Do you worry about being poisoned? by food, as an illustration? Naturally, we wash and carefully prepare our food for this reason. We know that failing to do so could result in headaches, diarrhea, or an upset stomach. You don’t realize that over time, we can take chemicals that make us sick to the point of death. Help might not be provided in time since symptoms can arise so late and be so vague.
On August 14, 1996, Dartmouth College chemistry professor Karen Wetterhahn, who specialized in dangerous metal exposure, unintentionally spilled a few drops of a colorless Mercury component called dimethyl mercury on her gloves-covered hands. She was aware of the high toxicity of dimethylmercury. Still, she was unaware it could and did infiltrate her skin and unbroken latex gloves, fatally poisoning her body in about 15 seconds. She thought she was healthy because she felt good and hadn’t experienced any symptoms in months. She became seriously unwell six months later, and in January 1997, she was brought to the hospital. Despite receiving treatment, she fell into a coma and passed away in June.
What surprises me in this situation is that even though everyone was aware of her mercury issues, a timely diagnosis couldn’t be made to save her life. That is how harmful poisons are and how challenging it is to identify poisoning.
Yet she wasn’t alone.
210 BC. Earlier China. Qin Shi Huang, the Emperor of United China and the man who first proposed building the Great Wall of China, was searching for immortality. How, therefore, did he obtain it? He thought it was concealed in Penglai City, at the foot of Penglai Mountain, the home of the Eight Immortals. To locate this peak, the Emperor dispatched thousands of warriors aboard ships. No one returned since they knew they would perish without the elixir of life. As a result, they proceeded to discover and occupy Japan; as a result, the Chinese Emperor was forced to obtain “magic pills” from his physicians and scientists. After ingesting them, he passed away. The explanation: Mercury was present in the medications. He was not made immortal by those tablets, but his name was because he was the first well-known person to be poisoned and died by mercury, one of the most notorious and deadliest modern poisons.
But only famous people have the privilege of getting mercury poisoning.
Have you heard the phrase “mad as a hatter” before? You most likely have. You might be surprised to learn that many felt hat makers in the 18th and 19th centuries developed mental illnesses due to exposure to mercury found in the treatments used to cure animal hides. Theophilus Carter, who Lewis Carroll, the author of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” personally met and was said to have served as the inspiration for the colorful figure “the Mad Hatter,” was insane.
Mercury is highly harmful since it harms the kidneys, lungs, brain, and nerves. It results in drowsiness, sleeplessness, muscle weakness, memory issues, irritation, pain, edema, hair and tooth loss, and personality changes. You get too much epinephrine because it stops your body from removing catecholamines, which causes heart palpitations, perspiration, and high blood pressure. Does this lethal toxin, however, enter your body?
23 October 2008. New York’s Broadway. Elisabeth Moss from Mad Men and Raul Esparza, a three-time Tony nominee, co-starred in the Broadway smash hit play “Speed-the-Plow” with the well-known American actor Jeremy Piven. Soon after, Mr. Piven skips a few appearances and says he won’t be performing because of an unidentified ailment. Mr. Piven had reportedly decided to leave “to pursue a career as a thermometer,” according to playwright David Mamet’s joke. Mr. Piven had mercury poisoning, so the trick was especially painful. But how did he become poisoned with mercury? Simple: He consumed Chinese medicines and twice-daily sushi for 20 years.
Sushi is not the only food that contains mercury, though. Thimerosal from vaccines, fluorescent lights, cosmetics, waste disposal, and other human-generated sources, in addition to dental amalgams, are other sources of mercury. According to OSHA, dental amalgams are poisonous and cannot be disposed of in the trash, but they can be placed in your mouth for 15 to 20 years. What a lovely irony.
Another poisonous heavy metal is always present in our environment besides mercury. It’s poisoned and even killed plenty of individuals, the famous among them. But occasionally, it takes more than a century to identify the murderer.
May 7, 1824. Vienna’s Kärntnertor Theater. In Vienna, where Italian music predominated, famous composer and conductor Ludwig van Beethoven was keen to defeat Italian composers like Rossini. He moved the Ninth Symphony’s Vienna debut from Berlin. He knew that a composer had never used voices in a symphony before. He had no idea that his Symphony No. 9 would go down in history as the most well-known work of classical music ever and that one of its songs, “Ode to Joy,” would become the European Anthem. He took the podium before the chorus and orchestra and started conducting. As the symphony was over, the audience cheered. Standing ovations were given to the composer, but oddly, Ludwig van Beethoven kept directing.
