Back in school, I never understood why the cause (or etiology) of a lot of chronic medical conditions (such as cancer or autoimmune diseases) was unknown or idiopathic. Perhaps, we were not taught to look deeply enough at that time. For whatever reason, it doesn’t make sense to just treat symptoms with synthetic drugs (or even natural ones). It’s always better to look for the cause or causes of illness and address those while also treating symptoms with the appropriate remedies. Otherwise, if the cause/causes are not addressed properly, the illness tends to return and get worse with time. One of the more common causes of chronic degenerative diseases are heavy metal toxins (other causes such as nutritional deficiencies and neurotoxins will be discussed later). These include mercury, lead, arsenic, aluminum, and cadmium among many others. Where do we get them from? Practically everywhere. Indoors and outdoors. It’s from our food, air and water. It’s found in natural and synthetic products. You don’t even have to try hard to get exposed to them. Guess what? Even babies are born with heavy metals present in their system. What are the overall effects of these toxins? Basically, they could deposit in any part of the body, particularly those fatty areas (since these metals are lipophilic) including the nervous system. They would then interfere with physiological processes by causing free radical damage as well as inflammation. It’s always a good idea to screen who presents with vague symptoms (or anyone for that matter, for preventive purposes) for heavy metal toxicity. Screening for heavy metals could be done through the blood, urine, hair and actual tissue samples. There are pros and cons to each type of specimen used for screening, of course. I recommend working with a holistic health care practitioner versed in detoxification or chelation therapy if levels are found to be elevated.
Related Articles
- Mark Hyman, MD: How to Stop Attacking Yourself: 9 Steps to Heal Autoimmune Disease (huffingtonpost.com)
- Mark Hyman, MD: Lead Poisoning: Why Lead Poisoning May Be Causing Your Health Problems (huffingtonpost.com)
Hot Tips, News and Trends for Healthy Aging By Dr. Joel Lopez, M.D. 
Comments on: "Toxic!" (1)
Super stuff! This was a really helpful post.