I found this article by Dr Eades which covers a new use for the weight loss drug Orlistat to remove polychlorinated biphenyls, dioxins, dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane and other organochlorine pollutants from your body:
Dr Eades first discusses the "toxins" in question:
Organochlorine pesticides (DDT, lindane, etc), organochlorine and organobromine industrial pollutants, solvents, placticizers, and a host of other such substances are in the stored fat of all of us. Their use over the previous decades has so filled our environment with these chemicals that we can't escape them. The are in the air, they fall in the rain, they are in the groundwater. Consequently, they are in our food. Whenever we eat, we get a load of these persistent organic pollutants (POPs) that make their way into our fat cells and cells in other tissues. And they build up because we can't get rid of them.
How do these compounds accumulate in your fat:
First, the chemical structure of these compounds involves a chlorine-carbon bond that is very stable and lipophilic (fat loving). The stability is what keeps these chemicals around for decades without breaking down, and their lipophilic nature is what drives them into our fat. When we eat foods that are contaminated with POPs (some foods are contaminated more than others, but virtually all foods contain some quantity of POPs), these foods make their way into our digestive tracts. The gall bladder squirts bile salts, cholesterol and phospholipids into the churned up mass of food as it travels through the first part of the small intestine. The POPs quickly find their way into the fat in this mass, which is then absorbed through the cells called enterocytes that line the small intestine. Once in the enterocytes, the fat – including the POPs – is repackaged and released into the lymph. The lymph containing the POP-laden fat makes its way to the blood, then to the fat cells, which remove most of the POPs and store them away.
Once they reach the fat cells, it becomes difficult to get rid of the POPs for a couple of reasons. First, they like fat, so they want to stay where the fat is. Second, if they do get released from the fat cells during weight loss they get reabsorbed by the enterohepatic circulation.
POPs that leave the fat cells go back into the blood and travel to the liver where they are released into gall bladder as bile. It is thought that these POPs are also released through the enterocytes back into the small intestine. Animal studies have shown both mechanisms to be at work. When the POPs reach the small intestine either through the bile or through the enterocytes, the process described a couple of paragraphs above repeats. The POPs mix with the fat and are absorbed and start their journey back to the fat cells once again. The process of releasing a substance (in this case POPs) by the liver into the intestine and having it picked back up again and recycled is called enterohepatic circulation.
If you are reducing food intake to lose weight these POPs traveling back into the blood make their way once again to the fat cells, but are released quickly as the fat cells give up their fat to provide the energy deficit created by the decreased food intake. What ends up happening is this flux of POPs from the intestine to the fat cells and back leads to increased POP levels in the blood and the uptake of POPs by other tissues such as the brain. I don't know about you, but I would much prefer my POPs stay in my fat and away from my brain, kidneys, pancreas, etc. But what if I want to lose weight, what then? And is there a way to reduce the body's load of POPs permanently?
We've got a situation that's really a one way street. POPs can get in, but they can't get out. All they can do is recirculate. And since they're always coming in, we're always going to have more and more of them accumulate. Which I have always found troubling because it seems that at some point they will begin to cause serious problems.
According to a paper called, Enterohepatic circulation of organochlorine compounds: a site for nutritional intervention:
There is ample evidence that OCs [organochlorine compounds] are present in humans. Studies of breast milk composition have revealed the international presence of OCs. A memorable demonstration of the ubiquitous distribution of OCs in humans resulted from a meeting of 13 European Health ministers in June 2004. All of the ministers volunteered to have OCs measured in their blood, and most of the assayed OCs were found in all of the ministers.There are also reports that the level of OCs in blood increases with age. This longitudinal increase results only if the rate of intake is greater than the rate of excretion.
Since the presence of OCs in the human food chain will continue for decades, it is unlikely that cessation of production of OCs will contribute significantly to health in the foreseeable future. We therefore need to consider alternative approaches to potential health problems resulting from OCs. One approach is that of reducing the human body burden of OCs by nutritional means. We present here data that suggest that it is possible to reduce the rate of intake of dietary OCs and to increase the rate of excretion of OCs.
So basically:
We only accumulate if our intake is more than our excretion. But how do we excrete POPs? We excrete them in our stools. But unfortunately, only in minuscule amounts. These compounds are trapped in fat, and we absorb almost all the fat that gets into our GI tract. There is a tiny amount of fat that makes its way out in the stool, maybe 5 -7 grams per day, which is negligible in terms of shedding and meaningful amounts of POPs. So, if we could figure out a way to reduce the absorption of fat back into the body, then more POP-laden fat would come out in our stools and be gone forever. And if we could figure out a way to lose weight, which increases the dumping of POPs into the small intestine AND decrease the reabsorption of it all, we could really make a substantial dent in our total body POP load.
Since Orlistat blocks fat absorption in the small intestine, it can help you increase the fat in your stool and reduce your body load of POPs. This seems like it might be a valid anti-aging treatment. An individual might do a 7 day Orlistat treatment every couple months. A suggested regimen / dosing is suggested in the link below.
More information can be found in Dr Eade's post:
http://www.proteinpo...e-for-orlistat/
Here is a graph taken from that post illustrating the relationship fecal fat content and Orlistat.
orlistat_jpeg.JPG 19.57KB
10 downloads
