Fig. 1. The natural cycle of pollution and purification.
1
BASIC PROTOCOLS OF DETOX
Pollution is a basic fact of life. No one is immune to it. Although the human body is designed to cleanse itself naturally of the normal waste products of digestion and metabolism, it is clearly not equipped to deal with the additional toxic overload from chemical preservatives and pesticides, pharmaceutical drugs and artificial foods, and other sources of internal toxicity that have become common in modern lifestyles. This internal pollution is the major cause of disease, degeneration, and a foreshortened lifespan.
The most fundamental principle in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is the universal law of polarity known as the “great principle of yin and yang.” The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine, an important Chinese medical text written over two thousand years ago, states, “If it’s hot [yang], cool it down [yin]. If it’s empty [yin], fill it up [yang].” All traditional Chinese medical practices are based upon this principle of dynamic polarity. Extending it to the problem of blood and tissue toxicity, we could say, “If it’s polluted [yang], purify it [yin]. If it’s acidic [yang], alkalize it [yin].”
Unfortunately, like so many other dichotomies in life, the purification process is not nearly as much fun, nor as easy, as the pollution process. Therefore, most people tend to overlook the importance of self-detoxification, or they pretend that it is not necessary. To the contrary, purification of polluted blood and tissues is absolutely necessary to preserve health and prolong life, particularly in the hazardous environmental conditions that prevail throughout the world today. Periodic detoxification is the best way to purge the body of both its own natural toxins as well as the unnatural and far more dangerous toxins assimilated from external sources. By taking measures to purify their blood and tissues on a regular basis, people prevent toxemia and protect themselves from its debilitating effects, particularly the acidosis and hypoxia that make tissues vulnerable to cancer. Since acidosis and hypoxia are the primary conditions of imbalance that permit germs to breed, tissues to degenerate, and cancer to develop, periodic detox is probably the single most effective preventive measure you can take to protect your life from the entire spectrum of disease and degenerative conditions. Detox is also the best cure for most of these conditions.
FLUSHING OUT ACIDS
The first and foremost strategy in any detox program is to flush acid residues out of the lymphatic system, blood, and other bodily fluids, all of which should be slightly alkaline. Almost all toxins in the body take the form of acids, and these acids must therefore be neutralized and flushed out of the system to restore normal alkaline balance to the blood and other bodily fluids. In TCM, the blood, lymph, bile, and other essential fluids of the body are collectively referred to as jing-yi (“vital fluids”), and the condition of a person’s jing-yi, particularly the bloodstream, is regarded as a primary determining factor in human health and disease.
The late V. E. Irons, one of the Western world’s leading authorities on therapeutic detoxification for health and longevity, agrees with the traditional Chinese view regarding the condition of the bloodstream as a critical indicator of health and disease. As Irons puts it, “Every cell in the body is served by the blood. It nourishes the cell, replaces worn out parts, and carries away waste products.” Obviously, a polluted bloodstream carries little nourishment and is already so saturated with wastes that it cannot properly fulfill its function of carrying away cellular wastes.
The same goes for the lymphatic system. The body has six to seven hundred lymph glands. About three times more fluid volume of lymph exists in the human body than blood. One of the primary functions of the lymph is to clean acid wastes from the blood and tissues, but if the lymph itself is polluted with acid wastes, then it cannot properly perform these cleansing functions. Acids interfere with the free flow of lymph within the lymphatic channels, thereby further inhibiting its capacity to cleanse the blood and tissues.
Regardless of what type of detox program you choose, you must always remember to drink at least 1¾ to 2 and ²⁄3 quarts per day of pure, preferably alkaline water, to neutralize, dilute, and flush away the large amounts of acids and other toxic wastes that the detox process releases from tissues throughout the body. The human body is composed of over 70 percent water. By saturating the system daily with abundant quantities of pure alkaline water, pollutants are continuously flushed from the blood and tissues and eliminated through the kidneys, bowels, and skin. As a result, all bodily tissues are “washed” and all vital fluids are replenished with fresh water. This is equivalent to changing the dirty motor oil in your car, as well as the battery, brake, and transmission fluids. The whole mechanism operates more efficiently and produces less toxic waste when dirty fluids are replaced with clean.
