The Better Baby Book (23 page)

PART FOUR

Preparing for Pregnancy and Birth

13

Detoxifying Your Body and Your Home

For the steps outlined in this chapter, we recommend starting three to six months before getting pregnant, if possible. Three months is typically enough for your diet to improve fertility, but six months is best for detoxing properly. Working with a physician will give you access to medical tests that measure your progress.

The Better Baby Diet

The diet we recommend is based on our own experience combined with countless nutrition and diet books and thousands of studies. Dave refined the principles behind the diet for more than ten years—he used an early version of these principles in his twenties to lose a hundred pounds and improve his health. Lana used them to overcome nagging health problems. After two successful pregnancies, we have road-tested the diet with brilliant success. The Better Baby diet itself does wonders to detox the body. Starting it three to six months before getting pregnant is a firm foundation for your other detox efforts.

Heavy Metals and Chelation

By heavy metals, we mean metals that are toxic to the body. Examples are aluminum, arsenic, cadmium, chromium, copper, iron, mercury, manganese, nickel, and lead. People are exposed to heavy metals through food, dental fillings, cigarette smoke, air and water pollution, and some work environments. When these metals build up in our bodies over time, they can cause health problems. The body actually needs trace amounts of some metals, like copper and chromium. Other metals, like arsenic and mercury, only do harm.

At home, metals are most commonly found in tap water and certain foods. Tap water can become contaminated from old metal water pipes (lead, copper, and arsenic are all commonly found in old metal water pipes) or from contaminated local soil. Soil contamination usually happens near factories. Heavy metals are also contained in compact fluorescent lightbulbs and in household insecticides, fungicides, and rodenticides. Vaccines contain heavy metals as a preservative or an adjuvant (a substance that enhances the immune response).

Common food sources of heavy metals are factory-farmed chicken, eggs, and some pork products because of the use of antibiotics containing arsenic. Mercury contamination in seafood is now common, as we noted in chapter 4. Wild game hunted with lead shot or bullets is a risk, too. If you derive a lot of your diet from game, steel or bismuth shot is a healthier choice. Some pesticides contain lead, so its important to know where your vegetables come from, too.

Heavy metals are one reason that losing weight before
but not during
pregnancy is important. The body stores metals in fat deposits in order to keep the metals away from the more easily damaged organs and tissues. All methods of eliminating metals from the body stir them up from fat reserves, which prepares them for elimination. When you exercise, burn fat, and lose weight, any metals stored in the fat reserves that were burned will be released and will travel through the body. Some of the metals will be filtered out by the kidneys and the liver and eliminated, but some are likely to become deposited somewhere else in the body. This poses a risk for a fetus. Because of this, it's actually safer to keep the weight on along with the metals the fat is storing. This is one reason you shouldn't try to lose weight quickly while breastfeeding.

Chelation is a medical process that helps the body to detoxify from heavy metals. The process of chelation frees the metals from the fat reserves by breaking the chemical bonds between the two. Whenever you consume chelating foods, supplements, or drugs, they pull the heavy metals out of the fat deposits and release them into the bloodstream for filtration by the liver or the kidneys. Good chelators are alpha-lipoic acid, dimercaptosuccinic acid (DMSA), dimercaptopropane sulfonate (DMPS), and EDTA. DMPS is available only by prescription.

Once the chelators release the metals into the bloodstream, it's important to help the liver and the kidneys capture the metals using metal-cleansing supplements like dietary fiber, N-acetyl-cysteine, or chlorella. These supplements bind with the metals and carry them out of the body. Chelators alone simply dislodge the metals from the fat reserves and leave elimination up to the body. Sometimes, if there aren't enough cleansers circulating in the body, the heavy metals are simply redeposited in the body instead of eliminated. Like losing weight, strong chelation is important to avoid during pregnancy. When the chelators release the metals from the fat deposits, the risk that some of the metals will reach the fetus is too high. The ideal time to chelate is a full six months before pregnancy.

