Excerpts from The Tao of Detox

by Daniel Reid

Book Preface

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’.

 

The Way of Nurturing Life

The ‘way of nurturing life’ is a comprehensive system of self-health care that is as relevant to the human condition today as it was when first developed over 3,000 years ago in ancient China, and the life-prolonging benefits for those who practice this way of life are greater today than ever before.

In The Tao of Health, Sex & Longevity, I introduce this system of sell-purification as follows:

The essential principle is to combat the debilitating, deathly effects of environmental poisons and self-pollution with the rejuvenating, antidote of personal hygiene and self-purification. The purpose of regular regimens of sell-cleansing is simply to stay a few steps ahead of the inexorable process of pollution and decay. ‘Aging’ is not a matter of time alone; it is the rate at which we permit our bodies to decay over a period of time.

Having practiced these methods myself for nearly 30 years, I agree with their principles more than ever, and I wholeheartedly endorse this system as the best way to protect your health, preserve your vitality and prolong your life.

This book presents the most practical and effective methods used for thousands of years in traditional East Asian cultures to cultivate health and longevity through personal hygiene and proper daily care of the human body The therapeutic powers of these ancient Eastern healing arts are further amplified by fusing them with modern technology and new health products, and their basic principles are more clearly illuminated by viewing them in the light of modern medical science. By selectively blending the best of East and West in self-health care, this book presents a comprehensive system for protecting health and prolonging life by means of internal cleansing, and introduces a variety of practical programme’s that anyone can learn to practice within the context of one’s own daily life.

However, a book can only show you the way; the will to follow it can only come from you. Hopefully, this book will inspire that wish in you.

Daniel Reid
Byron Bay, Australia
February 2002


INTRODUCTION: Tissue Toxicity

In recent years, environmental pollution and the poisoning of our food, air and water supplies have become issues of major concern and hot debate throughout the world, but virtually nothing has been done to correct these problems or reverse the trend. In fact, as the population of the planet continues to multiply and the pace of industrialization continues to accelerate, the poisoning of life on earth grows more severe and widespread day by day.

Along with this radical degradation of our living environment has come an equally swift erosion in the quality of human health: cancer, AIDS, heart disease, liver infection, respiratory ailments, nervous disorders and a host of other maladies have spread like wildfire throughout the general population all over the world, ravaging lives in all segments of society. For all its highly touted surgical weaponry and massive arsenal of chemical drugs, conventional medicine has failed to defend humanity against this malignant attack. Rather than protecting people from this relentless onslaught of disease and degeneration, modem allopathic medicine simply tries to manage its symptoms with drugs and surgery, and the treatment often leads to even worse symptoms later.

What modern medicine, as well as most victims of disease today, fail to recognize is the direct correlation between external pollution of the environment and internal pollution of the human body. The simple fact is this: whatever poisons are put into the macrocosmic eco-systems of nature invariably seep into the microcosmic bio-systems of human health. External toxicity of food, air and water always cause internal toxicity of blood, tissues and cellular fluids, and these toxic conditions become the breeding ground for disease and degeneration. No drug or surgical procedure can correct this problem, because the cause is not germs, genes or congenital defects. The cause is a state of toxicity in the blood and tissues of the human body, a condition known as toxaemia. If you see a festering pile of rubbish crawling with flies and maggots, you don’t blame the flies for creating the filth, and you don’t try to get rid of it by poisoning the flies and maggots with chemicals. What you do is get rid of the rubbish and clean up the mess it made, in which case the flies and maggots have no place left to breed, and they disappear naturally, thereby solving the problem without waging chemical warfare against nature.

Eliminate The Root Cause of Disease

The same principle applies to human health. The only real way to cure any chronic disease or degenerative condition is to eliminate the root cause by ridding the body of the toxins that pollute the blood and tissues, attract germs and weaken resistance and immunity. That means detoxifying the internal environment of the human body, repairing the toxic damage done to vital organs, and restoring balance to all the basic vital functions. When the blood and tissues of the body have been purged of poisons, germs cannot attack, degeneration is arrested, and the body’s natural healing mechanisms repair the damage and restore optimum health to the whole system. Until the world wakes up to the mortal danger which environmental pollution poses to human health and longevity and takes effective measures to clean up the planet, human beings who wish to live long and healthy lives in this world have no choice but to take their own measures to periodically detoxify, and protect the inner world of their own bodies, and to try to stay a few steps ahead of the constant retoxification process that occurs naturally in the course of daily life.

