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The amount of toxins coming into our body every day, from the environment and our food and water sources, grows every year. And it is affecting us in many ways.
But one area it affects us quite severely is in our microbiome, where these toxins kill off the beneficial bacteria that help to produce key calming neurotransmitters like GABA and serotonin.
We covered the microbiome in the last article: 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, lose body fat and stay fit.
As these bacteria produce or help to produce neurotransmitters such as Serotonin and GABA, which calm and relax us, de-stress us and allow us to fall asleep, when it's harmed, we can have higher levels of stress, cortisol, feelings of anxiousness or being depressed, poor sleep, and poor recovery.
We also covered how some of these bacteria eat the foods coming in such as amino acids, vitamins and other nutrients, and some actually produce amino acids and vitamins that the body can use or that other bacteria feed off of.
It’s actually a miniature circle of life down there, with whole food chains, and bacteria consuming food and then making food for other bacteria, producing neurotransmitters for the body to use and even consuming them when too much are produced.
So keeping these in balance is very important, and knowing what harms them, and what we can do, is even more important.
In this article we’re going to cover how the number of toxins coming into our body, which increases every year, affects these bacteria.
Glyphosate (the chemical in the herbicide "Roundup' which is used on all major food crops), micro-plastics, PFAS, and heavy metals are all neurotoxins and hormone disruptors.
A neurotoxin is something that poisons the nerves. It can cause them to speed up or slow down or even stop our heart, if concentrated enough.
They’re also antibiotics in that they kill bacteria — including the bacteria in your microbiome that you need.
When nerve channels are slowed we can get brain fog, become less alert, and have a harder time figuring things out.
When they’re sped up we can become hyperactive, aggressive, or have a "crawling in our skin' feeling.
And when they get too messed up in different areas, speeding up or slowing down along channels that were meant to operate at incredibly fast speeds, or when we have actual nerve death from poisoning by these factors, we get things like autism or Alzheimer's.
And this all relates to the health of our gut bacteria, because while this is part a poisoning of the actual nerve cells, it’s also a poisoning of the bacteria that produce the neurotransmitters that allow for communication between the nerve cells.
When we look at children with autism we see seizures, sensory sensitivities, anxiety, intestinal disturbances, and lowered immunity.
These are all related to the nervous system and the gut, which we now know are inextricably intertwined. In fact, when a child is growing, their microbiome and nervous system form parallel to one another.
When we look at Glyphosate, an herbicide used on all major crops these days and which is in almost all processed foods and meats, we’re looking at an antibiotic — something that kills bacteria.
So if you’re consuming food with glyphosate this will kill off some of these bacteria that are necessary to the production of neurotransmitters.
We also have heavy metals and PFAS (so called forever chemicals) in our food and water supplies. These can either kill off these helpful bacteria, or the bacteria can take the toxins into themselves, holding them so they don’t harm you at the time, but slowly poisoning the bacteria, only to be released again when the bacteria dies.
This is part of the flu-like symptoms we experience during detoxes, candida diets, and even just weight loss diets or “going Keto”. This is these bacteria being either killed by the detox or starved by a new diet, and so dying and releasing the toxins they’ve held onto which then make us feel terrible.
Then there are antibiotics that we take for an infection. Antibiotics work by preventing bacteria from reproducing, both the destructive bacteria, but also the good bacteria.
Just to give you an example, there is a statistic where about 20% of people who take a course of antibiotics suffer depression for the next couple of months. And when we up that to two courses that percentage rises to about 40%.
This is these bacteria being killed off and so lessening the production of GABA, serotonin, and other major neurotransmitters.
That’s why it’s very important to take probiotics and amino acids after a course of antibiotics, to build these back and feed them so they can thrive once more.
So it’s very important to eat organic food, or if not possible then to follow the Clean 15 foods and stay away from the Dirty Dozen.
It’s also smart to get a reverse-osmosis filtration system for your drinking water to stop these toxins from coming into your body.
And make sure you’re taking your probiotics, Greens, and PerfectAmino to help rebuild these bacteria and feed them what they thrive on.
I hope this helps.
And, if you haven't seen the Gut Health Protocol & 30-Day Challenge, I highly recommend you check it out! It's very possibly the most important program we have for overall health.
The Autoimmune Series:
The Gut Health Protocol:
Digestion: Acid Reflux, Bloating, Muscle, Fat Loss & More:
Leaky Gut: SIBO, Toxins, Glyphosate & Gluten:
The Microbiome: Stress, Recovery, Mood & Overall Health:
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How does PerfectAmino actually work? And what is it really doing in our bodies?
PerfectAmino is the perfect protein source. But there is a point there. It’s the perfect protein source. It isn’t protein in itself, but amino acids, the building blocks of protein.
When these amino acids are bonded together into chains, that’s when it becomes a protein.
That’s what any protein molecule you eat is — hundreds or thousands of different amino acids all bonded together into a long chain.
But PerfectAmino is different than other protein sources you’ve had. Very different.
You can find the PerfectAmino Users Guide here, which covers how to get the best results depending on what you are trying to achieve.
But to know what it's actually doing in your body, read on.
Here’s a quick explainer before we jump into what it does in our bodies.
The hardest part of any diet, whether for fat loss, muscle gain or health, is getting over our cravings for sugar and junk food.
There's no question there.
The only real question is how? It can be so hard!
I understand. And in case you feel alone in this struggle — you're not.
It's the hardest part of any diet or lifestyle change, and where most people fall off.
But to know how to fix this we need to know exactly what's causing it.
And one thing I can tell you is not causing it... is you having a "weak will."
That's not it at all.
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, chemicals 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.
And while this affects muscle-building and fat loss significantly, its effect goes far beyond this.
In this article we cover what's happening and what you can do about it.