“Dr. Rob, I’m exercising like crazy and eating very clean but I continue to gain weight!”
That was the first thing a patient said during our new patient consultation a few months ago. “Can you help me?” she asked.
The honest answer is “it depends.” You see, clean eating and exercise are critical components of weight control, but they are not the only components. Could environmental toxins prevent weight loss? The answer is an emphatic “YES!”
We know that environmental toxins, such as pesticides/herbicides, aspartame, mercury, lead, arsenic, BPA and thousands of other chemicals known as persistent organic pollutants, can lead to diabetes, high cholesterol, and weight gain. Think about “toxins” as “poisons” in our bodies.
Understanding how detoxification in the body really works is the first step to understanding how these harmful poisons can be. Our bodies are wonderfully created with the God-given ability to break down and excrete toxic substances we are exposed to. Detoxification is the process that our liver, digestive system, kidneys, skin, and lungs use to help our bodies eliminate poisons.
But, when our bodies are exposed to more poisons than it can readily process and excrete, it stores these excess poisons as fat.
When The Trash Bin Overflows
Another way to look at it is the “garbage in” exceeds the “garbage out.” Since we are intelligently designed, our bodies know what will happen when excessive poisons circulate in the blood stream, including symptoms and diseases, so it does its best to protect itself by storing them in fat.
A vicious cycle begins; excess poisons stored in your fat leads to holding on to that excess fat because your body knows if it starts to breakdown its fat stores it’s only going to release a load of poisons that your body is unable to properly excrete. I don’t know about you but I don’t want an excess amount of poisons circulating through my body!
The Snowball Effect of Toxins and Weight Gain
Toxins lead to weight gain, which affects our hormones and insulin levels, and ultimately slows our metabolism and our ability to maintain proper blood sugar levels. Over time, this can lead to diabetes. Additionally, toxins lead to inflammation. Long-term inflammation leads to increased cholesterol levels as the body wisely tries to decrease the inflammation. Unfortunately, if the resources for reducing inflammation are interfered with by out-of-control hormones, high insulin levels, and diminished immune responses, the result is often increased cholesterol. Contrary to what mainstream medicine reports about high cholesterol, it is not a result of eating too much saturated fat. Instead, high cholesterol is due to unchecked inflammation.
Case in point, a 58-year-old woman presented in early October with complaints of being overweight, hormonal issues, and high cholesterol. Her medical doctor prescribed a statin drug to reduce her cholesterol but she declined to take the drug. She had been following a Paleo type of diet that was free of excessive carbohydrates, grains, and dairy but was continuing to gain weight. My unique functional toxicology testing revealed the following toxins in various tissues of her body: Round Up in her liver, lead in her bone marrow, cadmium and mercury in her lymph, and parasites in her intestines. As we began to safely detoxify her body, she was able to lose 15 pounds by early December and her cholesterol dropped from 294 to 246. Her medical doctor could not believe the change in her weight or her cholesterol number and told her to “keep doing whatever you are doing.”
What is the moral of the story? Eat well, exercise, and get those fat-stored poisons out of your body!
