Early this month I was fortunate to meet a 30-year old man named Kisakye Godfrey at a clinic in Nairobi. I had several conversations with him over the course of the week, and what I remember most is that his kindness was amazingly genuine.The feeling for me was that he had done a lot of inner work to identify the life principles that he strove to live by.One day, I asked him why he chose to eat his meals alone rather than with other people. After a bit of silence, he told me that he was getting some negative vibes from a new colleague, and that he felt it was best for him to stay away from the colleague because he angered him several times.I remember him using the word toxic to describe the other colleagues’ insults, not in a malicious way, but in a thoughtful and observational tone.It’s almost coming to the end of the month and I still think about Kisakye thoughts on avoiding unnecessary toxic insults from his colleagues. I feel that this facet of living is vastly underrated determinant of health and overall quality of life one can live. There is a very strong relationship between emotional strength and the function of our body system.We know that our emotional health status has constant influence over the health of every organ in our body, particularly our nervous and endocrine systems.The action of the above mentioned body systems go hand in hand with our emotion strength or beliefs. This is why one can feel pain without any underlying sickness but simply because a colleague has told that the wine he took attacks directly the liver. And clearly, our emotional health is largely affected by our daily interactions with others.So it stands to reason that learning how to identify and effectively deal with toxic influences are important skills to develop when looking to experience optimal health.From this perspective, it is important to understand how to identify and detect toxicity of human origin. I think it’s safe to say that a person is toxic to your health if their behavior makes you feel bad on a regular basis.Clearly, there are exceptions, for example, if a close friend or family member shares a concern about a certain behavior with a spirit of wanting to improve the existing relationship, you may feel bad and your sense of emotional well-being may take a temporary hit. But it does not make sense to label such friends or family members as being toxic.Some of the toxic instances may be an attempt to intimidate you by yelling or becoming violent in any manner that is not good for example slamming a door is a violent act.Other toxic instances include slandering others behind their backs that is to say trying to engage you in gossip that is hurtful to others.People need to preserve their health after they have identified a person as being toxic to their health. This depends on the role that the toxic person plays in a person’s life. Although it is virtually impossible to categorize all such people into neat boxesThe most important measure to protect yourself from toxic people is to first think carefully about your own behavior to see if you may have done or said something to illicit the other party’s behavior.If you can identify something that you did that likely offended the other party, if possible offer a sincere apology. If he or she accepts your apology, things work out well for both parties. If your apology is not accepted, you can at least walk away with some peace of mind, knowing that you owned up to your behavior.If you cannot think of a single thing that you did and that could have offended the other party, then you should always make sure you keep silent or walk away. Sometimes confronting a colleague about unkind behavior is not likely to be fruitful especially in public since you do not have to co-exist on a regular basis. However, it is best to confront her or him in privacy.