When dealing with heavy metals and chelation, we believe it's best to work with a holistic physician. Poorly implemented chelation can make you very sick and harm your liver and kidneys. DMSA and DMPS are usually administered orally and work best on chelating mercury. EDTA, which works best on lead, can be administered orally, but little is absorbed, so it's best administered through suppositories or intravenously. Chelation for serious cases of heavy metal toxicity usually involves intravenous administration of EDTA.

Great metal cleansers to take with these chelators are bentonite clay, chlorella, glutathione, N-acetyl-cysteine, and zeolite clay; most of these are mentioned throughout this book. Cilantro, a common spice, is also a wonderfully gentle chelator that cleanses the brain.

Rejuvenating Your Liver

Your liver is responsible for dealing with the toxins and chemicals we ingest (through food and drugs) and breathe in every day. Nearly a third of your blood is pumped through your liver every minute. As blood moves through the liver, the liver filters out harmful substances and neutralizes them. It also performs a number of other functions, including protein and hormone production, bile production, blood sugar (glucose) regulation and storage, and cholesterol and tryglyceride production. Without the liver, the body would die. An amazing organ, the liver is the only one that can regenerate itself.

We encounter preservatives, solvents, herbicides, pesticides, tobacco smoke, alcohol, heavy metals, and mycotoxins every day. Taking extra steps to help the liver detoxify the body keeps us healthy and prevents these toxins from reaching a growing fetus. Activated charcoal, bentonite and zeolite clays, and other detoxifiers bind toxins in the intestines and prevent them from ever reaching the liver. We highly recommend them.

Beyond these, there are herbs and supplements that optimize liver function so the body is prepared for what does get through. No matter how much activated charcoal or bentonite clay you use, many toxins will still get through to the liver. Vitamin C, N-acetyl-cysteine, and alpha-lipoic acid help to clean the liver's detoxification pathways. Silymarin, a powerful detoxifier found in milk thistle, has been shown to increase the liver's glutathione level as much as 35 percent, protect liver cells from the dangerous toxins they work with so closely, and stimulate liver regeneration. Artichoke extract has shown an ability to clean and protect the liver. Turmeric, hailed as one of the greatest herbs by ayurvedic medicine, can help the body to naturally increase liver bile flow, which enhances liver function and cleanses the liver.

We've found herbalist Hulda Clark's olive oil, grapefruit, and Epsom salt liver cleanse to be a great way to eliminate liver toxins from the body. We've both done the cleanse many times, and we always feel much better after doing it. You'll find a full description of this simple liver cleanse process on our website,
www.betterbabybook.com/liver
. We recommend doing this liver cleanse before
but not during
pregnancy.

Detoxifying Your Home

The best principle to remember when you're dealing with anything that you breathe or anything that comes in contact with your body is that if you cannot safely eat it, you should not inhale it or let it touch your skin. Your lungs quickly absorb particles in the air into your bloodstream, so any toxic chemical–containing fumes can be harmful. At the microscopic level your skin is a fine mesh, or net, and anything small enough will pass right through it and into your body. The molecules of chemicals, including those contained in the household products we discuss below, are often small enough to absorb through the skin.

Our goal in this section is to point out unexpected sources of toxins throughout your home. Of course, toxic poisons from expected sources—drain opener, toilet bowl cleaner, lawn chemicals, insecticides, pesticides, gasoline, lead paint, asbestos, toxic wood preservatives, or anything remotely like them—should be avoided completely if you are trying to get pregnant, are pregnant, or are nursing. Before conception, this goes for fathers, too. Every chemical you're exposed to right before and during pregnancy is likely to contact your baby. Spray chemicals are the easiest to be exposed to from normal use.

The Kitchen

Let's start with the kitchen, where we find dishwashing liquid, hand soap, dishwasher detergent, and probably some surface cleaners.

Artificial Fragrances

One health risk that many kitchen cleaning products have in common is the strong artificial fragrances they contain. These artificial fragrances consist of a variety of toxic estrogenic chemicals that are easily absorbed into the body when they are inhaled or touch your skin.

