchase food, like cereal, pasta, and rice from bulk bins and fill a reusable bag or container
  11. Use paper or your own reusable shopping bags, bulk goods bags, and bring your own mesh produce bags (FYI: I suspect that many paper bags contain BPA and BPS)
  12. No more chewing gum, it’s made of plastic
  13. Buy boxes and glass instead of plastic bottles whenever possible
  14. Use a reusable bottle or mug for your beverages or coffee and soda refills (but you don’t drink that crap, do you?)
  15. Boycott any restaurant that still uses styrofoam – Why is that still a thing?
  16. Use matches or invest in a refillable metal lighter – avoid the plastic disposable ones
  17. Eat real, whole foods – fresh foods equates to less packaging and less previous plastic contact
  18. Don’t use plasticware ever, bring your own if need be
  19. Use cloth diapers – disposable diapers are extremely toxic to the environment and your baby
  20. Make your own cleaning products
  21. Pack your lunch in glass containers and reusable bags.
  22. Use a razor with replaceable blades instead of a disposable razor
  23. Find other disposal products that can be replaced by their non-disposable counterparts
  24. Avoid seafood
  25. Avoid cheap supplements and be wary of sports supplements

Also, Avoid BPA receipts!

Did you know that some receipts contain 250 to 1,000 times the amount of BPA typically found in a can of food?  If that isn’t scary enough, BPA transfers readily from the receipt to skin and cannot be washed off. Different types of receipts contain varying levels of BPA. If you aren’t sure whether or not a merchant uses BPA in their receipts, either ask directly or let them know early in the transaction that you will not need your receipt. Gas station receipts are particularly notorious for containing huge amounts of BPA.” – Home Maker Chic

How to Detoxify Plastic Byproducts

To eliminate BPS, BPA, and other plastic residues from the body, one must  first and foremost, make sure your gut is not leaking! A healthy gut microbiome will breakdown toxins into inert substances. See How To Heal Your Gut for more on that.

The second most important thing you can do is consume lots of salads like these. Incidentally, salads are part of building a healthy gut microbiome. A large salad with 15 different vegetables and herbs will chelate toxic chemicals from the body while providing nutrition and feeding a healthy, diverse microbiome.

Also, eliminate heavy metals and other toxins as well. Toxins tend to disrupt the endocrine system. The endocrine system is your hormonal system (click to learn more), which includes glands like the thyroid, adrenals, and the pancreas. Heavy metal toxicity and other toxins will also inhibit the body’s ability to detoxify other chemicals including plastic residue.

Most people living on a modern, refined diet suffer from candida overgrowth, and consequently, a leaky gut. Ingesting pesticides, GMOs, antibiotics, alcohol, and other toxic foods kill our natural, beneficial gut microbiome. The refined sugars and flours we ingest feed the microbes that survive our toxic lifestyles. These microbes thrive in our toxic bodies because they feed off of simple sugars and weak cells. They also feed off of plastics, heavy metals, and all kinds of toxins. And they are not the microbes that optimize our health. THe best gut bacteria just happen to like the healthiest foods. Nature wouldn’t work if it were any other way.

The diet I recommend may sound extreme. It’s the same diet I advocate for those suffering from cancer, diabetes, depression, any other autoimune disease or infection, or for those who just want to detoxify. If you are sick, no amount of supplements will fix that. But with the right diet, supplements will radically speed up the process of getting well. If you want to live life disease free, save the following articles:

Even if you’re not feeling ill in any way, detoxifying plastic or anything else is done best with raw, fresh vegetables. The right salad will chelate heavy metals, BPAs, BPS, and more, all while replenishing the minerals we need. Garlic, parsley, cilantro, and many other foods show promising chelation properties, but their effects alone are weak. Thr trick is to combine many healthy foods with their many health benefits for a holistic approach. Taking a few cloves of garlic a day will not significantly reduce levels of toxins any more than taking a supplement. In other words, don’t underestimate the importance of the right diet. It must contain a wide variety of fresh, whole foods.

Supplements for BPA and BPS, Heavy Metal Detox, and Other Endocrine Disrupters

Without a proper diet, the right supplements will work, but only to a certain extent, and only for a little while. On the other hand, supplements taken with a healthy diet can radically speed up healing time.

Plastic Detox Supplement Stack

With a proper diet, the following is probably overkill (but if the budget allows it…):

Keep reading for an explanation of these supplements:

Probiotics

1.) Get thee some probiotics – pronto. I’m not talking celebrity endorsed yogurt here. Chose fermented foods like kimchi, natural sauerkraut, and kefir. A refrigerated, concentrated probiotic supplement helps. Drink kombucha. Bifidobacterium breve and Lactobacillus casei were found to extract BPA from the blood of mammals and were excreted out through the bowels. That is very good news!

Beneficial bacteria strengthen the gut and help break down chemicals like BPA so they can be cleared out. As a bonus, they break down pesticides, another major endocrine-disruptor, and other toxins as well. Probiotics are becoming well known for breaking down endocrine-disruptors and other toxins in the body.

