What does detoxification mean?

Welcome to episode 73. Thanks for joining me. I am super grateful you all have stuck with me for 73 episodes. 

Please send me your questions to helpforhashimotos@gmail.com or head over to my website outofthewoodsnutrition.com and fill out the contact form putting in the subject line, podcast and then ask away. I’m here to help so you can live your best life and feel fantastic even while dealing with chronic illness and thyroid disease. This disease does not have to make or break you and let me remind you that you are not your disease. You are a person who deserves love and kindness and to feel good. It isn’t going to magically appear just because you know you deserve it though. You do have to make choices day by day that are going to bring you out of dis-ease and in to wellness. What you put in and on your body and what you have going on in your head all do play a role in your health and in disease. Those small and seemingly insignificant choices we make on a daily basis add up to a lot over time. Cutting 125 calories of crap from our diet over 2 ½ years can result in significant weight loss. Reading 10 pages a day of a book can result in you reading more books than you ever imagined over that same period of time. The point here is with a little change here or there you can and you will start to feel better. It is all up to you. Are you in?

Okay. Now let’s get down to business. This is another show about detoxification because I want you to be really clear what it means and what it does in your body. Again, this is not a discussion about cleanses or water fasting or any sort of fad type of detox. This is what is happening on a daily basis in your body and how you can provide your body with the tools it needs to work optimally for you to feel your best. 

Detoxification can be defined as giving the body what it needs to break down and excrete the toxic compounds we take in through our day to day life and to break down and excrete the toxic compounds created by our own body and it breaks down external compounds we have been exposed to. At the same time detoxification is about taking the steps we need to do to reduce our exposure. 

Detoxing or cleansing has been around for 100’s and 100’s of years as part of a healing practice. Think about the season of lent in the catholic church. You are giving up something and bringing something else in to your life. The point of it is to look at your life with curiosity and self examination. When you change the kind of food you put in to your body to something more healing, your life will change too. This can also be called detox but biotransformation is a better name in my opinion. It is access to greater change and healing. 

We have three phases of detoxification within the body. Phase I, Phase II and Phase III. Phase I & II have been studied a lot in conjunction with pharmaceutical drugs and how they are metabolized in the body. Phase III is elimination of toxins in your cells but also elimination from the body via urine, sweat, feces and so on. 

There was a study done on women with chronic fatigue syndrome- possibly some of you have been diagnosed with that in addition to Hashimoto’s? These women took a detox supplement powder along with doing an elimination diet. So they took this powder that had all the nutrients your body needs and it was mixed with water or something. Along with the powder they consumed an elimination diet that was loaded with phytonutrients (a component of plants that are beneficial to our health). They took the Medical Symptom Questionnaire from the Institute For Functional Medicine before the program and then again when the program was done. This specific detox program which is food based reduced the participants medical symptoms significantly. There is a clear benefit here but I want to stress that you should not do this on your own. Get support from a practitioner because you may need to heal your gut before doing something like this or you may need to make sure you are pooping regularly etc. 

A program like this can help you get rid of brain fog, pain, help you understand what foods you should avoid, give you more energy, clear up your skin, reduce medications and stress and inflammation and can help you recover or go in to remission. This is kind of a big deal. Is it worth it to you to do the work to get to this place? If so, I am your girl. These are my favorite kinds of clients to work with. 

The work you may need to do to get to this feeling is not only clean up your diet, but your home, your personal care products, your mind and even your relationships. Your results will all depend on how much work you put in as with anything. There is no magic and I am sorry to say that because I too wish there was a magic pill here. 

So where do you begin if you want to do something like this? First make sure you are pooping 1-2 times a day. This is really really important. You don’t want to go to the work of cleaning up the body and then not be able to get rid of all the garbage because it will just go right back in to circulation and make you sick. Not good. You also need some energy to get through something like this so if you are low on energy as many of us with hypothyroidism are, you will need to do some work on that first. You may need to do some supplementation to support your body through this as well. 

Your gut needs to be in good shape before detoxing so working on healing your gastrointestinal tract is important. If you have intestinal permeability you have a good chance that these external toxins are escaping in to the blood stream along with proteins that have not been broken down etc. We need to have a very acidic stomach- not usually the case in hypothyroidism and as we get older so we need to possibly supplement with stomach acid in order to break down our foods. Your liver needs to be working well because much of the breakdown of toxins happens there. You need good bile flow which means you need to have a proper functioning gallbladder. If you have referred pain in your shoulder blades or if you put some pressure on the area under your right rib cage and it is painful or uncomfortable, then you have some healing to do there too before implementing a detoxification program. 

