Over the last few years, scientists have uncovered an unexpected fact: Environmental toxins make you fat and cause diabetes. This should be headline news, but it isn’t because there are no drugs to treat it. Everyone is focused on lifestyle, calories in–calories out, and medication for diabetes. But the scientific data tells us something else is contributing to the epidemic. We have found that environmental toxins interfere with blood sugar and cholesterol metabolism, and cause insulin resistance.1
Vicky was a health nut, but she had 40 extra pounds she couldn’t lose. She ate an organic, whole-foods, low-sugar, high-fiber diet, but she loved tuna fish (full of mercury). She was a fitness trainer and coach and exercised 90 minutes a day. In addition to not being able to lose weight, she had severe premenstrual syndrome, stomach bloating, fatigue, and mild depression. Clearly her lifestyle wasn’t the problem.
When I can’t solve a patient’s problem, or when they have tried everything else, I often think about the role of environmental toxins on metabolism, obesity, and insulin resistance. Toxins also act as hormone disruptors and are linked to many female complaints.
We looked at Vicky’s heavy metal levels and found she had very high levels of mercury—76 mcg/gram/cr (normal < 3)*. Metabolic and health effects are being identified at lower and lower levels of mercury. Once we identified the problem, we carefully and slowly helped her detoxify, by supporting her own detoxification pathways with sulfur molecules like n-acetyl-cysteine (which boosts glutathione, the body’s main detoxifier); methylating B vitamins (B6, folate, B12); the broccoli family of vegetables, which boosts detoxification; and detoxifying minerals, including zinc and selenium. Saunas also helped her body get rid of metals and other toxins, and they can be a great aid in weight loss. We also used oral doses of DMSA, a chelating agent. Slowly her mercury came down from 76 to 5, and she lost 35 pounds. All the rest of her symptoms—PMS, fatigue, depression, and bloating—went away, too.
If you have struggled with weight loss and diabetes despite eating a perfect diet and exercising your butt off, it may be the effect of the load of toxins in your body interfering with your metabolism.
Take the quiz below to find out if you are toxic. Remember to take this quiz before you start the program and again after the six weeks are over to measure the “before and after” change in your health. You may need extra individualized support based on your scores; I explain this in Week 6 of the plan.
We often don’t connect our ill health or symptoms directly with the effects of environmental toxins. This quiz will help you make that link. For any symptom you have experienced in the last month, place a check in the “Before” box. Then find out how severe your problem is by using the scoring key below. Place a check in the “After” box after you’ve completed the six-week program to see how much you’ve improved.
The most recent example of how toxins make us fat can be seen in the dramatic increase in obesity in babies. In 2006, scientists at the Harvard School of Public Health found that the rate of obesity in infants less than six months old has risen 73 percent since 1980. This is not related to lack of exercise or diet—after all, babies that age are only drinking breast milk or formula. They don’t say, “Hey, Mom, take me out for a twelve-hundred-calorie McDonald’s breakfast or a giant tub of buttered popcorn.” And you can’t point to watching too much television or video games as a risk factor. So what’s the cause? It appears it may be the load of environmental toxins in their little bodies. The toxins make them fat.
The average newborn has 287 chemicals in her umbilical cord blood, 217 of which are neurotoxic (poisonous to nerves or nerve cells). The chemicals these infants are exposed to include pesticides, phthalates, bisphenol A, flame retardants, and heavy metals such as mercury, lead, and arsenic.2 These chemicals have a broad range of negative effects on human biology; they damage the nervous system and increase the risk of cancer, and now they have been shown to contribute to obesity.
A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that bisphenol A, a petrochemical that lines water bottles and canned food containers, increases a person’s risk of diabetes, heart disease, and abnormal liver function or fatty liver caused by insulin resistance.3
Data from the government’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1999–2002 found a striking correlation between diabetes and blood levels of six common persistent organic pollutants (POPs): polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (PCDDs), polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), hexachlorobenzene (HCB), and two organochlorines used as pesticides.4 Those people who had the highest levels of pollutants in their blood had a dramatically higher risk of diabetes. This isn’t just a coincidence. Experimental studies prove you can induce obesity through direct exposure to toxins, independent of calorie intake or exercise.
A recent paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association documented that arsenic exposure increases the risk of diabetes.5
Studies of Air Force veterans of the Vietnam War found that those who had been exposed to Agent Orange (dioxin) had a much higher risk of diabetes.6
The National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Academy of Sciences recently convened a conference to examine this new phenomenon of obesogens— toxins that cause obesity.
The old idea that weight gain is simply a matter of calories in–calories out is falling apart. New evidence shows that it can occur in the absence of excess calorie intake. For example, in a recent study, rats given toxic chemicals gained weight and increased their fat storage without increased caloric intake or decreased exercise. In six months, these rats were 20 percent heavier and had 36 percent more body fat than rats not exposed to those chemicals.7
Here is the take-home message: If you are toxic, you can gain weight without eating any more calories or doing any less exercise.
Toxins interfere with and slow down metabolism and contribute to weight gain and diabetes. In 2007, I published a paper called “Systems Biology, Toxins, Obesity, and Functional Medicine,” which provides a detailed description of many of the mechanisms by which toxins cause obesity8 (available at http://drhyman.com/downloads/Diabetes-and-Toxins.pdf). One of the key mechanisms that leads to insulin resistance and diabesity is that toxins block the function of very important receptors on the nuclei of your cells. These receptors, called peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors (PPARs), are needed for optimal insulin function and blood sugar control.9 Using new techniques of genetic and metabolic analysis, scientists have shown that toxins cause increases in glucose, cholesterol, and fatty liver, and slow down your thyroid function.10 They also may cause an increase in appetite and problems with brain signals that control hunger. This is no longer something that can be ignored. Toxins make you fat and cause diabesity, and they must be addressed in any treatment program for diabesity.
You will learn how to enhance your body’s own detoxification systems and remove toxins from your environment and your body in Part IV.
