How to minimize toxins
Stress and inflammation cause insomnia. I help my clients lower as much stress and inflammation as possible so their bodies can heal and they can sleep normally.
Toxins cause a lot of inflammation in your body so you want to minimize toxins as much as possible.
To reduce toxins, you want to:
- Eliminate toxins in your body and support your liver
I use functional lab tests to find out what toxins are in your body. Pathogens in your gut such as a parasite or bacteria overgrowth release many toxins. Heavy metals are toxic, too. Your liver has to break down toxins so they put an extra burden on your liver. To restore your health so you can sleep, you want to eliminate these toxins.
- Minimize toxins from the environment
Toxins are also all around us, in the air, our water, our food, our cleaning products, even our lotions and shampoos. To help your body get back in balance, you want to minimize toxins from the environment as much as you can.
Here are ways to reduce environmental toxins:
_____ Eat organic. Organic food has fewer pesticides, hormones, chemicals, etc. And organic foods can’t be genetically modified. See EWG’s Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen lists and make sure to choose organic for the produce on the dirty dozen list.
____ Drink organic, mold-free coffee. Coffee is grown with many pesticides and also tends to be contaminated with mold.
_____ Grass-fed meat is important to avoid antibiotics given to animals that eat grains and the pesticides sprayed on the grains that the animals eat.
_____ Wild caught fish. Farm-raised fish are given antibiotics, GMO feed and are concentrated in cancer-causing PCBs.
_____ Filtered water. It’s so important for the water you drink to be filtered. Tap water has tons of chemicals. Well water can be high in heavy metals from the ground. You can test your water at https://mytapscore.com/collections. You can also enter your zip code in EWG’s tap water database and see what contaminants are in your water.
You want a high quality water filter. The Brita and Pur filters do not remove enough contaminants. The water filters I recommend are the Berkey filter and Pure Effects. Or you can buy filtered water at the grocery store or get it delivered to your home.
_____ Non-toxic personal care products. Your skin is your biggest organ and it absorbs everything you put on it! To minimize toxin exposure and make sure you aren’t absorbing chemicals that disrupt hormones, you want to use natural shampoos, lotions, deodorants, make-up, etc. There’s no legal definition of “natural” and some so-called natural products don’t have clean ingredients. Your best bet is to shop at health food stores and ask the employees what’s most natural. You can search EWG’s Skin Deep guide to see how the products you use rate and to find alternatives.
Keep in mind that some of these products (especially deodorant) take some time for your body to get used to. They also may not be as sudsy or the same texture as what you’ve been using.
Here are some of my favorites:
Alaffia body wash: Alaffia’s products are super clean but I don’t recommend their hair
care line
Mad Hippie cream cleanser and face cream
_____ Avoid or use more natural hair dyes, fingernail polish and perfume.
_____ Clean cleaning products. Conventional cleaners are full of chemicals and toxins. EWG has a guide to healthy cleaning. I’ve found that old-fashioned products like vinegar and baking soda work just as well as things you buy.
My favorites:
Molly’s Suds laundry detergent
_____ Non-toxic cookware. Non-stick pans have many toxic chemicals that are released when you cook. Use stainless steel or cast iron or less toxic non-stick brands such as Caraway or GreenPan.
_____ Use glass instead of plastic containers for food. And never microwave food in a plastic container.
_____ EMFs come from your cell phone, wifi, computer, TV and microwave. We can’t get away from these things most of the time but I do recommend connecting your wifi to a timer that turns off at night and turning your cell phone on airplane mode while you sleep or leave it out of your bedroom.
If you aren’t doing many of these things, this list can seem overwhelming. I suggest picking one or two things to get started with at first that are easiest or most important to you. You can gradually make these changes over time.
If you already do these things and you still can’t sleep, there are toxins in your body that you don’t know about that are keeping you from sleeping normally and being healthy. The only way to uncover what they are is to test. This is what I can help you with. Book a free consultation with me to talk about how to find what’s keeping you awake and fix it so you can sleep better soon.