From BPA, MSG, pesticides, environmental chemicals, household cleaners, toxins in vaccines and prescription drugs, our children are exposed to a huge amount of toxic chemicals. Toxins are everywhere in our modern society. They are damaging your child’s health and causing disease. How can you get these chemicals out of your children’s bodies and protect them? The first step is to understand where they are coming from. Then you can eliminate them and incorporate a healthy lifestyle that naturally detoxes your child’s body.
This article is Part 1 of 2 addressing the issue of toxicity in our children and what to do to detox them. It is not necessarily easy to rid your kid’s bodies of years of these stored toxins but it is possible. In part 2, we will discuss specific strategies and tips for detoxing.
Toxins and Childhood Health
The problem of toxic exposure has only increased year by year. My readers of more advanced years will remember a time when children were generally healthy and active. Today, however, there are more children who are sick and taking prescription drugs than there are healthy children. Certainly, there are many factors that contribute to this but the extreme exposure to toxins is a huge factor that you can control.
Nearly 12 million children in the United States under age 18 suffer from one or more learning, developmental, or behavioral disabilities.(1) We have seen ridiculous increases in the incidence of autism, ADHD and cancer in children. Consider these facts:
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Autism rates were 1 in 150 in 2000. By 2008, the rate had increased to 1 in 88.(2)
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From 2001 to 2010, the rate of ADHD diagnosis increased 25%.(3)
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Cancer is now the leading cause of death by disease in children under age 15.(4)
My Experience with Toxicity in my Own Child
When my son was born, the doctors felt that my wife had an infection in the birth canal. If that were the case, it could be transferred to my son during delivery and cause harm to him. However, the only way to confirm the infection is a bacterial culture that takes three days to grow. As a result, my son was placed on ‘precautionary’, heavy doses of three different I.V. antibiotics for three days.
Well, three days later, the cultures came back negative – my son never had a bacterial infection at all. However, the three days of heavy antibiotics were not without effect. As a result of the antibiotics, my son is profoundly deaf. There is nothing I can do to restore his hearing. However, the experience that we gained over the last five years dealing with his deafness have been amazing. In fact, my wife and I write about those experiences at this blog: Seeing Life Differently.
Additionally, the antibiotics wreaked major havoc on his digestion system. It took at least three months to detox him from the antibiotics and restore his normal digestive functions. He endured a lot of discomfort and pain for three months all due to three days of antibiotic treatment.
He is now one of the healthiest, non-toxic kids I know. Since that incident at birth, he has never had need of any prescription drugs, including antibiotics.
He attends the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind – a public school serving Deaf and Blind children in all of Florida. Many of the children at this wonderful school live in dorms Monday through Friday. The school has a great medical clinic/health center right on campus.
On registration day, all the parents have to also check in with the health center. It was amazing to me how many of the parents – nearly all – checked in prescription drugs for their children’s chronic health conditions! Toxicity from prescription drugs alone is a huge problem for our children.
It seemed like we waited forever in the line for the health center. We simply had to let them know that he has no drugs, remind them of his vaccine exemption, and sign a health services form.
I thank God everyday for my child’s great health. It is not that he has great genes. It is that we have formed a lifestyle for him that produces great health. This is no easy task as a parent, for sure. But it is possible, even for picky eaters like my son and every other five year old kid!
Children and Toxins
The fact is that children are exposed the same chemical toxins as adults. However, children are more vulnerable to toxins than adults for several reasons.
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Their bodies are still growing
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Pound for pound children drink more water/juices, eat more food and breathe more air than the average adult which increases their exposure to toxins
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The typical child receives 50+ toxin-laden vaccines before age 6(5)
Here are the top 10 toxins that our children are exposed to regularly:
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Mercury Fillings. The mercury in these fillings is slowly leached into your kid’s body everyday which causes long term neurological damage. This mercury exposure is made even worse by the other sources your child is exposed to from vaccines and other drugs.
