Reason"All things are poison and nothing is without poison. It is the dose that makes a thing a poison," declared the wandering Renaissance physician-surgeon Paracelsus. Now after reviewing more than 5,000 toxicological studies, University of Massachusetts toxicologist Edward Calabrese has a possible amendment to Paracelsus' dictum: Low doses of poisons may be good for you.
Calabrese speculates that evolution has given our bodies and cells the ability to repair themselves. Low exposures to toxins stimulate these biological repair mechanisms and lead them to fix the damage caused by the toxin�and even to repair some of the normal background damage as well. In other words, exposure to low levels of toxins provides "a very modest overcompensation to a little damage."
Calabrese speculates that evolution has given our bodies and cells the ability to repair themselves. Low exposures to toxins stimulate these biological repair mechanisms and lead them to fix the damage caused by the toxin�and even to repair some of the normal background damage as well. In other words, exposure to low levels of toxins provides "a very modest overcompensation to a little damage."
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