Total Health Breakthroughs: Alternative Solutions for Mind, Body, and Spirit

More and more evidence shows that pesticides can disrupt our hormonal balance and even suppress our immunity and cause neurological damage. In past articles I have noted that to reduce your body’s toxic burden from pesticides, one of the most important steps you can take is to eat organic foods as often as possible.

But for many people, the higher price tag on many of these foods can be cost prohibitive. If you can’t afford to buy “all organic,” here are some pointers to help you prioritize which foods to spend a little more on and which foods will be the lesser of evils if you can’t buy the organic version.

If you are having difficulty losing weight even after dieting and exercising more, you are not alone. Over the years, I have helped probably thousands of people with the same problem, but I am finding this scenario to be much more common now than in the past. What I want you to know is that when you’ve tried everything and weight loss or lowering of blood sugar or lipids seems impossible, it could be that environmental toxins are disrupting your body.

Some pesticides, for instance, have been linked with suboptimal thyroid function and others to insulin resistance (IR). Certain pesticides that haven’t even been used for years, like DDT, are still a problem because they are so persistent in the environment, and from there can get into our bodies.

Researchers call these substances persistent organic pollutants (POPs). The insecticide, dieldrin, is an example. This organochlorine pesticide was used on cotton and corn from the 1950s until 1970. And although its use was banned on crops in 1974, it was still used for termite control until it was finally banned by the EPA completely in 1987. Because it is tightly bound to soil and it evaporates very slowly, dieldrin persists in the environment even though it’s no longer used.¹

So how does dieldrin affect us today? Plants absorb it from the soil, and water runoff carries the soil with the chemical into water supplies. When we eat plants grown in soil still contaminated with dieldrin, it enters our bodies. We can also get it from the flesh of animals eating contaminated plants or fish living in contaminated waters.¹

After being consumed, dieldrin is then stored in our body fat. And here’s the problem: dieldrin may be linked to disruption in the thyroid hormones, T4 and TSH. One study found that women with significantly high dieldrin in their blood had decreased T4 levels and increased TSH.