How does Selenium Help Your Body to Detox More Effectively?

What Are Toxins?

Our modernised living environment has contaminated the Earth with immeasurable amounts of toxins and this is hardly surprising. Now what if I say that your body is also being swamped with lots of hidden toxins? Perhaps you find this statement too incredulous to believe and doubt its validity. Especially if you are someone who truly take the effort to maintain your physical health. All the more you will question, “How on earth would my body be overloaded with toxins?”

Take the lighting of a matchstick as an illustration, other than it burning to give off light and heat, the combustion process will also produce some ashes at the end. Similarly, the myriad of biochemical processes occurring in the body to support life, such as energy metabolism and digestion, also generates toxic by-products like free radicals, disintegrated cellular contents, undigested food, metabolic wastes and so forth. If these naturally occurring toxins are not removed efficiently, they will certainly interfere with the normal functioning of cellular tissues and the micro-environment that surrounds the cells.

So what are toxins? Put it simply, it refers to anything our body cannot use yet fail to be expelled properly. Accumulated toxins in the body prevent cells from working normally which leads to poor functioning of body tissues and organ systems. As long as we are alive and breathing, we metabolise and produce toxic wastes every day.

There are many different forms of toxins found in our living environment which create loads of detox burden on our organ systems yet this is an unavoidable consequence that people have to tolerate what with the choice of staying in a modern city landscape. Not only that, but our physical body can also be subjected to endless stream of toxins produced within through automatic emotional reactions that result in worry, fear and anxiety, inaction in the form of emotional suppression or denial, or the behavioural pattern of dealing with negative stress with poor eating habits that cause recurring digestive problems or disruptive lifestyle routines.

You might ask, “Isn’t my body armed with natural detoxifying abilities?” and you are right. The human body has an ingenious biological design that is comprehensive and all-encompassing in functions, highly intricate and intelligent in its interconnected systems, and the detox capability is one of them. Still, how well our detox abilities work together across different organ systems are conditional upon the availability of essential nutrients and whether the cellular tissues can utilise these nutrients efficiently.

The Origins of Toxins

Unhealthy eating habits, abuse of prescription drugs, physiological malfunctioning, chronic negative emotional stress and the list goes on, all of which lead to the overload of toxins that accumulates in the cellular tissues of our body in many different forms, and this hinders the body cells from working optimally, thus creating a toxic micro-environment that damages DNA and breeds the development of chronic diseases such as cancer.

Toxins originate from

1. The external environment we live in – air pollutants released from coal burning to generate electricity, water polluted by chemical substances and heavy metals due to illegal waste water disposal by petrochemical plants, ultraviolet radiation that is not effectively filtered by thinning ozone layer in the atmosphere, soil polluted by chemical fertilisers employed in modern farming practices
2. The food we consume – hormonal residues in meat products, foods that are sterilised by radiation rays, bacterial contaminants in food products due to improper storage conditions, pesticide residues in agricultural products, chemical additives in processed food and beverages
3. The lifestyle habits we practise in convenience – excessive tobacco smoking, alcohol abuse, prescription drugs abuse, synthetic fabrics used in clothing and home furnishings, chemicals in cleaning products, skincare and cosmetics products, toxic odours from household products and office supplies
4. Metabolic activities in our body – lactic acid, uric acid, viscous blood, stools stuck in the folds of large intestines, gall stones, free radicals and oxidised fatty substances

Fat Soluble Toxins and Water Soluble Toxins

Toxins found in the body can be classified into two types – water soluble toxins and fat soluble toxins.

These toxins which the organ systems fail to expel properly will gradually accumulate in various body tissues such as the bones, fatty tissues and even the organs themselves. Water soluble toxins are carried right into the connective tissues by the vast network of small capillaries and settle into the cartilages, synovial membranes and tendons to produce different forms of inflammatory joint diseases. Whereas fat soluble toxins drain into the lymphatic system from the blood or reach the mucous membranes that cover the surface of internal organs or line the endothelial cells of body cavities such as the stomach and intestines to eventually form polyps or cysts. Even the diverse pathological changes observed in the skin such as acne and hyperpigmentation are also the undesirable consequence of fat soluble toxins build up.

Healing Symptoms Experienced During the Detox Process

The body will produce numerous physical reactions during the course of expelling toxins from within the organ systems. Pain in the joints, muscles and bones are typical responses when water soluble toxins are being removed. It is recommended to drink plenty of clean plain water and vegetable fruit juice mixtures to support the detox of water soluble toxins. If you notice festering sores in your skin, experience pain in your organs or having diarrhoea, these are physical symptoms for the removal of fat soluble toxins. Other than drinking lots of vegetable fruit juice mixtures, it is good to supplement with additional nutrients intake that better supports the detox functions of the liver. If situation permits, you can consider visiting a hot spring to facilitate faster sweating out of the fat-soluble toxins. 

Selenium and The Detox Process

Dissolved selenium in the blood plasma becomes non-metallic ions with negative charges, and these negative selenium ions are attracted to the positively charged harmful heavy metal ions found within the body tissues to form heavy metal-selenium protein complexes which help to enhance the removal of these carcinogenic heavy metal ions right out of the body systems. The way selenium works effectively as a trace mineral to nullify and detox earns it the title “Nature’s antidote” against toxic heavy metals. Selenium ions demonstrate a strong affinity for and bonding with metallic ions that help to lower the toxicity of heavy metals which usually poisons the kidneys, the reproductive system and the central nervous system. Selenium can effectively remove and detox heavy metals such as mercury, tin, thallium, lead and other heavy metals through the formation of heavy metal-selenium protein complexes. Poisoning symptoms arising from contact with common harmful substances that pollute the environment and heavy metal contaminants such as cadmium, arsenic, lead and nickel can be minimised in varying degrees by selenium.

Exercise to Remove Toxins May Create More Problems

Nowadays people are more likely to join fitness training programs for the purpose of improving physical health and some believe that exercise helps to promote detoxification. Engaging in moderate amount of exercising and an exercise type that is suitable for oneself is undoubtedly beneficial for physical fitness. However, the problem is, many people have a tendency to over exercise. In other words, we will usually assume, “Isn’t it better to do more than less when it comes to exercise?” in reality, there is a optimal limit to every permissible thing that can be done. Over done is worse than undone is precisely the reason behind advocating moderate exercise.

The science of exercise states that increased movement of the body accelerates energy metabolism and breaking down blood glucose naturally produces a certain amount of metabolic wastes and toxins. If your health objective is solely hinged upon physical fitness training and neglect to help your body detox properly through adequate rest and replenishment of depleted nutrients, then you are merely exercising for the sake of exercising in an effort to burn off your calories. You may end up inflicting more cellular damage on your physical body unknowingly.

Generally speaking, why are people discouraged from doing strenuous exercise every day? And how about the recommendation to exercise thrice or even just twice a week is good enough? Precisely because you need to give your body sufficient time to wind down and metabolise the huge amount of lactic acid generated into harmless substances. Not forgetting the examples of professional athletes engaging in competitive sports, who usually end up with problematic joints near the end of their careers, don’t you think that this has something to do with the harsh reality that sports athletes are not able to help their physical bodies detox timely?

It goes without saying that sports athletes are required to train almost every day and the accumulation of a few hours each day is almost like subjecting the stored reserves of their lives to premature wear and tear. If you are just an ordinary person who has not resolved to fight for the glory of your country by competing in the Olympics, then for the sake of your future physical well-being, just do what you can and stop when enough is enough.