“Over 25,000 tons of pesticides are used in the UK every year. Imagine a convoy of 1,000 trucks of poison bent on spreading its toxins on the relatively small agricultural area of the small island of Britain - and populations having to eat the produce that comes from that area! In a sane world, we would be declaring we have found WMDs (weapons of mass destruction) at home and … Blair would bomb the #*@$` out of it!”
-www.sunday-times.co.uk

According the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the average intake of vitamin A by an American adult is “adequate”. However, environmental factors are depleting that vitamin A or sabotaging its ability to be used by the body.

Exposure to various environmental chemicals such as PCB’s and the DDT in insecticides poison both your body’s ability to make and use vitamin A. This is also true of the formaldehyde and acetaldehyde used in building supplies and carpeting. Routinely, Americans are exposed to tens of thousands of harmful chemicals. When scientists at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine tested nine volunteers for the presence of 210 common toxins, they found that volunteers tested positive for an average of 91 toxins. The Centers for Disease Control later conducted a more extensive study and confirmed their findings.

Unfortunately, our external environment is not our only source of toxins from pesticides. Pesticide exposure can mutate the normal friendly bacteria in our guts so that they produce a pesticide-like toxin. One study done in Australia in the early 1990’s found that everyone they tested with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) was producing this toxin. The study also found a direct correlation between the quantity of this toxin in the body and the severity of the disease. For this reason, someone with an autoimmune disease, especially CFS or fibromyalgia, needs to supplement with probiotics, which are friendly intestinal bacteria that can help replace any pesticide-mutated bacteria.

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