Ageless: The Naked Truth About Bioidentical Hormones (40 page)

Every moment of every day we are exposed to thousands of toxic chemicals. They are everywhere, all the time. They are a big part of the reason we are getting sick. Yet it wasn’t always this way.

When I was a child, my parents didn’t have a cabinet full of chemicals stored under the kitchen sink. My mother washed her dishes with Ivory soap. If we had an ant infestation right before a rain, she washed down the baseboards and sink tops with soap and water. The food we ate wasn’t labeled organic because the food
was
organic. We didn’t spray our fruits and vegetables with pesticides. If my mother found bugs on the fruits and vegetables in her garden, she washed the leaves with soap and water.

Our milk came in glass bottles. Our babies drank their milk from glass bottles; our meat was wrapped in white butcher paper. We didn’t drink our sodas and coffee from Styrofoam cups; they didn’t exist. There were no preservatives in our food, nor were there hormones in our meat. The oceans were clean; our fish were not filled with mercury and other poisons. It was a simpler time.

Growing up, I loved root beer floats—my mother would buy a bottle of root beer and a carton of vanilla ice cream once during the summer to make this yummy dessert. Mmm! I waited all year for that one. We didn’t have numerous six-packs of sodas and colas sitting around. Back then it was a once-a-year treat, not a sweet I ate every day as kids today might do. At mealtimes we drank milk—milk that wasn’t loaded with hormones and additives that you can’t pronounce. Now we walk around with giant plastic cups called Big Gulps filled with diet sodas loaded with aspartame or other artificial sweeteners. Aspartame is found in sugar-free chewing gums, cola drinks, sweets, and many other foods we enjoy every day, and it is made of chemicals. They say in America we consume a gallon of chemicals every year! And this is a conservative estimate.

Sweets are no longer a treat, they are an everyday occurrence, and
our children are showing the effects. Adult-onset diabetes is now called type 2 diabetes because so many children are also affected by this disease. It now accounts for up to 45 percent of new cases of diabetes among youth. Fifteen years ago, type 2 accounted for less than 3 percent of all cases of newly diagnosed diabetes in children and teens. Also, children are eating so many sweets that they’re now showing symptoms of heart disease—heart disease! This is a tragedy.

Who had ever heard of the word
phthalates
(the outgas that comes from the plastics so innocently used to wrap our food in today’s world)? In fact, we eat so many plastics daily, unknowingly, that the government has established an average daily amount that we can “safely” ingest. Once inside our bodies, these phthalates, or plastics, hook tightly on to our cell parts, where they wreak havoc. They damage hormone receptors, leading to loss of sex drive and energy, or they damage brain chemistry, leading to learning disabilities and hyperactivity, or they accumulate in organs and trigger cancers of the prostate, breast, lung, and thyroid. We also find these poisons in industrial compounds used in everything from plastic shower curtains to lipstick. That “new car” smell, which is particularly strong after the car has been sitting in the sun for a while, comes from the outgas of phthalates volatilizing from a plastic dashboard. Phthalates have been known to cause kidney and liver damage and harm a developing fetus. Nice, huh?

Who had ever heard of dioxin, either? Dioxin is a man-made chemical that is now almost inescapable in our food. Created in part through the manufacture of plastics, pesticides, and other chemicals, dioxin is spewed from industrial smokestacks, taken up into the clouds, and then rained down onto the soil, where it is absorbed by the plants consumed as food for animals and humans. When you wrap your food in plastic, then microwave it, you create carcinogens from the dioxin in the plastic. Dioxin is one of the most potent carcinogens known to man. Toxic chemicals like dioxin and phthalates are everywhere—in the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, and the soil in which we plant our very future.

