Creating an Artificial Fever
Once you understand the importance of a healthy cellular environment and the power of fever in burning away toxins and renewing this biological terrain, you cannot help but admire the wisdom of nature in creating fever to help us recover our health. Invading germs as well as ingested poisons that have accumulated over time from unhealthy lifestyle choices can all be eliminated in a relatively short time by one simple, but intense process: fever.
Everyone knows that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” The later a treatment is started, the greater the deterioration of the body’s biological terrain will be. By using preventive measures to avoid deterioration of the terrain in the first place, you can prevent disease from getting a foothold. This is why, rather than forcing the body to unleash a fever, it is far better to avoid reaching this state of decline by cleansing the cellular terrain in advance, just like a fever would.
But is it possible to create an artificial fever? This is a question that has been a subject of concern to health care practitioners for some time now. Attention to this question has fortunately led to the discovery of simple, natural methods for inducing fever, methods that can be used whenever there is a need to take this kind of preventive measure.
There are two methods that are particularly effective in creating fever: hyperthermal baths and sustained physical exercise. With the baths the heat is brought to the body from the outside, while with physical exercise the body produces the heat itself. The first procedure is therefore more passive and the second more active, but both are equally valid and effective. The main distinction is that they are best suited for people whose physical capabilities are different.
In both methods, the heat intensifies blood circulation, oxygenation of tissues, combustion of wastes, cellular exchanges, elimination of toxins, and the body’s defenses, in the same way a fever does. Also in both cases, the core temperature no longer remains confined to the interior of the body but is spread until it reaches the skin surface, ensuring that the entire body benefits from the healthy effects of the fever.
While these techniques make it possible to produce a strong fever, it will only be a temporary condition, lasting for one or two hours rather than the several days that a natural fever can continue. A complete, definitive result will therefore not occur with just one treatment. The chosen method should be repeated several times a week in order to achieve the desired regeneration of the body’s biological terrain.
Let’s now take a look at how to receive the maximum benefits from these techniques while respecting our physiological boundaries. This does not involve, for example, filling your bathtub with the hottest water possible or exercising until you have reached a state of complete exhaustion. There are very logical and precise boundaries that should govern the application of these treatments.
HYPERTHERMAL BATHS
As their name indicates, hyperthermal baths are very hot baths. But the sensation of heat is a subjective matter, which is why there is no precise temperature that the water must reach. Everyone needs to discover their own ideal temperature.
This works in the following way: Get into a bathtub with several inches of water heated to body temperature, 98.6°F. Next, continue raising the temperature of the bath gradually by adding hotter water until you reach your tolerance threshold, which would be just before the point at which you can no longer stand the heat. Fill the bathtub with enough water to cover your entire body, except your head, of course.
Despite its high temperature, the bath should not be so hot that you cannot tolerate the heat; you should feel at ease. The goal is not to try to stand the highest heat possible but to find the temperature that will allow you to spend half an hour in the bath comfortably. Depending on your personal threshold, the temperature should be in the neighborhood of 102°F to 108°F.
The purpose of the hyperthermal bath is to bring a large amount of heat to the body. If you have a low heat threshold, this objective can still be attained by spending a longer time in water that is not quite so hot. Since the bath will have a tendency to lose heat during this time span, do not hesitate to add more hot water to it as needed. In anticipation of these necessary additions, it is a good idea to not fill the bathtub completely at the onset. The more water in the bathtub, and the lower its temperature, the harder it will be to reheat.
On the other end of the spectrum, it is important to stress that you should not suddenly immerse yourself in extremely hot water, even if it is at a temperature you can tolerate. In fact, the body’s initial defensive reaction to this sudden assault will be to close the pores of the skin, which would partially negate the desired effect.
It is imperative to allow the body to get used to hyperthermal baths. There should be no hesitation about increasing both the temperature and duration of these baths very gradually over a period of several weeks before reaching their maximum potential. As a precautionary measure, and to avoid head congestion, you can keep a cold washcloth on your forehead during the bath.
Depending on your personal constitution and vitality, a hyperthermal bath may be taken every two or three days for a period of several months, or every day for one or two weeks.
Once finished bathing, gently climb out of the tub and lie down for a half hour or more wrapped in a terrycloth towel and a blanket. This extended period of rest allows the body to complete sweating and restore its balance. Because the bath was at least half an hour in duration, a great deal of heat collected in the body. The artificially induced fever will not stop as soon as you get out of the bath; it continues working, gradually subsiding. You will therefore continue to perspire heavily for a good part of this rest period.
Because the power of hyperthermal baths is their high heat, it is not necessary to add any special preparation to the water, for example, a mixture of medicinal herbs. However, there is also no reason not to do so. In addition, teas with sweat-inducing ingredients such as lime and elder blossoms can be drunk, piping hot, before and after the bath.
The artificial fever that results from immersing the body in hot water can easily be verified by taking an oral temperature reading. This artificial fever shares the same properties as a naturally occurring fever. Combustions intensify and the wastes that are scattered throughout the body, some lodged deep within the tissue, are broken down and eliminated.
In a hyperthermal bath, the body feels as if it is under attack from the heat of the water and that its thermal equilibrium is threatened. This prompts it to react and defend itself in three different ways, all of which are similar to the reactions that take place during a natural fever.
