fluctuate, toxins start to find their way into your circulatory system and excess hormones can’t be cleared from your system, resulting in hair loss and irregular periods.
The skin, like the liver, is a major detoxifying organ, so waste materials exit through the skin’s pores and show up on your face, hair and nails, causing wrinkles, acne, blotchy skin, blemishes, bad hair days, split nails and white blotches on your nails – all clear warning signs that vital nutrients are lacking.
Your kidneys and bladder work harmoniously with your liver to eliminate waste from your system. The kidneys help your system keep the right amount of minerals, while pulling out unwanted elements like nitrogen, salts and certain chemicals. When the filtering is complete, urine flows from the kidneys to the bladder where it is eliminated.
When your liver can’t cope with too many toxins, the excess passes into your bloodstream and to your kidneys. But your kidneys are not designed to detoxify waste, as your liver does. Consequently the toxic substances move to the urinary tract where they can cause yeast infections. Your skin is also forced to do double time in the elimination process, which can cause rashes, acne and other skin conditions.
Situated on top of your kidneys, your adrenal glands are on the alert every second of the day, responding to the pressures affecting you. In order to cope, the adrenals manufacture hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol, which keep blood sugar in check so that you receive the energy you need. The more your adrenals are under siege because of physical, emotional or environmental stress, the greater likelihood of burn-out or adrenal exhaustion. When this occurs, too much cortisol is produced, which in turn can trigger testosterone production and the familiar symptoms of PCOS.
Your lymph system is also crucial to your body’s detox processes. Lymph, a liquid produced by the lymph glands in various parts of your body, absorbs dead cells, excess fluids and other waste products from foods and takes them to the lymph nodes. Here the waste is filtered and eventually fed into the blood and on to one of the eliminatory organs – skin, liver or kidneys – to be passed out via perspiration, faeces or urine.
Poor lymph drainage due to excess waste results in a build-up of fluids containing waste products. This waste can become toxic and stagnant, and eventually will make you feel bloated and tired. In addition, tissues can be damaged due to excess fluid.
What Can You Do?
There are two things you can do to help keep your liver, kidneys and adrenals in good working order and protect yourself from toxins:
1 Give them nutritional support from a healthy diet. Nutrients can help process, transform or eliminate toxins and excess hormones through the liver’s detoxification pathways. A healthy diet can help you prevent, control and repair the damage toxins have caused, while working to restore hormonal balance in your body.
2 Reduce the amount of toxins in your food, chemical home cleaners, cosmetics, plastic and water supply, in order to allow your body’s natural detoxification systems to function optimally and regulate your hormones.
DETOXIFICATION
There are many detox programmes recommending you drink only water and vegetable juice for a number of days to cleanse your system, and then add in other foods over a week or so. These aren’t usually a good idea, because they slow metabolism and are very hard to stick to.
You don’t really need to go on fasts, retreats or harsh regimes or take supplements to protect yourself from toxins. The best way to protect against toxicity is to keep your body’s own self-purifying system in good working order, by eating well, reducing the number of toxins you put into your body, and following these recommendations:
1 Drink pure water.
2 Eat healthy, fresh food.
3 Always read the labels.
4 Go organic.
5 Cut down on caffeine and alcohol.
6 Stop smoking.
7 Ditch the ‘bad’ fats.
8 Try chemical-free living.
9 Reduce your stress.
10 Get enough sleep.
Now let’s take a closer look at each of these.
1) Water, Water
Without water, you can’t survive. Making sure that the water you drink is pure and clean is a good first step. The World Health Organization has claimed that 80 per cent of world’s illnesses would be eliminated if we all drank pure water. Water replenishes, cleanses, rejuvenates and restores your liver, kidneys and adrenals. It is the most important item in any detox plan. We’ve also seen in the previous chapter how important it is for women with PCOS to ensure an adequate intake of fluid.
But where do we find pure water?
The standard purification techniques used by most water companies remove the bugs from the water but do not remove all the dissolved chemicals. It is estimated that as many as 60,000 different chemicals now contaminate our water supplies. In attempts to clean the water, other chemicals are sometimes added, including chlorine and aluminium.
Not only may these chemicals be toxic in their own right, but chlorine may react with organic waste to form compounds which can increase the risk of cancer of the colon, rectum and bladder.
The recognition that much of our tap water is contaminated has seen the boom in bottled-water sales. According to Professor Larry Laudan in his book Danger Ahead, however, there’s a one-in-four chance that the next batch of bottled water you drink will be nothing more than tap water which has been passed through a filter.
There is also little need to drink mineral water to obtain the minerals we need for our bodies. While this type of water does contain essential trace minerals, it also contains calcium carbonate, which our bodies need but cannot absorb in a desirable way from water. This calcium carbonate can contribute to blocking of the arteries and to arthritis, rheumatism, gout and indigestion. The best source of minerals is vegetables grown in mineral-rich soil.
Distilled water isn’t much better. The process of distillation can concentrate some compounds and remove essential trace elements. For water to be pure, it must be double distilled. Few companies do this.
What to Do?
Ideally, all drinking water should be purified in the home. You can do this with water filters and water filter systems. The quickest and easiest are water-filter jugs, readily available from department stores and health food shops. Use the filtered water for cooking as well as for hot and cold drinks. Bear in mind that filters can become breeding grounds for bacteria, so regularly replacing the filter and cleaning the filter-housing is essential. A good quality filter should eliminate, or greatly reduce, the levels of heavy metals such as lead, cadmium and mercury, fluoride and chlorine, and remove any adverse tastes, colours and odours in the water.
If you want to go to the next level of convenience you can buy plumbed-in carbon filters to use at your kitchen sink. These are effective at removing chlorine, heavy metals and many organic compounds. However they may not be so successful