RESTORING PROPER PH BALANCE
The corollary protocol to flushing out acids is to restore proper pH balance in the blood and tissues. The “pH” value is a standard measure of acid/alkaline balance, calibrated on a scale of 1 (extremely acid) to 14 (extremely alkaline), with 7 as neutral. Each of our vital bodily fluids has a very specific pH level at which it functions best. Except for stomach fluids and a few others, most of our vital fluids and tissues should be slightly alkaline. Blood, for example, has a slightly alkaline pH value of 7.3 to 7.4, exactly the same as seawater. If blood pH drops below 7.1 or rises above 7.5, severe symptoms of imbalance will manifest immediately, and if pH is not quickly restored to proper balance, death follows swiftly.
Almost all forms of internal toxicity cause a state of acidosis in the body. In turn, excessive levels of acid residues in the blood and tissues suppress immune response, interfere with normal metabolism, inhibit digestion and assimilation, promote fungal arid bacterial infections, and cause all sorts of other biological malfunctions and ill health. To explain how important pH balance is throughout the human system, some of the ways vital organs depend upon proper pH balance to function correctly are listed below.
Heart
The human heart pumps about 114 quarts of blood per hour. If the blood is saturated with acid wastes, the acids can do serious damage to heart tissue as the blood passes through it, gradually causing deterioration of the heart muscle. Moreover, normal heartbeat rhythms are dependent on an alkaline environment and are therefore adversely affected by excess acid wastes in the bloodstream. And since acid wastes drastically reduce the blood’s capacity to carry oxygen, the heart does not receive sufficient oxygen supplies from blood that is saturated with acids.
Lungs
One way that the body can self-regulate pH balance in the blood is by controlling the oxygen level through correct breathing. By maximizing the exchange of gases in the lungs, proper diaphragmatic breathing saturates the bloodstream with fresh supplies of oxygen, while purging it of carbon dioxide. Oxygen supports an alkaline environment in the blood and tissues, while carbon dioxide contributes to acidosis. If you permit your blood to become overloaded with acid wastes, it cannot absorb and carry sufficient oxygen from the lungs to sustain an alkaline blood and tissue pH, resulting instead in a state of chronic hypoxia (oxygen deficiency) and its twin condition acidosis, in every tissue and cell in the body. This in turn paves the way for germs and tumors to develop.
One of the liver’s main jobs is to filter toxic wastes from the bloodstream. Another task is to produce many of the alkaline enzymes upon which immune response and other vital functions depend. If the blood is constantly polluted by excess acid residues from wrong eating habits, alcohol and drugs, stress hormones and other acid-forming factors, the liver eventually gets overloaded with acid wastes and becomes deeply congested with toxic debris. This overload in turn impairs its ability to filter acids from the bloodstream, so instead the body starts depositing excess acid wastes in the joints and other solid tissues, causing arthritis and tissue toxicity throughout the body.
Kidneys
The kidneys also help to filter acid wastes from the bloodstream, processing about one liter of blood per minute. This process in turn helps keep blood pH at its proper alkaline level. Excessive acid waste in the blood due to improper diet, pharmaceutical drugs, and other lifestyle factors can severely corrode the delicate tissues in which blood filters through the kidneys. It can also cause the formation of kidney stones and inflammation of the bladder and urinary tract.
Proper pH balance to the blood and tissues can be restored in basically two related ways during detox, after the acid waste residues have all been flushed out. One method is alkalization, the other is oxygenation.
