Toxic Fatigue – The New Energy Thief

Toxic fatigue!  Do you know what it is?   How do you get it?  Can it be resolved?  Two words can generate a lot of questions quickly.  Toxic fatigue is a real concern.  But I am noticing that too few professionals are talking about it.  Don’t get me wrong, some well informed champions of health are with me in trying to make you aware of this hidden cause of fatigue.  However, as loud as our voices are, they are no match for the “purveyors of poison”.  You are being assaulted with toxins daily.  Yes, I said daily!

Not Even a Cause

Why is toxic fatigue on no ones radar as a cause of fatigue?  While I could provide several answers to this question, it boils down to the lack of acknowledge of the growing problems of toxins.  I see this as such a growing issue that one of my five core pillars focuses on it.  This pillar is called the Remove phase of the 5R Process to health.  You have to remove chemicals and toxins that are poisoning you.  Toxins are an interference to optimal function.  The more time you spend managing them, the faster you are aging.

In case you feel like challenging me on whether or not you are being exposed to toxins, let me give you an example I have pondered of recent.  You go to fill up your car with gas.  Do you smell the gas?  Of course you do, every time.  You just inhaled toxins.  What about the nozzle at the pump itself?  Do you think the people before you took extra precautions to avoid accidentally slinging gas back on the pump, or getting gas on their hands with their gas cap and then touching the credit card key pad and nozzle?  Not hardly.  Now you are absorbing toxins through your skin.

How Toxicity Damages Your Energy Cycles

I like to use analogies to make the complex more understandable.  Let me tell you, the biochemistry and names involved when talking about energy production can sound like a foreign language.  While I enjoy geeking out on biochemistry sometimes, its more fun for me to come up with a way to help make sense of this serious topic.  After all, it is critical that you understand it.  So here goes.

Imagine a vehicle.  If the vehicle is new and you drive it off of the lot, everything works like it should.  Its efficient, fast and doesn’t have any problems.  But then you start to skip the maintenance a few times and the oil gets gunky.  The station you routinely fill up at has poor gasoline.  You drive down a bad road and damage a tire only to come out and later see it flat.  I think you see where I am going with this.  After enough insults, that amazing pristine machine you started out with is no longer optimally functioning and starts costing you.

This is the same way toxins rob our energy and create toxic fatigue.  Their effects slowly creep up on us.  We start out fine, but then a slow, steady diet of toxins in your food, chemicals in your home and clothes, plastics in your cookware and liquid containers. gasoline in the water and that you touch, all begin to add up and knock out individual steps of your energy production.  Ultimately they create enough damage to inhibit your hormones and destroy the energy producing units in the cells called mitochondria.

Are You Toxic?

Am I making a mountain out of a mole hill?  Are you still fatigued?  I would say we are dealing with the mountain of toxins.  The effects of toxins are cumulative.  Toxic babies are now being born.  Think about that for a moment.  A toxic infant, being literally poisoned from before their first breath.  They don’t stand a chance of not dealing with toxic fatigue.  This is real.

Here are a couple of questions to consider.  If you answer yes to just one of these, you are on the way to toxic fatigue, if not already dealing with it.

• You eat foods that are not organic and 100% chemical free all the time?
• Do you wash your clothes in name brand detergents and chemicals rather than soap nuts?
• You fill up your vehicle with gasoline without wearing protective gloves?
• Do you have fewer than 2 bowel movements per day?
• Are you sensitive to certain smells?
• Has your energy been slowly declining over time?

Is Toxic Fatigue Strangling the Energy Out of You?

Toxic fatigue doesn’t often hit you over night.  Instead, it comes on over years.  It slowly tightens its grip on your energy production until you wake up feeling just as tired as you went to bed.  You are dragging yourself through the day wondering what is happening.  What I have consistently noticed with my patients dealing with toxic fatigue is that all of the traditional strategies for managing fatigue don’t work.  The reason is that they are not dealing with the toxins.  B vitamins, energy boosting protein drinks, hormone support, vacations, stress reduction and more sleep all fall short of making a difference.  If this sounds like you then you are starting to become clear of how toxic you are.

Toxic Fatigue Recovery Plan

I hear you.  “Enough with the toxic fatigue talk.  Just tell me what to do to fix it.”  You got it!

Toxins are tricky.  Different types require specific strategies to remove them.  Nonetheless, here are my foundational steps to eliminating the poisonous culprits of your fatigue.

• Toxin Identification – You cannot remove what you don’t know about.  I like to look for toxins in two ways, through the urine and through immune system response testing with blood.  If you are urinating a toxin, you are exposed to it routinely or it has built up in body.  If your immune system is fighting it, its constantly present in your environment.  You can remove what you can identify from chemicals to molds to metals.
• Facilitate Elimination – Toxin elimination is a science.  Purges and prolonged fasting have no place here.  You need the exact nutrients to rev up your detox pathways.  The goal is not simply excretion.  You have to convert toxins to forms whereby they can be eliminated.  What good is a functional elimination pathway if you cannot get toxins into it to be eliminated.
• Clean and Green – If you are not going to eat clean (organic, chemical free food), don’t bother detoxing.  Otherwise you are going to be retoxing as fast as you are detoxing.  Greens, otherwise known as leafy vegetables, should be a mainstay in your diet.  They are phenomenal at assisting detox efforts.  You also need clean protein sources from animals that are not being fed toxic grains and grasses.  If you don’t have a local source, check out US Wellness Meats and Vital Choice as great options.

If you are not getting answers as to the cause of your fatigue, its time to start investigating toxicity as a cause.