Pollution, Toxemia and Chronic Disease

 

We live in a polluted world. We consume dead, processed foods. We are subject to chemically contaminated air and water.

Even without all the additives, industrial pollutants and stress, our basic metabolic processes produce toxins even on the purest of foods, just as fire produces smoke and ash. You need to detoxify even if you live on the purest of foods.

The Yogi’s in India, for example, rigidly eat pure foods, but they still follow very strict, scientific self-purification practices involving such things as Neti douches to clean the nasal passages and the entire digestive tract from the tongue to the anus via special yogic salt water cleanse rituals.The yogi’s rigidly and regularly purify the body and the mind as a means or path to union and self-realization.

Today, our non-spiritual, mad-dash, faithless and fear filled life styles mean that we are overwhelmed by mental problems such as money, fear, stress, burnout, negativity, depression and general unhappiness.

Our bodies, minds and spirits have had more than they can take. We need to clean up our own act and detoxify now. There has never been a greater need for effective mind-body detox.

We can detoxify now and remove the poisons from our bodies and our minds. As we purify ourselves, in the same way that the Lotus seed transforms the pond it flowers in, we will help transform the world.

This is why the Prophets and Philosophers of old wrote so much about Fasting, Self-purification, Prayer and Meditation. Fasting and self-purification give the body an opportunity to cleanse itself, allowing the body to heal itself, and allow space for the knower to know his or her true self. The ancient Greeks also were practitioners of self-examination and self-detoxifiction. They had the words KNOW THYSELF engraved on entrance walls as a way to guide the students to the truth.

Pollution = Toxemia = Disease = Death

In the Excerpt below from The Tao of Detox, Health Author Daniel Reid explains the modern health dangers that we are faced with from industrial pollution and what we can do to protect our health and well being.

Daniel Reid: The Tao of Detox

Despite the ‘Wonders of Modern Medicine’, the state of human health throughout the world today continues to erode at an alarming rate. This deterioration prevails as much in the wealthy, industrially developed parts of the world as it does in poor, underdeveloped regions. America, for example, has one of the highest per capita rates of cancer mortality on earth, and the immune deficiency syndrome known as AIDS has spread to every corner of the planet, striking the rich as well as the poor, old and young alike. Debilitating diseases and chronic degenerative conditions that only a hundred years ago rarely manifested except in the weak and elderly have today become increasingly common conditions in the young and mainstream adult sectors of the population.

Chronic pain and fatigue, indigestion and insomnia, hypertension and heart failure, and all sorts of other maladies are now par for the course in the lives of men and women all over the world, degrading the quality of their lives and causing untold misery.

So what’s the problem here?

The problem is toxicity, plain and simple, the same sort of toxicity that attracts flies to filth, kills fish in rivers, and lays waste to the environment, except in this case we’re talking about the toxic waste that pollutes the blood and tissues of the body.

Modern Western lifestyle, particularly the highly touted ‘American way of life’, has spread like an oil slick across the entire sea of humanity smothering traditional ways of life that once kept the human body in a relatively healthy state of balance. Fast food and junk food, preservatives and additives, chemically contaminated air and water, mad dash lifestyles and indiscriminate use of drugs, both medical and recreational, have all contributed to the overall degradation of human health and the relentless pollution of the human body.

 

Most people today take far better care of their cars than they do their own bodies.

Imagine what would happen if you indiscriminately poured Petrol, Diesel, Kerosene, Propane and a cup of Sugar altogether into the petrol tank of your car.

That’s precisely the way most people eat today, mixing meat, bread, milk, fat, sugar and other digestively incompatible foods at the same meals and pouring them into their stomachs at the same time.

And what if you never changed the motor oil, neglected to clean the filters, and let the carburetor get crusted up with soot?

The result would be obvious: the fuel would burn inefficiently, producing foul-smelling toxic wastes and gases, the engine would soon begin to wheeze and splutter, vital moving parts would seize up and malfunction, and finally the whole machine would grind to a shuddering halt and need to be hauled to the nearest repair shop. All of this could be easily prevented, and expensive repair work avoided, simply by keeping the engine properly tuned, periodically changing the oil and replacing the filters, cleaning the carburetor, using the right type of fuel, and properly maintaining the vehicle on a daily basis.

Many of today’s most common and deadly diseases, such as Cancer, Diabetes and Cirrhosis of the liver, are caused not by viruses or other germs, but rather by long term accumulation of toxins and acid wastes in the body, which create the conditions of tissue toxicity that germs require to infect the body.

Similarly, most chronic degenerative conditions, such as Arthritis, Arteriosclerosis and Immune Deficiency, are acquired primarily as a result of blood and tissue toxicity produced from things that people put into their own bodies. As these acidic toxins fester and decay in various tissues, they damage organs and glands, corrode joints and arteries, enervate the nervous system and inhibit immune response and other vital functions.This debilitating state of tissue toxicity is almost always self-inflicted, and it cannot be corrected with pills, injections, surgery or any other ‘quick-fix’ medical procedures. The one and only way to counteract self-toxification of the body is by self-detoxification, and the only one who can do that for you is the same person who allowed it to happen in the first place – you.

 

A Job That Needs Doing!

As the saying goes, ‘It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it‘, and in this case that someone is you.

Fortunately, there are simple ways to get the job of detox done quickly and efficiently and to repair the damage that toxicity does to vital organs and functions. However, it’s entirely up to you to take the time and apply the discipline required to detoxify your system properly, and to do so on a regular basis, just the way you care for your car with periodic tune-ups and proper daily maintenance. Life is toxic by nature, and just as fire invariably produces smoke and ash, so the metabolic processes of life quickly begin to ‘retox’ your body the moment you’ve finished a detox programme.Therefore, the secret to enjoying a long and healthy life – and being able to ‘eat, drink, and be merry’ while also working, prospering and remaining fit – is to practice the discipline of periodic detox and apply the principles of ‘rational retox’ to your daily life.

In the Far East, where people like to work hard, play hard and enjoy every aspect of life, health and longevity have always been cultivated as the two most precious treasures of life, and they form the cornerstones upon which the enjoyment and accomplishment of everything else worth doing depends.

Regardless of how busy they became in the relentless pursuit of fame and fortune, food and sex, prosperity and pleasure, people in traditional Asian societies always took the time to relax their bodies and rest their minds, to replenish their energies and re balance their systems, and designed their diets and other basic habits in ways that protected their health and prolonged their lives, rather than hastened their degeneration and demise. By following these basic principles, traditional Eastern cultures developed a knack for healthy living that enhances rather than diminishes the enjoyment of life’s pleasures, and assists rather than interferes with the demands of hard work. The Japanese, for example, who work harder by day and play harder by night than anyone else on earth, and who live with the most intense forms of modern industrial pollution, continue to enjoy the longest average life span in the world, simply by continuing to follow traditional ways in their personal habits of life. What they and other East Asian cultures have learned is the ancient Chinese art of longevity by means of toxic damage control, a system known as the ‘way of nurturing life’ (yang-sheng dao). In other words, they practiced the ‘Tao of detox’.