Clean: The Revolutionary Program to Restore the Body's Natural Ability to Heal Itself (7 page)

OVEREXPOSURE: DIET AND KIDS

Sometimes the impact of the modern diet makes itself known in alarming ways. Unfortunately, toxins take the biggest toll on children, whose small body size means they’re more affected by everyday amounts. When patients are resistant to the idea of using organic foods, I tell them about my friend and colleague Tina, with whom I worked in Palm Springs. A dynamo of a mom who has won national bodybuilding championships and competed in Eco-Challenges, she has two beautiful daughters. She presented me with one of my earliest toxicity cases.

Several years ago, she called me extremely worried because her daughter, Annie, age seven at the time, had gotten her period and was developing breasts and pubic hair. I immediately sent her to the best pediatric endocrinologist I could find to rule out the possibility of a brain tumor in her daughter’s hypophysis, the gland that regulates the sex hormones. After no tumor was found, the specialist, still confounded by this alarmingly early development, wanted to start her on a chemotherapy drug to stop her sex-hormone production.

We decided to look for an alternative and quickly realized Annie wasn’t alone. Her problem was another silent crisis in American health. The chemicals in everyday food, especially the hormones in our animal products, were mimicking sex hormones that her body shouldn’t have had until years later. She was experiencing artificially induced development—a sign of inner chaos that was not only psychologically harmful, but would throw the whole balance of her health into disarray. Immediately Tina stopped buying anything that was not 100 percent USDA-approved organic. Her grocery bill tripled, but it was worth it. Annie’s condition reversed: her periods stopped, and her breasts and pubic hair did not develop further until she hit her teens.

This story is an extreme case because it affected such a young person, but it shows how the exposure to toxins from food is changing our bodies at every level and how the body can self-correct after a total dietary change. It also shows how the invasive medical treatment prescribed would have exposed Annie to potentially lethal toxicity from chemotherapy drugs—without correcting the root problem.

The technological processes used today for “safety,” cosmetic, productivity, and convenience purposes turn much of what we eat into poison. With the thought, “If it’s good for the baby, it must be good for us,” we started drinking milk and using it to make a hundred other foods. We became the only mammals that drink milk after we stop nursing from our mother’s breast. And we go even farther—we steal the milk from different species. It’s like putting jet fuel in a motorcycle; it damages the engine. Worse, now that milk is full of hormones and antibiotics, a questionable argument becomes undeniable. Milk is poisoning us.

My own story, of arriving in North American supermarket culture and getting sick, is far from unusual. In fact, anthropologists show how it has happened around the globe, many times over. Scientific studies show that when immigrants exchange traditional, local diets, full of vegetables picked from the field (with nutrient-filled soil still on them) and home-raised animal protein, for the American diet, full of sugar, processed foods, and chemical drinks, their obesity, diabetes, and heart-disease rates increase unusually fast—in a single generation.

Patients are often surprised when I tell them that some of the most common toxins are the foods on their daily plate. Wheat, dairy products, and eggs as well as corn and soy are allergic triggers in a large number of people. This is partly because of the way these foods are produced today, with chemicals, antibiotics, and lots of pesticides, but also partly because the human intestinal tract didn’t evolve to process them in mass quantity. Dealing with large quantities of them was not part of our original design.

Water is another source of toxicity today. Our tap water is treated with chlorine to kill microscopic organisms instantly—which means in the case of large-sized organisms like humans the damage just takes a little longer. Fluoride is added to many public water systems ostensibly to strengthen teeth—but it’s a known toxin now linked to problems with the thyroid, kidneys, central nervous system, and skeletal system, including cancers (not to mention lower IQs).

But there’s much more in our ordinary H2O than that. Carcinogens (cancer-causing compounds) from industrial toxins in the air and runoff from other wastes in the modern world make it through water-treatment facilities in trace amounts and into our tap water. Drinking water disinfection by-product (DBP) is a newly identified danger, formed when the chemicals used for disinfecting drinking water react with natural organic matter in the source water. And our water is even medicating us more. A recent study showed that 41 million Americans drink water contaminated with antidepressants, hormones, heart medications, and other prescription and over-the-counter medications that have made it through the water-treatment system. It’s not just in the kitchen. The city-supplied water in our showers and bathtubs has equal potential to add to the toxic load, because we absorb more water through our skin via bathing and showering than through drinking.

