The Mail on Sunday, You magazine, 14 April 2002

Paula's toxic shock treatment

Extract one: Revitalise your natural slimming system

Why is it better to eat cherries than strawberries, and how can opening a window help you lose weight? In the second exclusive extract from her new book, Dr Paula Baillie-Hamilton details how you can boost your body's ability to slim naturally.

Our slimming system covers a whole network of body systems, such as appetite, metabolism, hormone levels, fat burning, body heat, exercise and more, which work together to maintain our ideal weight. Just as our bodies have homoeostatic mechanisms to maintain body temperature at a certain level, our weight is also controlled by homoeostatic mechanisms to maintain a largely predetermined weight at which the body will try to remain through thick and thin. A person with an efficient slimming system will find it easy to maintain their body weight despite eating lots of food. For many others, though, their slimming systems are constantly underachieving, because they are under attack from toxic chemicals and are lacking the nutrients they need in order to work properly.

The good news is that by reducing our exposure to the most damaging or 'fattening' of these chemicals, and by increasing our intake of 'slimming' nutrients, it is possible to revitalise our slimming system. Once this happens, it can then start working properly to actively reduce our weight.

When it comes to animal produce, buy organic whenever you can. The chemical calorie table on page 46 will help you identify which foods are likely to be the most contaminated. All our crops are exposed to chemicals in the atmosphere and in particular to PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) from air and rainwater. However, organic fruit and vegetables are far less polluted.

Keep animal fats low - choose low-fat milk and leaner meat, even if the food is organic. Low-fat is especially important if the produce is nonorganic because chemicals are stored in animal fat and excreted in their milk or eggs. Whether you buy organic produce or not, it's important to realise that most pesticides tend to be absorbed into your body far more readily if they are mixed with fats. You can limit to some extent the amount of pesticides you absorb from a food by lowering the overall fat content of the meal. If you buy a mixed, nonorganically grown salad, make sure you serve it with a low-fat or no-fat dressing. If you love tinned salmon or tuna, keep down the chemical calories by buying it stored in brine rather than vegetable oil.

Soft fruits and more delicate vegetables are likely to be more polluted than robust fruits and vegetables that store well. The most obvious way to rid your fruit and vegetables of some of the pesticides or plastic residues is to wash them. Peeling can be a dramatic way of reducing the chemical calorie content of a food, and heat can break down certain chemicals and lower the levels of others.

Choose products in natural packaging or remove plastic packaging as soon as you can. Plastics leach chemicals into food. If a food is high in fats, is stored for a long time in intimate contact with plastic and is then subjected to high temperatures, the chances of the food being contaminated are going to be higher than if that food is chilled. You should avoid storing food in clingfilm made of PVC and avoid cooking ready-made food in its plastic container. Non-fatty produce such as fruit and vegetables stored in plastic seem to be far less affected.

Air your air. Even if you live in a city, indoor air still tends to be far more polluted from chemicals in the home, so ventilate rooms every day.

Get rid of household pesticides, such as fly sprays, insect repellents, flea powders, weedkillers, ant and slug killers, and find alternative treatments or cleaning solutions. One of the most direct ways we absorb chemical calories is straight through the skin in creams and cosmetics, so a good rule of thumb is to try natural or organic products without artificial scents, colour or preservatives. Air your dry-cleaning outside in the garden before you hang it in the wardrobe, and reduce the amount of plastic in your home.

In addition to reducing our exposure to chemical calories, we can also get rid of the residue of chemicals which have built up in our bodies. Many of the early studies were performed on cows and other farm animals which had been contaminated with organochlorines from their feed. Farmers had to remove the chemicals from the animals or be faced with the expensive consequence that they could not be used for human consumption. Tests showed that animals given extra rations of specific vitamins and minerals were much more able to get rid of these chemicals from their bodies. In some cases, the rate of excretion of certain organochlorines more than doubled. It also became apparent that a good technique was to take advantage of the natural recycling of fats in the gut. As fat is broken down it is released into the blood, taking with it its collection of organochlorines. Some of the fats are then secreted from the blood into the gut in the gastric juices and travel through the gut until they are absorbed back into the blood again in the small intestines. These reabsorbed fats are then put back into the body's fat stores. This creates a window of opportunity, for while these chemicals are in the gut they can be removed through high-fibre diets with plenty of raw foods or binding substances such as fruit pectins and gums and psyllium husks, which are widely available in health-food stores. Your intake of raw foods, particularly vegetables, should be maximised because they contain masses of slimming nutrients; they are high in fibre and act like an internal broom; they are alkaline (which aids detoxification), and they contain enzymes which play an important part in digestion.

Extensive contamination of our bodies with chemical calories means that the whole way we diet now needs to change. Any attempt to lose fat must include a detox programme. If we don't deal with the very high levels of toxins released following excessive mobilisation of the body's fat stores caused by fasting, ordinary methods of dieting which use food restriction alone may not only damage the slimming system and make us fatter, but could also potentially damage good health. By not continually adding to your body's toxic load, you will be giving it a chance to deal with its 'chemical' backlog. But you will also need to help your body to use its natural detoxification system to the full by giving it all the nutrients it needs to perform optimally.

Two to three litres of clean water each day is vital to help wash away some of the chemical calories, particularly if you are mobilising them from your fat by dieting or exercising. Exercise boosts the levels of many of the most essential slimming hormones, such as thyroid hormones, testosterone and catecholamines. Carbohydrates also appear to be essential for detoxification, so very low carbohydrate diets should be avoided. Severe food-restriction and fasting can be very toxic, for they increase the levels of chemical calories into the blood circulation without providing an exit route for them. However, a mild food restriction diet, with increased levels of vitamins, exercise and binding agents can be a great way of detoxifying and speeding up the removal of fattening chemicals. Heat treatments, such as a sauna or steam bath, also boost detoxification, as does body scrubbing.

While it may seem as if you have to make an awful lot of changes, the key is to do what you can, when you can. The more you can cut out chemical calories, the slimmer you will eventually become. If you can adopt just a few of the recommendations, this will help. Since the vast majority of the most persistent chemicals in our bodies come from our food and drink, you can make a huge difference just by buying and eating foods that are low in chemical calories. None of these changes requires you to give up food; all they do is cut out the 'fattening' chemicals. Dieting without food restriction - for many it's a dream come true.

The Chemical Calorie Food Guide (the potential amount of chemical calories in different food types; all foods were produced conventionally unless marked organic)

Read the extracts printed in the magazine:
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Extract two: Why chemicals are making us fat