Toxins in Your Diet
By Elizabeth Lee Vliet, MD
Excerpted and condensed from It’s My Ovaries,
Stupid, pgs. 65 – 79
Scribner, 2003
Ovaries at Risk: Hormone Disruptors in Common Foods
Why is it we see so many more women today suffering
from serious health problems, including infertility,
arising from premature ovarian decline? Are we overlooking
a crucial connection that lurks “innocently” in the foods
we are eating and the soft drinks we consume by the
gallon?
I think the answer is yes. As you read the stories of
the women I have seen for consultations, you will
recognize that many of them have one thing in common:
Their ovaries have been damaged by subtle, insidious
dietary and environmental “hormone disruptors” that have
impaired their ability to make the ovarian hormones they
need to “run” the cellular engines that make up every
organ in their bodies. Some of these hormone
disruptors—such as soft drinks and MSG—are commonplace. We
would never dream that they could wreak such havoc on our
ovaries and hormones.
Soft drinks? “Impossible,” you might say. MSG
in all those foods? “Not in a million years!”
The following information may shock you. You may not
think it is real. But worldwide research has established
that endocrine disruptors have adverse effects on animal
life all over the planet, from insects to humans. Dietary
toxins are a very serious problem. They can affect many
aspects of your health, from present fertility to future
cancer risk.
Let’s explore some surprising “ovary damagers” that lie
in some ostensibly innocent foods and beverages you
probably eat or drink every day.
The Soft-Drink/Fast-Food Menace: Excitotoxins and
Hormone Health
How can soft drinks and foods affect our ovaries? Let’s
look at what we know about certain types of food additives
and sweeteners that fall into a group of chemicals called
excitotoxins.
Excitotoxins, or neurotoxicants, are chemicals that
cause damage or death to nerve cells. Basically, these
chemicals stimulate such an intense and rapid firing of
nerve endings that cells run out of chemical messengers,
then die a few hours later. The nerve cells in the
hypothalamus, our master hormone regulator, are some of
the most sensitive to this excitatory damage and death.
These excitotoxins can damage brain cells in the
hypothalamus while we are still quietly developing in our
mother’s womb, but the impact doesn’t show up until many
years later when our menstrual cycles begin.
In childhood, we typically consume large amounts of
these excitotoxins in soft drinks and other processed
foods. The damage to the hypothalamus accumulates with
each passing day, and yet we don’t recognize what is
happening. Again, the most marked consequences of this
damage show up later in our reproductive years, when
“hormone problems” can begin in earnest.
Excitotoxins: Where They Are Found
Man-made: Hydrolyzed vegetable protein powder
Found in
nature as amino acids: glutamate, aspirate, cysteine
Monosodium Glumate (MSG) |
Many types of prepared foods |
Hydrolyzed
vegetable protein: (contains 3 excitotoxins: glumate,
aspartate, and cystoic acid) |
Many prepared foods,
diet products, frozen dinners |
Aspartate (Nutrasweet) |
Everything from foods
to soft drinks |
Glumatate |
See above |
Cystiene (cystoic
acid) |
See above |
Major Brain Areas and What They Do
The cerebral cortex is our master “thinker,”
integrating information between the body and the outside
world. It is made up of the brain’s frontal, temporal,
parietal, and occipital lobes.
The limbic system lies deep in the brain’s
subcortical
area. It is made up of several structures that regulate
many human “drives,” such as appetite, thirst, sex,
aggression, and sleep-wake cycles. The limbic system is
crucial to our discussion here because it encompasses our
body’s master hormone regulators, the hypothalamus and
pituitary, that oversee endocrine regulation, memory
processing, mood and emotion, alertness, focus, and
movement coordination. The limbic system also helps
integrate sensory information, including pain.
Chronic pain-carrying signals from the pass through the
limbic center, while acute pain pathways bypass the limbic
system and go directly to the higher brain centers. This
is one reason that chronic pain shatters the stability of
our mood and sleep-governing centers, and causes insomnia
and depression along with the pain. People suffering acute
pain usually do not experience depression or severe sleep
disturbances.
The cerebellum lies below the cortex and towards the
back of the head. Its major role is to coordinate movement
(with the cortex), balance, and fine-motor control. For
example, imbalance from alcohol intoxication and the
abnormal movements seen in Parkinson’s disease result from
damage to these movement-control pathways.
The brainstem (midbrain, pons, medulla) are structures
that regulate our “survival functions,” such as
respiration, heart rate, and blood pressure in response to
all the information they receive from multiple connections
to the brain and spinal cord.
The spinal cord is a thick band of nerve fibers that
connects to the brain at the base of the skull and travels
the length of our spine to the low back. It carries all
the nerve tracts and the constant flow of chemical
messengers from the body to the brain and from the brain
back to the body so that our brain and body functions can
be properly coordinated.