Even without environmental pollution, the human body produces internal toxins as a natural by-product of digestion and metabolism. When glucose and oxygen are burned in the cells to create energy, acid wastes and other toxic by-products such as carbon dioxide are produced. Lactic acid, for example, is a toxic waste produced in the tissues as a result of muscular exertion. When new cells grow to replace damaged cells, the old cells are dismantled and dissolved by enzymes, and this cellular debris becomes more toxic waste that must be removed from the body. In a healthy, well balanced body, all of this natural metabolic waste is automatically eliminated from the system by the excretory organs. As the eminent American physician Dr John Tilden writes in his book Toxaemia: ‘Toxin is a by-product as constant and necessary as life itself. When the organism is normal, it is produced and eliminated as fast as produced.’

A normal, healthy body will therefore naturally detoxify itself by eliminating its own self-produced toxic wastes as fast as they are produced. Toxaemia occurs, and the conditions for disease are thereby created, when toxins are retained and stored in the body due to toxic overload or impairment of the body’s own natural detox and elimination functions.

As Dr Tilden states:

‘Without toxaemia there can be no disease … Thus retention of metabolic toxin is the first and only cause of disease … One of the first things to do to get rid of any so-called disease is to get rid of toxaemia, for it is this state of the blood that makes disease possible.’

Dr Theodore Baroody, author of Alkalize or Die, agrees emphatically with this view:

The countless names attached to illnesses do not really matter. What does matter is that they all come from the same root cause … too much tissue acid waste in the body! It is these tissue residues that determine sickness or health!

Retention of Toxins

Retention of toxins within the body has two basic causes: one is massive toxic overload beyond natural metabolic levels due to excess exposure to unnatural environmental toxins in food, air and water; the other is impairment of normal elimination processes due to unhealthy personal habits, exhaustion and enervation of the nervous system caused by hyperactive modern lifestyles. In most cases, toxaemia is the net result of a combination of various factors – indiscriminate eating habits and chemically contaminated food and water; smoking and drinking, a ‘fast-lane’ lifestyle of hard work and hard play; excessive stress and insufficient rest; and so forth. But regardless of the sources of toxicity, the net result is always the same – a state of toxaemia – and toxaemia is the root cause of all disease and degeneration. Therefore, the first step in curing any disease, correcting its cause, and preventing the onset of other diseases is to detoxify the whole system, just as cleaning up the rubbish is the only way to get rid of flies and maggots. After each period of intensive detox, you may then take appropriate measures to ‘clean up your act’ in daily life, so that retox proceeds more slowly and less severely than before. This involves changing some of your eating habits, adjusting various aspects of your lifestyle, and learning a few basic rules that govern the way your body works, such as the axiom: ‘You are what you eat’.

One of the most important things to learn about how your body works, especially with regard to detox and retox, is the way the autonomic nervous system operates. All of the body’s vital functions are controlled by the autonomic nervous system, which has two antagonistic branches. One is called the sympathetic branch, also known as the ‘action circuit’ or ‘fight or flight’ response (‘F or F’). This is the branch that is switched on by any sort of physical exertion, hard work, excitement, sensory stimulation, emotional turmoil and any other intensive activity. When the ‘F or F’ action circuit is switched on, the body’s entire supply of nervous energy is consumed in active response to external conditions, emotional reactions and sensory stimulation, and these functions burn up nerve energy faster than it can be produced. The result of such neuro-active depletion is a state of nervous exhaustion or enervation, which has become a chronic condition of daily life for the majority of people throughout the world today.

The other branch of the nervous system is called the parasympathetic circuit, and it is this branch that governs the immune system, controls auto-detoxification and sell-cleansing responses, and regulates excretory functions. It is also known as the ‘rest and relaxation’ circuit (‘R & R’), because the one and only way to activate this branch and allow it to function properly is to give both body and mind a period of complete rest and total relaxation. The human body was designed to function in a healthy state of balance between these two modes of nervous response: intensive bursts of activity in the sympathetic ‘F or F’ action circuit are supposed to be followed by periods of deep rest and physical relaxation in the parasympathetic ‘R & R’ healing circuit in order to allow the system to recuperate and re balance itself. Whenever the nervous system is locked into the intensive action mode for prolonged periods of time, such as in modern urban lifestyles, immune response atrophies, cleansing and excretory functions are suppressed and toxic wastes continuously accumulate in the body, setting the stage for disease and decay. Only when the nervous system is at rest in the restorative parasympathetic mode can the body neutralize and eliminate toxins, process and excrete digestive wastes and restore itself to a balanced state of health that promotes long life.

 

The Hyperactive Autonomic Nervous system

Today, virtually everyone in the world finds themselves locked into the hyperactive, depleting, highly toxifying sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system, with very little time to spend in the healing, restorative parasympathetic mode.

The modern lifestyle, with its ‘work hard, play hard’ ethic, makes little allowance for sustained periods of rest and relaxation. Overwork, overindulgence in food and think, over-stimulation of the senses and over-excitement of the emotions all conspire to keep the action circuit of the human nervous system switched on day and night, and this leads to a state of constant enervation and toxic overload. This in turn produces conditions of chronic toxaemia, which is the root cause of most disease and degeneration.

As Dr Tilden puts it:

‘Toxaemia is the cause of all disease, and enervation – an enervated body and mind – is the cause of toxaemia.’

The only solution here is to give body and mind a prolonged period of complete rest and total relaxation, thereby switching the nervous system over to the healing mode of the parasympathetic branch and allowing the entire body to cleanse and purify itself naturally, replenish its energy reserves, and restore its normal resistance to disease and degeneration.

Let’s take a closer look at the basic nature of toxaemia. In a normal healthy body, the blood and most other bodily fluids should be slightly alkaline, very much like seawater, and the tissues and cells should be well oxygenated. Alkaline and oxygen are therefore the twin pillars of good health and strong immune response. Bacterial, viral and fungal infections cannot develop in tissues that are sufficiently alkalized and oxygenated, and almost all microbes and toxins are neutralized by the presence of alkaline and oxygen elements. However, when internal toxicity exceeds the body’s capacity to cleanse itself, alkaline and oxygen levels plummet, and a state of toxaemia develops.

This state is characterized by two primary conditions: excess acid (acidosis) and insufficient oxygen (hypoxia).

 

Acidosis and Hypoxia

Acidosis and hypoxia are the underlying conditions that allow bacteria, viruses, fungus and other microbes to invade and breed inside the human body. Virtually all germs that infect the human body are anaerobic, which means that they thrive in oxygen-deficient environments, such as toxic tissues. Ever since Louis Pasteur proposed his Germ Theory of disease, modern Western medicine has become obsessed with the simplistic view that every disease must be caused by the specific germs which appear in diseased tissues, and that the cure for any particular disease is to kill the specific germ associated with its symptoms. As a result, modern Western medicine engages in an ever escalating campaign of ‘chemical warfare’ against germs, fought on the battleground of the human body. This approach fails entirely to account for the fact that under precisely the same conditions of exposure, some people become infected by germs and get sick, while others do not. The difference between those who ‘catch’ germs and those who don’t is that those who do have lower resistance than those who don’t.

As the famous American physician Dr Charles Mayo stated:

‘We are all afraid of germs because we are all ignorant of them. Germs are outside, what we should be afraid of is lowered resistance from within.’

Viewing the situation from the rubbish and fly analogy, people whose blood and tissues are littered with accumulations of toxic debris are the ones who become most vulnerable to infection by germs, just as rubbish attracts flies. All microbes have a very narrow range of conditions in which they can survive and reproduce. The two most basic conditions that allow pathogenic microbes to colonize human tissues are excess acidity and insufficient oxygen. Any wine or beer maker can testify to the fact that the bacteria they use to ferment their products require an acid medium of very specific degree, without exposure to oxygen, in order to function. On his deathbed, Pasteur himself finally recanted his germ theory by admitting that ‘the terrain is everything’. Without the specific preconditions of acidosis and hypoxia, germs simply cannot survive in the ‘terrain’ of human tissues, just as flies cannot breed in the terrain of a sanitary environment. What this means is that the presence of germs in the blood is not the root cause of any disease, but rather a symptom of toxaemia. Toxaemia provides the breeding ground for germs and thereby becomes the root cause of all disease.

Dr Warburg and Cancer

The implications of this fact find their greatest significance in the understanding and treatment of cancer. In 1931, Dr Otto Warburg received the Nobel Prize for medicine for his discovery that all forms of cancer, without exception, are characterized by two basic conditions: acidosis and hypoxia. Like germs, cancer cells flourish only in acidic, anaerobic environments, in which they reproduce as rapidly as fermenting bacteria.

This discovery clearly indicates that the best way to cure and prevent cancer is to alkalize and oxygenate the blood and tissues, thereby eliminating the conditions in which cancer cells thrive.

However, modern medicine has totally ignored Dr Warburg’s work, and has chosen instead to attack cancer the same way it attacks germs: poisoning it with toxic chemical drugs, burning it with radiation therapy and cutting it out with radical surgery. None of these conventional cancer treatments provides a real cure for the underlying cause of cancer; in fact, they further aggravate the root cause by strongly elevating the levels of tissue toxicity, while at the same time severely inhibiting the body’s own natural cleansing and healing responses.

A hundred years ago, less than one in a thousand people died of cancer. In the UK today, one in three people will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime, and one in every four will die.

Having clearly lost the ‘war on cancer’ long ago, modern medicine nevertheless stubbornly continues to ignore its root causes and now claims that people get cancer due to a ‘genetic predisposition’ to it, as though cancer were an inherited trait, like freckles and blue eyes. This is nonsense. While 5-10 % of cancer cases may be linked in some way to faulty genes, if most cancers were genetically determined, as some doctors now claim, then a hundred years ago the incidence of cancer should have been about the same as it is today, rather than 250 times lower. Mainstream medicine has taken the wrong track on cancer treatment but refuses to admit it because cancer therapy has become one of the most profitable branches of the modern medical industry. Meanwhile, these conventional therapies continue to make matters much worse for Cancer patients by increasing the underlying state of toxaemia that lies at the root cause of all cancer.

 

Cancer and Toxins

The fact’s that 80-90 per cent of all cancer cases can be traced back to basic environmental factors, of which diet is by far the most important. Toxins assimilated from external sources accumulate and fester inside the body, causing internal toxicity of blood and tissues and producing the conditions of acidosis and anaerobia upon which cancer feeds.

The answer to cancer is to clean up the cumulative tissue toxicity that allows cancer to develop in the first place, and to stop using the human body as a dumping ground for all the toxic waste that enters the system with food, water, air, smoke, drugs and other external sources. There’s no way to totally avoid toxic contamination these days, but you can certainly reduce your risk by making some basic changes in your diet and lifestyle and taking a few simple preventive measures, and you can certainly protect yourself from cancer, heart disease and other life-threatening ailments by periodically flushing the poisons that cause them out of your system, rather than letting them accumulate to critical levels.

If cancer is detected early enough, before it causes irreversible damage to vital organs, it can usually be treated and cured by a combination of various detoxification methods, such as fasting and colonic irrigation, raw juice and detox diet therapy, herbal and nutritional supplements, alkalization and oxygenation of blood and tissues, and other holistic methods, without the need for debilitating toxic treatments such as chemotherapy, radiation and radical surgery.

However, if a doctor tells a patient that cancer can be cured by means of blood and tissue detox, and offers to provide such a cure, they are likely to be prosecuted. It is not ‘politically correct’ these days for doctors to discuss the real causes of cancer, nor to provide real cures that work, because the profits of powerful pharmaceutical cartels and other branches of the modern medical industry are threatened by the truth regarding the real causes and cures for disease.

It’s therefore up to each of us to discover the truth ourselves, and act on it by taking effective preventive measures to protect our health and prolong our lives in a world that grows progressively more toxic and ‘user-unfriendly’.

Cancer is the final, fatal stage of tissue toxicity, but it takes a long time to develop, and long before it does, chronic toxaemia takes its toll on human health in many other ways, making life miserable for millions of people who don’t realize that the root cause of their misery is their own blood and tissue toxicity. In addition to providing fertile ground for infection by germs, toxaemia also damages vital organs and impairs immune response, causing a wide range of degenerative ailments that grow steadily worse for as long as the state of toxicity continues.

Symptoms Associated With Blood Acidosis and Tissue Toxicity

Listed below are some of the most common symptoms associated with blood acidosis and tissue toxicity:

heartburn loss of hair
allergies arthritis
headaches foul body odour
festering sores frequent colds
fungal infections vaginitis
gastritis depression
psoriasis excess mucus
sinusitis hyperactivity and anxiety
fatigue all forms of cancer

While a variety of secondary factors such as malnutrition and harmful habits may also be contributing causes in these conditions, the root cause always remains the same – toxaemia. Even if the secondary factors are eliminated, the condition will continue to manifest until the internal toxicity that allowed it to develop in the first place is neutralized and the toxins are eliminated from the system.