The Orchestra members quickly understood what was happening because they were privy to the composer’s best-kept secret. Beethoven was turned around to observe the applause from the crowd when the contralto Caroline Unger approached him. The audience members knew they had heard one of the most excellent musical compositions ever. They were unaware that Ludwig van Beethoven, a composer, and conductor, was deaf. Yet other health issues also led him to seek care from other medical professionals. He had despair, mood swings, indigestion, and stomach pain. His condition was fast getting worse. He quickly became sick and passed away at age 57 in 1827. Right before he died, he penned, “As soon as I pass away, if Dr. Schmidt is still alive, urge him to find my disease.” Notwithstanding his request and an autopsy, the cause of his deafness and death remained a mystery. Even the autopsy failed to illuminate the cause of his death.
Before now, the riddle surrounding Beethoven’s deafness and death was solved thanks to one spectacular act of theft and one brave act of mercy, which added a new chapter to the toxicology saga.
London, 1994. The renowned Sotheby’s auction. Ira Brilliant, the man who established the Beethoven Center at San Jose State University in 1985, was quietly observing the addition of fresh goods to the auction. He wasn’t looking for the priceless work of art for which Sotheby’s is renowned. He searched a wood and glass frame for a lock of 582 brown, white, and gray hairs. According to the Sotheby’s auction catalog, this hair was once owned by Ludwig van Beethoven. Because of this, Mr. Ira Brilliant purchased it for $7,200 with assistance from Nogales, Arizona-based urologist Dr. Alfredo Guevara. Yet, they wanted to ensure the hair was Ludwig van Beethoven’s. After asking for confirmation, they soon
received a letter from Denmark stamped and signed by Mr. Thomas Wassard Larsen. Dr. Kay Alexander Fremming, his grandpa, was a physician in the little Danish community of Gilleleje, which was only ten nautical miles from Norway. He was assisting in the departure of Jews from Nazi Germany when one of the thankful survivors offered him this priceless possession—a lock of Beethoven’s hair—as a present. But from where did he obtain it?
It’s never a good idea to steal, especially from the deceased. Yet Beethoven’s lover Ferdinand Hiller, a Jew, just wanted a souvenir when he cut off a lock of Beethoven’s hair the day after the composer passed away. Ferdinand Hiller was unaware that this strand of hair would ultimately reveal the reason for Beethoven’s passing.
Dr. Alfredo Guevara and Mr. Ira Brilliant were sure that the hair was Beethoven’s. They had an audacious thought: maybe they might determine Beethoven’s cause of death by examining the hair! The forensic specialists at the University of Arizona Medical Center in Tucson received the hair. They were astonished to discover that Beethoven’s hair was significantly contaminated with lead, another hazardous heavy metal.
What happens if mercury and lead are combined? They increase the harm done by both of them. Combined, it doesn’t work like 9 + 9 = 18. It’s like adding 9 to 9 and getting 81!
When was the last time your levels of lead and mercury were assessed?
Although heavy metal toxicity is exceedingly risky and challenging to detect, it wasn’t what the scientists were most concerned about.
1980s. The dwindling salmon population caused great anxiety among fishermen in the US and Canada. Scientists had to investigate, and there appeared to be disproportionately more girls than males. However, how did that occur? Has Mother Nature made a serious error? The male-to-female ratio was fine when they decided to verify it after the eggs had hatched. But, when they looked at the ratio downstream, they discovered more females than men. What transpired to the men, then? Are they dead? That was not supported by evidence, so how could they have vanished? It remained a mystery until they decided to investigate the salmon’s genetics.
At first, scientists didn’t think what they discovered made sense. Despite having male DNA, salmon were female. Males somehow changed into females while floating down the river after hatching. Gender reversal was a phenomenon that scientists had never heard of or seen before. They initially attempted to use low temperatures to explain this occurrence, but it didn’t make sense. The attempt to explain the gender reversal by partial chromosomal movement caused by unknown
external causes also failed to make sense. Finally, every well-known fact that might serve as a credible explanation entered their minds: early exposure to estrogen can cause a guy to transition into a female. But the Columbia River, where the trials were conducted, contained no natural estrogens. Hence, there must have been other artificial substances like pesticides, detergents, etc., that had the same effects as natural hormones, or what is known as environmental estrogens. It wasn’t the first catastrophe they encountered, so they started to get extremely concerned.
