Did you know low levels of thyroid can bring on not only low energy and weight gain, but also depression and even brain fog?

This can make thinking, problem-solving, and just coping with the everyday stresses of life, much harder.

With the rise in hormone-blocking toxins in our environment, processed foods and processed sugars, and the low amount of protein most of us consume, low thyroid is affecting more and more people, especially among women and the elderly.

In this article we dive into what thyroid is, how low thyroid occurs, how it affects our mood, mental alertness, and our ability to think and cope with the problems of everyday life and what we can do to raise it.

We know that toxins are harmful to our bodies.

They stress our nervous system, raise inflammation and cortisol in the body, mess up our hormones, damage or kill cells, contribute to many diseases including cancer, and even cause trouble for our unborn children, disrupting the process by which both their nervous systems and immune systems form.

But how do toxins stress the body? How do they raise inflammation? And how can we prevent this?

Electromagnetic Fields, or EMFs, are invisible electric and magnetic fields of force surrounding any flowing electricity or magnetic object.

They can be generated by natural things, like the Earth's magnetic field, or the Sun, which don’t cause us trouble. Or they can be generated by man-made devices: cell phone towers, cell phones, microwave ovens, kitchen appliances, and even electrical wiring in our homes.

And these can cause us trouble, depending on how much or many we’re exposed to, and how strong they are.

Stress levels in our society have never been as high as they are right now. And, while there has been a lot of upheaval in the last few years, there's more here than meets the eye.

Depression and anxiety have never been higher, physical stress in the form of inflammation, auto-immune disease, heart disease and cortisol levels have never been higher.

But this isn’t a recent occurrence. Stress levels have been rising for decades.

And, while some stress is emotional or mental, and some physical, it's all tied together, each aspect affecting the other, pushing each other to new heights.

How do we lower physical stress levels and inflammation?

How do we achieve a more even-keeled mood, more able to calmly face the challenges life presents?

How do we become the most alert and competent we can be mentally, while at the same time being able to relax when we need or want to, or when it's time to sleep?

Over the next few weeks we're going to cover this from every angle, see how it all fits together, and find out what you can do to lower stress levels in your life.

We've spoken a lot about hormones but not how toxins affect these. 

Testosterone levels have been dropping for decades, while estrogen levels have risen sharply. And thyroid is a huge problem.

Hormonal imbalances are no longer just being deficient in one or another hormone.

There are exact chemicals in the environment, in our food, air, and water, which didn’t exist before, that block hormones from being created, block them from being able to communicate their instructions to a cell, disrupt their normal actions, or impersonate them entirely.

If you’re reading this page, it’s likely that you’ve seen our claims for PerfectAmino Essential Amino Acids; and that you may have a few questions about them.

The first claim is that not all proteins are equal. That different proteins, once digested and absorbed, provide our bodies with different amounts of usable protein, gram for gram. 

The second claim is that the idea that we receive 4 calories for every gram of protein we consume is a misconception. And that it indicates a broader lack of understanding of what calories are outside of the scientific community, and what they have to do with muscle gain, energy, and body fat. 

We’ll do our best to answer those claims here.

Environmental toxins are getting worse.

And I don’t mean that as a generality. I mean it on a very real, very personal level.

We’ve passed the point where taking “reasonable caution” or “buying all organic” is enough.

We’re exposed to too many chemicals every day. They’re in our personal care products, the clothes we buy, the fabric of our car seats, and our dishwashing liquids. We even have toxic heavy metals in our baby foods.

But we’ve heard all of this before, seen all the stats and figures.

What does it really mean? How does this work, how do these things actually harm us? And is it really that bad?

Let’s have a real example and you tell me.

As we head towards winter, I wanted to provide a little information on how our immune system works and how you can prepare your body to stay as healthy as possible over the coming months. Getting sick is never fun, but even more, is often unneeded. Yes, we may occasionally get a cold, the flu, or some other illness, but if our immune system was in proper health then we would get sick less often.

There are about 500 different species of bacteria. And between them, they ether produce or help to produce neurotransmitters in our body, such as Serotonin and GABA, which calm and relax us, de-stress us, allow us to fall asleep, and help to keep our hormones in balance so we can lose weight and add muscle.

Some of these bacteria eat the foods coming in such as amino acids, vitamins and other nutrients, and some actually produce amino acids, or vitamins, or other nutrients that the body can use or that other bacteria feed off of.

There is something called “Leaky Gut”, and this is not just a funny name. It’s probably one of the most accurate labels there are, actually.

When food comes into your small intestine from your stomach it’s already mostly broken down. Here, more enzymes (bodily chemicals) are released to break it down further into truly microscopic pieces.

The digestive tract is arguably the most important pathway in the body for overall health, fat loss, muscle-building, hormones, energy, and immune system function.

Now we’re going to dive more into one aspect of it affecting a majority of the people in the US right now whether they know it or not: SIBO or Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth.