Chemicals have replaced bacteria and viruses as the main threat to human health. Given the statistics that one in two men and one in three women in the US will develop cancer, it is prudent to take steps to prevent its development.
While it’s impossible to avoid all of the toxins and cancer causing agents we are bombarded with every day, there are some simple, yet effective steps you can take that will greatly decrease your exposure to cancer causing agents.
1. Eat Organic Foods
In our food choices, we seem to have traded the safety of our long-term health for lower prices and convenience, though this cost incentive is actually an illusion, given the medical bills and medications a diet of processed and conventional foods will eventually generate. By going organic, you are not only avoiding pesticides, you are also avoiding genetically modified ingredients and organisms, mineral depleting chemical fertilizers, artificial ingredients and harmful preservatives. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considers 60 percent of herbicides, 90 percent of fungicides, and 30 percent of insecticides found on conventional produce to be carcinogenic, and most are also damaging to your nervous system. To find out what pesticides (and their harmful effects) have been found to be on your conventional and organic produce, see Pesticide Action Network‘s searchable database What’s on my Food?
2. Filter Your Tap Water or Drink Only Spring Water
Tap water contains heavy metals, fluoride, chlorine, medicines like antibiotics and antidepressants and hundreds of chemicals, many of which are not even measured or regulated. Fluoride causes many, many side effects, weakening bones and increasing your chance of developing osteoporosis and cancer, yet it’s added to almost every municipal water supply in the country. The body absorbs a substantial amount of toxins, including fluoride and chlorine, through the skin during showers and baths. Ideally, install a whole house water filter to remove 99 percent of these chemicals. As we are looking to filter major chemicals, a simple Brita filter for your drinking water is not going to cut it, though it’s better than nothing. PureEffects is the water filter I most highly recommend. Ideally, drink only spring water from remote places on earth, as it will be free from pollutants and more hydrating than many filtered waters like reverse osmosis.
3. Remove Mercury Fillings
Mercury fillings leech highly toxic mercury into your body where it stores in your brain and tissues leading to neurological problems and disease. Lowering the immune system, mercury is implicated in cancer, autoimmune diseases, allergies, Candida (yeast) overgrowth, and multiple sclerosis, to name only a few. When making an appointment to get your mercury fillings removed, be sure to find a biological or holistic dentist that can remove the fillings properly. To find a biological dentist and read more about the harmful effects of mercury fillings, see Huggins Applied Healing.
4. Buy a Natural Deodorant
Deodorants and antiperspirants contain dangerous chemicals including aluminum, parabens, propylene glycol, artificial colors, talc and more. My favorite deodorant is Dirty Peppermint Pitstick by Primal Life Organics. Making your own natural deodorant is as easy as mixing coconut oil, baking soda and shea butter. Buy a natural one from Tom’s, Jason, or my favorite Primal Life Organics. For a complete list of products I recommend see my article Wendy’s Favorite Natural Beauty Products.
5. Buy Natural Toothpaste and Mouthwash
Fluoride is very toxic, contributing to cancer, thyroid disease and too many health issues to mention. Most toothpastes and mouthwashes contain fluoride, triclosan, saccharin and petroleum-based artificial colors. Avoid these ingredients by purchasing natural fluoride-free toothpastes and mouthwashes, preferably organic. You can also make your own mouthwash with water, baking soda or sea salt, hydrogen peroxide, and a drop of peppermint or tea tree oil.
6. Buy Natural Organic Bathroom Toiletries
More than 25,000 consumer product chemicals are in use, but less than 4 percent of them have been tested for safety in humans. More than half of these products contain harmful chemicals not listed on the product label. Avoid commercial, popular brands of shampoo, conditioner, and body wash as they contain toxic, cancer-causing ingredients including triclosan, fragrance (contains phthalates), PEG, ceteareth, polyethylene, propylene glycol, DMDM hydantoin and parabens including propyl, isopropyl, methyl, butyl, and isobutyl. Remember, pesticides and other chemicals will be in your natural shower goodies unless they are organic. To see how your products rate and the toxic substances they contain, see Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep Guide. For a complete list of products I recommend see my article Wendy’s Favorite Natural Beauty Products.
7. Make your Own Natural Home Cleaners
Research has found that breast cancer risk is twice as high among women who report the most use of cleaning products and air fresheners. While it is very difficult to prove that a person’s exposure to household cleaners over the course of 10, 20 or 30 years is what caused their cancer diagnosis, it is well known that commonly used household chemicals do, in fact, cause cancer, along with other serious health effects like reproductive and developmental problems in developing children. If you feel the need to compulsively keep your home germ free for the sake of your family, think again. Their bodies are well equipped to handle germs, but they have no way to metabolize the chemicals you are introducing in a vain attempt to sterilize their environment. Mold and mildew cleaners and air fresheners have shown the greatest correlation with breast cancer. Some of the chemicals of greatest concern that you’ll want to avoid include:
| Synthetic musks | Phthalates | 1,4-diclorobenzene |
| Terpenes | Benzene | Styrene |
| Phenol | Nonylphenol ethoxylates (NPEs) | Formaldehyde |
| Petroleum solvents | Butyl cellosolve | Triclosan (antibacterial) |
For a great video on how to use natural ingredients and other tips for cleaning your home without hazardous chemicals, please review the article How to Keep Your Home Clean Naturally. To see how your traditional and natural home cleaners rate, see Environmental Working Group’s Guide to Healthy Cleaning.
8. Buy Natural Laundry Detergent
Most name brand laundry detergents leave chemical residue on your clothes, which is absorbed by your skin. Dryer sheets are especially toxic. Manufacturers are not required to tell you what is in their products, which can contain hundreds of toxic chemicals. The ‘fragrance’ portion of the product alone may contain over 100 different chemicals. Ingredients to avoid include fragrance, linear alkyl sodium sulfonates, petroleum distillates, phenols and sodium hypochlorite (bleach). Trade in your Clorox bleach for a non-chlorine bleach. See how your laundry detergent rates at Environmental Working Group’s Guide to Healthy Cleaning.
9. Smart Cell Phone Use
The radiation from cell phones is proven to cause cancer. Limit your cell phone use, talk on a landline when available, and try to use hands free options such as Bluetooth, headphones, and speakerphone whenever possible. Do not sleep with your cell phone in your bedroom. Turn it off or to airplane mode so your phone is not searching for a signal, exposing you to radiation. Keep your cell phone away from your body when it is on. For more information on the dangers of cell phones, see the article Urgent Warning to all Cell Phone Users.
10. Use Natural Cosmetics
Women who use makeup on a daily basis can absorb almost five pounds of chemicals into their bodies each year. Putting chemicals on your skin is actually far worse than ingesting them, because when you eat something the enzymes in your saliva and stomach help break it down and flush it out of your body. When you put these chemicals on your skin they’re absorbed straight into your blood stream without filtering of any kind, so the toxic chemicals from toiletries and beauty products are largely going directly to your internal organs. There are literally thousands of chemicals used in cosmetics, and only a tiny fraction of them have ever been tested for safety. According to the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, nearly 900 of the chemicals used in cosmetics are known to be toxic. It’s impossible to list them all, but some of the most common culprits to avoid include:
| Sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) | Musks | Mercury |
| Paraben | 1,4-Dioxane | Lead |
| Phthalates, including dibutyl phthalate (DBP), dimethyl phthalate (DMP), and diethyl phthalate (DEP) |
Mineral Oil, Paraffin, and Petrolatum |
Nano particles |
| Antibacterials | Hydroquinone | Formaldehyde |
Please note that in order to avoid formaldehyde and 1,4-dioxane, you need to know what to look for as they’re typically NOT listed on the label, at least not in those words.
| Common ingredients likely to contaminate products with formaldehyde include: |
To avoid 1,4-dioxane, watch out for these ingredients, which create 1, 4-dioxane as a byproduct: |
| Quaternium-15 | PEG-100 stearate |
| DMDM hydantoin | Sodium laureth sulfate |
| Imidazolidinyl urea | Sodium myreth sulfate |
| Diazolidinyl urea | Polyethylene |
| Ceteareth-20 |
After you throw out your toxic cosmetics, you’ll want to look for the USDA’s verified Organic seal when buying your new makeup. To see how your cosmetics rate and the toxic substances they contain, see Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep Guide.