Alkalization can be achieved fairly quickly by adjusting the diet to strictly limit intake of acid-forming foods, while increasing consumption of alkaline-forming items. The swiftest and most effective dietary alkalizers are freshly extracted raw vegetable juices, such as carrot and beetroot juice. Drinking lots of pure alkaline water throughout the day is another effective way to alkalize your blood and tissues quickly by dietary means. One of the primary contributing factors to chronic acidosis today is a critical deficiency of essential alkaline minerals and trace elements, particularly calcium and magnesium. The body requires the full range of essential minerals to properly regulate pH balance in the blood and tissues. For example, if the bloodstream is constantly awash with acids from sugary carbonated soft drinks, sweets and other junk foods, and calcium intake is insufficient, the body will automatically draw calcium from the bones and teeth and pour it into the bloodstream to neutralize the flood of excess acids from eating refined sugar products. Calcium is the body’s most powerful and abundant alkalizing agent, and whenever the blood becomes overloaded with acids, it “borrows” calcium from bones and teeth to quickly reestablish proper pH balance in the blood. This in turn results in weak bones, which gives rise to osteoporosis, and weak teeth, which results in tooth decay. Adequate mineral supplementation is therefore a key strategy in maintaining proper pH balance in the blood and tissues, and one of the best dietary sources of balanced minerals is whole Celtic sea salt, which may be used for all culinary purposes in the kitchen and also dissolved in a glass of water as a full-spectrum mineral supplement. So-called Celtic sea salt is whole, unrefined sea salt harvested by hand the ancient Celtic way and dried naturally by wind and sand. It is from seashores that have not yet been poisoned by industrial pollutants.
Oxygenation is the other major method of quickly restoring pH balance in the blood, and the best way to utilize this method is simply by learning to breathe properly, using the diaphragm rather than the upper chest to drive the breath. Sufficient oxygenation is an essential factor for maintaining an adequately alkaline environment in the blood and tissues. Conversely, progressive acidosis of blood and tissues is always associated with insufficient oxygenation, and therefore increasing oxygen supplies to the blood and tissues is an antidote to acidosis. In addition to learning how to breathe correctly and practicing deep breathing exercises, you can also oxygenate your blood and tissues by taking various types of oxygen supplements, such as water oxygenated with ozone, a few drops of hydrogen peroxide in a glass of water, deuterium sulphate (“ESF”), ionized alkaline micro-cluster water (microwater), and others. We’ll take a closer look at some of these products in the next chapter.
DREDGING THE DRAINS
During any detox program, the organs of elimination must work overtime to process and excrete all the accumulated toxic wastes that are loosened and released from organs and tissues throughout the body. Since the organs of elimination are already overworked from dealing with environmental pollution and wrong eating habits, the extra load of toxins that are suddenly released into the bloodstream, bowels, kidneys, and skin by the detox process can put a very heavy strain on the excretory organs. It is therefore important to give your excretory systems all the supplemental support you can during detox, to ensure maximum efficiency in elimination, with minimum toxic stress to the organs.
There are four main “drains” in the body through which toxic waste products are excreted from the system: the skin, the lungs, the kidneys and bladder, and the colon. As blood and tissues grow progressively more toxic during the course of a person’s daily life, these drains get clogged with toxic residues, dry mucus, dead microbes and other “biowaste.” In the case of the colon, the situation is very similar to what happens to the drain in your kitchen sink: layer upon layer of grease, partially decayed food, and other debris adhere to the pipe, gradually reducing the size of the passage through which waste water flows. And since this sticky layer of waste is full of microbes and toxins, it pollutes the bloodstream by osmosis through the colon wall, allowing the poisons to circulate throughout the body.
A number of ways exist to facilitate the drainage of toxic wastes through the four organs of elimination, and to protect them from damage during the detox process, and these ways will be discussed in detail in the following chapters. Briefly, what follows are some of the primary support protocols for each of the main drains during detox.
Skin
An enormous amount of toxic waste passes out of the body through the surface of the skin, especially in hot weather when the pores remain open day and night. During detox, toxic residues become very concentrated in perspiration and can damage the skin as they pass through for excretion. Strong, foul body odor and clammy sweat are additional manifestations of heavy toxicity in perspiration during detox. Damage to skin may be prevented, as well as relieved and repaired, by soaking daily in hot baths with sea salt or Epsom salts, plus some essential oils that help draw toxic wastes swiftly out through the pores. Another effective method of facilitating skin detox is the traditional Thai herbal steam bath, which draws toxins out through the skin while also soothing skin tissue with healing herbal essences. If you’re doing your detox program by the sea, daily plunges in the ocean also provide cleansing support for the skin.