We know that mercury is a big player in autoimmune disease and Hashimoto’s right? Well 80% of the mercury in our body comes out in our stool. If we have leaky gut and are not pooping regularly this can be a real problem. You can be pooping daily but if you are not pooping out what you ate the day before that means you have slow motility and that is not good either. You might want to do a transit time test- eat some beets or like a half a cup of organic corn or take 5-7 activated charcoal tablets in the morning. Write down what time you take it, then watch your stool. Write down what time you first see one of those things in your stool (you will likely see red in your stool with beets) and then write down the date and time you last see them. The time between when you first ingested the stuff and the last time you see it in your stool is your transit time. This should be around 16-24 hours. Anything longer than that, there is a good chance you are reabsorbing some toxic materials. Anything less than that and it is likely you are missing out on absorption of nutrients.   If your poops are not perfect you likely need to do a gut healing program before you begin. Again, this is something you should do with a practitioner- it requires some diet change and supplementation but is so worth it. 

What kinds of nutrients do you need to help your body detoxify?

 Fiber- most of us don’t get enough of it. Get your fiber from a variety of plant foods and avoid supplementation if you can. Fiber is in veggies, nuts, legumes (beans), fruit and grains. The more fiber you eat the more toxins you will naturally pull out of your body. If you need help through supplementation you can take psyllium which works great but be aware that taking it for too long can result in developing an intolerance. It will reduce transit time, it can help lower blood sugar and LDL cholesterol and it is pretty safe. Biotics Research makes a really nice psyllium product called Colon Plus that works well. When I first started doing this, I was still in school and had a practice client who had not pooped for a month. She started on this product which I tested her for and she called me up to tell me she pooped 5 times in one day and she was feeling fantastic.  So it really gets things moving. 

Aloe vera can be used for up to 2 weeks to stimulate your eliminations but it doesn’t really taste great. It is anti-inflammatory and can be cooling to our system. 

Prebiotics- you can get those from fiber containing foods. They reduce inflammation and IBS symptoms, they are good for your colon and allow our body to assimilate vitamins and minerals. They can also promote feeling full and weight loss. Prebiotics feed the beneficial bacteria in our gut allowing for the population to remain strong and healthy. 

Probiotics- many strains help our body detoxify things naturally so building up a good, strong healthy gut is important. 

What organs are involved in detoxification?

The liver- the super detoxifier. So much goes on in our liver and detoxification is one of the really important and big jobs it has. We need to support the liver with antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients and herbs. Milk thistle is well known to be supportive of the liver and helping it eliminate toxins from the body. It is an antioxidant and supports the production of our master antioxidant, glutathione. N-Acetyl Cysteine is a powerhouse of a nutrient too. It has been studied in the prevention of the flu. It prevents or combats oxidative stress, protects the liver and is what is given to people who OD on acetaminophen. You can take 1000-1500mg per day depending on your needs. 

Just like in constipation, when stools sit in our colon too long, toxins can be reabsorbed. The same thing happens in the kidneys. We have these tubules in our kidneys where resorption of toxins can happen and it is all dependent upon a more alkaline pH in the body which we get by consuming a ton of fruits and veggies. 

We also detox through our lungs just by breathing. So deep breathing practices can be very helpful. Avoid perfumes, even essential oils can be problematic for some people, and incense. 

We detox through our skin too. Emotionally you can think about whether or not you feel good in your own skin but in addition to that- what are you putting on your body? We talked about what to put in your body but what goes on your skin is equally important. You want to avoid aluminum in your deodorant and clean up your make-up and skin care. Think about shampoo, conditioner, hand soaps, dish soap, laundry soap. Household cleaners and on and on. It gets overwhelming for sure but start with one area and clean that up and then move on to other areas. Little by little. 

If you have access to a sauna to sweat that is really helpful in moving toxins out quickly. Use a dry brush on your body before getting in the shower and start working on self love. 

The limiting thoughts and beliefs we have about ourselves and our ability to heal can be a real thing. What are you thinking about most of the time? For me, for years, it was how much I hated this disease and how it made me feel so terrible. I had a lot of toxic thoughts, still do in some areas. It is a daily practice to work on changing those thoughts in to something good. What kinds of thoughts are controlling you? Take a moment to think about that. Our thoughts are powerful. The toxicants that we take in, like actual chemicals, can change our mood and behavior making us angry, irritable or moody. Toxic thoughts can do that too. 

