Last updated on March 14th, 2018
There are a lot of toxins in the environment, in the air we breath, in our food and water, in the soaps and lotions we use each day, and even in our clothes.
You become sick, quickly or slower, when there are things in your body that do not belong there or things that are missing.
Among the things that do not belong in your body are things like bacteria or viruses, or chemicals like free-radicals and metals like aluminum.
Removing these “bad things” from your body and making sure they never get in will lead you to live a much healthier life.
There can also be good things missing from your body such as various nutrients that your body needs to manufacture strong, healthy cells and to keep your nervous system functioning properly. The missing nutrients I address in another article listed at the end of this article.
In this article I focus on a concept known as “toxic load”. Toxic load refers to the work your immune system is doing trying to remove toxins from your body.
Your immune system can only work so hard without becoming overloaded.
Your immune system being overloaded can lead to immediate sickness or it can lead to long term chronic diseases which develop over years or decades.
Having an overloaded immune system can also lead to additional disease as your immune system is too worn down to fight effectively.
In addition to working too hard, your immune system needs various nutrients in order to function efficiently. More about nutrition and the immune system is available at the end of this article.
If you take a human cell and drop it into a toxic environment it will die much more quickly than if it is in a healthy environment.
This applies to individual cells and to your entire body which is made up of billions of cells.
If you eat or swallow mercury, or just touch it on a regular basis, you will lose brain cells at an alarming rate and you will develop cognitive problems.
One of the problems with mercury and other metals is that once they are in your body they are very difficult to get out. Aluminum is increasingly being associated with degenerative brain disease.
Toxins have 3 main ways of getting into your body. You can swallow them in which case they get into your digestive system, you can breath them in, and you can absorb them through your skin.
My goal for you is to eliminate as much of the toxic load your immune system is exposed to as possible.
So how do I reduce my toxic load?
It means one thing: Avoid long chemical names and toxins in the products that you use and the foods that you eat.
It is actually not that hard to do. In fact avoiding long named chemicals and toxins can save you a lot of money.
Eat only naturally occurring food with simple names, like beef, tomatoes, lettuce, rice, etc.
(I do not mean to endorse those foods I am just using them as example of simple foods)
Do not eat or drink anything that contains long chemical names in the ingredient list.
Do not eat sugars.
Do not put things **on** your body that have long chemical names in them or other known toxins.
For example, most anti-perspirants contain aluminum. Look for entirely natural deodorants instead.
Use only natural Castile soap. You can wash your hair and your body with it.
Wear clothing made out of natural fibers (those shaved from animals (wool) or gathered from plants (cotton))
Use natural soaps in your washing machine.
Use a reverse osmosis (RO) filter for your drinking water. Many governments put long named chemicals and other toxins into the drinking water in addition to the toxins the water picks up as it goes through miles of pipes.
So what about what you inhale? Do you need a home air purifier. I would do the home air purifier last, after you have fixed all the other issues.
What about product X?
“But I can’t give up product x” you say “and it has long named chemicals in it.”
It is a question of total toxic load. The less load the better.
Removing 90% of the problem is way better than doing nothing.
So sure you can keep your toxic hair shampoo but I suspect after a few months you will probably be able to find an alternative to even that.
The things you spray around your house, like cleaners, should also be made up of simple natural substances without long chemical names. Vinegar, citrus juices, alcohol, and baking soda are all good cleaners.
Since I mentioned it you may be wondering about consuming alcohol.
They are lots of health upsides and downsides to alcohol. A glass or two of red wine (a glass is 5 ounces) each day does look to correlate with better cognitive outcomes in old age.
Beer and distilled liquors also have their proponents.
Here is a list of items to help you get started detoxifying your life:
I get a small percentage of the sale if you purchase items via these links. You pay the same price here as you would searching for them at amazon.
You can think of a purchase via these links as helping the effort at FiniteSpaces which is what I use the proceeds for.
It used to be a lot harder to find these sorts of items, but these days the market is well served, you can also get these sorts of items from your local Whole Foods.
Castile Soap Laundry Detergent Deodorant Reverse Osmosis As an alternative to RO, you could use a gravity filtration system like Alexa Pure
What about getting already accumulated metals out of your body?
The accumulated metals in your body are mostly stored in fat cells. To get rid of those toxins you will have to lose the fat, which means a weight loss program.
After you get rid of the fat, you can get fat again if you wish, just be careful to make sure your fat cells are no longer full of metals or other toxins.
To lose weight see
To get more of the right nutrients see