Nutrition and Mental Health Part 7 - Pollutants, chemical toxins, and detoxification

We all know about pollutants in the air, and water, even about plastic waste and all the others. Can they impact our mental health and well-being? What about detoxification and what role the right nutrition plays in this?

There are three sorts of toxins:

• The chemicals that are present naturally in food, natural toxins used to ward off insects or fungi,

• The chemicals acquired from the environment (like pesticides or insecticides), go into plants, and from here into the animals grazing the plants,

• Things that we may add to the food at the end, to preserve them (these ones are extensively tested, so their toxicity levels are quite low, but not zero).

About plastics, there are two ways to ingest them, one is as microplastics, tiny particles, derived from plastic bottles or polystyrene, eroded by the sea over a long, long time, sometimes just microns wide, filtered by organisms like mussels, and if you ate them, you end up getting a dose of microplastics. The fish can eat mussels, you eat the fish, and you end up with another dose of microplastics. That is the plastic itself. Then there are chemicals within the plastics called plasticizers, used to make the plastic soft, and these ones leach out of the plastic, contaminating the environment, where they end up into fish, grazing animals, and so on. Microplastics may bind all sorts of chemicals, and then they will be delivered into our metabolic system, along with the food. But the plasticizers, when they are delivered to our body, they have specific effects, as most of them look like the female hormone 17-beta-estradiol, and they can bind into the hormone receptor, switching on the feminizing aspects of the cell. This is not a major feminization, just a biochemical feminization, bringing subtle changes in cells that are associated with the female aspect of a cell, rather than the male aspect of a cell.

This is important for brain health, as the female hormone initiates the development of the brain in utero at the early stage of the embryo. So chemicals that mimic estrogen might interfere with brain development, as they might turn it on earlier or they might slow it down if they bind the receptors and stop the real estrogen to reach the receptors. All these plastic-derived chemicals could have unexpected effects on brain development in utero.

There are other issues, for example, children exposed to BPA -bisphenol A, a plasticizer found in plastic bottles and boxes used for packing lunch, as they can leach into sandwiches and lunch packs. There is some evidence that children with high levels of BPA or born from mothers with high levels of BPA have some mental developmental differences, subtle, but they are present in there.

Another example is organophosphorus pesticides, which are known to interfere with a particular enzyme in the synapse of a neuron, and, at early stages, might change the neural networks, and the way the nerves are set up, leading to children with lower IQ. So there is a slight difference, but this can add up if the whole population is exposed, one generation after another. Tiny concentrations, but they can add up too often, and we may see what is called "the cocktail effect" as all are affecting the same thing (the brain), slowly tweaking the same pathway in terms of biochemistry. Separately, the individual effects are very low, but if you add them together, the effect is not negligible anymore.

One more example? BHA (butylated hydroxyanisole), is quite often added to fatty food, to scavenge free radicals and stop the fac going off. If we will not add this one, the fat, especially the polyunsaturated fat, will go rancid, and taste disgusting, becoming toxic. So we need to think about what is more dangerous, the fat going off and becoming toxic, or the BHA added to it? BHA was tested on animals, looking for acute, subacute, chronic effects and mutations, but no one can guarantee the long-term brain developmental effects, due to the long-term exposure of our parents, grandparents, and so on, to these chemicals over many years. Think about what will happen in, let's say, 800 years if we lose 5 IQ points every generation. In 10 generations our average IQ may go from 100 to 50 (severe learning disabilities), and that is the end of humanity as we know it.

Our body can get rid of toxins (most of our tissues, except perhaps the brain), using two specific pathways. The first one is by adding some chemical groups, making them water soluble, and eliminating them via urine. If you are exposed to benzene, by putting petrol in your car, 10 minutes later the benzene-based compounds are eliminated via urine, as these chemicals are not designed to hang around in the body. There are enzymes involved in these processes, enzymes requiring magnesium, manganese, copper, or other metals/minerals. Micronutrients from the food are required for detoxification.

So, even healthy foods, like parsnip, can contain chemicals used to defend themselves from insects. But the most dangerous toxins are the ones in our environment, ending in our food, as they can affect the neurodevelopment of children after plastic exposure during pregnancy, leading sometimes to poor motor skills, problems with attention, hyperactivity, and social impairment. The additive effect of all these chemicals is the major issue, even if each on its own it may not be harmful. The micronutrients, especially the trace minerals, are absorbed in a very small quantity, used for detoxification, but also for a multitude of other pathways, being essential for multiple functions going on in the body in general, in the brain in particular, making energy molecules to support methylation and detoxification. As you can see, used to cancel the toxins, not enough will be present to repair our cells and our DNA, and this is the whole aging process. A diet rich in antioxidants and other anti-inflammatory nutrients can help reduce the effect of toxins and prevent aging.

What are these nutrients? I will talk about them in my next post on this series of articles.

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Have a nice day,
George
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