 

Purification: The One and Only Solution

The one and only solution to pollution is purification. In the case of internal pollution of the human body, and the state of chronic toxaemia that it causes, that means periodic purification of the bloodstream and complete detoxification of the bodily tissues. Unless you choose to reside in a remote mountain cave and live on nothing but wild fruit and spring water, there is no way to avoid the accumulation of toxic residues in your body. As long as the amount of toxin does not exceed the capacity of your immune and excretory systems to eliminate it, health and vitality are easily maintained, but sooner or later the toxic overload of daily life exceeds your body’s ability to properly cleanse itself of it, and that’s when toxaemia develops and disease and degeneration begin. The worst mistake of all is to start using pharmaceutical drugs and surgical procedures to temporarily ease the symptomic discomfort and inconvenience of the chronic diseases and degenerative conditions caused by toxaemia, because that approach only makes the problem worse by increasing blood and tissue toxicity, while weakening immune response and other vital functions. The only effective way to deal with toxaemia is to ‘clean up your act’ with a regular programme of detox and a rational approach to retox. This means periodically purging the blood and tissues of accumulated toxic residues, then reforming the personal lifestyle habits that contribute most to acidosis and tissue toxicity.

 

Rest and Relaxation

In order for any detox programme to be effective, you must take at least three days of complete rest and total relaxation. Seven days is even better, because it takes exactly seven days of complete rest and clean living to purify the bloodstream and cleanse the internal organs. Only a prolonged period of ‘R&R’ will allow the autonomic nervous system to switch over to the restorative parasympathetic circuit long enough to give the body a chance to completely cleanse and re balance itself, while giving the over-worked, over-stimulated sympathetic action circuit a long overdue rest. Remember: effective detoxification and repair of the body can only take place when the mind is at rest and the nervous system is operating in the healing mode of the parasympathetic branch. There is no way you can do it simply by eating the right foods and taking the right supplements, while still remaining locked into the hectic activities of ordinary daily life. So unless you’re willing to retreat from daily life for a while and take the time to do it properly, there’s not much point in trying to detox at all.

Besides purging the blood and tissues of toxic residues, a period of detox also provides other essential long-term benefits for health and longevity. One of those benefits is to cleanse and rejuvenate the entire excretory system- clearing clogged bowels and congested lungs, cleaning dirty lymphs and blemished skin, and flushing out dirty kidneys and bladder. The more toxic you become, the less efficiently your excretory organs work, and if extreme toxaemia continues for too long, serious organic damage to the excretory organs can occur. Another benefit of periodic detox is restoration of maximum immunity and resistance, which depends on adequate alkalization and oxygenation of the blood and cellular fluids. Bacteria and other germs simply cannot survive in a body that is sufficiently alkaline and oxygenated. Even a microbe as aggressive as anthrax can only infect a person whose body is already in a toxic state of acidosis and anaerobia, and this explains why, under precisely the same degree of exposure, some people ‘catch’ it and others do not. These days, with all the hazardous chemicals and microbes that contaminate our living environment, spending three to seven days once or twice a year doing a serious detox programme certainly seems worth the investment of time and effort.

 

Diagram of The Problem and The Solution

The basic problem of toxaemia and the solution of detox are summarized in the next schematic diagram:

The Problem:
The Solution:
stress
(environmental pollution; daily life)

strain
(physical/mental/emotional overwork,
exhaustion, worry)

enervation
(overdrive in sympathetic mode)

inefficient elimination
(bowels, lungs, kidneys, skin)

retention of toxic wastes
(overdrive in sympathetic mode)

toxaemia
(acidosis and anaerobia)

acute disease, chronic degenerative
conditions, cancer
rest
(peace and quiet; clean living)

relaxation
(physical/mental/emotional
tranquility, comfort, support)

regeneration
(rest in parasympathetic mode,
replenish energy, restore vital functions)

swift and efficient elimination
(bowels, lungs, kidneys, skin)

elimination of toxic wastes,
purification

(alkalization and oxygenation)

immunity and resistance,
health and longevity

The importance of a sustained period of rest and relaxation as an absolute prerequisite for any detox programme to be effective cannot be over-emphasized, especially in today’s fast-paced, high-stress world, where resting quietly and doing nothing is regarded as a ‘waste of time’. As Dr Tilden notes:

The present day strenuousness causes enervation which checks elimination, and the retained toxins bring on toxaemia.