My recommendations (pick one depending on the budget):

  • Syntol AMD (powerful probiotic with prebiotics and enzymes)

Activated Charcoal (AC)

Chelators are small molecules that bind very tightly to metal ions. Activated charcoal is proven to attach to heavy metals including beneficial macrominerals, so mineral supplementation is recommended when consuming activated charcoal, though this can be mitigated with a healthy diet like as mentioned above.

Activated charcoal is highly negatively charged. It seems to bind with positively charged particles. Pathogens typically have a high positive charge associated with them, and so do plastics. Activated charcoal filters have shown to remove BPA from water, but I don’t see any research on its ability to filter BPA from the body, but I think it works.

My recommendation:

Bentonite Clay

Like activated charcoal, bentonite clay is negatively charged. Unlike charcoal, bentonite clay provides minerals and other nutrients to the body while it sucks out toxins, as it helps repair the intestinal tract.

My recommendation:

Diatomaceous Earth (DE)

Another chelator, and much more. Any self-respecting eco-friendly health-nut has a bag of food-grade DE somewhere. Take it with water to kill pathogens in your gut, and use it outside or indoors for pest control.

Food grade DE is approximately 80-85% silica. Life cannot exist without silica. Most people are silica-deficient.

There are tons of uses and benefits of using DE. Read more: Diatomaceous Earth – Mother Nature’s Secret Weapon: What Is It, How to Use It

Chlorella

Chlorella has a well-documented history of helping remove heavy metals and other toxins like dioxin from the body expeditiously. Its high concentration of chlorophyll and fiber seems to be a big part of its exceptional detox benefits. It’s almost certain, considering the mechanism, that Chlorella (and spirulina) help pull out BPAs and other plastic residue.

Chlorella is a good source of protein, GLA, and phytochemicals, B12, B2, B3, iron, magnesium, Beta Carotene, and a bunch of powerful phytochemicals. Chlorella stimulates the growth of friendly bacteria. Furthermore, chlorella’s cell walls act to absorb toxic compounds within the intestines, restoring proper gastrointestinal pH and helping to promote normal peristalsis. And it is another chelator, as it is also very negatively charged, attracting positively charged molecules.

Phytochemicals found within Chlorella pyrenoidosa support the complex network of enzymatic reactions that drive the human detoxification system. This detoxification network involves the Phase I and Phase II enzymatic reactions that take place in nearly all cells in the body, though they are concentrated in the liver cells. Phase I detoxification reactions change non-polar chemicals that are not water-soluble into relatively polar, water-soluble compounds. The Phase I process can result in the formation of reactive chemicals that are typically more toxic than the original compounds. Phase II detoxification is necessary therefore to add chemical groups to the toxic intermediates to make them water-soluble so that they may easily be excreted via urine and/or feces. Phase I and Phase II detoxification pathways must remain functional for the removal of toxins from the body. This research focuses specifically on the Chlorella pyrenoidosa species of green algae recognized for its detoxification properties. – King Hardt Academy

Spirulina

Chlorella is green algae, but spirulina is more of a blue-green in color. These two algae have a lot in common. Chlorella’s green hue demonstrates that it’s richer in chlorophyll than spirulina, and chlorella is said to have stronger detoxification properties. But spirulina is an even better source of protein, and it offers iron, B1, B2, B3, B6, B12, calcium, potassium, zinc, and a host of microminerals.

My recommendation:

Related: Total Nutrition – Make your own Homemade Multivitamin and Mineral Formula

Enzymes

Digestive enzymes break down food. Metabolic enzymes, also known as systemic enzymes, break down foreign proteins, fibrin, and other toxins, and they clean the blood of impurities. Consider the ramifications of this. Probiotics and enzymes together help breakdown nearly everything in the gut that doesn’t belong. Read more about systemic enzymes here.

My recommendation:

Indolplex – DIM

Diindolylmethane (DIM) is naturally present in cruciferous vegetables such as cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, and brussels sprouts. It helps metabolize estrogens and hormone-disrupting estrogen mimics. Indolplex is a dietary supplement that contains a patented, bioavailable form of diindolylmethane.

My recommendation: 

Calcium D-Glucarate

Calcium glucarate (calcium d-glucarate, calcium saccharate) supports the glucuronidation detoxification process.

Glucuronidation is a major metabolic reaction, and mainly takes place in the liver, for disposal of a variety of endogenous (such as TH) and exogenous substrates (such as PCBs).

Comprehensive Handbook of Iodine, 2009

Calcium glucarate is naturally found in fruits and vegetables, especially cruciferous vegetables. Calcium glucarate helps rid the body of toxins and excess hormones while it protects our cells from carcinogens.

My recommendation: 

Conclusion

My family and I do avoid it as often as we can. Years ago, I spent considerable time trying to completely eliminate plastic from my life. I found that my overall environmental footprint went up a little. Plastics make things so easy and convenient that sometimes it just doesn’t make any sense to do without it. I’m careful, but plastics don’t scare me. The body can handle a remarkable toxic load when the diet is right. I trust my diet to eliminate the BPA, BPS, and whatever else gets in there that shouldn’t be.

That said, I cannot wait for the day when our plastics come from hemp or some other sustainable alternative. There are much better options available to us if we can just get out from under this petroleum-based economy.

Recommended Reading:
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