Understanding Toxins & Hormone Health

How toxic are we?

“A quarter of all deaths and diseases are attributed to the environment — our air, our water and our physical surroundings. Yet, when we visit our doctors, tests for environmental toxins — a chemical body burden test — are rarely if ever performed, despite the increase, since the 1970’s, of many environmentally influenced diseases such as autism (10x), birth defects (2x), asthma (2x), infertility (5–10%) and various types of cancers (40–60%).” – We Act for Environmental Justice

What is a toxin?

A toxin is any substance that can be harmful to the body, causing allergies, intolerances, sensitivities, bloating, digestive upset, or an overall feeling of sickness. Those toxins, unfortunately, come from the very things we encounter every day.

Chemicals are all around us, I mean that’s probably no surprise.

But, did you know that there are thousands of chemicals registered for use in the US and the majority of them have never been tested for safety?

And guess where many of these chemicals end up? That’s right…in our homes where people spend 90% of their time!

Toxins and hormone health

The endocrine system is an essential physiological system that helps keep you feeling healthy and well-balanced. Endocrine disruptors, or hormone disrupting toxins, on the other hand, do exactly the opposite: they mess with the endocrine system and throw your body out of whack.

Hormones are responsible for keeping you healthy, looking good, and thinking clearly. When your body is in this state, it is called hormonal harmony. Endocrine disruptors threaten this harmony every single day. These toxins are constantly present in the environment around us and in our lifestyles.

It is therefore very important to understand what the endocrine system is and how it works, and how endocrine disruptors can affect it. This will help us figure out what we can do to ensure that our bodies are always in hormonal harmony.

What is the endocrine system?

Commonly referred to as the hormone system, the endocrine system is the collection of all the glands in the body that produce hormones. Hormones are responsible for growth and development, metabolism regulation, tissue function, sleep, mood, sexual function, reproduction, and many more things.

The glands that make up the endocrine system include the pineal gland, the hypothalamus, the pituitary gland, the thymus gland, the parathyroid gland, the thyroid gland, the pancreas, the adrenal glands, and the ovaries. These glands secrete hormones into the bloodstream and regulate those hormones.

The endocrine system ensures that there is proper hormone balance, which is essential for the normal functioning of the body. When the hormones are out of balance, it leads to many health issues, including hypothyroidism, hyperthyroidism, adrenal dysfunction, low libido, pituitary malfunction, weight gain, diabetes, among others.

The endocrine system is always at work. Hormones are constantly being pumped into the blood, determining our moods and energy levels, sleep patterns, growth, development, and healing, among other body processes. However, it takes very little to disrupt the entire system, which is why taking good care of it is very important.

What is an endocrine-disrupting toxin?

As the name suggests, endocrine disrupting-toxins are things that mess with the body’s endocrine system. They can lead to developmental, neurological, immune, or reproductive disruptions, or sometimes, a combination of these issues.

Where you are being exposed

Our everyday home environment contains a host of endocrine disruptors that are found in household chemicals, pesticides, our mattresses, furniture, clothing, technological devices, plastics, and more.

Other toxins can include cash register receipts, detergents, food & color additives, irradiated foods, genetically modified organisms (also known as GMOs), tap & bottled water, alcoholic drinks, medicines, and ingredients from our everyday cosmetics, cleaning and personal care products, including feminine care products.

Our bodies have a natural process to eliminate toxins, which are excreted through the body (ex: urine). But, our bodies can get too overwhelmed with these toxins and that’s when we may begin to experience signs of illness and sluggishness.

So, where does this all start?

It all starts in the womb.

Did you know that your health as a baby was first affected by the foods and environmental factors that your maternal grandmother was exposed to, all while your mother was still in the womb?

This means that while your mother was in the womb this was already setting the stage for your health.

If you remember from high school biology class, the umbilical cord is the life line of a baby when a baby is still in the womb. Everything the baby needs, like nutrients, is passed to it through the umbilical cord through the mother.

On the down side, the same happens with low-level toxic exposures from food, air and water through either ingestion, inhalation, or direct contact with the skin.

Because women mobilize a lot of body fat during pregnancy to provide nourishment for their growing babies, any contaminants in the fat are also passed to the children, even if the pregnancy occurs years after the mother’s exposure. Nursing mothers also transfer a good portion of their lifetime accumulation of chemicals to their babies.

It’s also quite possible that a mother’s exposure to toxic chemicals during pregnancy could harm her baby, while possibly not affecting her own health at all. Toxins accumulating in the womb, regardless of harm to the mother’s health, too, can be potentially stored for a lifetime.