Lungs
The lungs excrete carbon dioxide and other volatile gaseous wastes from the blood, while absorbing oxygen, negative ions, and other elements from the air and transferring them into the bloodstream. When the blood is highly toxic, such as during detox programs, its capacity to carry oxygen is severely reduced, and this in turn leads to a state of hypoxia throughout the system. The anaerobic state produced by hypoxia supports an acid environment, thereby creating the conditions for disease and degeneration. Therefore, learning deep breathing exercises and practicing them daily is highly recommended during any detox program. Proper breathing oxygenates the blood and tissues, thereby helping to eliminate acidosis, while also facilitating rapid excretion of carbon dioxide and other gaseous wastes that contribute to acidosis. Thai herbal steam baths are also a very effective lung support therapy during detox; the soothing herbal essences in the steam bathe the delicate lung tissues in healing vapors with every breath, while drawing toxic residues out of the lungs. It is also a good idea to keep a negative-ion generator in your room to help the lungs function smoothly and support the detox process during sleep.
Kidneys and bladder
Some of the body’s most toxic wastes pass through the kidneys, which filter them from the blood and excrete them through the bladder as urine. When these wastes are highly acidic, they can damage the sensitive kidney tissues through which they filter and can also form painful kidney stones. It is therefore advisable to drink lots of herbal teas during detox, especially those with diuretic and kidney cleansing properties, to facilitate rapid excretion and protect the kidneys from toxic damage. Another important measure to protect the kidneys and promote swift elimination is to drink between one and ¾ and two and two-thirds quarts of pure alkaline water daily, preferably ionized micro-clustered water. This water dilutes the concentration of toxins in the blood and kidneys, neutralizes acidity, and flushes poisons quickly out of the system.
Colon
Of all the excretory organs, the colon is the most abused and overloaded these days. Believe it or not, the average Western male today carries about 2¹⁄3–2²⁄3 pounds of dense, rubbery, mucoid material—a thick toxic sludge—imbedded in his bowels, and none of it is ordinary feces. During a detox program, it is a good idea to eliminate as much of this toxic lining as possible from the bowels. To accomplish that elimination, the person going through detox should take ground psyllium seed shaken in water at least twice daily and should also drink plenty of extra water. The psyllium and the water gel to form a fibrous bolus that sweeps through the bowels like a broom, loosening and eliminating mounds of impacted wastes from the walls of the bowels. For even more dramatic results and a complete cleansing of the entire colon, a series of colonic irrigations is recommended, especially during the first few days of a detox program. In addition to cleansing the colon and eliminating a major source of toxins to the bloodstream, colonic irrigation triggers a strong detox response in the liver, and a major cleansing reaction throughout the body. It is impossible to describe in words the sheer volume and incredibly foul appearance of the putrid, mucoid wastes that come tumbling out of the body with a series of colonic irrigations, after festering in the bowels for years and years. It is definitely a case of “seeing is believing,” and anyone who’s ever done it can testify how good it feels to dump all that bad rubbish from their bodies.
If you really wish to “start at the bottom” in a progressive program to completely detoxify and regenerate your whole system, then you should definitely begin with a series of colonic irrigations to dredge your bowels of all the putrefied, partially digested debris and toxic residues that have accumulated inside over the years. This is best done in conjunction with a three-to-seven day water or juice fast. Until you do this, regardless of how well you cleanse your blood and tissues by other means, the sludge in your bowels will continue to seep toxins right back into your bloodstream. Virtually everyone today has this problem. Even a hundred years ago, the famous American naturopath Dr. Harvey Kellogg, who invented the corn flake and was portrayed in the novel and film Road to Wellville, noted, “Of the 22,000 operations that I have personally performed, I have never found a normal colon.” V. E. Irons, who devoted his long life to promoting colon health, remarked, “About the only place you see a normal healthy colon today is in an anatomy book.”
