You will start by undergoing a two-week diet to strengthen and support your liver and improve your elimination through the GI tract.IF YOU LIVED IN A PERFECT, UNSPOILED ENVIRONMENT WITH NO chemicals or poisons, your body would still produce its own toxins. Just like the engine of a car that creates exhaust as it burns fuel to run, in a much more profoundly complex and wonderful way, your body creates many different toxins in an infinite variety of ways just to function. In a perfect environment, dealing with your body’s internal toxins would be a cinch for your liver and excretory system. But when your liver and GI tract and the organs and tissues of the body are bombarded both from without and within with far more toxins and free radicals than they were ever designed to handle, it can begin to scream for toxic relief. Not only does your liver have thousands upon thousands of chemical toxins that come from external sources with which to contend, your body must deal with its own manufactured toxins. Let’s take a look at the toxic battle that rages against your body from within.
Which one of us has not taken antibiotics for a bad case of sinusitis, strep throat, bronchitis, or a serious infection? Going to the doctor and getting antibiotics today is about as common as eating a peanut butter sandwich. But if you have had repeated bouts of antibiotics, or even a single bout of super antibiotics, then you could be at risk for developing an overgrowth of yeast and dangerous intestinal bacteria. Let me explain.
Your intestines are filled with good bacteria called lactobacillus acidophilus and bifidus that prevent the overgrowth of bad bacteria (called pathogenic bacteria or microbes) in your intestinal tract. When you take antibiotics, many of your body’s beneficial bacteria can be killed. Your good bacteria function like a firewall to keep pathogenic bacteria and yeast in check. So when antibiotics throw off the balance, the bad or pathogenic bacteria may grow like a wildfire, out of control with nothing to slow it down or stop it.
Now your body is in trouble, for bad bacteria may produce endotoxins, which may be as toxic as almost any chemical, pesticide, or solvent that enters your body from the outside.
Overgrowth of bacteria in your small intestines can cause excessive fermentation, similar to the fermentation that happens when you leave apple cider outside for too long. This fermentation process creates even more poisons, including indoles, skatols, and amines.
Without antibiotics we’d be in trouble. Infections that might have snuffed out a life a century ago are little more than a nuisance today. But we are just beginning to get a full picture of the toll that the overuse of antibiotics has taken on a generation of users.
Mostly unheard of in centuries past, an epidemic of candida and yeast overgrowth in the intestinal tract has swept through our nation. When the body’s delicate balance of good bacteria and yeast is out of balance, a host of symptoms and diseases can result, ranging from relatively minor GI disturbances such as bloating, gas, and irritable bowel syndrome to major diseases such as psoriasis, colitis, and Crohn’s disease.
Just like a biblical plague of locusts that ravaged ancient farmlands, yeast overgrowth causes damage to the intestines like a plague of toxins. These toxins produced by yeast are absorbed through your intestines and create devastation to the inside of your body similar to disaster upon the land caused by biblical plagues.
For example, candida albicans releases over eighty different poisons into the body. The most toxic substances produced by candida albicans are acetaldehyde and ethanol, which is alcohol.
Acetaldehyde is related to formaldehyde, which is the dangerous solvent found in carpets and pressed wood. Formaldehyde is dangerous enough in the small amounts that you might breathe in, but can you imagine what the effect to your body would be of drinking it? The consequences of having it produced inside your body are potentially disastrous!
Acetaldehyde is also extremely toxic to the brain, even more so than ethanol. It causes memory loss, depression, problems concentrating, and severe fatigue.
When you consider the potential danger of having strong, devastating poisons created inside your body, you will recognize that the toxins within can do as much or even more damage than environmental toxins.
You may be thinking, “Whew! I’m glad I don’t have candida!” If you don’t, I’m glad too. Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean that your body isn’t battling a toxic war every single day. With or without candida, your cells are in armed combat.
The Molecular Warfare of Free Radicals
While you are going about your daily business, a war is raging inside your body at the molecular level. Free radicals are similar to machinegunning microscopic shrapnel, injuring your cells throughout the day. Let me explain.
For a moment, picture an atom. It has a nucleus, and it has electrons around it. The nucleus is positively charged, and the electrons are negatively charged. It would look something like the sun with the planets around it.
What happens when someone blows smoke in your face or you are exposed to air pollution or radiation? Or what happens when you ingest some chemical or pesticide? When the toxin enters a cell, the free radicals created by one of these toxins can pull one of the electrons out of orbit. Thus, massive instability begins at the molecular level—remember these are living, electrically charged cells. When the atom, which is missing an electron, becomes unstable, it begins to grab electrons from other nearby molecules to replace it, causing chain reactions.
These unstable electrons are called free radicals because they have been freed or liberated from where they were. The chain reactions caused by liberated electrons can send free radicals spraying through your bloodstream and cells, tissues, and organs throughout your body, wreaking great havoc and even possibly setting the stage for cancer, heart disease, and a host of other degenerative diseases.
Think what would happen if a large crane were driven through the streets of Manhattan with an uncontrolled wrecking ball swinging from side to side. The skyscrapers might not fall, but they would be severely damaged. That’s similar to what free radicals can do to your cells, tissues, and organs.
