We NEED to Take Notice of Heavy Metal Toxicity

Heavy Metal Toxicity is More Common Than You Might Think!

When people start their journey back to good health, the moment that they say, ‘enough is enough, I don’t want to feel like this anymore’, they haven’t even heard of heavy metal toxicity. Alternatively, many believe it’s just another ‘toxicity’ that practitioners make up to scare them into following a protocol. Conversely, heavy metal toxicity is very real and, unfortunately, very common.

Heavy metal toxicity is well researched in both conventional and naturopathic medicine and is often the main or sole contributing factor to a whole list of uncomfortable symptoms and conditions.

What Is Heavy Metal Toxicity?

It’s what it says on the tin: heavy metals can accumulate in your system, causing a toxic build-up. This doesn’t happen from one single exposure, but from years and decades of accretion. This toxic build-up is serious and we need to take notice, because it is responsible for causing lots of symptoms in the body. 

Unfortunately, toxic build-up is almost unavoidable because our environment is turning into a scarier and scarier place: we are constantly exposed to toxins from the soil our crops are grown in, the water we drink and bathe in, the air we breathe, and the products that we use on a daily basis. Luckily, there are things we can do to reduce our exposure, and to aid the body’s detoxification process! 

The most common heavy metals found in the body are mercury, lead, cadmium, arsenic and aluminium. We find these a lot of the time because of industrial-based uses. All of these compounds are being released into the atmosphere and they are raining down on the ocean, soil and the air we breathe.

How Does Heavy Metal Toxicity Occur? 

Minerals and metals are not man-made, they are naturally occurring on the earth. This is fine, healthy in fact, as we need electrolytes. The issues began when we started adding minerals and metals to the products and items that we use every single day. This results in heavy metal toxicity. 

The main offenders are mercury, lead, cadmium, arsenic, copper, fluoride and aluminium. Lead exposure is much less than it used to be because we are now wiser to its dangers, but it can still be found in pencils and some paints. Your body needs an incredibly effective detoxification process to remove lead from the body. Arsenic used to be used as paint, so arsenic poisoning was very common.

Now, exposure to arsenic largely comes from certain foods with tap water and rice being big culprits. These days, aluminium is one of the most pervasive metals when it comes to toxic build-up, which comes from cosmetic products, foil wrapping, food packaging… it is everywhere you look in a supermarket! Additionally, we are consuming way more mercury that we should be, due to the high mercury content in fish. Fluoride is in most toothpastes we put in our mouth, every day, at least twice a day – this isn’t even hidden, most toothpaste brands BOAST that their product contains this metal. As a result to the high usage of fluoride in every day products, tap water is also often contaminated with high fluoride content. Basically, heavy metals are everywhere, they’re in our cosmetics, cleaning products and pharmaceuticals. The result? Widespread heavy metal toxicity.

These metals accumulate in our body due to overexposure, and as a result we experience toxicity, because our body is not able to detoxify quick enough.

What Heavy Metal Toxicity Does To Your Body

Your body detoxes on a daily basis – if it didn’t, you wouldn’t be reading this post right now! However, it may not be detoxing optimally. Glutathione is essential in the detox process. So, every time you get these toxins in your body, it begins to use up a lot of your glutathione. Your body uses sulphur-based, amino acids to break down the toxins and remove them through your stools, urine and sweat. 

The body needs to detoxify daily because there have always been environmental and food toxins. But now, there are more. Just step outside and you are breathing in exhaust fumes and environmental pollutants. Even if you live in rural areas, agriculture activities are one of the major human source of air pollution in those regions.

If you have a drink at a local pub which has ice cubes, there is likely chlorine, fluoride, and other heavy metals because they’re probably making these ice cubes with tap water. EMFs affect how well your body detoxifies. There is so much toxicity surrounding us, that it is not surprising that our bodies are not detoxifying optimally, and that we are experiencing toxic build-up.

You need to help your body reduce your toxic load. If you don’t, these heavy metals will remain in your body and bloodstream, they will attach to your nervous system, causing neurological symptoms and feelings of anxiety or overwhelm, they will make home in your fat cells, causing unwanted toxic water weight gain and bloat and they will impact your gut health, resulting in chronic conditions, fatigue and digestive problems.

How To Reduce Your Toxic Load

Firstly, don’t stress about what you can’t control (stress doesn’t help anything!), and control what you can. Eliminate the big toxins: filter your water (with a good quality water filter such as Berkey and not Brita please), use natural cosmetics and household cleaning products (check out my personal resourcespage for brand recommendations), avoid taking pharmaceuticals unless it is absolutely necessary, reduce EMF exposure, avoid using plastic and foil packaging at home. 

Secondly, running a hair tissue test with an integrative health practitioner can truly be transformational. A hair tissue test is essential for assessing the levels of heavy metals in your body, which can help direct you to make lifestyle changes to reduce your exposure to these particular heavy metals. The test will also look at your mineral levels and oxidation rate. Why is this important? Well, another signifier of toxic metal build-up in the body is high zinc levels, as when metals build-up, your body expels zinc at a higher rate. If you’re not supplementing with zinc and your hair tissue test shows high levels of zinc, you almost certainly have heavy metal build-up in the body.

Now, copper and zinc work in an inverse ratio, which means if zinc reduces then copper will increase, causing more uncomfortable symptoms. Copper build-up is common for women who have opted for the copper-coil as a form of contraception, so this in addition to reduced zinc levels due to heavy metal toxicity, will only exaggerate physical and mental symptoms.

No test is better at assessing your mineral and metal levels than the hair tissue test, and since this is such a widespread issue, this should be one of the first at-home lab tests that you take when embarking on your health journey!

Thirdly, complete a functional medicine detox. We should ALL be doing functional medicine detoxes at least 3 times a year. If you have never completed one, I recommend the 21 Day Reset, which is a full-body 21 day reset that has been proven to work exceptionally well on hundreds of individuals. It is the fastest way of rebalancing the systems of the body that control inflammation, immune imbalances, and metabolism. I do a full, 3-week Reset every January, then three 1-week Resets every season following.