CHEMICAL SOUP

Why detoxification is so important

By the Triangle Health News Service

What's in Your Body?

Chemicals are usually man-made substances that human bodies never experienced until the dawn of the Industrial Age only decades ago.

These substances are exceptions to the normal patterns of nature. They do not exist in a way that our bodies are familiar with, and our bodies are often ill-equipped to process these chemicals and remove them from our cell tissue.

This wouldn’t be such a problem except that many of these chemicals cause health problems. They embed in our bodies, especially in fat deposits, where they silently destroy our cells, internal organs, and immune systems.

Harmful chemicals are so pervasive that it is a daunting and constant task to be on guard against ingesting them and to be proactive in getting rid of them if they are inside us.

The pervasiveness of chemicals is due in part to the power of the industries that create the chemicals.

In Europe, for example, the continent’s major medical associations have demanded stricter European Union chemical regulations, arguing that watering down a proposed chemical regulatory bill would increase the incidence of cancer on the continent.

Representatives of the French Association for Research and Treatment of Cancer and the Standing Committee of European Doctors (an organization representing 2 million physicians) told members of the European Parliament that cancer, congenital birth defects and asthma were often linked to the toxicity of chemical pollutants.

“We are in a serious situation. Some 75 percent of cancers are due to mutations induced by environmental factors, mainly chemicals,” said leading French oncologist Dominique Belpomme.

He called for better testing of dangerous substances, adopting more stringent toxicological standards a