Health effects of xenobiotics

Is there such thing as natural food toxins? You bet. Not all natural, whole foods are equally good, and some can be plain unhealthy. How can naturally occurring food substances be harmful to the body? Well, we live in imperfect world, and our food is part of it: some food substances are just capable of disrupting our metabolic cycle.

There is an untold number of natural chemical compounds in our foods, and not all of them are friendly to us. The offending substances are either biologically active amines - like tyramine, histamine and serotonin - or natural plant toxins, such are glycoalkaloids in nightshades (potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, tobacco, some spices), cyanogenic glucosides (bitter almond, cassava root, sorghum root, lima bean, fruit seed, etc.) , or pyrrolizidine alkaloids in some herbs and herbal teas.

These natural food toxins are adversely affecting health of millions, most of them unaware of what is causing - or contributing to - their health problem. Symptoms caused by natural food toxins include food sensitivities and allergies, neurologic, cardiovascular or respiratory disturbances, arthritis, and liver damage.
 

While natural food toxins are definitely a health concern, toxic chemicals of industrial and agricultural origin are simply overwhelming. What else to say but: beware! Volatile hydrocarbons, dioxins, toxic metals, pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, chemical fertilizers, food additives, chlorine and fluoride - to list only some of the major ones - are everywhere.

There are tens of thousands of tons of PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) in the upper 200m of the North Atlantic, after three decades (1947-1977, when they were banned) of dumping them into the Hudson River. After another three decades, the EPA finally made the GE responsible for cleaning the worst spots of the contaminated river sediments, which should take place in 2009-2016. The ocean, of course, remains contaminated. And that is just the tip of the iceberg.

Plasticizers (or phthalates), common in PVC materials, plastic food packaging and cosmetics, are another endocrine (hormone) and cellular disruptor. These chemical substances are either inherently toxic to our bodies, or become toxic due to their excessive accumulation. They accumulate in our tissues, damage our enzymes, mimic our hormones and deplete the body of nutrients it needs for detoxication, making it ever more vulnerable.

Chemical toxins are capable of disrupting body chemistry in many ways. Possible consequence is any imaginable symptom or disease.

 The final nail to the coffin of our health, suffering from all kinds of diseases due to toxic chemical exposures, as well as poor dietary and lifestyle choices, are conventional medical treatments which not only ignore the cause of your illness, but add more toxins to your body, in the form of pharmaceutical drugs.
 

Ample scientific evidence proves that we are being poisoned, slowly but surely, by all these toxins permanently deposited in our bodies. Epidemic increase in the incidence of degenerative diseases, for which our toxic exposures are among the main causative factors, was "officially" ignored for a while, then partly acknowledged, but treated mainly as a "drug deficiency".

The danger of toxic substances in our air, food and water, was played down by assigning to them often convenient - to the industry and government - "safe limits". That didn't make us safe. Not only that these "safe limits" are very loosely enforced. They are inherently arbitrary, which is why they keep shrinking as every next toxin proves to be more, or much more damaging than what it was thought to be.

And no one ever bothered to access the

combined effect of hundreds of different chemical toxins
present in our bodies.

No wonder that the avalanche of degenerative diseases is not slowing down. No wonder there is so many "clinically healthy" people suffering from serious, sometimes debilitating symptoms. Or those others, who were "lucky" enough to get a disease label (diagnosis), but with the "cause unknown" tag attached. How do we cure illnesses we don't know cause of? We don't...

While very few people doubt that we are exposed to many toxins, the majority is still unwilling to accept that the effect can be so bad, as to cause widespread diseases. After all, there is the government, with institutions specifically monitoring health effects of chemicals in our air, water and food. Why would they allow such an epidemic?

The answer is: (a) economic and political prosperity, and (b) the money power. Frankly, adequately protecting people's health would require production and marketing constraints that would significantly slow down economic and political growth.

Evidently, governments have concluded long ago that strong economy and resulting political power are

worth some sacrifice in the area of public health.

Financial power and political influence of large industrial conglomerates will make sure that this view doesn't change. But it got out of control: protecting "common" interest is adversely affecting health of so many individuals, and to such a serious extent, that it cannot be justified anymore. As more and more irrefutable evidence of poisoning surfaces, governments in developed countries - European more than the U.S. - are getting involved.

However, it is occurring at such a large socioeconomic scale, that any significant changes will require both enormous energy and years, if not decades of continuous efforts.