Treatment

Article to be published in the April issue of WNC Woman Magazine

Join Me for a Detox…..My Poor Irish Liver Needs a Rest!

I began writing a monthly column for WNC Woman Magazine titled: Common Sense Approaches to Women’s Health because, with the current dominance the pharmaceutical industry has over the medical profession, common sense approaches to staying or regaining our health are often ignored.  We live in a time when drugs are prescribed for symptoms such as headaches, elevated cholesterol, poor attention, depression, PMS, irritability, GI distress (to name a few),  when in actuality, those symptoms often represent an  underlying imbalance in the body that can frequently be corrected with alterations in lifestyle, dietary changes, proper supplementation and varying degrees of detoxification.   This is where I get my conservative friends upset.  So, let me explain: I’m not suggesting that there is never a time for pharmaceuticals.   I’m just pointing out that they are currently overused, they mask symptoms instead of addressing underlying causes of illness, and the quick fix approach they offer has a price that many of us are no longer willing to pay.

It wasn’t always this way. Up until the early part of the last century (when the pharmaceutical approach began to invade and take over the medical mind-set) physicians or healers relied on many forms of natural healing including detoxification or internal cleansing to help their patients regain health.  Internal cleansing as a practice has been used for centuries as a means of eliminating toxins from the body in order to restore vibrancy and health.  Cultures including the Greeks, Romans, Chinese, Native Americans and Ayurveda in India have all used botanicals and other forms of cleansing to get rid of toxins from the body and optimize health.

In addition to the reasons these ancient cultures used and valued purging the body of toxins created by our own metabolism, we now live in a time where there’s the added burden of 87,000 relatively new chemicals in our air, water and food including the 2.2 billion pounds of chemicals that are sprayed on crops each year. Almost ¾ of these new substances are small enough molecules to cross cell membranes (1),

The most recent report from the CDC found the average American had in her body 116 of the 148 synthetic compounds tested for, including the infamous dioxin, polycyclic hydrocarbons and organochlorine pesticides.  (2) Further studies revealed these same substances were also in human milk, placenta and umbilical cord blood, and in the blood and body fat of newborns. Another report showed out of the 287 chemicals detected in umbilical cord blood, 180 cause cancer in humans or animals, 217 are toxic to the brain and nervous system, and 208 cause birth defects or abnormal development in animals.  (3)

Okay, so here’s where the common sense comes into play: there are 287 million people in the US today and approximately 41% of them suffer from some form of chronic illness.  That is 118 million people not feeling well.  I’m thinking; maybe there is a connection between toxins, their build up in our systems and these illnesses and it might be time to consider bringing back the ancient art of detoxifying as a common sense approach to regaining our health.

After all, we clean out our cars and our homes, doesn’t it make sense to also clean out our bodies periodically?  I know my poor Irish liver needs a rest once in awhile which is why, as I write this article, I happen to be smack dab in the middle of my own spring cleanse.   Although a bit challenging at first…..(I don’t know too many people who cherish the idea of  giving up coffee in the morning and red wine at night), but it is so worth the effort.  I feel FABULOUS! [click to continue…]

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