Lake Ontario, 1970. Michael Gilbertson, a biologist, noticed an extremely high mortality rate among gull chicks. He discovered that 80% of the dead chicks had perished before hatching, but what particularly surprised him was the number of strange malformations they exhibited. He was scrambling to find an answer. The malformed chicks had an uncanny resemblance to something he had seen before, though he couldn’t place it. His memory suddenly provided the solution: he had observed the same malformations in chicks exposed to carbon dioxide poisoning. However, the fact that there was no dioxin in Lake Ontario nearly made his coworkers laugh at him. The investigation into this enigma lasted more than 20 years.
The Great Lakes in 1988. Theo Colborn, a professor of zoology at the University of Florida in Gainesville, was intrigued by a gull behavior that was out of the ordinary: two gulls building a nest together. Typically, a male and a female pair up to make a nest. She did notice two females nesting together, though. Had they been “gay gulls”? Colborn was searching for a solution. She was trained in zoology and knew little about hormones. Therefore, the only thing that could alter the gull’s behavior was hormones. Endocrinologists, who were the ones who could and should have solved the enigma, didn’t seem very interested in it. She had to purchase an endocrinology textbook and conduct her research. She discovered that the reduction of fish testicles due to Baltic water contamination by organochlorine substances worried Swedish toxicologist Bengtsson. Could there be a disruption in hormones? She assembled 21 experts in 1991 from 15 different fields to talk about the data on gender change brought on by environmental contaminants that act as hormones. The “Wingspread Consensus Declaration” was a paper they released in 1991. Because of this meeting, the phrases “endocrine disruption” and “endocrine disruptors” were coined.
Our heart, digestive system, kidneys, bones, brain, and the rest of our nervous system are all negatively impacted by lead. It results in mortality, tremors, convulsions, stomach pain, learning difficulties, sleeplessness, and mood issues. Children are susceptible to lead and may suffer long-term harm. Yet, where does lead poisoning originate? Air, food, soil, paints, and consumer goods.
How come these chemicals are so harmful?
By acting as messengers and errand boys, hormones typically transmit signals from our brain stem to our endocrine glands, transferring them to the rest of our body. Because of this, only a tiny quantity of hormones is required to send the signal. It’s similar to a little key that opens a massive safe. Because of this, it only takes a small amount of an environmental poison (also known as an endocrine disruptor, which acts like a hormone) to completely undermine the exquisite control system Mother Nature designed for us. They are much more hazardous than mercury, lead, cadmium, etc., because of this. Do you recall the dead chicks in Lake Ontario but no dioxin? That was because a poison’s amount can be so minute that it cannot be found using a typical water analysis. Endocrine disruptor exposure has severe effects: our body can no longer regulate itself, even to the point where gender is altered. It’s like attempting to unlock your apartment door with the wrong key and it getting stuck and breaking the key; you can’t even go inside with the right key, and you’re locked out.
In our water, food, air, dust, detergents, cosmetics, pesticides, plastics, etc., endocrine disruptors are present everywhere. Infertility issues, fetal loss, cancer, menstruation issues, low IQ and learning issues, behavioral issues, ADHD, and autism can all be brought on by them.
Mother Nature, shouldn’t she shield us from these many toxins?
Usually, the liver removes toxins that enter our bodies in two stages. Phase 1 of the process, during which intermediate metabolites of the toxin are produced, is the rapid deactivation of the poison by the cytochrome P 450 group of enzymes. These intermediate metabolites are water-soluble in “Step 2,” so the kidneys or the bile can eliminate them through the stomach. After this, the poison is inactive, and the body’s byproducts are eliminated.
What happens if your body is not used to or ready for the toxin? Similar to how man-made endocrine disruptors like pesticides, plastics, cosmetics, and heavy metals do. Or perhaps your liver is receiving too many poisons and is underequipped to handle them? If the body’s natural detoxification function is compromised, problems start to occur.
The bottom line is straightforward: you may be toxic if you have signs of toxicity, including exhaustion, mood disorders or psychiatric issues, ADHD, sleeplessness, palpitations, tingling or other unusual sensations, unexplained high blood pressure, menstrual problems, memory issues, etc.
You must be examined by a doctor who specializes in detoxification if you want to get better.
Purge yourself of:
— Show more vigor.
— Make you feel better.
— Get better rest,
— Decrease blood pressure.
Things you must do to improve:
1. Pay attention to what your body is saying: energy loss? Lacking sleep? Not a libido? Mood changes? Flashes of heat? Gaining weight?
In that case:
2. Do your difficulties make life more difficult or perhaps painful? If so:
3. Look for a doctor specializing in detoxification who you can trust.
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