Detox Your Microbiome: How Toxins Can Destroy Your Gut Health
It is no surprise that a properly functioning gut has a major part in generating overall health. Your microbiome plays a crucial role in a wide range of functions, from regulating hormones to creating energy. It can also be a major source of disease and dysfunction when it isn’t operating properly.
Today we explore the bidirectional relationship between toxins and the human microbiome. Firstly, how the gut helps modulate an individual’s stress response to toxins, and conversely how toxins play a role in shaping (and narrowing) an individual’s microbiome. We will also touch on ways to optimize gut health to boost our resilience to toxins of all kinds.
A Healthy Microbiome: Why It Matters
A microbiome is the body of bacteria within a certain ecosystem. The human body actually has multiple microbiomes, like your skin biome, your mouth biome, and your gut biome. Your gut microbiome is made up of trillions of bacteria, fungi, and other microbes.
The functions that your microbiome plays in generating your whole body health are extensive. You could argue that a healthy microbiome is equal to being healthy overall. The gut microbiome in particular digests fiber turns food into absorbable nutrients, fights off disease and invaders like bacteria, parasites, and viruses, it also regulates mood, and plays a crucial role in your immune system and generating hormonal responses (which impacts everything from your mood to libido).
Detox Your Microbiome: A Two-Way Street
Although science likes to draw conclusions through ‘cause and effect’, the reality is that most things influence one another in a bidirectional way. This means that A influences B, and vice versa that B influences A. In the case of the impact of toxins and the human biome, there is indeed a reciprocal influence from one onto the other.
The Impact of the Microbiome on Toxins
Your gut microbiome contributes to a variety of metabolic and immune functions that are key to generating resilience and health. The gut microbiome is essentially a line of defense against harmful invaders. Whether they be toxins, pathogens, or bacteria– having a healthy gut means that the likelihood of these invaders making their way into the bloodstream is much lower.
A strong microbiome boosts your resilience to the outside world. When we inevitably come into contact with toxins, pathogens, and bacteria, a strong immune system reduces the likelihood that they will have a negative impact on your overall health.
The influence of a robust and healthy microbiome could be the reason why some people make it through cold and flu season without a sniffle, or why some people are able to tolerate sleeping a few nights in a moldy hotel without getting a migraine.
Detox Your Microbiome: The Impact of Toxins on The Microbiome
Although studies show the ability of healthy gut microbiomes to ward off the impact of toxins, the converse is also true. Environmental toxins do have the ability to alter the composition and metabolic activity of the gut microbiome. In other words, toxins can ultimately wreak havoc on your gut, which then leaves you even more susceptible to the harmful impact and symptoms of the toxins themselves.
Although the gut is a main line of defense against foreign invaders, the key takeaway here is that it can only do so up to a certain degree. It can be useful to see toxins as a drop of water in a bucket. A single drop at a time provides no problem, but over time if the bucket isn’t emptied, it will eventually overflow.
An individual’s gut health is only resilient if given the attention, support, and time to progressively empty that ‘bucket’. If your toxin exposure is chronically high, it can lead to the destruction of your gut. As a result, your immunity will suffer– making you even more sensitive to toxin exposure.
Top Ways Improve Gut Health and Boost Resilience Against Toxicity
Before exploring the top ways to improve gut health, we must highlight the importance of actually reducing the body’s exposure to toxins. The modern world that we live in is inevitably going to expose us to low levels of chronic toxin exposure (like air pollution), but avoiding the key gut-destroyers is a non-negotiable to cultivating gut health.
Detox Your Microbiome: The top sources of toxin exposure that negatively influence the gut include:
- Amalgam (mercury) fillings
- Mold (at home or at work)
- Drinking city tap water
- Conventional body care and cosmetic products
- Conventional sunscreen
- BPA in plastics
- Pesticides and herbicides in non-organic food
- GMO’s and hybridized foods
- Pharmaceutical drugs and antibiotics
Detox Your Microbiome: Top Ways To Improve Gut Health
After removing (or seriously reducing) your exposure to the aforementioned gut-destroying toxins, it’s time to start incorporating habits to heal and improve gut health. Some of the top ways to do so include:
1. Reduce or Remove Processed Foods (Especially Sugars and Oils)
Processed foods are highly inflammatory and can lead to a reduction in ‘good’ bacteria. Processed sugars actually feed things like parasites and cancer, both of which are harmful to gut and overall health. By avoiding processed foods, we encourage a healthy GI tract.
The two main offenders when it comes to processed foods are sugars and seed/ vegetable oils. These two categories of food are extremely inflammatory and should be avoided at all costs.
White sugar, agave, corn syrup, brown sugar, are examples of refined sugars. Vegetable and seed oils include soybean oil, canola oil, sunflower oil, safflower oil, and cottonseed oil.
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Dr. Daniel Pompa is a respected wellness leader, educating practitioners and the public on his multi-therapeutic approaches to healing.
Although trained as a chiropractor, Dr. Pompa's true authority developed out of his "Pain To Purpose" mindset, as his own journey back to health from neurotoxic illness ignited his passion to teach others how they can get their health back, too.
You can find Dr. Pompa at www.drpompa.com and on the weekly Cellular Healing TV podcast.