There is not a home, office, institution, or manufacturing site where plastics do not abound. They are used in construction materials, building products and furnishings, plastic baby bottles, baby
rattles and teething toys, plastic crib bumpers, car seats, mattresses, kitchen appliances, shoes and sneakers, IV tubing, computer housings, automobile dashboards and undercoatings, electrical wire coverings and cables, carpet backing, cosmetics, notebook covers, clothes, dishes, tablecloths, shower curtains, toilet seats, gadgets, games, and much more. Not only do these plastics get into our food, they also get into our air, assuring an easy route to every one of our internal organs. Any chemical you can smell in the air makes its way into your bloodstream, eventually disseminating into all your organs.

Currently, there are about fifty thousand chemical compounds in production: Ten thousand different chemicals are used in the processing of food, and more than three thousand chemicals are added to our food supply. Our drinking water alone may contain over seven hundred chemicals. One of them is fluoride, an extremely toxic poison that is banned in nine European countries. A portion of the fluoride in the water we drink is deposited in our bones, where it has been shown in studies to weaken bones and increase the risk of hip fracture in men and women over age sixty-five who have been exposed to twenty years or more of fluoride in their drinking water. Read the label of your fluoridated toothpaste sometime: “Keep out of reach of children under 6 years of age. If more than used for brushing is accidentally swallowed, get medical help or contact a Poison Control Center right away.” Why? Apparently, there’s enough fluoride in that toothpaste tube to kill a twenty-pound child. That should tell you something! (Be sure to read Dr. Herb Slavin’s interview and see what he has to say about fluoride.)

Heavy metals, particularly mercury, are another example of deadly toxins hidden in our foods. We can get mercury toxicity from contaminated fish, shellfish, and small fish that feed around the mouths of rivers. Large fish such as swordfish, mackerel, and tuna feed on those smaller fish and then stockpile those heavy metals in their own flesh. As if we did not have enough ways to contaminate our foods, there have been accidental spills that have led to silent yet serious poisonings. Add to this the highly polluting commercial shipping industry, incinerators, and others that have brought us to the place of existence we are now experiencing.

Additionally, air pollution, cigarette smoke, smog, car exhaust, toxic waste pesticides, herbicides, ultraviolet light, and drugs can all generate disease-causing free radicals in the body. Free radicals induce inflammatory reactions that cause life-shortening chronic diseases. Think about this, too: The average household carpet outgases over a dozen chemicals. Also in our homes, the place where we spend the most time, are paints, solvents, insecticides, greases, oils, lawn mower gas cans, a heated car engine, furnace, gas dryer, gas water heater, and washing machines—all possible pollutants, and we never give them a thought!

The chemicals given off in our environment can remain in the body for years, putting an enormous strain on our vital organs and glands. In fact, more than four hundred toxic chemicals have been detected in human tissue. This increased toxic burden on our bodies results in illness and disease: decreased immune function, arthritis, rheumatism, hormonal dysfunction, neurotoxicity, leukemia, obesity, chronic fatigue, depression, physiological disturbances, ADD (attention deficit disorder), and, of course, cancer.

Now, I realize that many of the things you have at home, at work, and around you are everyday luxuries. You’re not about to get rid of most of them. However, there are some you can do without, especially now that you know their dangers, their impact on your body, and why you have chronic conditions you can’t seem to shake. The purpose of this section is not to scare you. I just want to make you more aware so that you can lessen the effects on you and your family by eliminating some of them, buying the highest-quality food you can afford, and getting to the proper doctor if you feel you have been adversely affected by unwanted chemical poisoning.

TAKE CHARGE OF YOUR ENVIRONMENT

Buy high-quality air and water purification systems for your home.

Purchase natural-fiber clothing, bed coverings, and furnishings of cotton and wool whenever possible.

Use natural floorings or ceramic tile rather than carpets. But if you opt for carpet, choose natural fiber wool rugs and carpets.

Buy safe, natural, nontoxic paints and household cleaners to eliminate synthetic toxins.

Microwave your foods in glass; don’t use plastic wrap.

Try to find ways to eliminate the use of plastics in your life: Drink water from glass bottles, heat baby’s milk in glass bottles, and use fabric shower curtains instead of plastic.