It is rather pointless to embark on a major new dietary program and spend a lot of money on expensive nutritional and herbal supplements if your bowels are impacted with toxic wastes from years of pollutants and wrong eating habits. Not only does this thick slimy lining constantly secrete toxins into the bloodstream through the bowel walls, in the small intestine it blocks the assimilation of nutrients and herbal essences into the bloodstream. Dr. Norman Walker, who lived to the age of 116 by practicing what he preached, states in his book Colon Health: The Key to a Vibrant Life:
The elimination of undigested food and other waste products is equally important as the proper digestion and assimilation of food. . . . The very best diets can be no better than the very worst if the sewage system of the colon is clogged with a collection of waste and corruption.
Those who have done colonic irrigations have always remarked on how much better they feel afterwards, and how colonics often eliminate chronic conditions that defied all other treatments. Nothing facilitates internal cleansing and accelerates the detox process as effectively as colonic irrigation. If you’re still a “colonic virgin” and you really wish to know how it feels to unclog your bowels and wash them “squeaky clean,” you should gird your loins and take the plunge as the first big step on your own “Road to Wellville.”
MOVING WATER, ACTIVE HINGES
An ancient Chinese text on human health states, “Moving water never stagnates; active hinges never rust.” That means if you exercise gently every day to keep your blood, lymph, and other vital bodily fluids flowing freely and to keep your joints and other moving parts active, then your bodily fluids won’t stagnate and become toxic, and your joints won’t “rust” with arthritis and stiffness. Regular, rhythmic body movements are particularly important for moving the lymph, because, unlike blood, which is pumped by the heart, lymph flow depends entirely on gravity and body movement for mobility. Since the lymph must work even harder than usual to cleanse the blood and tissues during a detox program, it is important to help keep lymph flowing freely with daily exercise.
The type of exercise required during detox is very different from strenuous sports activities such as tennis, football, jogging, and weight lifting. Western field sports and other forms of “hard” style exercise produce lactic acid in the tissues and carbon dioxide in the bloodstream as metabolic by-products of muscular exertion, and this contributes to acidosis, which is always counterproductive to detox. One of the primary purposes of any detox program is to eliminate acids and alkalize the system. Hard style exercise also keeps the autonomic nervous system locked into the “fight or flight” sympathetic branch, which switches off self-cleansing and healing responses, and causes muscular tension and tightness in the joints and tendons that then interfere with the state of complete physical relaxation required for detox to proceed.
Instead of hard exercise, one should practice traditional Asian soft-style exercises, such as yoga, Tai Chi, and chi gung, on a daily basis throughout the duration of any detox program. Soft-style exercise has entirely different effects on the body than hard-style. The soft, slow, smooth movements of these exercises gently pump the lymph through the system, while also assisting the free circulation of blood, without causing any muscular tension and without saturating the tissues with lactic acid or overloading the blood with carbon dioxide. These gentle body movements also help dissolve and eliminate crystalline acid deposits in the joints and keep the entire skeletal structure loose and limber.
Soft-style exercises should always be practiced in conjunction with slow, deep, rhythmic breathing that fully engages the diaphragm. The combination of slow stretching and loosening maneuvers with deep diaphragmatic breathing drives blood and lymph through the body like a strong pump, facilitating rapid drainage of toxins from the tissues and swift delivery of wastes to the eliminatory organs. Deep breathing greatly enhances oxygenation of the blood and tissues, which helps neutralize acidosis and maintains a healthy alkaline environment inside the body. When breathing properly, the diaphragm descends deeply into the abdominal cavity, providing an invigorating massage to the internal organs and glands. Diaphragmatic breathing gently squeezes the internal organs like a sponge on inhalation, draining out stale blood. Then it releases the pressure on exhalation, drawing freshly oxygenated blood into the organs. This deep diaphragmatic pressure on the internal organs and glands accelerates the detox process and extends it into the deepest, densest tissues of the body.
Most importantly, deep breathing, especially when performed in conjunction with slow rhythmic body movements, immediately produces the state of physical and mental relaxation required to switch the autonomic nervous system into the healing, restorative mode of the parasympathetic branch. Detoxification and healing can only proceed when the nervous system is operating in the parasympathetic circuit, and one of the primary functions of all traditional Asian soft style exercises is to activate the body’s innate self-cleansing and healing mechanisms by switching the nervous system into the calm parasympathetic mode. That is what this style of exercise is designed to do, which is why it plays such an important role in traditional Asian health and healing systems.