Rest from habits that enervate is the only way to put nature in line for healing. Sleep and rest of body and mind are necessary to keep a sufficient supply of energy. Few people in active life rest enough.’ This means taking a break not only from hard work and hard play, but also from worry, anger and all other forms of emotional excitement and strong sensory stimulation, all of which enervate the nervous system, inhibit immune response and impede efficient elimination of toxins from the body.

 

Detox Program

If you cannot find sufficient peace and quiet to detox at home, or if you lack the discipline to conduct your own detox programme, the best solution is to check into a quiet, comfortable spa or health resort that has the facilities required to support an effective programme of detoxification and rejuvenation. Such resorts are becoming increasingly popular throughout the world, providing a wide range of facilities and services that not only expedite fast, efficient detoxification, but also make the entire process a lot more pleasant. Look for places located in tranquil settings next to the sea or up in the mountains, preferably those which offer facilities such as therapeutic massage, steam rooms, whirlpool baths, hot springs, raw juice bars and other restorative health regimens. Instead of always taking action holidays that leave you more exhausted and toxic than when you started, try taking a relaxing health holiday for a change, one that leaves you feeling thoroughly rested, totally refreshed and completely rejuvenated. You’ll be amazed how much better you feel and how much better your body functions after allowing your system to drain out all its toxic residues, eliminate acid wastes and restore natural balance in the blood and tissues. In the following chapters, we’ll discuss the best ways to accomplish this.


Chapter 1: Basic Protocols of Detox

Pollution is a basic fact of life, and no one is immune to it…This internal pollution is the major cause of disease, degeneration and foreshortened life span…

Purification of polluted blood and tissues is absolutely necessary…By taking measures too purify your blood and tissues on a regular basis, you prevent toxemia and protect yourself from debilitating effects, particularly the acidosis and hypoxia which make tissues vulnerable to cancer.

Periodic detox is probably the single most effective preventative measure you can take to protect your life from the entire spectrum of disease and degenerative conditions. Detox is the best cure for most of these conditions

Flushing out Acids

The first and foremost strategy in any detox programme is to flush acid residues out of the blood, lymph and other bodily fluids, which should be slightly alkaline. Almost all toxins in the body take the form of acids, and these acids must therefore be neutralized and flushed out of the system in order to restore normal alkaline balance to the blood and other bodily fluids.

The late V.E. Irons, one of the western world’s leading authorities on therapeutic detoxification for health and longevity puts it:

Every cell in the body is served by the blood. It nourishes the cell, replaces worn out parts, and carries away waste products.’

Obviously, a polluted bloodstream carries little nourishment and is already so saturated with wastes that it cannot properly fulfill its function of carrying away cellular wastes.

The same goes for the lymphatic system. There are 600-700 lymph glands in the body, and there is about three times more fluid volume of lymph then there is blood in the human body. One of the primary functions of the lymph is to clean acid wastes fro the blood and tissues, but of the lymph itself is polluted with acid wastes, then it cannot properly perform these cleansing functions. Acids interfere with the free flow of lymph within the lymphatic channels, thereby further inhibiting its capacity to cleanse the blood and tissues.

Regardless of the type of detox programme you choose, you must always remember to drink at least 2-3 litres per day of pure, preferably alkaline water, in order to neutralize, dilute and flush away the large amounts of acids and other toxic wastes which the detox process releases from tissues throughout the body. The human body is over 70% water. By saturating the system daily with abundant quantities of pure alkaline water, pollutants are continuously flushed from the blood and tissues and eliminated through the kidneys, bowels and skin.

As a result, all bodily tissues are ‘washed’ and all vital fluids replenished with fresh water. This is equivalent to changing the dirty motor oil in your car, as well as the battery, brake and transmission fluids. The whole mechanism operates more efficiently and produces less toxic waste, when dirty fluids are replaced with clean.

