#foreverchemicals #PFAS #toxins #drinkingwatersafety #hormonedisruptors #thyroidhealth #fertility #cognitiveimpairment #obesity #environmentaltoxins #howtodetoxfromforeverchemicals #detox
What a coincidence that last Friday, there was another region of Belgium on the news for increased levels of PFAS in drinking water…. As I said last week, I believe that our water quality has vastly degraded in the past years and we do need to make sure we filter our drinking- and ideally also cooking and shower water.
The problem with PFAS is that they can take over 1000 years to degrade! That’s why they’re called forever chemicals. Their carbon-fluorine covalent bonds are what’s making it so difficult to degrade and they’re not only staying long term in our environment but also in our tissues and liver. (Source)
It's taken us quite a while to understand the environmental crisis these chemicals are causing to our earth, animals and ourselves, as well as understand how exactly they’re affecting our bodies. And they're clearly not the only chemicals we're exposed to....
Manufacturers have been using PFAS for decades in products, but at least they’re now starting to get regulated and reduce the use of these chemicals. You may have noticed that many cookware brands are now advertising PFAS or PFOE free products.
As a reminder, the health risks of PFAS contamination are:
Infertility
Thyroid health
Development issues for babies and children
Liver damage
Increased risk of cancer
How to know if you have increased levels of PFAS?
For my US-based readers, if you really want to know if you have accumulated levels of PFAS, you can get tested with the Vibrant Wellness Total Tox-Burden + PFAS Chemicals urine panel. In Europe, there’s only environmental toxin tests that don’t include the PFAS markers unfortunately.
We can probably agree though that everyone amongst us has likely been exposed to PFAS and/or other environmental toxins and since they are so prevalent in our environment now, I recommend that everyone does some sort of detox at least 2x per year.
I promised to share with you what you can actually do to expel these toxins from your body, so here are my 6 best tips to detox forever chemicals:
Keep your gut healthy! This will help your immune defense and also help eliminate toxins. Eating fermented foods and plenty of fiber from vegetables daily is the base for a healthy microbiome. Make sure that you sit down when you eat and chew your food properly to avoid too large food particles damaging your intestinal wall. Megasporebiotic is my favorite probiotic and it’s also now available with antioxidants to further feed those good bacteria in your gut. Megaspore is special because it’s a spore-based probiotic. Those earth-type bacteria actually do settle in your gut as opposed to milk ferment bacteria that lose their impact once you stop taking them. Doing a 3-month cure annually along with MegaPre (which is a blend of fibers that will feed all different good bacteria species in your gut) is great.
Sweat: sweating through exercise, doing hot yoga, or purchasing an at-home sauna (like Koanna or Sunlighten) promotes the detoxification of toxins like heavy metals, mycotoxins and other chemicals. The best is infrared sauna: it uses infrared light which goes deeper into your body allowing it to release fat-soluble toxins. Infrared sauna therapy heats your muscle tissues and internal organs without heating the surrounding air. This heat helps your organs and tissues to detoxify by pushing toxins out of your bloodstream to be eliminated by sweating. The infrared wavelengths help to enhance liver detoxification, improve the immune system, kill pathogenic organisms, stimulate metabolism, optimize kidney filtration, aid elimination, reduce stress, and enhance healthy weight loss.
Do coffee enemas with organic, and preferably mold-free coffee: coffee enemas have an added benefit over typical water based colonic therapies because the palmitates in coffee stimulate the liver to produce more glutathione (your master antioxidant). The caffeine, theobromine and theophylline dilate your bile duct and increase your bile flow for increased detoxification. They basically not only help remove toxic mucoid plaque around the colon walls and the elimination of parasites in the gut, but they also literally squeeze out your liver like a sponge. It’s taken me a while to get to trying out coffee enemas but I’m telling you, once you get over the gross factor and find a good enema kit, you might even get addicted to it!
Eat clean, organic and drink lots of clean water (with added minerals)! Especially anything green and bitter is great for supporting your liver and gallbladder for some extra detox support. Also make sure you consume enough healthy fats that are supportive for your liver and GB!
Bind toxins to safely expel them: use GI Detox or Ultra Binder to bind to and safely expel toxins if you don’t need any help moving your bowels. If you don’t have daily bowel movements, I recommend Bio.Revive.Kinetic to promote regular bowel movement and gently assist your body’s natural detox process.
Use detoxifying herbs to help move out more toxins. Dandelion root, burdock root, gentian, black radish etc are great. Clear Way Cofactors is a great product to help push out toxins. I also recommend using some extra support for your gallbladder when detoxing - Beta Plus is a great way to support a detox protocol and make sure your bile will remain fluid.
Find all the mentioned products here. (with dosage recommendations)