Energy Detox: for improved health
(Note: this is a long page, designed to be easy to copy and paste.)
Most bodies are unable to completely metabolize, detoxify and permanently
get rid of the many pesticides and other toxins introduced in the last
100 years. Once inside our bodies, these phthalates or plastics and other toxins
tightly hook onto our cell parts where they gum up the works. The body
chemistry was not designed to deal with this daily onslaught of man-made
chemicals and they have no role in our chemistry anyway.
They damage hormone receptors, leading to loss of sex drive and energy;
or they damage brain chemistry, leading to learning disability and
hyperactivity; or they accumulate in organs and trigger cancers of the
prostate, breast, lung and thyroid. They are not
fully metabolized and there is a slow, steady accumulation, with the unknown additive effects
from the combination of multiple compounds.
So toxins get stockpiled and bioaccumulate over a lifetime. Until
recently toxicity loads generally did not reach a high
level enough to cause
symptoms until
we were middle-aged or older. But many of the young are now born
with high levels of toxicity and then must withstand the additional
onslaught in their early years, which their immature livers are even less
able to handle than ours. Chronic health problems have become far too
common in our young.
When you go or a family member goes to the doctor for
help, are any tests done? Does your doctor run tests, does s/he explain what they are? And
are they all blood and/or urine tests? Not much good, then.
First, the standard laboratory tests only look at a person's blood count,
liver and kidney functions, cholesterol, sugar, thyroid, etc. Second, few
doctors run any toxicity tests of any kind (much less tests for
overgrowths of parasites or fungus, an almost inevitable "side effect" of
high levels of toxicity in the body - in turn, the cause of symptoms).
Third, the blood is the last place to show serious imbalances and urine
only shows what the body can get rid of: yet it is the
accumulated toxicity stuck in the body that creates symptoms and problems. The
helpful tests are ones that check what is actually happening inside the
cells, rather than outside in the fluids. What is needed is a tissue biopsy
to check what is going on inside the cells of the body to get real information about what is happening
in the body but these tests are hardly ever carried out until death is
imminent.
Fourth, medical tests are not very reliable. They are "coarse" and
generally identify only very serious problems. It's almost too late by the
time something shows up in a medical test.
Fifth: not only are they not very reliable but the "normal" parameters
have been extended since the 1970s (the new, wider parameters may be
"average" but they are certainly not normal!). Laboratories across the
world are lowering their standards over the decades for the cut-off of
"normal" vitamin levels, for instance. Every decade the labs dropped the
lower level for the norm for B12 and folic acid. Normal cut off for B12
was originally 250 but suddenly became 220. Later it dropped again to 200
and then 180. The labs explain that they obtain their "normal" values by
averaging the levels of their laboratory personnel who are "healthy". So
because the "norm" was dropping in people swigging coffee, alcohol, sodas, on birth
control pills (and many other prescription and over-the-counter drugs),
eating trans-fatty acids, smoking and inhaling chemicals all day, they saw nothing wrong with lowering the norm for everyone, even
sick and elderly patients in hospitals.
Despite all this, if you do want some tests, some you might want to
think about getting include:
RBC (red blood cells) Minerals/Heavy Metals: this blood test
determines whether you are deficient in calcium, chromium, copper,
magnesium, manganese, molybdenum, potassium, selenium, vanadium, or zinc.
It also shows toxic elements/heavy metals of aluminium, cadmium, lead and
mercury. Caution: you do not want to be in the low-normal range for
minerals but mid-range or high-normal. This is because the so-called
"normal" person,
on which tests are based, is not extremely healthy but only average.
Likewise, do not be fooled by a low level of toxic heavy metals for three
reasons:
- The total toxics (adding one bar to the next, to the next, to the
next to get the totality of toxic heavy metals) is a better indicator
of what is lurking in your body.
- The real "normal" level would be zero for everything but there are
no longer any normal people. Therefore, the norm is already too high,
because it reflects the unwanted heavy metals that everybody carries.
- When you are looking at a few representative heavy metals it is
only the tip of the iceberg in terms of total toxins. There are scores
of other heavy metals that are not in the assay.
