Why should we worry about aluminum toxicity?
Aluminum is the most prevalent metal in our environment. Many people don’t understand the impact of increased heavy metals in our surroundings because we can’t see and touch them. They are invisible to our eyes.
Unfortunately, the increase in heavy metals and pesticides over the last several decades is a huge burden on our collective health. Our bodies have to work much harder than they used to in order to keep up with proper health. Our organs get depleted, and our children are born deficient. All this happens behind the scenes.
Heavy Metals are naturally found in our Earth's crust and are naturally released by weathering, volcanic eruption, and forest fires. Our bodies are used to small amounts of metals, and our bodies know how to detox toxins, heavy metals and pesticides! But a 3 fold increase in heavy metals has been observed in the twentieth century via the advent of large scale metal mining, as well as smelting and fossil-fuel combustion. In reality, it is probably more than 3 fold!
Because all mammals live and breath the same atmosphere that toxins are released into, a huge increase in health problems has been observed.
Just because you don’t live right next to a metal mining facility does not mean you aren’t affected. Metals are spread via our weather system and oceans to all sorts of unimaginable places. For example, on the west coast of USA, California is prone to extra Uranium and Mercury via the moisture of the ocean air and/or drinking water.
Aluminum is a toxic metal that contributes to Alzheimer’s and dementia. It affects the brain more than any other system in the body. It impairs memory and cognition. Parkinson’s is another disease that has been linked to aluminum.
“Deaths from Alzheimer’s have more than doubled between 2000 and 2019, while those from heart disease — the leading cause of death — have decreased.
Other health conditions correlated to Aluminum toxicity.
Nervous system – it blocks the electrical charge of nerve cells
Behavioral effects – loss of coordination, confusion, disorientation
Digestive system – aluminum reduces intestinal activity and causes colic
Kidney and liver dysfunction
Learning delays and disabilities
Lowered immune function
Skin problems
But how does Aluminum cause issues in our bodies?
Toxic metals contribute to brain disease by producing oxidative stress, and aluminum is one of the worst offenders! Oxidative stress is a normal occurrence in the human body. In simple terms, it means you have excessive free radicals in your body that will need an extra dose of nutrients to be neutralized. An excess of free radicals in the body leads to damage of fatty tissues, DNA, and proteins, which in return leads to disease.
Guess which foods and nutrients help neutralize oxidative stress?
Fruits (vitamin C, bioflavonoids, potassium, magnesium, copper)
Organ Meat (vitamin A, D, E, K, & B, and Zinc)
Some Vegetables like onions and garlic for their high sulphur content.
Aluminum doesn’t just cause oxidative stress.
It also replaces nutrients and minerals in enzyme binding sites. During this process the metal inhibits, overstimulates, or otherwise alters thousands of enzymes. This can reduce enzyme activity by 95%!
Aluminum can also replace substances in other tissue structures. Tissues in arteries, joints, bones and muscles are then weakened by the replacement process.
Aluminum can be deposited in many tissue sites throughout the body, causing local irritation and other toxic effects.
It also impedes glutathione production, your body’s master antioxidant. Glutathione is produced in your liver and is one of the most important intracellular detoxifiers reversing oxidative stress.
How do we detox Aluminum?
Definitively NOT by the route most Googled for, which is chelation, binders, liver cleansing, and drinking lots of vegetable juices!
Noooo, this most likely will set your health back! It sure did for me, and it certainly did with a lot of my clients. They start the "Andi Cutler Protocol" and think ALL metals will leave the body magically. But the body doesn’t work like that.
When you provide the right nutrients, lifestyle and relaxation modalities to your body it will detox on its own at the right time! Your liver does not need to be DETOXED because it does not STORE toxins. Your liver needs nutrients so that it can safely turn the metals into a fat soluble form and then into a water soluble form and excrete them via your colon and urine.
The detox issues of modern life:
Lack of calories, aka glycogen storage, in your liver that provides it with energy to work. You can give it all the NAC (N-acetyl cysteine) you want all day long, but without energy, your liver will be sluggish.
Lack of nutrients and minerals, we simply need more than we did 100 years ago.
Increases in stress. We can't detox when we run around stressed all day long. We need to relax to detox.
EMF changes the frequency of our body, interferes with relaxation, and detox (positive and negative charged ion exchange).
Increased exposure to pesticides, herbicides etc. that competes with detox.
Lack of joy, fun, laughter
Lack of movement
Emotional trauma
Low Metabolism (when your metabolism is slow it will not detox!)
Sources of Aluminum hydroxide:
Pharmaceuticals
Personal care products
Food preservatives
Coloring agents
Anti-caking agents
Emulsifiers
Soy based infant food
Animal feed, and therefore animal products
Antacids
Beverages in aluminum cans
Bleached flour
Cookware
Dental amalgams
Nasal spray
Pesticides
Tap water (aluminum is added to many municipal water supplies)
Tobacco smoke
Toothpaste
How to test for aluminum toxicity?
Hair tests and urine tests are the best way to evaluate your aluminum status. But if your body is not capable of detoxing at the time of testing you will not see anything come out via your hair or urine because aluminum is sitting somewhere deep in your tissues and it’s not safe for your body to let go.
There are two ways to detox:
Take a chelator for a day which mobilizes aluminum inside the body. Chelators are a form of chemical that goes and rips out heavy metals from storage sites regardless of your body being ready or not.
Start a healing journey with me which will mobilize heavy metals and toxins gently over time when your body is ready. For example, if you were to run a Hair Sample every 3 month on your health journey you might start seeing different metals coming out slowly over time.
What is the worst thing you can do to detox aluminum?
FASTING! Fasting sounds like a smart way to detox the body. A lot of people take a large amount of herbs that mobilize toxins during a fast. What they don’t know is that:
A. Fasting causes the body to break down muscle and fat which releases stored toxins, but it won't have enough extra nutrients to safely carry them out of the body.
B. Most herbs contribute to stage one of liver detox, which makes toxins water soluble. But when fasting, you lack the fat soluble vitamins/nutrients that a daily diet of meat and broth provides, and this prevents the second phase of liver detox from taking place, and toxins are re-lodged within the body.
Some people feel great when they go on these cleanses, but it's only for a short time until more symptoms appear down the road.
Resources:
Analytical Research Labs, Inc. “Mineral Information, Aluminum”. http://arltma.com/Mineral_Information/Aluminum.html.
Global Healing Center. “New Research Indicates Aluminum in Deodorant Linked To Breast Cancer”. March 23, 2009, Updated June 12, 2014. http://www.globalhealingcenter.com/natural-health/aluminum-and-breast-cancer/.
Global Healing Center. “Why I’m Concerned About the Dangers of Aluminum”. December 27, 2012, Updated on July 17, 2013. http://www.globalhealingcenter.com/natural-health/concerned-about-aluminum-dangers/.
Wilson, Lawrence, MD. “Aluminum – The Soft-in-the-head Mineral, a Toxic and Mainly Female Element”. The Center For Development, Inc. October 2012. (excerpted from The Mineral Reference Guide found in the back of the 2010 edition of Nutritional Balancing And Hair Mineral Analysis by the same author). http://drlwilson.com/ARTICLES/ALUMINUM.htm.
Wilson, Lawrence, MD. “Toxic Metals and Detoxification”. July 2014, The Center for Development, Inc. http://www.drlwilson.com/articles/TOXIC%20METALS.htm.
Yokel, RA. “The toxicology of aluminum in the brain: a review.” College of Pharmacy and Graduate Center for Toxicology, University of Kentucky Medical Center, Lexington, USA. 2000. http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/11130287
Comments