Sexy Forever: How to Fight Fat After Forty Read Online Free PDF Page A

distinctive smell; and then there is more of that propylene glycol, linked to irritation and immune system toxicity.
    If you dry-clean your clothes, you’re exposed to a plethora of chemicals, including perchloroethylene (PCE), a chemical believed to be capable of causing cancer, especially in the liver and kidneys. It is also shown to affect developing fetuses. Even if you don’t get your clothes dry-cleaned, what about synthetic fibers in your clothing (think polyester), which may be giving off small molecules of plasticizer fumes?
    It goes on and on. It’s in your makeup, cosmetics, hair spray (its ingredients can affect your nervous, reproductive, and immune systems), hair gel, mousse, and cream conditioner, which are equally toxic.
    How did it get like this? How did our beautiful planet become so contaminated? Our waters no longer run clean, our precious air is polluted, and oil has gushed into the Gulf of Mexico, contaminating our shores and our seafood. Chemicals are everywhere—in our homes, in our offices, in our gardens, and most unfortunately, in our bodies. And this toxicity is making us very unhealthy and very fat.
    Remember this: you must be healthy to lose weight!
    First, let’s examine what the word
toxin
means. A toxin is a poisonous substance; it’s taken from the Greek word
toxikon
, which means “arrow poison.”
    For our purposes, there are two types of toxins: environmental and internal.
Environmental
toxins include household chemicals, industrial pollutants, food additives, and pesticides.
Internal
toxins consist of waste products created by normal metabolic processes within the body. These toxins are produced as a result of our digestive system breaking down proteins, carbohydrates, and fats.
    We are bombarded with external toxins: car exhaust, paint fumes, industrial solvents, plasticizers, household cleaning products. Every breath we take is laden with tiny amounts of pollutants and poisons. I was hugging my little granddaughter the other day and I said, “You always smell so clean and fresh,” but then I realized her clean clothes smelled like the laundry detergent and fabric softener her mom used, the same ones I had been using for so many years.
    I used to spray my house with aerosol room fresheners and clean with foaming chemical cleansers; I used hair spray and tanning lotions and cosmetics laden with chemicals. We have all grown accustomed to the daily conveniences of modern life, but we don’t make the connection between these and our unexplained weight gain and ailments. How about that new-car smell? You got it—it’s a chemical. And it’s making you fat.
    Kids are now born with this crazy toxic burden, which is a tragedy. The researchers at the Environmental Working Group (EWG) examined the cord blood, which circulates between a baby and its mother’s placenta, of infants born in U.S. hospitals to study how many toxins are passed on. The results were startling: the EWG found that newborns begin theirlives with exposure to as many as 287 of the 413 toxic chemicals being studied. A range of between 154 and 231 toxins were found per baby, and 101 toxins were found in all of the babies. The 287 toxins included 180 chemical compounds that have been shown to cause cancer in either animals or humans.
    Once we’re born, we go on to accumulate tiny traces of poison every day. We have pollutants in the air we breathe both indoors and out, our food, our water, our soil, our backyards and gardens. Ever wonder how come you never see a bug in a grocery store? Ever wonder why you don’t see insects or rodents in hotels, even with all the room service trays left around? Hmmmm … must be the chemical spray. Yes, supermarkets, hotels, and most places of business are routinely sprayed with pesticides, so that we never have to endure the sight of those little critters. But at what cost to our health?
    We spray weedkillers like Round-Up as if they were some miracle. According to Dr. Russell