Oxidative Stress  – the Root Cause of All Disease

Increased oxidative stress is the source of all illness and leads to cardiovascular disease, arthritis, a variety of cancers, and much more. Here, Dr. Thomas E. Levy reveals
the eight steps to help you stop oxidative stress in its tracks.

There’s a lot of anxiety surrounding disease nowadays, as people seem to be getting sick left and right, and it’s not clear why. Most of us know at least one person who has suffered a heart attack or courageously battled breast cancer or faced down some other formidable illness like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s. While many of us stress and worry about falling victim to a deadly health crisis, we feel largely powerless to protect ourselves from such a scary fate. But according to Thomas E. Levy, MD, JD, disease is far less random than we’d like to believe—and there’s plenty we can do to prevent it. He says all disease comes down to a single factor: too much oxidative stress in your body.

“Oxidation is a normal component of the body’s healthy metabolic activity,” says Dr. Levy, author of Hidden Epidemic: Silent Oral Infections Cause Most Heart Attacks and Breast Cancers. “But thanks to our highly toxic lifestyles, a state of highly increased oxidative stress (IOS) is becoming the norm. This is the source of all disease. Anyone who wishes to stay healthy should identify and eliminate all ongoing new sources of oxidative stress on a daily basis.”

Surprisingly, the biggest source of IOS is the toxins caused by hidden dental infections, particularly infected teeth, infected gums, and infected tonsils. In fact, studies show that root canal-treated teeth and chronically infected gums cause at least 90 percent of heart attacks and 70 percent of breast cancers. Treating these kinds of infections in the mouth is a vital step in decreasing your toxic load (and thus decreasing IOS). But according to Dr. Levy, there are also lots of other ways to suppress the influx of toxins present in the body.

Keep reading for some ways to decrease toxins and lower your levels of oxidative stress.

Identify and eliminate chronic infections (usually in the mouth!). Infections of the teeth are a significant source of pathogen-related toxins, says Levy. These infections are asymptomatic and often not seen on a standard x-ray. However, they can be seen by using 3D x-ray imaging. He advises having a baseline physical evaluation and 3D x-ray of the mouth. Over time you can use this baseline result to indicate the presence of new infections in the roots of the teeth.

Measure your C-reactive protein (CRP) level. “C-reactive protein is a protein in the plasma that indicates the level of inflammation in your body,” says Dr. Levy. “Though normal range for this test is usually 0-3, your CRP should ideally be well below 1. Anything higher is an indication of increased oxidative stress.”

Balance your hormones. Low estrogen levels in women, low testosterone levels in men, and low thyroid hormones in both men and women all result in an increase in oxidative stress. And when oxidative stress is increased throughout the body, any focal infections present in the teeth and gums are more likely to become metastatic. Therefore, it’s important to keep these hormone levels well within the normal range at all times.

Assimilate micronutrients by consuming blended smoothies. The standard American diet consists of highly processed foods that lack beneficial micronutrients. Further, thanks to compromised gut health, many people fail to fully digest their food, which then putrefies and creates a host of toxins and toxic metabolic byproducts. To combat poor digestion and get the most nutrition from your food, Dr. Levy recommends pulverizing a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables, preferably organic, into a nutrient-rich smoothie on a daily basis. This ensures that you take in as many micronutrients as possible, which defends against IOS.

Stay away from calcium supplements. “Despite its popularity for treating osteoporosis, calcium supplementation is simply never good for you and should be avoided,” says Dr. Levy. “When your vitamin D level is properly adjusted, you get all the calcium you need through your diet.”

Avoid iron and copper as well. In addition to calcium, iron and copper are toxic nutrients. They are essential for life in a limited dosage, but become progressively toxic in larger doses. Dr. Levy says that you should never take an iron supplement unless you have an iron deficiency anemia. Additionally, you should never eat foods that have been fortified with these nutrients. (Read your food labels; many processed foods contain added iron!)

Use caution with fat-soluble vitamins. Unlike water-soluble vitamins, which demonstrate little to no toxicity in any dose, vitamins A, D, and E can eventually be pushed to toxic levels as they become increasingly concentrated in the liver and fatty tissues of the body. Dr. Levy recommends exerting some caution when supplementing with high doses of them. Vitamin D supplementation requires some blood testing to make sure the dosing is correct. (He does, however, point out that vitamin K is the one fat-soluble vitamin that has no toxicity.)

“Sweat out” your toxins in a far-infrared sauna. “Sweating is a much too little recognized way to safely detox your body,” says Dr. Levy. “Many chelating drugs pull toxins from your tissues but don’t fully remove them from your body. This can cause a new toxic effect from the toxins as those toxins mobilize and travel to new tissues. But sweating gives you an enormous detox with little acute toxicity in the process.”

“Chronically increased oxidative stress can be bad news if left unchecked,” concludes Dr. Levy. “But luckily there are lots of great ways to combat it. In a few simple steps, you can lower your toxic load, stop oxidative stress that might otherwise become deadly, and remove yourself from the danger zone of disease.”

Thomas E. Levy, MD, JD, is a board-certified cardiologist and a lawyer, and is the author of 10 other groundbreaking medical books, including Curing the Incurable: Vitamin C, Infectious Diseases, and Toxins; Primal Panacea; and Death by Calcium. He is one of the leading vitamin C experts in the world, and he frequently lectures at medical conferences and to groups of people around the globe about the proper role of vitamin C and other antioxidants in optimizing treatment protocols for the most common chronic degenerative diseases, including heart disease, cancer, and advanced chronic infections, such as Lyme.