POLLUTION AND PURIFICATION
Pollution and purification are natural cycles of life. Like birth and death, growth and decay, and all the seasonal cycles of nature, pollution and purification follow their own natural rhythms of yin and yang phases (figure 1). The human body has its own built-in purification cycles to deal with the natural pollution produced by digestion, respiration, and metabolism, but the system is clearly not designed to handle the enormous overload of artificial pollutants in modern life. People now living on this planet assimilate more hazardous toxins in a single day than they did in an entire lifetime only a few hundred years ago. The only way to deal with this toxic overload is to assist your body’s natural self-cleansing mechanisms with periodic detox programs and to adjust your daily habits, so that purification always remains a few steps ahead of pollution.
Fig. 1. The natural cycle of pollution and purification.
It should be noted that the programs described in this book are designed to rid the body of the sort of blood and tissue toxicity that most people today develop in the course of daily life from such sources as poor dietary habits, environmental pollution, chemical additives in food, water, cosmetics, and other household products, as well as moderate, occasional use of alcohol and drugs. They are not, however, designed to treat withdrawal from long-term addiction to alcohol and drugs, which usually requires additional special support for the central nervous system.
The only exception is when Neuro-Electric Therapy (NET) is used as the primary mode of withdrawal from alcohol or drug addiction, as described in chapter 9. In that case, the other detox methods presented in this book may be very effectively employed to support the drug-withdrawal process. After withdrawal is complete, these programs may be continued as a means of purifying the bloodstream and purging the tissues of toxic drug residues, to repair damage to the internal organs and to restore functional balance to the whole system so that a normal, healthy lifestyle may be resumed.
Whether you do your periodic detox work at home or at a health resort, make absolutely certain that you will not be disturbed, upset, annoyed, or interrupted from start to finish. The importance of giving body and mind a complete rest and total relaxation throughout the detox process cannot be overstated, which is why it is repeated so often in this book. You must set aside a period of at least three-to-seven days of complete peace and privacy, and you must remain, as much as possible, in a calm, quiet state the entire time. It won’t work if you relax and do your detox regimens by day, then go out drinking and carousing at night, or if you work hard all day, then come home and try to detox at night. It is also a good idea to avoid watching violent films, listening to loud music, dealing with annoying people, or doing anything else that might excite your mind or stir up your emotions during detox. The moment you get excited or upset, your autonomic nervous system snaps back into the “F or F” action circuit, pumping stress hormones into the bloodstream and grinding the entire detox process to a halt.
The detox process can be accomplished in many different ways—hydration and hydrotherapy, diet and supplements, massage and exercise—but none of them will work properly for you unless you slow down and calm down long enough to allow your own natural healing responses a chance to work in complete harmony with these various supplemental programs. Half the battle is simply giving yourself that prolonged period of complete, uninterrupted rest and relaxation. The parasympathetic branch of your nervous system and the built-in healing responses that it governs will do the rest for you.
Back in the late 1960s, the hippy generation advised us all to “turn on, tune in, and drop out.” Today, we would all be a lot better advised to “turn off” our normal daily habits and activities for a few days, to “tune out” the rest of the world for awhile, and “drop in” for a spell at the nearest spa or health resort to clean out, tune up, and rebalance our overworked, overplayed systems. Many adults today can’t even remember what it is like to feel naturally good from the inside, so they seek a semblance of the sensation from the outside by indulging in alcohol and drugs, food and sex, money and power, all of which continuously enervate and weaken the system and end up making them feel even worse. Very few people halt their activities and retreat from the world for even as little as twenty-four hours, much less the three-to-seven days required for proper detox. For such people, a period of detox and self cleansing usually comes as a very enlightening experience, on many levels, and no one who’s done it properly has ever regretted the time, effort or expense it requires. Indeed, detox may some day become the new “drugless drug” of the twenty-first century, both for its potent therapeutic healing benefits as well as for the “natural high” of well-being and good feeling it bestows.