Page 59Recent study posted later in this journal shows that xenobiotic chemicals cause
an exaggerated inflammatory response. The rest of science has already identified
chronic inflammation as the number one cause of degenerative disease and
aging, from Alzheimer’s and heart disease, to diabetes and cancer.
Today, as I teach, one of the number one aspects of what we call “nutrition” is
merely supplementation to help our detox pathways. Magnesium, for instance,
is involved in over 300 pathways, including the all-important Phase I detox.
Glutathione is another powerful tool, an anti-oxidant. But it gets used up every
time it walks off a toxic molecule and we need to take phenomenal amounts.
We need B6, zinc and B3, molybdenum and more. That’s just to cope with the
additional oxidative stress of our poisonous world.
Not really what you think of as nutrition is it? But because these beneficial
supplements are taken by mouth, what else can you call it?
For more information, I can do no better than recommend Sherry Rogers’ book
Detoxify or Die. Another cracking read is by my old friend Dr Doris Rapp: “Our
Toxic Word: a Wake Up Call”. You’ll be sadder but I lot wiser when you have read
them.
Heavy Metals
And before we leave the subject of toxic overload, I must mention what we call
heavy metals. A number of metals are known to be carcinogenic. These are:
- arsenic and arsenic compounds,
- beryllium and beryllium compounds,
- cadmium and cadmium compounds,
- nickel compounds and
- hexavalent chromium (remember the movie “Erin Brockovich”?).
The usual target is the lung, though arsenic has a unique association with skin
cancers that has been recognized for many years.
You should know that in the US there is a heavy burden of arsenic poisoning
carried to humans via chickens. Roxarsone is a very common arsenic-based
additive used in chicken feed, used to promote growth, kill parasites and improve
the color of chicken meat. It is normally benign, but under certain conditions that
can occur within live chickens or on farm land, the compound converts into more
toxic forms of inorganic arsenic.