1. The vessels dilate because the body is attempting to open all its pathways to the outside to their maximum extent in order to retain the least amount of heat possible. This vessel dilation occurs most prominently at the level of the capillaries, which play a major role in the irrigation of the body’s deepest tissues.
When the capillaries dilate, the surface area of the exchange between the cellular tissues and the bloodstream increases, thereby permitting the extraction and elimination of toxins lodged in the cells. Circulation can be reestablished in the poorly irrigated regions of the body, which had become like swamps or deserts because of the surcharge of toxins and the poor functioning of the capillaries.
Overburdened capillaries are like dams on the exit paths for these deep toxins. By dilating these small blood vessels, the hyperthermal bath opens an exit door for embedded, non-circulating toxins and activates the process of cellular exchange. This makes it possible for toxins to rise from the deepest levels and enter the bloodstream where they will be carried to an excretory organ and eliminated from the body.
2. Blood circulation accelerates, which, by preventing the blood from remaining in contact with the heat source for too long, cools the overheated tissues with fresh infusions of cooler blood. Evidence of this physiological acceleration can be heard in the stronger and more rapid heartbeat. The blood, by increasing its speed of circulation, sweeps away wastes that have built up on the vessel walls and transports them to the excretory organs to be eliminated from the body. Furthermore, the increase in the speed of the blood flow causes an acceleration of lymphatic circulation.
3. The skin perspires, reducing heat through the evaporation of sweat while excreting numerous toxins from the body, as would be the case with a naturally occurring fever.
Hyperthermal baths have a much more powerful effect than most people imagine. In fact, if you neglect to follow the gradual progression recommended earlier, you can trigger a massive elimination of deeply embedded toxins, or what is known as a cleansing crisis. When these embedded toxins are brought suddenly into the bloodstream and combined with the toxins already circulating there, they can completely overwhelm the eliminatory capacities of the excretory organs. Unpleasant side effects such as headaches and nausea can result. These disagreeable reactions can be avoided by gradually building up to the highest tolerable heat threshold.
Without reaching the extremes of a cleansing, or healing, crisis, you can still see the purifying effects of these baths in the urine, which should be darker and more charged with wastes, and in the tear ducts, which will secrete more “sand” and so forth.
There are some criticisms that have been levied against hyperthermal baths, such as:
They might be bad for the heart. It is true that during a hyperthermal bath the heart is forced to work harder. But we should not overlook the fact that the heart is a muscle and like all muscles it can tolerate more substantial efforts, as long as it becomes gradually accustomed to taking on a greater workload. People with known heart conditions should ask their physician before taking hyperthermal baths.
They could possibly be harmful for those afflicted with varicose veins. In theory, no, quite the contrary: by encouraging circulation, varicose veins should fade away. But in practice, this is not always the case. The patient can then try bathing with her legs out of the water and showering her legs with very cold water after getting out of the tub to prevent the blood from descending into the lower limbs. An individual suffering from this condition could also try to remain lying down with her legs elevated. If the varicose veins dilate despite these precautions, then it will be necessary for the patient to stop taking hyperthermal baths.
SUSTAINED PHYSICAL EXERCISE
Sustained physical exercise is the second practice capable of creating an artificial fever. In fact, all physical effort produces heat as it causes the muscles to contract, the heart to beat faster, blood circulation to accelerate, and the lungs to breathe more deeply. The longer the effort continues, the greater the tendency for heat to collect and, as a consequence, the overall body temperature to rise. This places the individual in a state of artificial fever that burns away the toxins that have collected in the biological terrain. During a protracted, intense physical effort, the body temperature can climb as high as 104°F, which is at the line between a high and very high fever.
While physical exercise causes the combustion of the body’s energetic reserves, it is also breaking down wastes. In fact, intense physical effort necessarily engenders a much more intense level of oxygenation, which provides better oxidation on the cellular level—oxidation also breaks down wastes and toxins.
When a normally sedentary person makes a physical effort, exhaustion appears quite soon. The body quickly becomes overwhelmed by the oxidations being spurred on by this increased activity. With training, exhaustion will intervene with less frequency and the body will become increasingly accustomed to oxidizing at deeper and deeper levels.
The additional cellular oxygenation and increased energy needs caused by sustained physical exercise burn away the body’s wastes all the way down to the cellular level. The toxins that are more or less embedded in the tissues will be broken down on the spot.
To obtain these results, the physical exercise should be comparable to the effort required for sports such as cycling, long distance running, cross country skiing, and so on. For those who have the strength necessary to perform activities like these, pursuing them for a period of one or two hours makes it possible to create an artificial fever. Repeated on a regular basis, this will contribute greatly to restoring the integrity of the internal cellular environment.
The length of the exercise session should obviously be in accord with the physiological capacities of the individual. Overexerting yourself in an effort to obtain better results is a bad gamble. The high production of toxins and exhaustion of the body this will cause wipes out the benefits that the artificial fever could otherwise have provided.
One way to reduce the muscular effort required while maintaining the strong heating effect of the body is to perform gentler forms of exercise such as walking, gardening, a short bike ride, gymnastics, and so forth on a hot summer day so that the heat produced by the body will be added to that supplied by the ambient air. During other seasons performing these milder activities while wearing warm clothing will achieve a similar effect. This allows the exercise to be much milder while still attaining the heat required to create a fever.
The regular practice of artificially produced fevers will cleanse the depths of the biological terrain, which in turn will bring about health and vitality and prevent the return of illness.