Crap Food, Toxins, and Stress
Crap Foods, Toxins, and Stress are the key etiologies of disease in the modern world.
We are not designed to be malnourished, inflamed, infected, unrested, toxic, and stressed and yet still easily thrive, grow, reproduce, be thin, feel well, eat anything we want, race well, and recover fast. This combination is NOT natural. People are struggling due to nutrient-poor food, toxins, and stress.
Crap Food doesn’t provide nutrients, looks like a toxin, alarms our immune system and increases stress to our body. Crap food doesn’t provide the building blocks our bodies need to run; such as vitamins, minerals, and macronutrients. It typically has lots of chemicals that promote toxicity. For example, our bodies don’t need Red Dye 40 found in Swedish Fish. Crap Foods are highly refined and processed foods with lots of preservatives, a long shelf life, extra flavorings, and sweeteners like high fructose corn syrup. These are also foods that are heavily laden with pesticides. These foods are often interpreted as foreign invaders, rather than food. Two-thirds of our immune system lies in the gut. It surveys our world via the food we bring in. Can you imagine it looking at Nabisco Reduced Fat Wheat Thins and saying, I don’t know if this is food? It doesn’t look like food. I don’t know what to do with this. But I see it in here every day. It must be food. It treats it like the foreign invader it is.
Toxins are everywhere and unavoidable. But we can limit our exposure and ensure effective detoxification in our bodies. In 2018 there were over 86,000 chemicals in the US with an average of 2,000 new toxins per year. An average of 200 toxins are found in a newborn baby’s blood. These chemicals are found in our food, water, air, personal care products, and cleaning products. Toxins can cause cellular damage, disrupt our gut, disrupt our hormones, cause enzyme dysfunction, affect our genetic expression, increase oxidative stress, and displace nutrients. They can even ironically decrease our body’s own ability to detox. They can have dramatic cumulative effects, as well as synergistic and additive effects.
Stress is also unavoidable. There can be good and bad forms of stress. It can be mental, psychological, physical, environmental, and physiological. Unless mitigated in some way, it can lead to altered adrenal output, high blood pressure, high blood sugar levels, microbial imbalance in the gut, decreased digestion and motility, thyroid dysfunction, nutrient imbalances and deficiencies. Some powerful habits to implement to manage stress are solid sleep, doing things that provide joy, meditation, Power Hour or Miracle Morning, spending time in nature or with a pet, gratitude journaling, long walks, and exercise (can be good or bad).
We likely can’t avoid all Crap Foods, Toxins, and Stress. But KEY to Optimal Health and Vitality is mitigating our exposure!