While a nutrient dense diet is critical to building optimal health and maximizing your detox ability, removing toxic products from your menu of skin and hair care and cosmetics is also very important. The combination of all the poisons we are exposed to adds up and puts extra strain on our bodies. In the EWG study (Body burden, 2002) that tested 9 healthy subjects for 210 chemicals, they found 167 chemicals in every subject and 91 compounds were industrial toxins! Of these, 76 were linked to cancer, 94 were neurotoxic, 86 were hormonal disruptors and 79 were associated with birth defects or abnormal development.
If you read the ingredients on your shampoo, conditioner and cosmetics containers and they look like a chemical factory–think twice about using them!
The best way to begin to reduce this toxic load is to control what you can control. Here are a few links to sources of toxin-free body care products and cosmetics:
http://healing-scents.com/index.html
http://www.drrons.com/
For more information on building health and healing with nutrient-dense-foods see our book Performance without Pain and our new e-book on acid reflux.
Best in health,
Kathryne Pirtle