Skin contact, inhalation, or ingestion of the chemicals used in artificial fragrances will never fail to harm your body in some way. This is true no matter how low the concentration is or how “safe” the manufacturer, the FDA, or anyone else says these substances are. Artificial fragrances are harmful even when the concentration is low because toxic chemicals build up in the body over time and cause problems later. When you use these products every day, the chemicals can build up inside you.

One reason fragrances are toxic is that they contain oil-soluble molecules called
phthalates
. Have you ever noticed how strong fragrances are able to hang in the air for a long time? That unnatural, long-lasting smell lingers because phthalates, like oils, are difficult to break down—and they don't break down any faster in your lungs and bloodstream after you breath them in. There are a host of studies linking phthalates to birth complications.

The answer here is simple: use fragrance-free products.

Anything Made of Plastic

Plastic is a common source of toxins in the kitchen. This includes plastic cookware, dishes, silverware, storage containers, and disposable “paper” or styrofoam products, most of which are coated with plastic resin. Plastic or styrofoam articles that come into contact with your food or beverages often leach into the food or drink, and they're made from petrochemicals and dangerous substances like bisphenol-A (BPA). BPA is found in thousands of everyday consumer products, like canned foods (the lining inside the can), toilet paper, plastic cups, and recycled paper products.

BPA is a proven hormone disrupter that mimics estrogen in the body. Since BPA is a synthetic hormone, trace amounts have very different effects than do larger amounts, which have traditionally been considered toxic. In the 1970s and 1980s, scientists tested BPA and found that toxic levels caused organ failure and leukemia. These effects weren't seen when nontoxic levels were administered, so the chemical was considered safe. But later findings suggested that smaller amounts had very different yet still harmful effects.

BPA is released into hot foods and drinks (especially microwaved) very fast, so it's especially important to avoid hot food or drinks that have contacted plastic or Styrofoam. For example, one of the worst things you could do is something we see people in the workplace doing all the time: taking a Styrofoam cup of cold coffee and heating it in a microwave. The microwave is heating the BPA in the Styrofoam into the coffee, which people then drink.

To avoid BPA, we do the following:

• Avoid skin contact with vinyl.
  
• Drink bottled water only if it's bottled in glass.
  
• Avoid most canned foods and drinks, because a plastic epoxy resin lines the inside of the can.
  
• Don't microwave food in plastic containers or bags.
  
• Use glass or ceramic dishes and cups for dining, glass or ceramic containers for food storage, and stainless steel or wooden utensils.
  
• Buy fabric baby toys without chemical fire retardants instead of plastic ones.
  

Nonstick or Aluminum Cookware

Teflon, T-Fal, or any nonstick coated pans, pots, and other cookware contain fluoride compounds. When we discuss toothpaste a little later, we'll talk about why fluoride is dangerous. For now, you should know that when high heat is applied to these pans, these fluoride compounds and other harmful chemicals in the nonstick coatings are vaporizing into the air and leaching into your food.

This also happens with aluminum or aluminum-coated cookware. When this cookware is heated, harmful metallic aluminum ions leach into your food. Like fluoride, aluminum has been proven to cause health problems.

Stainless steel and cast iron are pretty safe, but high heat still releases the metal ions into food. Glass, enameled, or ceramic cookware is best. Ceramic is by far the most convenient: unlike glass, it's resistant to cracking even when subjected to fast temperature changes. Good ceramic cookware can be heated to over 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit without cracking. It also has a relatively nonstick surface, won't scratch, and is pretty lightweight. You can't throw ceramic around, however, because a heavy impact can crack it.

The Laundry Room

Fragrances are also one of the main sources of toxins in your laundry room, where we find detergent, softener, and bleach. Standard laundry detergents and softeners have chemicals and fragrances in them that are especially strong and are designed to linger in clothing for days. Before Lana became pregnant, we switched to fragrance-free laundry detergent and stopped using fabric softeners.

Dryer sheets are the worst culprit in this category. When you use a dryer sheet, your clothing is coated with powerful artificial chemicals that are absorbed through the skin. When you put these clothes on, the toxins are absorbed through your skin and into your bloodstream, especially when you sweat and water mixes with the chemical residue on the clothing. We have not used dryer sheets for many years.