Because the life of red blood cells is approximately three months, checking the RBC
minerals and heavy metals about every six months can show if whatever you are
doing to detox is creating changes.
24-hour Urine Heavy Metals Test: some people do not stockpile
much of their heavy metals in their red blood cells but have lots hidden
in the brain (causing depression or poor memory, for example) or in the
kidneys (causing ankle swelling or back pain) or in some other important
target organ like the heart (causing cardiac arrhythmia or congestative
heart failure). The only way to find mercury or other heavy metals is to
do a heavy metal provocation test. For this one, you collect urine for 24
hours on a day that you are taking 2 Captomer-250 tablets (by Thorne in
the US - 1-800-228-1966) three times a day. If heavy metals are hidden in
the body, the 24-hour urine analysis for heavy metals will show elevated
metals. The beauty of this test is that it reveals heavy metals the body
is eager to get rid of, even though they are hidden in storage and not
even seen on the RBC (red blood cell) heavy metal test.
Detoxification Capacity Profile: shows how well your body
detoxifies chemicals. No test looks at all of the pathways but this one looks
at the key detoxifying paths.
Organic Acids: this urine test measures 40 metabolites in the
urine. It can show abnormal metabolism of vitamins as well as high or low
levels of certain organic acids that indicate how well your body is
detoxifying or that mark the presence of abnormal bacteria or yeasts (like
candida) growing in the gut, etc. The lab provides a written interpretive
guide with the report, as well as making available consultations with
their knowledgeable staff.
Lipid Peroxides: done on serum, urine, or both, this test can
provide proof that your diet, environment, or both are damaging you and
accelerating aging-related problems. Lipid peroxidation is a measure of
the fact that something is causing free radicals to eat holes in your cell
membranes. The by-products of this are measured. So, if you are better
after a day at home but worse after a day at work (or vice versa), it
shows there is something in that environment that is leading you toward
illness.
ION Test: combines 10 tests into one, yet costs less than a
third of the total price of these individual tests. It measures over 130
nutritional factors including vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, amino
acids, lipid peroxides, homocysteine, coenzyme Q10, glutathione, organic
acids and intestinal metabolic markers. Costs about US$600 (in 2000). This
is a great test but, because it is so comprehensive and difficult to
interpret, it should only be used if you are working with a medically
trained specialist in environmental pollution and in detoxification who
is willing to spend an hour with you going over the results.
All these tests require prescriptions and are available in the US
from MetaMetrix: tel 1-800-221-4640)
Chemicals in the Blood: identifies volatile hydrocarbons,
pesticides and other foreign chemicals in your blood (but remember that the
blood does not reveal what is going on within the cells); in the US via
your doctor (since a prescription is required) from Accu Chem Laboratory
at 1-800-451-0016 or Pacific Toxicology Laboratories at 1-800-32-TOXIC. It
usually isn't worth doing, however, since it's been proven that all of us
harbour carcinogens. It might be useful for medical-legal-insurance
reasons.
Home Test (no prescription needed): a simple home urine
test (best done with first-thing-in-the-morning urine) that measures lipid
peroxidation (glutareldehyde) is offered in the US by VesPro at
1-800-438-4894. If it turns a pink color, you have far too many free
radicals attacking and damaging your cell membranes. However, you then
have to figure out what you need to do to make the test turn out negative.
Note: again, all these tests are blood or urine tests, which do not
show what is going on within the cells. Any amount of chemicals
seen in a blood or urine test is like the tip of an iceberg. Less than 1/10th of the iceberg is
visible above the water's surface. Over nine times that lies hidden
beneath. Likewise, environmental chemicals are stockpiled in the organs of
the body in addition to
being inside blood cells.
A tissue biopsy is
needed, for example from the liver. These are much more invasive, of
course: another reason that few choose to have them done and doctors
prefer not to. Even with a biopsy there are no absolute tests that can
identify all pesticides, phthalates, and other environmental chemicals or
their metabolites once they are inside the human body.
Energy Detox
gives the body the needed boost to start to return integrity to
the body,
enabling it
to reverse the decades of accumulated poisons.
It does not
treat disease.
The information provided is intended for educational purposes;
it is not to be construed as providing medical advice or
substituting for professional services.
