Fat As A Storage Depot for Toxins

The Environmental Protection Agency Find Toxins in Fat

The Environmental Protection Agency has monitored human exposure to toxic environmental chemicals since 1972 when they began the National Human Adipose Tissue Survey. This study evaluates the levels of various toxins in the fat tissue from cadavers and elective surgeries.

Five of what are known to be the most toxic chemicals were found in 100% of all samples (OCDD or octachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin, styrene, dichlorobenzene, xylene, and ethylphenol—toxic chemicals from industrial pollution that damage the liver, heart, lungs, and nervous system).

Nine more chemicals were found in 91-98% of samples: benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, DDE (a breakdown product of DDT, the pesticide banned in the US since 1972), three dioxins, and one fur an. Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were found in 83% of the population.

A Michigan study found DDT in over 70% of 4 years olds, probably received through breast milk. With the global economy, we may be eating food that was picked a day before in Guatemala, Indonesia, or Asia, where there are not the same restrictions on the use of pesticides as there are in the United States.

Many of these chemicals are stored in fat tissue, making animal products concentrated sources. One hundred percent of beef is contaminated with DDT, as is 93% of processed cheese, hot dogs, bologna, turkey, and ice cream.

Source: Mark Hyman, Systems Biology,Toxins,Obesity,and Functional Medicine. 13th International Symposium of The Institute for Functional Medicine.

Toxins In Fat: How Does It Happen?

There are two types of toxins when it comes to storage in the body. There is water soluble or fat soluble. Water soluble will be eliminated through urine and sweat. Fat soluble will dissolve and recombine using fat. Now there is another chemical term called “Lipophilic” lipo = fat. Philic> phile = philos “loving.” Fat soluble compounds or substances are lipophilic. These are what become toxins in fat.

Toxins In Fat: They Keep You Fat

Almost all the chemicals that cause obesity and have estrogen effects are lipophilic. For example

• Xenoestrogens
• Bisphenol A
• Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCB’s)
• Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers (PBDE’s)
• DDT
• Alloxan

We are at the toxic end of the food chain. Since we are high on the food chain, we end up consuming the accumulated toxins of all the lower forms of life on the food chain. We eat the accumulated toxins in fat of lower life forms.

Pesticides and herbicides, for example, are lipophilic (meaning, they are attracted to fat molecules and attach to fat), they are sprayed in mass quantities on crop fields, and leech into the soil. As the crops grow, the toxins are taken into the cells of the crop. Herbivores eat these crops. Carnivores eat herbivores, and we eat all of it.

There is more, though, the toxins in the soil go into the ocean, they travel through air. Because they are Persistent Organic Pollutants, they biodegrade at an extremely slow pace, they can travel vast distances.

When they go into the ocean, plankton can absorb them, fish and marine mammals (which have a lot of body fat) are force to consume these toxins. All of these animals end up right back in our mouths.

This is the concept of bioaccumulation.

As humans and as omnivores (eating anything, plants, meat, and crap) we get the accumulation of toxic storage through the food chain into our mouths. Our fat will store these toxins.

This is one of the reasons a detox is practically necessary in today’s world in order to stay healthy and lose weight and keep it off. These toxins are real, they are not a neat little ice-breaker conversational piece to talk about.

This cumulative factor of stored toxins or chemicals in fat tissue becomes a greater threat when we eat animal products. When you eat an animal, you consume all the residual toxins which that specific animal has consumed in its lifetime and of which are stored in that animal's fat tissue originating from the air it breathed, from the polluted water it drank, and from the polluted food that it consumed. These toxins and chemicals, stored in the animal's fat tissue, now become stored in your fat cells when you consume that animal.

Toxins In Fat: Causing Weight Loss Plateaus

Another factor to keep in mind is that when you start to lose weight, the fat cells mobilize these toxins back into your system. When the fat cells become utilized for energy the toxins go back into your blood stream. These toxins are proven to suppress thyroid production and alter thyroid hormone utilization. Thus someone starts to have symptoms on subclinical hypothyroidism and hypothyroidism.
This can feel like depression, sudden and intense cravings for sweets and starches, and a sudden lock-down in fat loss.

Toxins In Fat: Fat Protects You

This also puts body fat in a new light and a new perspective. Fat seems to have as one of its roles, a protective buffer for toxins. In fact fat is one of the therapies used to help a person detoxify!

Dr. Guy Weinberg developed a therapy to treat sever local anesthetic toxicity with fat injections to absorb the toxins. Through his use of this therapy and ample testing it was revealed that fat serves as a sink that removes toxins from the blood and vital organs.

"... Lipophilic toxins may be stored in the body fat to a large extent. This storage will lower the concentration of the toxin in the target organ and thus act as a protective mechanism. In the same way, it is possible that fat storage leads …"

I hope this sheds some light on the subject of today's obesity epidemic and the importance of cleansing and replenishing your body with vital nutrition.