The health benefits of eating organic fruits and vegetables really add up. Two recent research studies confirm it.

Human beings have never before had to deal with the level of toxic chemicals that now exist in the environment. And the stress of dealing with those toxins shows up as chronic illness. Dementia, Parkinson’s, asthma, heart disease, cancer, liver disease, infertility, and many more conditions have been linked to toxic exposure.

These poisons get into our body in three main ways:

• the air we breathe
• our occupational exposure
• the food we eat

Each of these pathways contributes significantly to our overall toxic burden, and in the ideal world, we could limit all of these exposure routes.

Unfortunately, we don’t have much individual control over the air we breathe. And sometimes we have little control over our work environment, or the work environments we’ve experienced in the past. But almost anyone can gain a measure of control over the level of man-made chemicals they’re exposed to in their food.

Eating “organic” food doesn’t solve every health problem, but it’s been proven to minimize the detoxification burden we face.

For instance, in 2006, a team of public and environmental health researchers measured the urinary output of the chemical residues of harmful organophosphates in children during periods when they ate their “normal” diet compared to when their diet was shifted to include only organic fruits and vegetables. The level of toxic by-products in their urine dropped close to zero, almost immediately.

And in 2015, a team at the Department of Nutrition at Harvard determined that semen quality differed significantly between groups of men depending on the level of pesticide in the fruits and vegetables they ate. Even if you’re not a male of reproductive age, these findings are still relevant for you. Semen is actively produced in an ongoing way, requiring a lot of energy and many building block chemicals the body produces, so it’s a useful marker for your overall metabolic health.

Dr. Lavine has been an innovator in the use of movement and touch to promote health since 1981. He practices in New York City and Princeton, NJ.

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