We’ve touched on how toxins affect our digestive tract and microbiome, and also how they lead to Leaky Gut and to our immune system mistaking healthy cells for harmful microbes that must be destroyed.

They cause an inflammatory response, both in our digestive tract and throughout our body over time.

They affect our hormones, energy levels, and mental focus. They make losing body fat and building muscle much harder due to increased cortisol levels.

And they speed the aging process, both internally and in our skin and overall appearance.

But now we’re going to dive deeper. And to give a real idea of how this works we're going to look at how one toxin, Glyphosate, affects us.

Glyphosate is the key ingredient in the herbicide Roundup, which is used on most major crops today.

This is a real problem, because it's one of the most toxic substances there is.

And due to its widespread use, it’s in almost all processed foods and non-organic meats.

And it plays a very large roll in the destruction of our digestive tract, microbiome and overall health, leading to Leaky Gut and some of the worst physical conditions there are.

So let’s dive in and see how this actually affects us and what we can do.

In the last article we covered what the microbiome is, a colony of trillions of bacteria in our colon, and how it affects every aspect of our health, our hormones, our longevity and the ability to build muscle and stay fit.

These bacteria also produce or help to produce neurotransmitters in our body, such as Serotonin and GABA, which calm and relax us, de-stress us and allow us to fall asleep.

In this article we’re going to cover how the number of toxins coming into our body, which increases every year, affects these bacteria.

Perimenopause and Menopause are two parts of a transition a woman goes through when their body comes to the end of its reproductive ability.

It usually occurs sometime in a woman’s 40’s or 50s, but can occur earlier.

Perimenopause is the start of this transition, when her menstrual cycle starts to fluctuate as the amount of eggs she has in her ovaries starts coming to an end.

Then, when she has not had a menstrual cycle in 12 months, we say menopause has begun.

This whole transition is a period of somewhat intense hormonal fluctuations, somewhat different for everyone, that ends with very low production of key hormones, and generally lasts around 7 years. Though it can be as long as 14 years.

During this transition a woman can experience extreme hot flashes and sweats as hormone levels fluctuate erratically, poor sleep, poor mood, brain fog or inability to make decisions, weight gain to one degree or another, headaches, bone loss and muscle loss, reduced libido, low energy and much more.

So understanding exactly what is occurring here, what causes it, what can make it worse and what we can do about it is quite important.

Let’s dive in.

There are key things causing hormonal disruptions in men and women today, even in our children, affecting their overall growth.

Testosterone levels have been dropping for decades while estrogen levels have risen sharply.

Levels of growth hormone and progesterone are lower and cortisol levels are too high.

And hormonal imbalances are now much more than just being deficient in one or another hormone.

There are exact chemicals in the environment today which block hormones from being created, block them from being used, disrupt their normal action, or impersonate them entirely.

And they're increasing each year.

While this affects muscle-building and fat loss significantly, its effect goes far beyond this to our sleep, stress levels, overall health and how fast we age.

In this article we cover what's happening and what you can do about it.

Everyone wants soft, healthy, firm skin. Especially as we get older.

This is so much the case that about $17 Billion is spent on skin care products yearly.

But much of these products, while providing results in the short term, actually cause worsening conditions over time, increasing the "need" to use them.

This is due, in many cases, to some very toxic ingredients used in many of them.

These include hormone disruptors, formaldehyde, chemicals also used as plastic softeners, carcinogens, allergens, solvents and even neurotoxins.

So, while these products may contain ingredients that seem to help on an immediate basis, over time many of them are causing the issues they claim to address.

Let’s see what's actually happening here and what we can do about it.

Did you know that the official measurement of what is considered to be normal testosterone levels has been lowered? 

It has. And this was done because the majority of men no longer fall into the earlier acceptable ranges. 

Their testosterone levels are too low. 

Why is this? What's happening? And why would they choose to lower the acceptable levels instead of addressing why they are lowering?

In this article we talk about what testosterone does in the body, largely from the view of its anti-aging effects, how lowering testosterone levels, not just in the elderly, speeds up our biological aging, and what is causing this.

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.

They stress our nervous system, create inflammatory responses in our body, raise cortisol levels, disrupt our hormones, accelerate our aging, contribute to many conditions we see in society today, and even cause trouble for our unborn children, disrupting the process by which both their nervous systems and immune systems form.

In short, they cause our bodies a great deal of stress.

And this stress passes on to us, to our anxiety levels and our mood, whether we know it or not. 

As of 2022 there were an estimated 350,000 chemicals used in the world, most of which get into our water supply.

That’s a fifty-fold increase since 1950.

And, according to the CDC, less than 100 of them are regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act.

But how do these toxins stress our body?

How do they affect our stress levels and mood?

How do they create inflammatory responses?

And how can we prevent this?

If we want to slim down while gaining lean muscle or toning our muscles, we need to address our hormones. 

This is because achieving hormonal balance allows our body to fully and correctly utilize the nutrients we’re consuming for what we do want and not for what we don’t want.

We’ve already covered how high Cortisol hinders fat loss and slows muscle growth. As well as how Growth Hormone, Testosterone and IGF help to speed fat loss and muscle growth.

But there is another aspect to this balancing act: Estrogen, Progesterone and Thyroid.

These hormones exist in both women and men, and are each necessary in proper amounts.

But when they go out of balance, they can create a vicious spiral that raises cortisol and cravings for junk food, lowers growth hormone, testosterone and IGF, and makes fat loss and muscle gains much harder all around.

We've spoken a lot about hormones, but here we cover specifically how toxins affect these.

Testosterone levels have been dropping for decades, while estrogen levels have risen sharply.

And hormonal imbalances are now much more than just being deficient in one or another hormone.

But why is this?

There are exact chemicals in the environment now which block hormones from being created, block them from being used, disrupt their normal action, or even impersonate them entirely.

And, while this affects muscle-building and fat loss significantly, its effect goes far beyond this.

Let's dive in.

In the last article we covered how many companies selling natural sweeteners such as stevia and monk fruit, knowingly or unknowingly cut their product with artificial sweeteners by 60% or as much as 100%.

They can do this because the only way to tell for sure is to do very extensive chemical testing.

Yet these artificial sweeteners can pose real health risks, from heart trouble to gut trouble.

And they're in about 99% of non-sugar sweetened products today.

But if it takes thorough chemical analytical testing to be absolutely sure it's natural, and you probably don't have access to that, what can you do to know what's real or not?

Well, there are a few ways.

There is an idea that saturated fats raise cholesterol and so blood pressure, and this isn’t the case.

Your body needs saturated fats. About 25% of each of your cells are made from saturated fat. And they wouldn’t function without it.

Even more, it’s necessary if we want soft, healthy skin.

But there is another type of fat which has been confused with saturated fats, and which is very destructive: Trans Fats.

We aren’t hearing as much about them today, but they exist in many processed foods and we need to check for them as they cause inflammation in the blood vessels that does lead to high blood pressure.

So let’s see what these are and what they do.