Toxins and Obesity

If you have a difficult time losing weight, it may be a result of the toxins that are constantly being introduced into your bloodstream. The more fat your body has, the more toxins it will retain, and as you lose weight those fat cells will release toxins into the bloodstream. Once the toxins are in the bloodstream, they can cause harm to the body.

Detoxification is the process of binding up these toxins and releasing them from the body.
Although the study of detoxification and its impact on obesity is relatively new, researchers do understand some of the mechanisms involved with how toxins impact weight gain. In particular, toxins can impact your ability to lose weight in three significant ways:

• Toxins slow your metabolism
• Toxins decrease your ability to burn fat
• Toxins slow down the satiety response time (the time it takes you to feel full)

Toxins Slow Your Metabolism
In the past it was thought that your resting metabolic rate (RMR) declined with weight loss primarily because of the decrease in caloric intake or changes in the ratio of muscle to fat. But clinical studies are now showing just how toxic internal toxins can be to our weight loss efforts.

One of the first things toxins do when released into the bloodstream is slow down your RMR. So, as you begin to lose weight, those surfacing toxins begin to inhibit your ability to lose weight. However, if you can eliminate those toxins from the body quickly enough during or before a period of weight loss, you may be able to reduce the decline in your metabolism.

Toxins Decrease Your Ability to Burn Fat
The last thing you want to hear is that something in your blood is preventing your body from burning fat, but that is just what toxins can do. In 1971, for example, a study at the University of Nevada Division of Biochemistry determined that chemical toxins weakened by 20 percent the co-enzyme necessary to burn fat in the body. In 2002, researchers concluded that toxins released during weight loss had the capacity to damage the fat-burning mitochondria.¹

The damage was significant enough to negatively impact the body’s ability to burn calories and, in effect, fat.

1 Imbeault P. et al., Weight loss induced in plasma pollutant is associated with reduced skeletal muscle oxidative capacity, Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab. March 2002; p. 282(3):E574-9.
2 Mark Hyman, M.D., Ultra-Metabolism (New York: Scribner, 2006), p. 195.