Are toxins real??

As the title says really. Posting it in this section to get the most feedback, whether its from people who have a scientific background or not.
 
Basically I'm talking about the build up of chemical usage in the modern world and its effect on the body. Do toxins explain the reasons why some areas of the body are more troublesome to lose the weight from and one of the reasons why the metabolism slows down with age. And the obvious continuing rise of negative health around the western world? 
 
Surely there must be an effect of adding chemicals into every single aspect of life? If tehre is how would you go about sorting the problem out? Has anyone had any experience with full body cleanses or any sort of detox process?
 
Gary

Have a read up on free radicals and antioxidants. Sounds like thats what you're getting at. wikipedia has decent starter pages on them. 
 
Not a fan of the term detox personally, it is in effect just a marketing word and the products offer very little compared to what the body can actually do, plus many people run a detox and simply go back to living the way they did. 
 
Living a healthy lifestyle is the surest way to 'try' and sort the problems out, as with anything though it still has its limitations.  
 
I'm on my phone so can't post any links up, iirc theres an article on MT about antioxidants, have a look for that.

Definitely agree that the word detox is slapped on anything and most of it is going to be a pile of s**t.
 
And a healthy lifestyle will certainly help with avoiding a lot of problems with the body. Done a fair amount of reading on free radicals and other background information. Personally think it makes a lot of sense. Just wondering what others think.
 
One of the things I'm trying to get at is the idea of the overall pH of the body, which should be slightly alkaline. Also that excess amounts of acidity relates to areas of fluid retention around certain fat cells in the lymph node regions. www.snyderhealth.com talks about this in greater details. Does the pH of the body have a dramatic effect, and the idea of cancers only being able to occur in an acidic body?
 
Gary
 
 

I have seen the alkaline diet approach work very well in a professional sport setting, for overall health it has it's benefits too.
 
in terms of specifics regarding cellular level i would have to look back over my notes i have to discuss the details of cancer at certain acidity levels. I do recall a book i read a couple of years ago addressing this issue in some depth, i'll see if i can remember the title, it was very interesting and was aimed at discussing nutrition and the links with cancer. You cant hold a permanent/pure alkaline ph state though. Also worth noting is that cancer does thrive more in acidic environments, but (again this is from memory) this has only been shown in lab tests and is more of an assumption, a lot of pro-alkaline diet writers forget to clarify this. 
 
Good topic, making me think back to some earlier reading i used to do. Will have to recap properly.

The body copes brilliantly with lots of things that it has come into contact throughout human evolution. Things that are newer to the system (e.g. petrochemicals, odd metals in contact with skin, etc), are less well dealt with, and there is an upper limit on how much any individual can expect their body to process.
 
Put simply you can't expect a system to outperform its spec sheet.

Cheers for the responses, agree that studies in the lab are a far cry from the real world.
 
Any articles or background info you've got got would be great Big D. Also half way through 'The China Study' where its talking about the role of animal protein in cancer growth/control. So much information out there its hard to know whats right.lol
 
And Tony, the human body is truly remarkable in what it manages to deal with. As much as it all about getting hench, health is above and beyond the single most important thing.
 
Hoping this turns into a nice debate, purely because of the overall wealth of knowledge on MT
 
Gary

The word 'toxin' is overly used.  It means poisonous substance and people claim things are toxic when they're not.
 
It's a term with more quack than my local park's duck pond!

Ofc toxins exist, it's the amount of exposure that's important. petrol fumes, cigarette smoke, industrial waste etc. the body is good at handling background levels of such things, so be careful what you read - examine every claim individually with research if reading from one person's site - as this area is full of quacks and unscientific scaremongering. First silver fillings leak mercury and kill braincells, but wait, white fillings leak bisphenol A and poison us too, better let our teeth rot and fall out then eh? Etc...
 
alkaline diet stuff etc is pure quackery. the body's ph level is tightly controlled by homeostasis and excess acid or of course alkaline beyond this slim range results in big health problems, something which the pseudoscientists always fail to mention when banging on about eating nothing but greens to fight acidic cancers lol

^^ better post than mine!

If you are interested in Toxicity read - Dr Mark Schaus, Achieving victory against our toxic world.
 
Quite an interesting read. Another point maybe to add are the effects of Phalates. My unlce is a professor and expert on the effects of these on the developing fetus. Phalates (correct me if I'm wrong) can effect the male testes in development and could result in higher estrogen in males resulting in higher body fat.