Mercury Detox Diets–Organic Only, Please!

It’s very easy to avoid thinking about where our food comes from or how it’s grown. Food comes from supermarkets, as if by magic. A zillion kinds of breakfast cereal crowd the aisles. Chickens appear on styrofoam trays from who knows where, and shiny red peppers and fresh heads of lettuce are always in the fridge, no matter what season it is.

The incredible convenience and bounty we experience every time we grab a cart and walk down a supermarket aisle comes at a price, though. Those shiny red peppers were covered in wax so that they could make the long trip from California to New York without going bad. And those golden ears of corn were grown in a field fertilized with minimally-treated city sewage. And don’t even think about how sick and antibiotic-laden those battery farmed chickens were before they got turned into nuggets.

Most healthy people can withstand the insults of today’s farming practices. Their livers can deal with the doses of pesticides, preservatives, and assorted mystery fillers that come along with every convenient meal.

But the mercury toxic body just can’t handle it.

Mercury impairs liver function, messes with digestion, subtly effects how the immune system works. Dribs and drabs of allegedly-harmless okay-in-small-doses chemicals have the power to topple a system that’s operating on the edge. The mercury sufferer’s liver gets swamped, their immune system rears up in protest, and digestion goes haywire, all because of that steady diet of seemingly innocuous frozen dinners and chocolate chip cookies.

The Solution: Organic, Unprocessed, Whole Foods

It a very simple thing to make life about a million times easier for the mercury toxic body–just stop eating things that aren’t food.

We’ve gotten used to the idea that it’s okay to eat traces of plastics, chemicals, fillers, dyes, petroleums, and antibiotics, but it’s not okay, and our overburdened mercury toxic bodies are protesting. Headaches, depression, mood swings, brain fog, rashes, constipation, low energy are all signs of an overburdened liver.

It’s time to give your liver a break.

Here’s how you go about it

• Stop eating packaged foods that have ingredient lists as long as your arm. If it has more than five ingredients, don’t buy it.
• Buy only organic meat, eggs, fruits and vegetables. They cost a lot more, but your liver will thank you.
• Eat foods that are as unprocessed and closest to their natural form as possible. Brown rice instead of white, grapes instead of gummi bears, baked potatoes instead of frozen waffle fries.
• Learn to cook a few simple dishes from scratch using super fresh organic ingredients. The result will be a hundred times better for you than anything you heat up in a microwave or order in a restaurant.
• Read this Cook Book!

Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon is the bible of organic and natural whole food ingredients and cooking methods. The recipes are yummy, and the introduction alone is worth the price of the book. It will ground you in the healthiest possible choices to make when buying everything from milk to meat to spices.