We need meaning and purpose. We need to believe in something greater than us- whatever that is for you. We need to feel peace. This is all part of the functional medicine model. Having purpose is good for our health. My dad lost all sense of purpose once he couldn’t drive anymore. Once his car was sold- that was it for him. He now spends most of his time sleeping. It is really sad. 

Anyway, starting some kind of spiritual practice can be really helpful- whether it is prayer, meditation, saying a mantra or even just journaling your gratitude. When I am feeling really terrible I will go for a walk and just say out loud as I am walking: “I am grateful for these feet that can move on the ground, I am thankful for my eyes that can see, I am grateful for my hands that can feel the breeze, I am thankful for ears that can hear the birds…”. You get the idea. Just small things to be grateful for and about halfway in to the walk- about 20 minutes- I start to feel lighter and much better. Little things. Find some time to just be quiet for a minute or two even if it has to be while you are on the toilet. 

Who needs to do a detoxification program?

Pretty much everyone these days. If you are obese or overweight, been on a diet your whole life, if you eat processed foods at all, if you use any kind of personal care products, if you have inflammation, live in a city or the country, if you are a Vietnam vet- actually any veteran could use a detox and if you travel a lot. These are just a few of the reasons someone should consider a detoxification program. If you have symptoms of fatigue, fibromyalgia, diabetes, brain fog or other brain/cognition issues, neurological issues, asthma, allergies, chemical sensitivities, autoimmune disease, chronic infections, infertility or hormone imbalance. The list really goes on and on. 

Do you think you need to clean things up in your body?  Shoot me an email and we can discuss it. Just go to the contact form on my website and fill that out. You can also just schedule a free 15 minute consult under Book An Appointment on the bar at the top of my webpage. While you are there, sign up for my newsletter and get recipes sent directly to your inbox. 

Please leave me a rating and or review on Apple Podcasts so I can reach more people and help others navigate the tricky waters of autoimmune disease. If I can help one person have to go through all I have gone through, it makes me so happy. 

I’m going to leave you with this mantra: I let go of everything that I no longer need. 

How to test for toxins in your body

We talked about toxins last week and how some particular toxins can affect the body. How do you know if you have an issue with toxins? Functional medicine can be helpful here when you use their timelines and you work with a practitioner to gather information about your health. 

Your practitioner should ask you, “When was the last time you felt good or when was the last time you remember feeling really good?”

There should first be a focus on your symptoms before you spend a dime on lab testing, except your obvious thyroid labs of course. Your practitioner should take a very thorough history and plotting your life on a timeline with you. Plotting all your toxin exposure on a separate timeline can be very helpful for you to be able to see just how much of a burden your body is under. 

Some of the things that are involved in your toxic burden are genetics, things like polymorphisms in your genetic make up called SNP’s. Things that you come with at birth, maternal heath habits and health history. What was it like while you were in the womb? Then think about things you were exposed to as a child or exposure over time to a particular toxin. For me it might have been mercury through a mouthful of amalgam fillings. Next we are thinking about how disease gets triggered. You have a lifetime of exposure to something- for me it was second hand smoke, then I had a root canal as an adult- maybe you had something else. The point is you get this compounding effect and something in your body is triggered. When my son died, I am pretty sure the trigger for the thyroid storm was stress. I didn’t handle stress very well at all back then and didn’t learn how to really manage it until the last couple of years if I am being honest. So stuff is brewing and finally your body breaks. The final straw could be something as simple as gluten. It really depends on you and your bio-individuality. That is why the timeline is so important in helping you figure out your root cause. 

Next you look at what keeps the symptoms going over time. What is making things worse? It could be not enough water or vegetables in your diet or chronic constipation which is common in hypothyroidism and is sure to keep you in higher toxic burden. Maybe it is mold. 