On a different level, free radicals are also formed during the process of oxidation. For example, when metals are oxidized, rust is produced. When oxidation occurs on painted surfaces, the paint begins to flake off. When you cut an apple in half, it turns brown—that is oxidation. It also occurs when meat rots. Our bodies are undergoing oxidative processes every day.
Oxidation is actually caused by free radicals. But what happens when you place lemon juice on an exposed slice of an apple?
The apple slice doesn’t turn brown as rapidly because the antioxidants in lemon block the oxidative process—it slows the formation of free radicals.
Each of your body’s trillions of cells has a protective wrapping around it made of lipids or “fatty” cell membranes. But free radicals, like wrecking balls, can start ricocheting off the cell membranes—damaging the cell membranes and eventually damaging intracellular structures such as the mitochondria, nucleus, and other organelles.
When wood is burned in a fireplace, smoke is produced. In the body, every cell contains mitochondria that produce energy. The heart muscle cells have thousands of mitochondria because they need a lot of energy, but the fat cells have the fewest mitochondria. Oxygen combines with glucose in the mitochondria to produce energy. However, in the process of energy production, damaging free-radical forms of oxygen are produced instead of smoke. In other words, when wood is burned, smoke is produced. But in our bodies, when energy is produced, free radicals are formed such as singlet oxygen and hydrogen peroxide.
When free radicals begin a chain reaction, they must be stopped quickly. Antioxidants from our diet or supplements and antioxidants produced in our bodies rush to the rescue instantly to quench the freeradical fire of activity. Many free radicals occur with normal metabolic processes in all cells in the body. Internal antioxidants produced by our body such as superoxide dismutase, glutathione peroxidase, and catalase work as antioxidants controlling free-radical production.
But problems occur when the level of free-radical activity gets out of control. When the body is overburdened with free radicals from air pollution, pesticides, cigarette smoke, fried foods, trans fat, sugars, and polyunsaturated fats in our diet, excessive stress, inadequate sleep, etc., then excessive amounts of free radicals ravage our cells. They can actually cause the breakdown of the fats in the cell membranes, ravage the proteins and enzymes, and then eventually damage DNA, actually causing mutations. These mutations may eventually result in cancer. Free radicals can also damage the cell membranes and nuclear membranes, depleting our energy and setting us up for degenerative disease. So you see, free radicals are bad news!
At this point you may be feeling a bit overwhelmed by the monumental battle your cells, tissues, and organs are being faced with each day. Look in the mirror and see the results of this war: premature aging, wrinkles, sagging skin, sickness, chronic fatigue, arthritis, cancer, heart disease, and so much more.
Your body is under an aggressive, ongoing assault against an evergrowing burden of toxins that is probably already causing a heavy toll upon your health—whether or not you even know it. But the good news is that you don’t have to sit by passively while your God-given entitlement to good health is stolen right out from under your nose. There is toxic relief!
As I mentioned earlier, your body is designed with an incredible system of defense that keeps you healthy even under extreme circumstances— and you never have to give it a second thought. But when you become overwhelmed with toxins or your excretory systems are not working up to par, your liver and excretory system eventually become overburdened. They simply cannot keep up.
Nevertheless, you can choose to step in and even the score. By undergoing the program of detoxification outlined in the following chapters, you can cleanse your body from a lifetime of toxins and discover the health and vitality that come with toxic relief. Since the burden of toxins has built up in your body over time, you may have learned to accept the fatigue and general lack of vitality that toxicity causes. You’ll simply be amazed at how much better you will feel after freeing your body of its toxic burden.
In my practice, I’ve encouraged many of my chronically ill patients to undergo detoxification. The results have been simply astonishing. Heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, arthritis, chronic fatigue, and many other serious diseases are being absolutely reversed as my patients cleanse their own bodies from toxins. Later in this book you’ll find a chapter devoted to detoxing for specific diseases.
In addition, if you are overweight or obese, this program of detoxification has the added benefit of slimming you down. And as you’ve seen, many of the toxins that are stored in your body get trapped in tissue, especially belly fat. Therefore, your health will improve dramatically once those toxins are removed and not just recirculated to other areas of the body. Not only will you feel better and live longer, you’ll look better too.
Here’s an overview of my toxic relief program. Plan to commit about a month to feeling better and looking better:
You will start by undergoing a two-week diet to strengthen and support your liver and improve your elimination through the GI tract.
Then you will go on a juice fast for three to seven days (or longer if monitored by a doctor). You will go back on the special diet for your liver and GI tract for another two weeks.
You will begin making lifestyle changes and plan to fast periodically to continue to cleanse and maintain your health.
There you have it! As you go through this program, you will discover renewed energy, rejuvenated health, and a fresh, glowing sense of vitality that will absolutely astonish you.
Toxic relief is for your total person. As you learn about this program of toxic relief, you will discover that not only does your body labor under a burden of physical toxins, but also your soul and spirit wage their own battle against toxins on another front. As you read through this book, you will discover that this program of toxic relief addresses your soul and spirit too. So get ready for a brand-new you—inside and out, body, mind, and spirit!
Now that you’ve seen the truly overwhelming toxic picture, turn with me to begin to find healthful, vital, life-giving toxic relief. But first we must face the terrible truth about the American diet.