Restoring proper pH balance

The corollary protocol to flushing out acids is to restore proper pH balance in the blood and tissues…

Almost all forms of internal toxicity cause a state of acidosis in the body. In turn, excessive levels of acid residues in the blood and tissues suppress immune response, interfere with normal metabolism, inhibit digestion and assimilation, promote fungal and bacterial infections, and cause all sorts of other biological malfunctions and ill health. To give you an idea of how important pH balance is throughout the human system, here are some of the ways your vital organs depend upon proper pH balance to function properly:

Heart

The human heart pumps about 130 litres of blood per hour. If the blood os saturated with acid wastes, the acids can do serious damage to heart tissue as the blood passes through it, gradually causing deterioration of the heart muscle. Moreover, normal heartbeat rhythms are dependent on an alkaline environment and are therefore adversely affected by excess acid wastes in the bloodstream. And since acid wastes drastically reduce the blood’s capacity to carry oxygen, the heart does not receive sufficient oxygen supplies from blood that’ saturated with acids.

Lungs

One way that the body can self-regulate pH balance in the blood is by controlling the oxygen level through correct breathing. By maximizing the exchange of gases in the lungs, proper diaphragmatic breathing saturates the bloodstream with fresh supplies of oxygen, while purging it of carbon dioxide. Oxygen supports an alkaline environment in the blood and tissues, while carbon dioxide contributes to acidosis. If you permit your blood to become overloaded with acid wastes, it cannot absorb and carry sufficient oxygen from the lungs t sustain an alkaline blood and tissue pH, resulting instead in a state of chronic hypoxia (oxygen deficiency) and its twin condition acidosis, i every tissue and cell of the body. This in turn paves the way for germs and tumors to develop.

Liver

One of the liver’s main jobs is to filter toxic wastes from the bloodstream. Another task is to produce many of the alkaline enzymes upon which immune response and other vital functions depend. If the blood s constantly polluted by excess acid residues from wrong eating habits, alcohol and drugs, stress hormones and other acid-forming factors, the liver eventually gets overloaded with acid wastes and becomes deeply congested with toxic debris. This in turn impairs its ability to filter acids from the bloodstream, so instead the body starts depositing excess acid wastes in the joints and other solid tissues, causing arthritis and tissue toxicity throughout the body.

Kidneys

The kidneys also help to filter acid wastes from the bloodstream, processing about one litre of blood per minute. This in turn helps keep blood pH at its proper alkaline level. Excessive acid waste in the blood due to improper diet, pharmaceutical drugs and other lifestyle factors can severely corrode the delicate tissues in which blood filters through the kidneys. It can also cause the formation of kidney stones and inflammation of the bladder and urinary tract.

There are basically two related ways to restore proper pH balance to the blood and tissues during detox, after the acid waste residues have all been flushed out. One method is alkalization, the other is oxygenation.

Alkalization can be achieved fairly quickly by adjusting the diet to strictly limit the intake of acid-formig foods, while increasing the consumption of alkaline-forming items. The swiftest and most effective dietary alkalizers are freshly extracted raw vegetable juices, such as carrot and beetroot juice. Drinking lots of pure alkaline water throughout the day is another effective way to alkalize your blood and tissues quickly by dietary means.

 

Water: Hydration and Hydrotherapy

Water is the universal solvent. It is also the quintessential symbol of the Tao in Chinese philosophy. As Lao Tzu states in the Tao Teh Ching:

Nothing is more yielding then water, but when it attacks things hard and resistant, there is not one of them that can prevail.

With sufficient time and exposure, water can dissolve almost any toxin, hold it in solution and deliver it elsewhere for elimination. Like city sewer and industrial waste disposal systems, water is the medium required to waste products out of the body. Therefore, when you’re detoxifying your body, you must drink extra quantities of pure alkaline water in order to dissolve, neutralize and wash away all the toxins and acid wastes that the detox process releases into the bloodstream from the tissues.

Water is also the element that extracts nutrients from food, transports them into the bloodstream and delivers them in solution into the cells for metabolism. Over 70% of the human body consists of water; 90% of the blood and 85% of the brain are water; even the bones contain 30% water. Water is thus required for the nourishment and replenishment of vital fluids, as well as for detoxifying the blood and tissues and eliminating wastes. In order to do this, good quality water must be consumed daily in sufficient quantities to perform both of these functions properly.

Internal uses: Hydration

Chronic dehydration has become a common condition throughout the world today. It is estimated that about 75% of the American population lives in a state of chronic dehydration. Levels in other industrial countries are likely to be similar. This causes the body’s natural thirst response, which is supposed to signal the body to drink water when thirsty, to be mistaken instead for hunger, prompting frequent snack binges that lead to food addictions and obesity. In study conducted at the University of Washington, it was shown that one glass of water effectively shut off the ‘midnight munchies’ syndrome in 100% of the dieters tested.

