"you guys are so silly, with your pretty little bottles of goop. think about it! you strip your face of all its beneficial oils, then try to replace those oils by slathering on those chemical lotions..." but he would say it in sing-song - slathering on those chemical lotions - while mimicking a teen slopping goo on his face, nose crinkled in exaggerated disgust.
dr. pollack was hilarious, and so right. those animated rants glittering twelfth grade anatomy and physiology held so much truth. at the time, i thought he was a bit of a kook. the man didn't wear deodorant, claiming the aluminum in antiperspirants caused cancer. "besides", he'd emphasize, "you are supposed to sweat. you're eliminating toxins!". the guy also ate chalk the first week of school...to expose the truth about tums...but still! (seventeen year old me rolling my eyes).
now i realize what a brave and brilliant doctor he was. while we were being brainwashed to believe only oxi-pads and noxzema would bring us clear skin, that benzoyl peroxide and salicylic acid would kill that zit-causing bacteria, dr. p mocked those commercials (shown during our school's morning announcements!) and urged us to change our diets, to stop consuming so much sugar, soda and dairy. "it's what you eat that is causing the break-outs!", he'd cry in frustration.
i didn't listen. i, like, loved milk and soda. milk did a body good. soda was ok once a day. and give up candy? is he crazy? i think it was on the way to dr. pollack's class that i stopped at the school store for my midday dose of high fructose corn syrup. (so nice of the schools to supply us our fix!)
dr. pollack was a chiropractor (not a real doctor i would think. oh i was a pistol!). he knew and taught us things we needed to know. he warned us of the dangers of olestra and aspartame and other artificial ingredients in diet foods (which i instantly filtered as rubbish, innocently believing such toxins would never be allowed on the market.) i didn't listen until john came along almost ten years later and pried the baby blue packets from my beet red fists. (ha, not really, but kind of.=)
thank you, dr. p, for the seeds you planted have blossomed! i stopped using antiperspirant years ago, my face wash is simply h2o, and i question everything that goes in and on my body. i don't know about the rest of the class, but i think you'd be happy to know you got through to at least one of your silly students. and like you, she aims to sow the seeds of truth in the youth.=)
p.s. you should have told us how aspartame is made from genetically engineered bacteria feces. i'm thinking that bit of information could have stopped my gum chewing habit. ha, probably not.
dr. pollack was hilarious, and so right. those animated rants glittering twelfth grade anatomy and physiology held so much truth. at the time, i thought he was a bit of a kook. the man didn't wear deodorant, claiming the aluminum in antiperspirants caused cancer. "besides", he'd emphasize, "you are supposed to sweat. you're eliminating toxins!". the guy also ate chalk the first week of school...to expose the truth about tums...but still! (seventeen year old me rolling my eyes).
now i realize what a brave and brilliant doctor he was. while we were being brainwashed to believe only oxi-pads and noxzema would bring us clear skin, that benzoyl peroxide and salicylic acid would kill that zit-causing bacteria, dr. p mocked those commercials (shown during our school's morning announcements!) and urged us to change our diets, to stop consuming so much sugar, soda and dairy. "it's what you eat that is causing the break-outs!", he'd cry in frustration.
i didn't listen. i, like, loved milk and soda. milk did a body good. soda was ok once a day. and give up candy? is he crazy? i think it was on the way to dr. pollack's class that i stopped at the school store for my midday dose of high fructose corn syrup. (so nice of the schools to supply us our fix!)
dr. pollack was a chiropractor (not a real doctor i would think. oh i was a pistol!). he knew and taught us things we needed to know. he warned us of the dangers of olestra and aspartame and other artificial ingredients in diet foods (which i instantly filtered as rubbish, innocently believing such toxins would never be allowed on the market.) i didn't listen until john came along almost ten years later and pried the baby blue packets from my beet red fists. (ha, not really, but kind of.=)
thank you, dr. p, for the seeds you planted have blossomed! i stopped using antiperspirant years ago, my face wash is simply h2o, and i question everything that goes in and on my body. i don't know about the rest of the class, but i think you'd be happy to know you got through to at least one of your silly students. and like you, she aims to sow the seeds of truth in the youth.=)
p.s. you should have told us how aspartame is made from genetically engineered bacteria feces. i'm thinking that bit of information could have stopped my gum chewing habit. ha, probably not.
Great post Kelli....I never knew all of these little facts about gum!!
ReplyDeleteBy Dr. Mercola
You might not pay much attention to the ingredients in chewing gum because, after all, it’s not actually swallowed. But the ingredients, many of which are potentially dangerous, do enter your body, directly through the walls of your mouth.
As with the toxic ingredients in personal care products like lotion, which are absorbed directly through your skin and into your bloodstream, the ingredients in gum also get absorbed by your body quickly and directly, bypassing the digestive system that would ordinarily help to filter some of the toxins away.
For these reasons, if you’re a gum chewer, it’s very important to look at what’s in your favorite brand, and as a recent investigation by The Health Wyze Report showed,1 what you find may put a bad taste in your mouth…
These 5 Common Chewing Gum Ingredients Are Linked to Cancer and More
1. Aspartame
If your gum is sugar-free, there’s a good chance it contains the artificial sweetener aspartame. Aspartame is metabolized inside your body into both wood alcohol (a poison) and formaldehyde (which is a carcinogen used as embalming fluid and is not eliminated from your body through the normal waste filtering done by your liver and kidneys). It's been linked to birth defects, cancers, brain tumors and weight gain.
2. BHT (Butylated Hydroxytoluene)
BHT is so toxic it’s already been banned in many other countries. In the US, it’s often used as a preservative in chewing gum and other processed foods. BHT has been linked to organ system toxicity, including kidney and liver damage, hyperactivity in children and may be carcinogenic.
3. Calcium Casein Peptone (Calcium Phosphate)
Found primarily in Trident gum, it’s thought this ingredient may be used as a whitening agent or texturizer. As a highly processed milk derivative, little is known about its long-term ingestion, although casein was previously linked to baby formula poisonings in China.
4. Gum Base
It’s quite a mystery what “gum base” is actually made out of, but the investigators found it’s usually a blend of elastomers, resins, plasticizers and fillers. Most manufacturers do not reveal more specifics than this. After all, why would they want you to know that you’re potentially chewing on petroleum-derived paraffin wax, polyvinyl acetate (carpenter’s glue) and talc, which is linked to cancer.
5. Titanium Dioxide
Titanium dioxide is often used as a whitening agent in chewing gum, but it’s been linked to autoimmune disorders, asthma, and Crohn’s disease and is potentially carcinogenic. One study found children are highly exposed to titanium dioxide in confections, with chewing gum containing the highest levels.
thanks elizabeth. i wasn't aware of all that! gum alone may not cause significant damage to a healthy person, but when you combine it with the toxins from processed foods, vaccines, water and air pollution, conventional toothpaste, soaps, antiperspirants and so on, then there could be a problem.
Deletedisgusting how they market the stuff to kids. it's still hard to believe they had us watch those commercials with the morning "news" in school. it's a like a glamorized version of 1984, where we are brainwashed to buy poisons, thinking they are good for us. i can still remember my homeroom teacher telling us we had to keep our eyes on the tv, when i just wanted to read my book. no wonder you and so many others home school.