We’ve also strayed from natural, simpler ways of packaging food. Instead of buying raw materials from a greengrocer or butcher that are then wrapped in paper or carried in our baskets, we buy food that comes in plastic packaging. This can leach chemicals into our food, which we then consume. This humanmade mix includes chemical compounds known as phthalates, one of the most abundant modern chemicals produced today, designed to give certain plastics their rigidity. Though we come across phthalates in multiple ways all day long, they’re especially prevalent in water and beverage bottles. And though they cross over into our foods and drinks in micro amounts, their effects can build up. The chemistry of phthalates mimics the chemistry of hormones, which are the message-carrying agents of the body. When levels of it build up in us over time, one result is that hormone function may be disturbed. This can be like air-traffic control suddenly going down at the airport. Signals get scrambled, and our normal functioning starts to crash—without any obvious cause. Now that two hormonally linked cancers, breast and prostate cancer, are on a rapid rise and the number of thyroid disorders is going through the roof, toxic specialists are pointing the finger at phthalates among other toxic causes.

TOXIC SYMPHONY

It’s important to know that: (1) toxins tend to bioaccumulate, meaning that they build up in our tissues and cells more quickly than they are eliminated, and (2) toxins work alone and in synergy with each other. Scientists admit we are fundamentally ignorant of the way the thousands of chemicals we’re exposed to interact once inside our tissues or cells. But we know that synergy—two or more things coming together and creating an effect that is bigger than the sum of their parts—is happening. This means that in this new world in which chemicals pervade our food, air, and water supplies, assurances of safety from official sources about one ingredient or another are almost useless. There is never a moment when we’re exposed to a single chemical in isolation. It is an orchestra, not a single instrument.

Multiple toxins are already combining in our bodies, altering and shifting our inner environments in ways that we’re only just starting to figure out. One basic reaction should be a red flag alerting us to how much disturbance must be going on daily: we know that fluoride, the chemical in toothpaste and many water supplies, actually depletes stores of the essential nutrient iodine from the body. Researchers, meanwhile, present new evidence of how cocktails of pesticides mixed together in rivers and lakes are infinitely more lethal to frogs and fish than a single dose of one pesticide alone could ever be. More evidence is coming out every day about the ways that harmful chemical reactions are happening throughout the body in thousands of small ways at the same time.

Another chemical, styrene, seeps into foods when it out-gases from food containers. Studies showed 100 percent of a group of people tested had it in their fat. Imagine how this load accumulates: a steak at the supermarket is packed on a polystyrene tray and wrapped in plastic wrap; then you grill it, which blackens it (blackening food has cancer-causing potential) and put some additive-filled sauce on it. Delicious.

Bisphenol-A (BPA) is another chemical used to make hard plastic containers like drinking bottles and to line cans of foods. When enough of it builds up in the body, it is thought to promote cancer.

Toxic chemicals are only one of the reasons why eating food, such a life-giving practice for the rest of nature, has turned deadly for us.

You Eat What You Are

There’s another side of food-based toxicity that keeps you stuck and sick. The standard American diet, with its quantities of refined grains and sugars and engineered, processed foods, has also created a roller-coaster ride of cravings and energy swings—a key factor in both contributing to and maintaining our modern toxic states. I frequently ask my patients if they know what the phrase “You are what you eat” means. Most say yes—the quality of the food you eat directly translates into the quality of your body. To put it more specifically, it means that the food you choose to eat becomes the building blocks of your architecture; the compounds that the body makes from food are what it uses to build your bones, muscles, tissues, and even the molecules and enzymes that fund your chemistry. You literally are what you eat.