Find ways to eliminate pests and rodents from your house without using chemicals. A helpful book is
1001 All-Natural Secrets to a Pest-Free Property
by Dr. Myles H. Bader.

Although we can limit our exposure to them, the chemicals in the air and water and soil are largely out of our control. Air pollution, cigarette smoke, smog, car exhaust, toxic waste pesticides, herbicides, ultraviolet light, and drugs can all generate free radicals in the body. We do have control over our diet and lifestyle, however. The choices we make also affect our organs, tissues, and glands. Of all the vital organs in the body, the ones that suffer the most abuse from our modern dietary and lifestyle habits are the colon and the liver. The liver is groaning from the effort of breaking down the massive intake of drugs and poisons. The colon was intended by nature to function as a smoothly flowing system that promptly and efficiently flushes digestive wastes from the body. Instead, it has become a stagnant wasteland. It’s not pretty to think about, but I believe if we could see what we have lurking in our digestive systems, we would all change our eating habits overnight. Choosing real food, healthy food, is a part of the environmental assault over which we have control.

In this day and age, we now have the opportunity to do something about the environment that is aging us. The simple, pollutant-free life we inherited from our ancestors no longer exists. As I have said, we are experiencing an environmental assault unlike anything the human species has ever before endured. This is not hocus-pocus. Think about it: how different life is today relative to chemicals and preservatives, fake food, and bad oils. Think about the cooking oil used in fast-food chains. Think of all the processed food we ingest. All this bad food and all these chemicals and poisons have a negative effect on the state of our health.

These new-thinking doctors can help you reverse the damage. It’s not too late. Take charge of your health and your personal environment. If you have been going from doctor to doctor and can’t get to the bottom of your problems or are on too much medication, a good antiaging doctor might hold the answer.

I
NFLAMMATION

Hardly a week goes by without the publication of a new study uncovering another way that “inflammation” does harm to the body. The word
inflammation
is so overused that hardly any of us have ever really stopped to ask ourselves what exactly is inflammation.

Inflammation holds good news and bad news. When we cut our finger, an inflammatory response is triggered. It swells up and reddens. Sometimes it gets worse and becomes infected. Then, because of inflammation, it gets better. Another example: Inflammation is what turns the tissue around a splinter red or causes swelling in an injured toe. Inflammation is the body’s natural healing mechanism. It activates a defensive attack the instant a deadly microbe slips into the body. Once this process subsides, healing begins. This is good inflammation, the body working at optimum.

Here’s where we go wrong: The moment we experience recognizable inflammation, we run to the doctor and demand to be given something to stop it. Inflammation hurts, after all; it is painful. Swelling is uncomfortable, redness is sore, infection oozes and is not only sore but also disagreeable to view on our bodies.

What we fail to recognize is that, again, inflammation is our body’s way of healing itself. When we stop the process with a drug or ointment, we leave our bodies confused. Now medicine takes over what the body is designed to do naturally; as a result, it takes longer to heal. The inflammation is driven deeper into the body, and it doesn’t go away. Now it becomes harmful. That’s bad inflammation.

Inflammation is not always as evident as the redness and swelling around a splinter. Inflammation can also be silent, lurking inside unbeknownst to us. Sometimes the problem is a genetic disposition
(something we have inherited), and other times it is environmental (like smoking or eating fatty foods made from fake fats), that keeps the inflammatory process going, since habits like these contribute to the development of underlying plaques in our arteries and other problems. In these cases, inflammation becomes chronic rather than transitory, sticking around a lot longer than it is needed. When this occurs, the body turns on itself, with inflammation launching an attack on normal cells. Within this scenario lies a wide variety of diseases.

Chronic inflammation does harm to the body. In fact, chronic inflammation may be the engine that drives many of the most feared illnesses of middle and old age. Our Western lifestyle with diets high in sugar and saturated fats, accompanied by little or no exercise, makes it easier for the body to become inflamed.