Hidden Toxins in Our Everyday Lives

By James Templeton

How conscious are you of the toxins you’re being exposed to? Because our country isn’t paying attention.

Most people aren’t aware of the harmful toxins in their food, water and air that are bombarding them every moment of every day. What you eat, drink, and breathe directly impact the status of your health and honestly, most people don’t even seem to care what they’re putting in their mouths.

In the words of Joel Salatin, a pioneer in chemical-free farming, ‘Amazingly, we’ve become a culture that considers Twinkies, Cocoa Puffs, and Mountain Dew safe, but raw milk and compost-grown tomatoes unsafe.’ He also had this to say about the current state of pesticide and herbicide use on our food supply, ‘If you have to put on a hazardous waste suit and a gas mask to go visit your food, you might not want to eat it.’

In addition to preservatives, GMOs, pesticides, and glyphosate in our foods, we’re dealing with invisible toxins in our air and water. Radiation is in the atmosphere on the west coast from Fukushima, and whether you’re close to a nuclear facility or not, radiation is in the atmosphere in most places in the country. If your body feels stiff and sore most of the time without a reasonable explanation, you may want to check this map and see if radiation exposure could be the cause.

Drinking water contamination is making the news all over the country now, from Chromium-6 (the Erin Brockovich “cancer chemical”) to lead and more. It’s become such a common occurrence to get a monthly notice in the mail warning about the poor quality of the municipal drinking water, that most people are growing numb to the warnings and going ahead and drinking the toxic water anyway. Check the quality of your municipality’s water on the Environment Working Group’s Tap Water Database to see what you and your family are drinking and showering in on a daily basis. It’s not good news.

Toxin Overload and the Bucket Theory

Because we aren’t paying attention, most of us are overloaded with toxins. It starts early – there’s rocket fuel in virtually all breast milk and cow’s milk. Specialists in Environmental Medicine often talk about the Bucket Theory. Think of yourself like a bucket, and imagine every toxin you come in contact with goes into your bucket. Eventually, your bucket is full and starts to spill over. This is when disease happens, when your body just can’t handle any more toxic exposures.

Ann Louise Gittleman says, ‘We spend our first 60 years using up our health to gain wealth, after which we spend our wealth in order to regain our lost health.’

Preventable “Bucket Theory” diseases are epidemic. One third of US adults are obese, with another third overweight. At least 30 million people in the US have diabetes. Heart disease is the leading cause of death for men and women. Almost 40 percent of us will be diagnosed with cancer in our lifetime, and one third of it is proven to be preventable through lifestyle. Just about everyone you talk to has a virus or chronic infection these days, too.

People don’t think twice about their immunity, they don’t look at ingredient labels. Some will focus on sugars and carbs now to lose weight, but very few look for cancer-causing chemicals in their food. Just like medications have side effects, so do foods with chemicals.

True Health is an Investment

Doctors aren’t going to bring all this to your attention and I think that’s because it takes a big chunk of money out of the pockets of the pharmaceutical industry, cancer industry, and illness industry. Sick care is big business. More than $3.3 trillion is spent yearly in the US on sick care and medical equipment. People put their lives in the hands of doctors for a “magic pill” to fix their ills, but they don’t change what made them susceptible to the illness in the first place – they don’t even think about it.

It’s time to take charge of your health. Fight for your family and yourself – whether your insurance pays for it or not. I promise you the type of care your insurance is willing to cover is only able to manage the symptoms of an illness; it does a poor job of preventing or finding the root cause of any disease. Taking good care of yourself and investing in your health is a worthwhile, lifelong investment.

Tackle Disease by Emptying Your Bucket

It only makes sense that if filling your bucket causes disease, then emptying it is the first step to getting your health back. This takes detective work and research; you have to look back in your history to find the toxins you’ve been exposed to. Maybe you lived close to a nuclear facility and were exposed to radiation, or the house you grew up in backed up to hundreds of acres that were sprayed with insecticides and herbicides that got into your air, water and food. Did you work at a full-service gas station and pump leaded gas? Or live in a household of people who smoked?

If nothing comes to mind, then start by talking to your family and neighbors. Many diseases that run in families relate more to the lifestyle choices made and foods eaten than to actual genetics. You may have several neighbors in a small radius who all have similar cancers and that can give you clues as to what’s in your environment you need to focus on.

Clean Up Your Act

Once you become aware of how many harmful toxins you are exposed to, the next step is to eliminate as many as possible from your environment. A good place to start is with the air inside your home. You can’t control the air quality outside, but you can filter the air inside your home and make it as clean as possible. A good quality air filter can be fitted onto your existing air handler or can be a freestanding unit. I trust Dr. Roy Speiser and his air filtration products at cwrenviro.com.

Filter both the water you drink and the water you bathe in. Even though it looks impressive when inexpensive carbon filters turn dark water crystal clear, this doesn’t mean the contaminants are all filtered out. Most contaminants that cause substantial harm aren’t actually visible unless they’re present in very large amounts. It’s important to invest in good quality water filters tailored to your specific needs. Call us here at UNI KEY if you have any questions, we can help.

Invest in organic food. A lot of people think farmers markets are the way to get healthier food, but if you’re not asking questions before you buy, you’re likely getting the same chemicals you would buying produce in the grocery store. It may sound expensive when you’re told to eat organic, but I can tell you firsthand that cancer is a lot more expensive. Learn to read labels and even get to know your grower. If you avoid drugs and medications, then don’t buy meat from animals that have been raised on them, either. Don’t kid yourself; the pharmaceutical industry is alive and well in the meat and dairy business, too. Free range, grass-fed, organic meat, eggs and dairy are worth the cost.

If you are suffering with unexplained symptoms or a chronic disease, I recommend ordering a TMA (Tissue Mineral Analysis) test. Just a small sample of hair is enough to show you which toxic metals you’ve been exposed to and what minerals are deficient. This important test also finds patterns to these excesses and deficiencies and can give you great insight into the root causes of your symptoms and diseases.