The Many Triggers of Mood and Anxiety Problems
- Hormonal changes: loss or decline of estradiol and
testosterone, imbalance of estradiol and progesterone
(especially excess progesterone relative to low estradiol),
excess DHEA, thyroid too low or too high, excess or
deficiency of cortisol, excess insulin causing low blood
glucose, to name some major ones.
- Nutritional factors:
deficiency of key vitamins and minerals; excess or
deficiency of amino acids; imbalance of protein,
carbohydrates, and fat; dehydration.
- Metabolic
imbalances: abnormal glucose regulation, such as rapid
rises or falls in blood glucose, or levels that are too
low or too high; sodium-potassium imbalances; calcium or
magnesium imbalance; and iron deficiency.
- Infectious
organisms: viruses and bacteria that damage the brain
directly or have indirect effects via damage to the
thyroid and ovary hormones that in turn affect our moods.
- Environmental exposures: food additives, pesticides, xenobiotics, heavy metals, molds, and other chemicals.
Many of these can disrupt formation or action of
neurotransmitters and hormones.
Sticker Shock: A High Health Cost to Your Hormone
Health
- One regular soft drink (12 ounces)
10 teaspoons of
sugar (40 grams!), 140 calories. And most of you probably
drink more than one a day! Remember, you’re getting empty
calories with no nutritional value, plus all those
excitatory amino acids and artificial chemicals used as
taste enhancers can affect the pituitary. Soft drinks also
have high levels of sodium and phosphates that leech
calcium from your body, adding to low bone density in
young women.
- One bag of potato chips (15 ounces)
Equals 1 cup
of oil (150 grams of fat!), 1,400 calories. This is more
than your whole day’s allowance of fat, not to mention
almost your entire day’s calories, all easily consumed by
“couch potatoes” in about fifteen minutes! Since the
calories are coming from carbs and fat, with practically
no fiber, they add up fast — you don’t feel all that full,
so you don’t realize how much you’ve eaten in calories or
fat. Potato chips are also loaded with flavor enhancers,
those excitatory amino acids I described earlier.
- One movie-theater popcorn with “butter”
(medium, not jumbo)
Equals
8 potatoes, 910 calories, 75 grams of fat. Popcorn at the
movies is an insidious “fat saboteur” because is contains
so many grams of fat, and also because it is usually made
with the unhealthy saturated or trans fats. Add to that
all the flavor-enhancing chemicals. And it may shock you
to know that the carbs in this popcorn are equal to eight
whole potatoes! Considering that it takes roughly one mile
of walking to burn 100 calories, you’d have to park nine
miles away from the theater to walk off all those extra
calories! If you like popcorn, try taking a smaller bag of
the no-fat, air-popped kind in your pocketbook.
- One Big Mac and large fries (McDonald’s)
Equals the fat content of 1
cup of Crisco (Yuk! Is that what you would want to be
eating?) Most of us would feel repulsed to think about
eating a cup of lard or Crisco. But that’s what you are
doing here: a Big Mac has 590 calories and 34 grams of
fat, and if you add this to the 540 calories and 26 grams
of fat in the fries, you get 60 grams of fat and 1,130
calories — about the fat equivalent of 2 cups of Crisco…
plus almost all your entire day’s worth of calories. Stop
and think before you pack away all that fat. If you are
having a “Big Mac attack,” stop and visualize what one cup
of Crisco would look like spread around your thighs! Then
switch to a grilled chicken without the mayo, and hold the
fries. You’ll get just as much flavor with a lot fewer
calories and fat. And you can feel oh so virtuous.
- 1
pint of Häagen-Dazs ice cream (plain vanilla)
Equals one stick
of butter. I know, I like Häagen-Dazs, too… and it is all
too easy to eat “the whole thing” after all, it’s such a
small container, it can’t be too bad, right? Wrong. 1,080
calories in one sitting is, once again, almost your whole
day’s supply of calories!
- 1 bagel with cream cheese
Equals 2.5 slices of pepperoni pizza. Bagels have a pretty innocent
image — most of us would think that pizza has more calories
and fat. But not all bagels are built the same. Bagels
from specialty stores, at 4 ounces and 350-500 calories on
average, have twice the size and calories of a traditional
bagel. A normal serving of cream cheese contains about 2
tablespoons or 75 calories. But most bagel specialty
stores and delis pile on as much as half a cup of cream
cheese, bumping the calorie count up to 400!
If you just can’t go without your morning specialty
shop bagel, then at least try having only half for
breakfast, and save the other half for your afternoon
snack. At least you won’t overdo it in the morning and
still hit the afternoon slump at 4 PM, craving even more
calories! Or, if you just don’t have the willpower to save
half for later, then scoop out some of the excess bagel
dough and scrape off excess cream cheese. The calories you
save are worth it for your waist.
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