About four years ago at a health conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, I proposed a mechanism which explained the recent explosion in obesity world wide. After all these years, it seems that I may have been right. Environmental pollutants, from mercury to benzene, pesticides to plastics and many others, may actually inhibit the bodies ability to derive energy from our food thus causing weight gain or the inability to lose weight.

In a nutshell here is how it works: Anywhere from 40-75% of our daily energy production comes when we are at rest. This resting metabolism drives most of the metabolic processes in our bodies. My research done originally at Carbon Based Corporation and now at Crayhon Research, has led me to discover that toxins we are exposed to daily can inhibit this energy producing cycle. If all we do is inhibit this process within the Citric Acid Cycle (aka Krebs or TCA cycle) by a mere 5% that will cause us to gain up to 52 pounds over a 5 year period!

Furthermore it seems that the concentration of these toxins is highly correlated to the effect. Dr. Angelo Tremblay of Laval University found that as people lost weight they seemed to reach a threshold where no more weight loss occurred. His theory suggested that as they lost body mass their concentration of toxins went up thereby blocking any additional weight loss.

Of course this is not the only reason people gain weight; eating too much without exercising is a major reason as well as the poor food quality in our fast-food world. Still, environmental toxicity is a major contributing factor few people talk about.

My next blog will discuss what to do about this issue.