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Toxins in Vaccines. Vaccines are not as safe as you may have been led to believe. I do not intend to discuss the validity of vaccines in this post. I would refer you to NVIC and Vactruth.com for a full discussion of this important issue. However, please do educate yourself fully before deciding which vaccines and how many vaccines to give to your child. Regardless of your vaccine decision, they are filled with toxic chemicals that damage your child’s health and cause disease. Here are just some of the common vaccine ingredients – posted on the CDC website(6) – that may shock you:
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Formaldehyde – also used to preserve dead things
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Mercury (thimerosal), especially in flu vaccines
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Aluminum – highly associated with alzheimer’s disease
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GMO yeast
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Monosodium Glutamate (MSG)
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Antibiotics (neomycin, streptomycin)
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Human cells from aborted fetal tissue
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Cells from pig and horse blood
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Monkey kidney cells
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Calf serum protein
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Chicken embryo cells
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Egg Protein extracts
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Soy Protein extracts
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Ammonium Sulfate
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Prescription Drugs. I discussed the problem with antibiotics that my child experienced. That was only scratching the surface. Prescription drugs are all toxic and inherently dangerous. ADHD drugs are especially dangerous and toxic. They belong to a class of drugs called amphetamines and are similar to street drugs like meth and speed. No parent would even consider handing their child meth. However, when a doctor gives you a prescription for a legal version of the same thing, unfortunately, most parents don’t even think twice about giving it to their kids every day. Even worse, more and more kids are being prescribed antidepressant drugs as well with devastating effects.
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MSG in foods and personal care products. MSG is everywhere. It is very toxic and results in many health problems. Read How to Avoid Being Secretly Poisoned by MSG to learn more about this important issue.
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Toxins in processed foods and fast foods. Have you thought about the amount of synthetic chemicals, preservatives, nitrates and artificial colors and flavors in the hot dog that you give your child for lunch? These chemicals are used in all processed and fast foods and are a constant source of toxicity.
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Toxins in Laundry products. These products may smell nice, however, the chemicals that create that fragrance are cancer-causing toxins. They are absorbed by your clothing and then absorbed through your skin and into your body.
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Toxins in shampoo and personal care products (soap, deodorant, toothpaste, etc). Have you read the back of your shampoo or body wash bottle lately? Chances are that you will not recognize 99% of the ingredients. Neither will your body when they are absorbed through your skin.
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Toxins in household cleaning products. Window cleaners state on the bottle that they are harmful or fatal if swallowed. Bleach will certainly cause grave danger if ingested. Though we don’t drink them, these chemicals are absorbed into our bodies by inhalation or through our skin.
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Pesticides in the home, food, and environment. We use pesticides in the home that get into our bodies by inhalation or accidental skin exposure. We consume produce and meat that contain ridiculous levels of pesticides.
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Soda pop. Both – depending on where you live – soda (and) pop contain high amounts of phosphoric acid which literally dissolves your child’s teeth and leads to softening of the bones as well. Not to mention the high fructose corn syrup causing toxicity, obesity and diabetes.
If you stop to think about all of these items, it becomes abundantly clear that our children (and you) are toxic! What can you do? How do you get rid of these toxins? We will discuss that in part 2 of this series. Look for it tomorrow.
The information in this article and the next (part 2) have been presented as a result of a question from a Wellness Achiever Newsletter subscriber. Be sure to subscribe for the latest updates from Wellness Achiever. You will also periodically have the opportunity to ask your questions about health and wellness and have them answered here. Visit WellnessAchiever.net and you will see a box near the top, right side of this article to enter your email address.
Question: What surprises you most about these statistics on childhood diseases? What about the sources of toxicity? You can leave your comment below.
Resources for this article:
(1) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-gavigan/toxins-impair-childrens-n_b_458935.html
(2) http://www.naturalnews.com/035452_autism_vaccinations_children.html
(3) http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130121161923.htm
(4) http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Sites-Types/childhood
(5) http://www.nvic.org/downloads/49-doses-posterb.aspx
(6) http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/appendices/B/excipient-table-2.pdf