Enhance Your Health

Health Tip of the Week: Pesticides

One of the strongest selling points for eating organic food is the fact that doing so can significantly lower your exposure to pesticides and other harmful chemicals used in conventional agriculture.

Both the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics and a US Endocrine Society task force warn that pesticides pose a major threat to human health, and should be avoided by everyone. Recent studies confirm that eating an organic diet can significantly reduce your toxic load.

A study published in the October issue of Environmental Health Perspectives showed that pesticides build up in the body. The study included 20 children living in Oakland, California, and another 20 living in Salinas, California, a major agricultural community.  For the first four days, all of the children ate a conventional diet. The following seven days, they ate only organic food, followed by another five days of conventional food.

As reported by The New York Times: "About 72 percent of their urine samples, collected daily, contained evidence of pesticides. Among the six most frequently detected pesticides, two decreased by nearly 50 percent when children were on the organic diet, and those of a common herbicide fell by 25 percent. Three other frequently detected pesticides were not significantly lower on the organic diet. Levels were generally higher in the Salinas children than in the Oakland children."

Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto's best-selling herbicide Roundup, is one of the most commonly used herbicides in the world, both on conventional and genetically engineered plants. An estimated one billion pounds a year is sprayed on our food crops, resulting in the average American eating several hundred pounds of glyphosate-contaminated food every year.

Last year, the World Health Organization classified Glyphosate as a class 2 probable carcinogen (causes cancer).

Lately, Monsanto has successfully been sued in a class action law suit for cases of Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma cancer caused by the weed killer Round-Up.

As far as eating fruits and vegetables, the general rule of thumb is to buy organic produce always. Safer, healthier. It’s the way to go.

If you cannot always purchase organic produce, here is a list of the foods that have the most pesticides in them and should be avoided (especially children) due to the toxicity. Always eat the organic versions of these fruits and veggies:

  • Peaches
  • Strawberries
  • Sweet bell peppers
  • Tangerines
  • Cranberries
  • Carrots
  • Green beans
  • Hot peppers
  • Nectarines
  • Sweet potatoes

Thought for the Week

It's bizarre that the produce manager is more important to my children's health than the pediatrician. ~ Meryl Streep

Chiropractic Thought for the Week

The “original” definition of chiropractic: “A philosophy, science and art of things natural; a system of adjusting the segments of the spinal column for the correction of the cause of dis-ease.”

Dis-ease is a chiropractic term that differs from the medical term of disease (meaning illness or condition).

Dis-ease means the absence of ease, the lacking of something, the incoordination of the transmission, flow, adaption and soundness of the body caused by disrupted nerve flow.

Chiropractors restore ease to the body by adjusting spinal segments and restoring interrupted nerve impulse flow to the body. The chiropractor helps the body to be healthier by allowing the body to function as nature intended, with the proper functioning and flow of the nervous system. That is what the chiropractor can offer to your individual health care program.

 

« Previous Health Tip | Next Health Tip »