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Understanding why toxins can cause a lot of damage is important.
A toxin found in foods you eat can destroy millions or billions of cells within minutes or hours of ingestion
Anything that has "LD50" value is a toxin.
LD50 is theoretical way of thinking of how specific amount of specific chemical has ability to be lethal for 50% of population. But obviously anything that is toxic in big doses is also toxic in small doses. Less amount just destroys less cells.
Some vitamins even have LD50 value but they are only for the synthetic lab-made fake vitamins, not the ones from raw animal foods, the true natural ones
If the body doesn't have nutrients for making detoxification systems optimal for neutralizing the toxins, then the toxins keep on destroying cells for hours or days leading to relatively big damage until the detox systems catch on.
This is different from nutrient deficiency which doesn't kill cells immediately, it prevents the body from being replaced after damage, causing chronic degeneration of tissues and systems.
And cells without toxin interactions can live years, depending on cells, usually to few weeks to few years or even decades before being replaced. I would also argue healthy cells live substantially longer than unhealthy ones. But nutrients are still needed as these cells need to be fueled to be kept alive during their lifespan.
One toxin molecule can kill thousands of cells and we can only replace the damaged cells and eliminate the toxins in certain rate which is limited and this becomes unsustainable for health pretty fast.
Healthy cells tend to live as long as they can avoid stress or damage.
There are 5 ways toxin kills cells:
1. Blocking energy for the cell (mitochrondia)
Some toxins shut off the mitochondria of the cell. Without it the cell cant maintain its structure and dies quickly.
2. Punching holes in the cell membrane
The cell membrane is a thin fatty layer that keeps everything inside. Some toxins dissolve or damage it.
3. Jamming important proteins
Cells are full of proteins that act kinda like tools. Many toxins stick to those proteins and change their shape so they stop working. If enough proteins fail, the cell cant function.
4. Causing destructive chemical reactions
Some toxins create very reactive molecules called free radicals. These behave like "tiny bullets" that hit important structures inside the cell. If damage becomes too large, the cell triggers self-destruction.
5. Triggering the cells suicide program
When severe damage is detected then sensors detect it and signal to activate death proteins that break the cell in a controlled way. This prevents damaged cells from becoming dangerous which can kill even more cells.
Health of cells largely depends on three systems:
(things we can influence, we obviously can't influence the laws of physics which are continuously damaging our body slowly.
1. Damage load
So amount, frequency and type of toxin matters.
2. Repair capacity
Mainly influenced by nutrients that directly enable the repair and detox systems and sleep supports this system.
3. Replacement rate
Genetics, age of DNA and nutrients are what influence how efficiently the body can replace the damaged cells with healthy cells to avoid disease (disease = not optimally functional tissue/system).
If the toxins destroy more cells than the body can replace them with healthy cells then overall cell loss accumulates and tissue dysfunctions and if that prolongs it causes the dysfunction to be classified as official known disease.
Why this matters for us on rawprimal diet?
This is important as even if you eat highly nutritious raw animal foods which 99% of time gives you the ability to replace the damage faster than it accumulates, but sometimes if the food has high amounts of toxins then it might be inadequate and lead to tissue dysfunction, that's why its important to find animals which have themselves eaten non-toxic food and liven in non-toxic environments.
This is why we stress about good sourcing of food all the time.
This is complex topic but hope I gave you food for thought.
