by Dr. Darren Hart
Does it feel like your body is trying to tell you something, but you just can’t pinpoint what it is? Are you tired all the time? Do you get sick easily? Do you have sinus and/or respiratory problems? How about chronic pain or headaches? Symptoms are the body’s way of alerting us that there’s a problem. Often these are just a few of the signs that the body is overloaded with toxicity. Some symptoms are the direct means by which the body is eliminating toxins for us. For example, sinusitis (a runny nose) is often the body’s way of getting rid of something that may be harmful to you. It’s the same with a fever – your intelligent body heats itself up to burn off bacteria, viruses, and toxins. In our modern culture, we are trained to believe symptoms are bad and that we need to eliminate them. What is your body actually trying to tell you?
Dr. Daniel David (DD) Palmer, who discovered chiropractic in 1895, said that dis-ease (body malfunction) is caused by toxins, thoughts, and trauma – the three T’s. Modern science is just catching up to his insights; he was far ahead of his time. Understanding the three T’s will help you understand, address, and prevent the causes of disease and symptoms. For this article we’re going to discuss toxins.
Toxins – poisons in the environment – have been linked to cancer, brain tumors, heart disease, Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, ALS, autism, rheumatoid arthritis, depression, immune system failure, and more. Many of these diseases are linked to chronic or long-standing inflammation, which is what toxins create. A toxic person is like a walking time bomb waiting for disease to strike.
How do we become toxic? Toxins come from our external environment (exogenous toxicity) and from our internal environment (endogenous toxicity). There are so many toxins in our external environment that we can’t list them all. They include air pollution, herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, mercury, and other heavy metals from sources such as dental fillings, chemical factories, waste dumps, toxic chemicals injected via vaccination, outgassing from carpets and various products, the chlorine and fluoride and waste chemicals in our water, etc. – the list is long and depressing. Toxins are so common that researchers have found more than 200 chemicals in newborn umbilical cord blood. This includes the controversial plastic additive bisphenol A, or BPA, which mimics estrogen and has been shown to cause developmental problems and precancerous growth in animals. Is it any wonder why our children are so sick today?
Toxins generated from inside the body include dental problems such as infected root canals, infected wisdom tooth sockets, and infected tonsils as well as longstanding waste in the colon, intestinal parasites, and many others. Toxins generated from inside the body can be just as dangerous as those from outside the body.
What do you do for toxicity? How do you remove toxins? For thousands of years, people in different cultures from all over the world have employed numerous detoxification procedures such as fasting, hot baths, sauna, clay, cleansing diets, sweat lodges, exercises, special diets, enemas, colonics, massage, bodywork, sunlight (heliotherapy), and many other procedures.
Modern life today has more toxins than any ancient culture ever had and yet we do less detoxification now. We each have the power to do so much more. So many people are suffering from chronic illness because they are full of toxins.
How do you start to detoxify? There is much you can do to detoxify. Doctors of Chiropractic, Naturopathy, Homeopathy, Chinese medicine, and Ayurveda and other healthcare practitioners from different disciplines often specialize in or work with people who can address toxicity.
Some detoxification methods can be extensive and require supervision, so it is important to have someone in the healing field who is knowledgeable about cleansing to assist you. There are also many centers around the world that specialize in detoxifying and cleansing the body. One such example in California is the Optimum Health Institute, also known as OHI, in San Diego. OHI is a non-profit institute that utilizes a variety of natural healing methods to cleanse the body. Very often, though, the most cost-effective and convenient place to start with your cleansing process is through a local, natural health care provider.