I will share some of my timeline I had to do for my class as an assignment. Each functional medicine timeIine starts with prenatal exposures so we always start there. My mom had rheumatic fever and was on penicillin for ten years so she basically had a completely destroyed gut microbiome before I was born. She grew up on a dairy farm- probably exposed to some chemicals in the fields there and diesel fuel as well. I was born in the early 70’s and it was okay for women to smoke while pregnant so I had that exposure in the womb as well as the occasional bit of alcohol exposure. I had second hand smoke exposure my whole life, ate a Standard American very processed foods diet all while growing up. Both my parents worked so there was a fair amount of convenience foods though my mom did cook meals from scratch most of the time. I consumed a ton of sugar as a kid and young adult- not so young adult as well. I had a mouth full of amalgam or silver fillings, lots of hair perms in the 80’s and early 90’s, regular alcohol use for at least 10 years, Round up exposure for sure over the years but a time frame is hard to pinpoint. Lots of household cleaner chemical exposure as a kid too. My mom used to choke while using a certain cleaning product that took lime off the shower every single weekend. New furniture and new carpet and new construction off gassing over a lifetime, several flu shots in my past until my kids put up such a fight over getting them, we quit going. The use of plastic food containers, heating food in plastic containers in the microwave. Chlorine and fluoride exposure in drinking water, non stick cookware.  

You can see how seemingly small things add up to a lot of exposure over time and can contribute to dis-ease. Plotting all this out can be super helpful for you and your practitioner to see where your exposures were and are and you can start to make small changes over time. 

Some other very important things you need to consider before labs are things that play a role in your overall health and not just your physical health but your mental and emotional health as well. 

How are your relationships? Hashimoto’s and thyroid disease in general can create some loneliness. You don’t look sick but you feel like crap or have zero energy so you don’t make an effort to be with friends or family. You maybe start to stay home more than socialize and people don’t understand. You might feel depressed and certainly there are many of us who have been told by our doctors that we are depressed and there is nothing wrong with us. 

How is your stress level? Not just your physical stress but financial stress, are you a caregiver? cortisol issues, any kind of thing you or your body perceives as stress. 

Diet- what do you eat and drink? Processed foods, foods with little to no nutrient density? Artificial sweeteners? Chemicals, food dyes? Do you eat fish that has high mercury levels?

Are you exercising? All you have to do is just move to start with if you don’t feel like you can do much. Maybe you are working out too hard, too long or too many days a week. That is stressful for your body too. Maybe you are dehydrated or you use energy drinks or caffeine to help you get up and go. 

Are you sleeping? Many of you are not. I spent my college years not sleeping- of course. I recovered on the weekends by sleeping in. Then I had kids. I didn’t sleep through the night for probably 6 or 8 years. Then my blood sugar was a mess and my thyroid problems started so I had a lot of insomnia, tons of fatigue. Then my husband started snoring and having sleep issues. He actually chokes in the night and then flails about, kind of punching his way to a breath so I got woke up by that with a shot of adrenaline and couldn’t sleep. I am 49 this year and I had had enough of the no sleep so I now sleep in a separate room and am sleeping hard and through the night and it feels wonderful. Not so great for my relationship- so that part of my functional medicine matrix paperwork is suffering but I am sleeping and sleep is important to me. I cannot function without it. My brain doesn’t comprehend when I don’t sleep and being in school, brain function is important. I made a choice but so did my husband when he let the doctor tell him he didn’t need a sleep apnea machine because he was borderline.  That is probably more information than you needed but I want to keep it real here. The other important parts of sleep are things like keeping electronics out of your bedroom, keeping the room cool and dark and making sure you have down time. What do you do to relax?

What kinds of dis-ease can be attributed to toxin exposure? Well just about anything but I’ll run down some general things: 

• Poor digestion, constipation, IBS

• Infections, either chronic or things that are recurring, autoimmune disease in general, skin problems, cancer

• Fatigue

• Multiple chemical sensitivities, kidney problems, elevated liver enzymes

• Cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, asthma or things like COPD

• Hormone problems, thyroid problems, type 2 diabetes

• Bone loss, leaky gut

• Brain fog, anxiety, depression, feeling a lack of purpose

For toxic exposure in particular, once you pinpoint the types of exposures you have had, you can then think about potential lab work that might help you set a baseline for measuring how you are moving these toxins out of your system. 

Without addressing your thyroid issue or autoimmune disease, and just thinking about removing toxins from your body, you want to be sure that you have great digestion and you are pooping at least 1-2 times a day so that once you get the toxins mobilized, you can eliminate them without causing you to feel sick.  You will work on avoiding any more significant exposures, probably make some lifestyle changes and then work on a diet plan to clean up your body’s insides. 

Once you do that, then maybe test to see if you are assimilating nutrients meaning- is your body using or able to use the vitamins and minerals you are taking in through your diet. 

