Detoxification: is it real?

Here is one of my favorite old posts. I'm re-posting, because the information in it is as relevant today as it was when I posted it a while back.


Detoxification, is it real?

Detox, detox, detox! It has become the war cry of every health and beauty guru. Why are we listening now, they’ve been saying this for years? Is it that we have finally wised up to the fact that we are being poisoned by the very society that promises to keep us healthy? Is it because science has once again gone mad on the subject of creating no-food food? Food composed completely of chemicals? Is it because there is now a drug for everything from a bad mood to hangnails? Have we bought into the idea that if you are grieving for a lost loved one you have to be drugged to get through it? As if honest emotions can be medicated away? That they should be? Or are we looking for a natural way to handle the ups and downs of life and the all too obvious signs of aging? Or is it simpler than that, are we just sick and tired of being sick and tired?

It is true that our environment is enormously more dangerous for our health than it has ever been. For example there are tens of thousands of LEGAL food additives, mostly chemicals, designed to keep food from deteriorating on the store shelves. or to make it taste decent, or to make it unpalatable and unfit for bugs. YUCK!

Sugar is often used to make food addictive. If you doubt this, just start reading labels. It may be disguised as lactose, maltose, dextrose, high fructose corn syrup or any of a dozen other names but they all mean sugar. We are allergic to sugar. Why? Up to about 150 years ago the average American consumed 1 Tablespoon of sugar a year, it just wasn’t available.

Now the average person consumes from 30 to 300 pounds of sugar a year.

Impossible, you say! A 12 ounce can of soda has from 1/3 to 2/3 cups of sugar, If you have only 1 can a day of the lower sugar variety you have consumed over 120 pounds of sugar that year in soda alone. This of course, is assuming you had no birthday cake, pie, cookies, candy bars, protein bars, hot chocolate, sweet liquors, canned vegetables or fruit, ham, bacon, corned beef, hot dogs, lunch meat, chewing gum, breath mints, pancake syrup, honey, canned food of any kind and added no sugar to your coffee and tea and that ice cream makes you break out in a rash.

The human body does not evolve quickly enough to switch from an intake of 1 tablespoon of anything to a thousand or more times as much. At least not in 150 years. We puff up (the bodies’ natural response to being poisoned), we gain weight, we have no energy, we feel awful, depressed and unhappy, We look for a way to detox our bodies. We go on special detoxification diets and they help, hard to stick with though, but they don’t really handle the junk built up in our bodies over the years. That is when we start looking for a way to detox ourselves. But where do we look, what really works?

Whatever the reason you are searching for detoxification, it is definitely something we all need. The human body was not designed to be a healthy waste dump. And it has been found that even chemicals ingested or inhaled by our mothers, while we were still unborn, remain with us for life. A person breaks an ankle, it remains larger than the unbroken ankle forever, retaining some of the decomposing lymphatic fluid released when it was broken. It ‘acts up’ when a storm is coming and dull pain becomes your personal weather man. There are literally thousands of methods for detoxification, many of which are not new to the human race. Nomads stopped at mineral springs on their annual treks and made bathing in them an important part of their lives. In Europe an annual two week trip to the mineral Bads (baths) is a way of life. They immerse themselves several times daily in those mineral-rich springs. American Indians used sweat lodges to cleanse their bodies. Some northern Europeans used very hot saunas, alternating with whipping their bodies with birch branches and rolling nude in the snow. For some strange reason this has not caught on in America!

Modern day Americans try many approaches for detoxification, kidney, colon and liver cleanses, foot baths, high colonics and saunas. But they seem to have gotten away from the basics our forefathers used so effectively; minerals. Why would minerals be so important to someone who wants to live a long and healthy life? Why is it so vital now more than ever? We have never, in human history been so surrounded by chemicals, We are all exposed to them, they are in the air, water, food and even in the detergents and fabric softeners we use on our clothing. We spoke with the owners of a company that routinely tests blood for medical professionals, they told us that every sample of blood they get contains detergent and fabric softener. You can stop using them, there are great alternatives, but how do you get out what is already stored in your body?

Take a good look at someone who works with farm chemicals, hair dyes and bleaches, people who clean homes, chemical workers, what do they all have in common? They look older than they should for their ages. But actually so do most people. Toxicity is aging!

Most of the services designed to make one look younger are external fixes; face lifts, tummy tucks, liposuction, chemical skin peels, none of which actually cleanse your body or have any positive effect upon your health and body age, underneath the younger external appearance you are still just as tired, old and toxic, plus you have added the stress and drugs used in those procedures to your personal toxin level.

What we have learned is that it takes a LOT of the minerals your body has to metabolize toxins out of the body so they are already in short supply. Add to that, that we are not getting the minerals we need from foods grown on our over-farmed land. The net result is that virtually everyone is mineral deficient to some degree. Here is a quote from a familiar source we can all respect:


"The net result of our research indicates that minerals are the answer for detoxification and cleansing, not just the major minerals, we need the trace or minor minerals as well. There are some minerals that if you are deficient in less than the amount it takes to cover the head of a pin, your body is in trouble. Believe it or not the body actually needs that tiny fraction of each of them for optimum health and body cleansing. As the Europeans have learned, the skin can absorb far more minerals than your stomach can. So in your search for what will handle the life-long build up of undesirable chemicals we suggest that you look for a system that provides both major and trace minerals applied topically. They should be in contact with your skin for at least an hour and work best if applied with materials that hold the minerals. in a liquid form, against your skin during that time preferably while you are mobile as circulation aids in absorption." -Dr. Linus Pauling, Library of Congress Archives

We wish you the best of luck in getting back the pep and energy and wonderful feeling of well being we all took for granted as children.