This is where the “body burden”, or “toxic body burden”, begins. Unfortunately, every infant born today carries a chemical body burden passed from mother to child during pregnancy and it can take years to see the long-term effects. And this burden will mostly grow throughout a lifetime of exposure to chemicals in food, air, water and everyday products.

And children, even once outside the womb, are still more vulnerable to toxic exposure than adults:

– A baby’s immune system is not fully functional, so a baby’s body cannot counteract toxic effects as well as an adult can

– Babies don’t excrete contaminants or store them away in fat in the same ways that adults do, making the poisons more available to affect rapidly growing bodies

– Children spend a considerable amount of time putting things in their mouths

– Children eat, drink, and breathe more for their body weights than adults do, so they get bigger proportional doses of whatever is out there

– Faster metabolisms in children speed up their absorption of contaminants, which means babies get continuous exposures at a time when all of their organs, including their brains, are still developing

– Children live closer to the ground where the highest concentrations of many air pollutants settle

– Children can be exposed to chemicals at schools and other various buildings through old fluorescent lighting, paint, floor finishes, the soil, and food

Teenagers

Laboratory tests reveal adolescent girls across America are contaminated with chemicals commonly used in cosmetics and body care products. The Environmental Working Group detected 16 chemicals from 4 chemical families – phthalates, triclosan, parabens, and musks – in blood and urine samples from 20 teen girls aged 14-19. Studies link these chemicals to potential health effects including cancer and hormone disruption.

Another study, discovered that the teen study participants used an average of nearly 17 personal care products each day, while the average adult woman uses just 12 products daily. Thus, teens may unknowingly expose themselves to higher levels of cosmetic ingredients linked to potential health effects at a time when their bodies are more susceptible to chemical damage.

So, ladies, moms. To put this into perspective think about your daily routine. There are thousands of chemicals used in personal care products. And according to the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, women expose themselves to an average of 168 of them every day.

168 chemicals!

And that’s the average, meaning some women are being exposed to more than that.
Men are generally exposed to fewer, obviously because they don’t use as many products as we do, but, their health can be affected the same.

Those 168 chemicals do not include the chemicals you are exposed to while cleaning the house. That number does not include the water you drink. And it’s not including the chemicals we are exposed to in our food. This is just exposure through our personal care products.

Our skin is the largest organ, and next to inhalation, making it one of the easiest ways to absorb these toxic chemicals.

Seniors are no exception

The last years of our lives can bring a whole new level of health issues. As the toxic burden continues to pile on through our senior years, this can also be the time that diseases from exposure over the years can begin to appear.

Toxic weight gain

Did you know that according to an article published in Environmental Health Perspectives Journal (2012 Feb; 120(2): a62–a68.), obesity is strongly linked with exposure to risk factors during fetal and infant development? 

There are about twenty chemicals that are known to directly or indirectly increase obesity through disruption of metabolic, hormonal, or developmental processes. They have the ability to alter fat cell development, alter metabolism, and promote fat retention, which leads to weight gain. They alter the very same hormones that are responsible for regulating appetite, satiety, and food preference.

These chemicals are actually a subset of endocrine disruptors called obesogens and can be found in the same previously mentioned toxic products.

The body stores fat loving chemicals as a defense mechanism to prevent them from freely circulating in the body – so the more fat we have the more of these fat loving chemicals we have. And guess where toxins tend to get stored?

Yep, you guessed it! Toxins tend to get stored in the very fat cells our bodies hang on to.

In conclusion

So, as you see early life exposure to chemicals can lead to health problems not only in adulthood, but also down through subsequent generations. Many of these chemicals are, unfortunately, linked to health conditions we’re all trying to avoid such as cancer, diabetes, insulin resistance, weight gain, resistant weight loss, thyroid disease, asthma, birth defects, hormonal imbalance, infertility, and more. 


While many exposures are unavoidable for all of us, there are many that we can easily address, especially in the home by moving to less toxic, or non-toxic versions. It’s time for you to know how your health, as well as your families’ health, is affected by your everyday environment so you can change the things you have the control to change.

Ready to take the first step? Take the 5 Day Toss the Toxins Challenge! This challenge isn’t going to rid you of all the toxins in the home nor the body, but it can get you started on reducing the burden they place on your body. Additionally, it will introduce you to some of the ways you can reduce your exposure to toxins in the home.