11. Avoid Medications Unless they are Absolutely Necessary
Americans take more medications and spend twice as much on healthcare than all the other developed countries, but we have more cancer and disease than any other country. Modern medicine would be far more advanced and effective had it not been abducted by the pharmaceutical industry. Taking synthetic prescription drugs long-term is toxic, depleting your body of essential nutrients and results in suppression of your immune system. There are usually far more effective and safer alternatives such as supplements, diet, lifestyle, and alternative medical treatments. Question and research every medication you are on or your physician recommends. Many drugs are necessary and do save lives. I am simply asking you to question whether your medication is absolutely necessary or is simply being pushed on you by a powerful company for profit or a doctor who is doing the only thing he was taught — using drugs to treat every ailment. The synergistic effects of multiple drugs increase your likelihood of becoming one of the over 100,000 people that die each year from taking their medications correctly or the two million who are hospitalized for nonfatal reactions. It is your best interest to avoid medications — even over the counter medications — unless they are absolutely necessary for your very survival. However, if you are not willing to research alternatives to medications and make the necessary lifestyle and diet changes for your condition, you may have to resign yourself to a lifetime of managing your chronic illness with medications.
How to Rid Your Body of Cancer-Causing Chemicals
Infrared Saunas. Scientific evidence shows that thousands of drugs, food additives, pesticides, and other pollutants remain stored in the body long after exposure. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, over 500 chemicals have been detected in human tissue. A sauna is one of the only effective methods of removing fat-stored toxins from the body. For more information, see my blog Infrared Saunas.
Coffee Enemas. Your liver must process all toxins, which is why all livers are overloaded. Coffee enemas provide a means for your liver to ‘dump’ its toxic load into the intestines for elimination. It is an incredibly effective tool to detoxify your body. For more information, see my blog on Coffee Enemas.
Supplements. Your body must have certain nutrients available to carry toxins and metals like aluminum out 
of the body. The most important for detoxing are vitamin C, glutathione, and R-lipoic acid. Without these nutrients, your detoxification efforts can result in toxins and heavy metals building up in your liver, intestines, and kidneys with no means of exit, causing illness, organ failure and even death. These supplements can be taken daily. Additionally, we need to supplement the major vitamins and minerals daily to assist in detoxification.
If you’re really serious about detoxing all the metals and chemicals you encounter on a daily basis, I recommend CytoDetox Zeolite.
CytoDetox supports the body to naturally capture and eliminate toxins throughout the body. Unlike other detox products, these drops contain 100% natural binders that hold on to toxins tightly, delivered through a patent pending Liposomal Cellular Transport Technology™. The CytoDetox® detoxification formula provides a quick and safe whole-body detoxification support formula, and is unlike any other product available on the market. Learn more >
Hair Mineral Analysis. A Myers Detox Protocol based on a hair mineral analysis is a very effective tool to detox. The hair analysis reveals heavy metal toxicity and the minerals in which you are deficient. Our body can release heavy metals and toxic forms of minerals when you supplement with the bioavailable minerals your body needs. It provides a roadmap for targeted mineral and detox supplementation.
Take Responsibility for Your Health
An invisible sea of synthetic chemicals surrounds us every day, and our bodies absorb them like sponges until we are in toxic overload. We consume foods that have been depleted of essential healing nutrients. These nutrients have been replaced by synthetic chemical additives. These additives in our processed foods interact in our bodies with chemicals absorbed from our water, air, and consumer products, weakening our immune systems. Once weakened, we become susceptible to illness and disease, occurring at younger and younger ages, that medical practitioners treat with synthetic chemical drug compounds that often prove toxic and increase our chemical load even further.
Our diets and our health, from the womb to the grave are now shaped by three sectors of the economy: the processed foods corporations, the medical/pharmaceutical giants, and the chemical industry. These powerful companies spend billions to ensure you will be buying their products by using dishonest business practices, rigged clinical studies showing their products in a favorable light, public relations campaigns (like the fraudulent Breast Cancer Awareness Month — started by the manufacturer of mammogram machines), articles from paid ‘experts’ on the internet and news clips to make you believe their products are healthy and safe, and lobbying Washington to enact laws ensuring you don’t have healthy alternatives to their products. Entrenched institutional forces within the economy and government cooperate to keep the public largely unaware of the extent to which a toxic threat exists within our foods and medicines.
Government regulators aren’t equipped, either with technological expertise or financial resources, to monitor, much less regulate, the synergistic disease-causing effects of our contact with thousands of chemicals in our products, water, air, and medicines. We must do the self-regulating, monitoring, and detoxing on our own. No government agency, traditional doctor or corporation is going to truly watch out for your health. The time is now to take responsibility for your own health.
Has this article helped you life a healthier lifestyle? Are there any other suggestions you have for avoiding cancer causing chemicals? Tell me your story by leaving a comment below.