But you can take the Toxin Exposure Questionnaire from the Institute for Functional Medicine to get a picture of where exposure is in addition to plotting your life on a timeline. Every one of us has a toxic burden. We want to figure out if your toxic burden is one reason you have thyroid problems or autoimmune disease. So besides doing the questionnaires and having an interview with a practitioner you can have some lab work done. I want to emphasize that the other work should be done first and lab work can come later. 

You can have blood, urine, hair or stool testing done pretty easily to measure some of your toxic load. Maybe have a heavy metal lab test done if you have skin issues, heart disease, high blood pressure (and you know it isn’t from a crap diet), peripheral neuropathy, chronic headache, sleep issues, memory problems or issues with concentration. Anemia, regular abdominal pain, cancer. Any of these can be due to chronic heavy metal exposure. 

Some labs have toxicity panels- I think Genova, Great Plains Labs and a few others offer these types of tests. They are not super cheap though so be sure it is something you need or want. They can test for things like BPA, organophosphates, PCB’s, pesticides, and more. Say you used a ton of plastic over the years- maybe you want a baseline for BPA so you can measure how well your new diet and lifestyle changes are doing at excreting this out of your body. This would be a reason to have a blood test done. 

You can check with your doctor to have a full blood work up done too for things like your blood sugar, maybe mold, your thyroid panel, sex hormones, some doctors do adrenal hormones, homocysteine which measures the level of inflammation in your body, I think you can even get a glyphosate test, red blood cell count, liver enzymes. All those can help you learn more about where your body is at even if they are in the “normal” range. The high end of normal can be indicative that something is going on that you might want to pay attention to. 

IMPERFECT FOODS

Can exposure to toxins cause Hashimoto’s?

Welcome to episode 71. We are discussing toxins today and detoxification. I might have mentioned before that I was on a forum once and I suggested to someone that they may want to work on detoxification in their body in order to help their thyroid work better. I was shunned by the moderator with some links to prove that detoxification is a myth and that it doesn’t really work. I had to explain to this moderator that I was talking about our body’s natural detoxification system which works really hard for us every day. 

We are exposed to a significant amount of man made chemical pollutants in our drinking water, our food supply and the air we breath. We also have to consider all the products we bring in to our homes as well as any pesticides we might use on our yard. The exposure is everywhere. This is not a doom and gloom episode, though it might feel that way. I think education is important because when you know better you do better and that is the case with anything. These toxins are not going anywhere. Some will be here longer than humans so we have to know what to do about them and how we can keep our body as healthy as possible. In other words we have this body burden that we need to be mindful of. 

It is estimated that we each have around 700 contaminants within our body and most of those have not been studied for safety. 

What is a toxin then?  That could be considered anything inside or outside of the body that keeps us from having good health. There are toxic things- physical, mental, emotional, chemical- that are poisonous to us. There are toxicants- a kind of poison, usually man made that is put into the environment by humans. 

Maybe you have heard the term xenobiotic. This is a chemical or organic compound not recognized by the body. Xenohormesis on the other hand is a stress compound made in plants that are beneficial to our health. The prefix xeno means foreign. 

We can be exposed to toxins through heavy metals, persistent organic pollutants (POPs- chemicals that stay in the environment for a long time because they are resistant to biodegrading), toxins from foods like GMO’s, hormones, antibiotics, fat loving toxins, aflatoxins, sugar, food allergies, xenoestrogens (a synthetic or natural compound that imitates estrogen). 

One of the big problems we have is the constant exposure to this stuff builds up in our body over time and leads to dis-ease. We have the exposure from the environment, genetic susceptibility, dose after dose of chemical for long periods of time- basically our lifetime which makes the toxins potent and that leads to disease. 

How do toxins affect us?

It often starts with some kind of problem with the immune system and then extends into neurological issues, endocrine system issues or gastrointestinal problems. One toxin can cause multiple issues in the body. 

If you have not responded to specific therapies that are known to be effective for your condition, if you have allergies, infections, autoimmune disease or you have known exposures to toxins from jobs, hobbies, home exposure, whatever- then you probably have an issue with toxicity of some kind. 

Toxin exposures and how it relates to health. 

People with the highest levels of PCB’s were more than 4x more likely to have high antinuclear antibodies than people with low levels of PCBs. These levels are linked to higher rates of autoimmune disease. 

Having high mercury levels in blood or urine were associated with high antinuclear antibody levels. This is coming from the NHANES study done between 1999-2004. 

Chlordane- a chemical used as a termiticide, even when applied per manufacturer directions exposes the homeowner to it for decades and is causing incidence of the development of antibodies against self, specifically against smooth muscle tissue. 