Andres, a dear friend and patient once surprised me. He said, “Doc, the opposite is also true. You eat what you are. When I was puffed up, sluggish, and emotionally dulled from toxicity, I craved the foods that gave me an initial jolt of energy, a boost. But after the rush came the crash, and the cycle started all over again. After the Clean program I am craving really healthy foods.”

I told Andres that craving toxic food is a classic sign of a toxic state. Toxins that cannot be dealt with immediately and continue in the circulatory system are soon trapped in the tissues and covered with mucus. This is the way cells defend themselves. Mucus has a dense and sticky quality; it resonates with and attracts dense, toxic thoughts and emotions. The reverse is also true, that dense thoughts and emotions promote mucus production in the tissues.

Instead, by enhancing the elimination of mucus during Clean, you will stop craving the foods that perpetuate it. As you provide the nutrients that your cells are desperately waiting for, your natural ability to regenerate and heal is reactivated and your adrenal strength is restored. Instead of dense, “dead,” processed foods you will acquire a taste for live foods, which still carry the energy of life. These were exactly what Andres was craving by the end of his third week on Clean.

Diet in America: From FAD to SAD

Anywhere I go, as soon as people find out what I do, they always ask, “Doctor, what should I eat?” Americans are obsessed with finding the right diet formula. Since 1990, the year I moved to New York, I have witnessed many theories and fads that swept the country, reshaped the industry, and left more casualties than all of the wars ever fought by the United States added together!

First was the war on fat. America’s full frontal attack on fat redefined life in America. With doctors and the media in agreement, the population was convinced that fat was a hidden weapon of mass destruction, so it was eliminated from every single product in the supermarket. The food industry was having a party. The supermarkets were inundated with everything fat-free, you name it. Even the impossible, fat-free butter, endorsed by cardiologists! The caloric void that fats left was filled with carbs. “Lean” was the buzzword, but not the result. Instead, Americans became the fattest people in the world.

At Lenox Hill Hospital, during my fellowship, the casualties of this war kept our cardiac catheterization lab open 24/7 reopening coronary arteries with balloons and stents to abort or avoid a heart attack. During one of those long nights, walking alongside a gurney on the way from the emergency room to the angioplasty room, I heard my patient laughing so hard, his oxygen mask flew off his face. Before putting his mask back on, I asked him what was so funny. He said, “I just changed my favorite phrase from ‘I can’t believe it’s not butter’ to ‘I wish it had been butter’!” Finding humor in tragedy sometimes carried me through those long nights on call. It also reminded me how believing in the latest product invented can be dangerous, even if it’s approved by the FDA and endorsed by cardiologists.

Before the wave of heart attacks slowed down, America found a new enemy, carbohydrates. It was war all over again, just as vicious and supported by most authorities. Getting leaner was not about eating lean foods, as we once thought; it was about eating “sugar-free.” The calories missing after eliminating carbs were replaced with extra protein, not exactly by accident. High-protein, low-carbohydrate diets had been in use in America for a long time. Bodybuilders figured out early on that if you eat mostly protein, your muscles will grow faster and bigger. Bodybuilders are the leanest people not by birth, but by choice, great effort, and tons of protein. So to imitate them off went America on a rampage of consuming fish, chicken, steak, eggs, and cottage cheese (low-fat).

Years back, when I started my search to overcome depression, I knew only one thing for sure: being in shape helps. Before moving to New York, as a tae kwon do competitor I was in tiptop shape. I remembered clearly that everything was better in that state. I decided to force myself to run, and after a month I was running one hour every day. I avoided desserts and candy and drank more water than ever in my life. I got skinny fast, but except in my legs, my muscles were gone and my skin was saggy. I wanted to get toned and ripped. I wanted a six-pack, so I hired a personal trainer who had one. He had the knowledge of the bodybuilders. He turned me on to many books, magazines, and products all created to assist the body in building muscle and burning fat. We lifted weights four days a week, did cardio two days a week, and rested one. One day every two weeks, I was allowed to splurge on pizza and ice cream. I was such a dedicated student that I beat his prediction about the time it would take me to look like him by a month. And in a graduation ceremony of sorts, he passed on to me the secret weapon, The Opus Diet.