Why Smart Athletes Don’t Guess Their Health: A Deep Dive into Heavy Metals

WELLNESS, INSIGHT | February 2026

When you hear “heavy metals,” you might think of industrial sites or polluted rivers, but these elements are all around us, and our bodies can absorb them without us even knowing it. Heavy metals are naturally occurring elements with high atomic weight and density. Some, like iron, zinc, and copper, are essential in trace amounts, but others such as lead, mercury, cadmium, arsenic, and chromium are toxic at elevated levels and can harm your body over time. In this article, we’re diving into how people are exposed to heavy metals, the effect they can have on the body, and how Joi + Blokes test their supplements to ensure quality and safety.

How Heavy Metals Enter the Body

People are exposed to heavy metals through many everyday sources:

Air and water pollution in urban environments¹.
Contaminated foods and supplements — including protein powders or supplement batches with heavy metals².
Soil and dust exposure from outdoor training or even from old buildings and pipes¹.

Heavy metals don’t just pass through the body like water. Instead, they accumulate in tissues and can interfere with how cells work, block enzymes, and displace essential nutrients needed for energy production and performance.

What Are Heavy Metals — And The Biological Impact

Heavy metals can impact the body on multiple fronts:

Physical Performance and Recovery

Some metals (like lead or cadmium) are associated with oxidative stress and chronic inflammation, which can blunt recovery and increase injury risk³.
Muscle strength, endurance, and aerobic capacity may be compromised when metals interfere with energy metabolism or organ function⁴.

Neurological and Systemic Effects

Heavy metals accumulate in the brain and nervous tissues, potentially contributing to cognitive fatigue, slower reaction times, and mood changes⁵.

Hormone Disruption

Perhaps most crucial is the effect heavy metals can have on the endocrine system — the network of glands responsible for hormone production and regulation:

Heavy metals like lead, mercury, and cadmium have been shown to potentially interfere with thyroid and sex hormone synthesis, transport, and metabolism, slowing metabolic rate and altering energy balance⁶.
There has been potential correlation of heavy metal excretion with disruptions in progesterone, estrogen, and thyroid-stimulating hormone levels, suggesting that these metals can affect both hormonal and immune function⁷.

“Hormones don’t operate in isolation. When environmental stressors interfere with endocrine signaling, athletes may feel the effects across energy, metabolism, and recovery.”— May Chewning, NP, Clinical Team, Joi + Blokes

In short: heavy metals do not just “build up” — they actively influence your physiology in ways that matter for performance, recovery, energy, injury resilience, and hormonal balance.

How Joi + Blokes Test their Supplements for Heavy Metals

At Joi + Blokes, testing doesn’t stop with formulation — it extends to the quality and safety of every blended supplement we produce. Every blended supplement we offer is independently tested for heavy metals, with results verified through accredited laboratory methods. To make this process transparent and accessible, a live Certificate of Analysis (COA) through the Light Lab Product Insight Panel is available directly under the Add to Cart section on each product page, allowing you to see exactly what’s been tested and how each batch performs.

To put results into real-world context, we view heavy metal exposure the same way we view it in food. Just as certain foods naturally contain trace elements based on soil, water, and sourcing, supplements can vary by ingredient origin and manufacturing conditions. Testing allows us to compare those trace amounts to established safety thresholds and ensure they remain well below levels associated with physiological harm.

This approach supports the bigger picture of health optimization. When athletes are training hard, supplementing consistently, and dialing in recovery, what’s not in a supplement matters just as much as what is. By testing every blended formula and making results visible, we remove uncertainty and give athletes confidence that their supplementation strategy supports performance, recovery, and long-term health — without adding unnecessary toxic burden.

How Heavy Metal Testing Ties Into Total Body Wellness

Smart athletes don’t guess their health — they measure it. Here’s why heavy metal testing is an essential component of a comprehensive wellness strategy.

Beyond Symptoms: Objective Data Instead of Guesswork

Many effects of heavy metals, fatigue, mood shifts, hormonal fluctuations, overlap with other conditions like overtraining, stress, or nutrient imbalances. These symptoms can be subtle or non-specific, meaning the only reliable way to detect toxic burdens is through testing.

“When fatigue or hormonal symptoms persist, it’s not always training or nutrition volume, sometimes it’s the quality of what’s being added daily, including trace exposures that can increase physiological stress over time.”— Dr. Lanae Mullane, ND, Clinical Strategist & Product Innovation, Joi + Blokes

Why Test For Heavy Metals? A Piece of the Bigger Wellness Puzzle

Heavy metal status doesn’t just stand alone — it interacts with other systems that determine overall wellness:

Hormones: Heavy metals are endocrine disruptors, meaning they can throw off the delicate balance of hormones that regulate metabolism, recovery, mood, and performance(8).
Nutrition: Metals can displace essential nutrients, blocking enzymes that need magnesium, zinc, or selenium — nutrients highly relevant to muscle function and metabolic health(9).
Immune function: Chronic low-grade inflammation from metal exposure may weaken immunity, increasing risk for illness and prolonged recovery times (10).

Top athletes already track VO2 max, sleep metrics, blood markers, and body composition — because performance is data-driven. Heavy metals deserve a place on that dashboard too. A great place to start is by understanding what is in the supplements you’re taking.

Take Control of your Wellness Journey

In order to reach peak wellness levels, guessing isn’t a strategy — data is. Smart athletes know that health isn’t just how you feel — it’s what the numbers say, and how you use them to optimize every system in your body. With the clinical testing of Joi + Blokes, they do the hard work for you, so you can eliminate the guessing game of what’s in your supplements.

For more information on Joi + Blokes and further invest in your wellness journey visit https://f45training.com/joi-blokes/

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