In order to understand the nature of the disease process one must first define
toxicosis. Toxicosis means nothing more than the retention of elements within
our system that are foreign to normal cellular function. It could also refer to the
retention of an increased quantity of a substance that would be normal in small
amounts but irritating or toxic in higher quantities.
Each cell is like a little factory. It takes in raw materials, processes them into
some usable product, and produces waste. This cellular or self-produced waste
is called endogenous waste. Endogenous wastes are the metabolic wastes
produced within our own body, the by-products of cellular metabolism.
Many are familiar with the concept of free radicals, a major endogenous
waste whose amount and location in the cell must be tightly controlled to avoid
cellular damage. Even the free radical has a positive function within the cell. It
is used there as part of the garbage disposal system helping to chew up and
destroy other waste products. Only when the amount of free radicals becomes
excessive or they escape their normal confines within specific cellular
organelles do they become a harmful element.
Exogenous wastes are those toxins taken in from outside the body—usually
from our food supply. They include chemicals, pesticides, and other obvious
pollutants. These wastes also include excesses of elements that may be
nutritive in normal amounts but produce toxic by-products when consumed in
larger amounts. Toxins may also be elaborated from bacteria residing within
the digestive tract.
Of course, the body has mechanisms to process and eliminate toxins and
protect itself from their damage. This occurs mostly through the breakdown of
toxins in the liver and elimination via the kidney. However, the body's ability to
process and remove toxic material has many limitations. Given the typical
modern diet and environment, our detoxification mechanisms are under stress.
They are often chronically unable to keep up with the excessive demand for
removal of toxins and other wastes.
Toxins also may be eliminated through the skin and mucous membranes. For
example, a skin rash may occur as the body's attempt to rid itself of some
offensive substance, or one's nose may produce excessive mucus as the body
attempts to channel irritating substances or dead cells through mucosal
eliminative channels.
If you were a fireman who entered a burning building and inhaled the acrid
smoke, your nose would run, your eyes would tear, and you would begin to
cough. Why? Because your body would be making an effort to protect itself
from the damage of the toxic smoke.
Your system has means to protect itself from irritants. Is this a sign of illness
or of health? Coughing is a sign of health; the body produces a cough as an
effort to keep the lungs clear. A healthy body offers a vigorous response when
we try to poison it. The body may cough, sneeze, develop a fever or a rash,
and even produce mucus or diarrhea in its attempt to rid the system of
unwanted retained waste.
It is easy for most people to see how the body can attempt to wash away or
push out a toxin such as smoke, but difficult for most to grasp the concept of
elimination when there is an invisible irritant coming from within. Waste usually
causes no symptoms, just painless cellular damage, unless the body has the
means to try to rid itself of the waste. Symptoms occur as the body tries to rid
itself of these internalized substances, and excess mucus or inflammatory pain
results.
Trying to suppress these symptoms with medication is not a good thing if it
enables the body to tolerate more waste products or toxins within it without
reacting to them.
In itself, the absence of symptoms is not the same as good health. Like the
smoker who continues to inhale noxious smoke on a continuous basis but feels
fine, most Americans are poisoning themselves daily in one form or another,
yet they feel healthy. Frequently these people feel bad only after they attempt
to quit smoking and the body gains the ability to attempt to rid itself of the
toxins. Only after quitting smoking does the body begin to repair damage and
attempt to remove abnormal cells that have been damaged from years of
abuse. So often I hear the complaint, ―I felt fine before, but now that I quit
smoking, I am coughing and bringing up mucus like I never did before.― These
symptoms may indicate that the body is moving in the direction of better
health.
The absence of symptoms is not indicative of adequate health. Detoxification
or rightly directed remedial activities of the body may be uncomfortable or
painful, but they always represent a form of withdrawal from an offensive
retained element. These same bodily actions may be called into play when the
body reacts against an unwanted invader, such as a virus or bacteria and the
elaborated toxic products from these microbes.
Occasionally, individuals manifest unusual eliminative pathways that express
themselves in troubling symptoms. These may declare themselves in
inflammation in almost any body part, but most frequently are observed in the
skin and mucous membranes of the nose, throat, sinuses, lungs, vagina, and
rectum. For example, vaginitis or prostatitis may be associated with the
overgrowth of certain infectious microbes, but in many cases no pathogenic
species can be found to account for such symptoms. Physicians are generally
not helpful at this point because they have found nothing to treat and kill with
drugs so they are unable to offer a solution.
Under these puzzling conditions, it is not unusual for me to see a patient
after he or she has visited numerous other physicians to no avail. When the
patient undertakes the solutions outlined in this book, and allows the body to
finish its rightly directed activity (of detoxification), he or she is soon free from
further discomfort. So many symptoms—from unusual skin rashes and joint
pains to more infrequent but extremely troublesome proctitis and vulvadynia—
are unexplainable by the conventionally trained physician but easily remediable
though fasting and natural diet, which allow the body to detoxify.
No comments:
Post a Comment