Chlorpyrifos- info from the EPA website: 

Chlorpyrifos has been used as a pesticide since 1965 in both agricultural and non-agricultural areas:

The largest agricultural market for chlorpyrifos in terms of total pounds of active ingredient is corn.

It is also used on soybeans, fruit and nut trees, Brussels sprouts, cranberries, broccoli, and cauliflower, as well as other row crops.

Non-agricultural uses include golf courses, turf, green houses, and on non-structural wood treatments such as utility poles and fence posts.  It is also registered for use as a mosquito adulticide, and for use in roach and ant bait stations in child resistant packaging.

This chemical causes high antibody levels anywhere from 1 to 4.5 years after exposure causing antibodies against the parietal cells in your stomach- this means low stomach acid production and anti-thyroid antibodies as well as hepatitis. 

Formaldehyde— exposure causing antibodies against brush boarder in small intestine, mitochondria and smooth muscle tissue. 

Lupus- has a huge association to certain pharamceutical comounds and with environmental chemicals. Focus here is on the environmental chemicals since that is what I am studying. A neighborhood in Hobbs New Mexico had higher than normal exposure to chemicals like benzene, xylene, toluene, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, mercury and more due to living near an oil field waste dump and a very high rate of Lupus- about 870 people per every 100,000. 

Mercury- Those same New Mexico residents were 11x more likely to have inflammation in the joints and they were 19x more likely to be diagnosed with lupus. They had problems with dizziness, balance issues, extreme fatigue, sleep problems, concentration issues and more. 

Antithyroid antibodies are linked with high blood mercury levels. Having blood mercury levels above 1.81 ug(microgram)/L means a 2.2x higher chance of developing thyroid autoimmune disease. Eating mercury containing fish just once a week can give you that level of mercury. 

Heavy metal exposure in general is a problem. These metals will bind to oxygen and other things in the body messing with all the enzyme activity that goes on every second. Chronic exposure can lead to CVD and related disorders, peripheral neuropathy, sensory disorder, anemia, abdominal pain, cancer, skin issues. Dental amalgams are a big culprit for mercury exposure. 

Regular and ongoing exposure to hair dye has been associated with higher rates of lupus as well. People who use nail polish have a 10x higher risk of developing lupus than those who don’t. 

Smoking also puts you at a higher risk of Lupus. 

Living with PCB contamination in your area will give you increased risk of antinuclear antibodies and anti-thyroperoxidase antibodies. Antinuclear antibodies are a general test for autoimmune diseases. 

From EPA: PCBs belong to a broad family of man-made organic chemicals known as chlorinated hydrocarbons. PCBs were domestically manufactured from 1929 until manufacturing was banned in 1979. They have a range of toxicity and vary in consistency from thin, light-colored liquids to yellow or black waxy solids. Due to their non-flammability, chemical stability, high boiling point and electrical insulating properties, PCBs were used in hundreds of industrial and commercial applications including:

• Electrical, heat transfer and hydraulic equipment

• Plasticizers in paints, plastics and rubber products

• Pigments, dyes and carbonless copy paper

• Other industrial applications

Chemical sensitivities are on the rise. This is also known as multiple chemical sensitivity, environmental illness, idiopathic environmental intolerance or toxicant induced loss of tolerance. About 20% of the population has this issue. 

You can have negative physical, mental, or emotional symptoms with minimal exposure to chemicals. Pesticides and solvents are the main culprits in bringing this on with new construction, gasoline and petroleum products a close second. Those of us with this issue may have a genetic SNP or two that lower our ability to break down organophosphate pesticides or solvents. 

Obviously avoiding toxins is going to be very helpful. It is your first line of defense. Clean up all things you can to the best of your ability and finances. Good air filters with a minimum efficiency rating value MERV of 7 on your ventilation system at home. This particular rated filter will help reduce dust particles which are  big culprit in at home exposure to toxins. Getting a good quality air purifier will be even better than a filter. There are things called sham units (no filters) and fully functional air purifiers. Using a reverse osmosis water filter will remove most groundwater contamination. Avoid high mercury fish, see a dentist that doesn’t use mercury in their office and if you need to remove high levels of mercury find a doctor that can use chelating agents.  I will go in to more details on how to clean things up in a future episode but using a sauna or sweating through exercise can be a great way to get toxins out of your system very gently and taking antioxidants or eating a rainbow of fruits and veggies will go a long way to helping your body clean things up and keep you healthy a million other ways.