Dehydration produces a state of chronic toxaemia and is one of the primary causes of daytime fatigue, sluggish metabolism, depression and inability to concentrate. It is also a major contributing factor in cancer. Several studies have demonstrated that by drinking fine glasses of pure water per day, the average person may reduce his or her risk of colon cancer by 45%, breast cancer by 80% and bladder cancer by 50%. Other research indicates that drinking up to eight glasses of water daily significantly relieves chronic pain the back and joints.

Dehydration is often the hidden cause in cases of chronic pain, including headaches, and in chronic fatigue. Dehydration dries the blood and other bodily fluids, causing cells to shrink and retain their toxic wastes. All bodily tissues are wrapped in envelopes of very fine membrane known as fascia, which continuously rub against each other as various parts of the body move. All fascia require a layer of water in between them in order to provide lubrication as various organs and tissues rub against each other. When the body id dehydrated, this lubricating layer of inter-fascial fluid dries up, producing inter-fascial friction that cause tissue inflammation and chronic body pain. This is one of the main causes of the chronic pain syndrome which so many people complain of these days, and for which they take billions of dollars worth of toxic chemical drugs to suppress, and yet most of the pain can usually be relieved by simply drinking sufficient quantities of pure alkaline water each day. If you drink specially energized waters, such as ionized or micro-clustered water or oxygen water, then the therapeutic benefits of hydration become even greater and take effect faster. Proper daily hydration with good quality water is therefore the first remedy one should try for all types of chronic pain, including headaches, as well as daytime fatigue.

The water used by most people throughout the world today carries more toxic elements into their bodies then it washes out. Typical tap water contains chlorine, fluoride, aluminium and a variety of toxic heavy metals such as lead, cadmium, and nickel. This is ‘dead’ water, killed by chemical additives and acid elements, not the ‘living’ water the body requires to function properly. Most commercial bottled waters are not much better, and the minerals in the so-called ‘mineral water’ that’s sold these days as an expensive gourmet health beverage are not in the ionized, micro-clustered form required by the cells for assimilation and utilization.

What’s required here is alkaline, ionized water that has been ‘restructured’ into micro-cluster form.

Only alkaline water can effectively neutralize acids in the blood and tissues and carry them away for excretion, and only alkaline minerals are beneficial for the body.

Water that is charged with negative ions functions as a potent antioxidant to scavenge free radicals and prevent degenerative damage to the cells and tissues; negative ions also neutralize all toxic substances in the bloodstream, because all toxins in the body take on a postive charge.

Water that’s been been restructured into micro-cluster form passes easily through cell walls and tissue membranes, quickly hydrating the whole body and delivering essential nutrients into the cells, while also flushing out and carrying away toxic wastes.

Water thus plays four fundamental roles in the body:

Hydration

Alkalization

Mineralization and

Detoxification

 

Microwater

A device has been developed in Japan that produces alkaline, ionized, micro-clustered water, known in health circles as “microwater” or “restructured water.” It’s a small machine about the size of a large dictionary that sits on the kitchen counter and attaches to any faucet. First the water runs through a very fine activated charcoal filter to remove solid particles and microbes, then it enters a chamber with two titanium plates that are coated with platinum. By the process of electrolysis, all alkaline minerals held in solution in the water are drawn towards one plate, while all the acid elements, such as chlorine, fluoride, and heavy metals, are drawn to the other plate. The acid water drains out an exit tube into the sink for disposal, and the alkaline water is dispensed through a spout for consumption.

In Japan, microwater has been successfully used to treat cancer, arthritis, immune dysfunction, and many other debilitating conditions, and it is now beginning to catch on in the West.

Dr. Theodore Baroody, author of the aptly titled book Alkalize or Die, uses micro-clustered water as a therapeutic tool in his clinical practice, and says, “It is my opinion that this technology will change the way in which all health care providers and the public approach their health in the coming years.”

Microwater has become so popular in Japan that bars and nightclubs now make all their ice and mix all their drinks with alkaline ionized microwater , and Japanese drinkers claim that when they mix their whisky with microwater and use microwater ice cubes, they never get hangovers the next morning, regardless how much they drink at night. That’s because the negatively charged alkaline microwater neutralizes the acid by-products of alcohol metabolism and flushes them out of the body before they get lodged in the liver, brain, and other tissues.

The microwater technology does three things to water

1. Alkalize

By eliminating every molecule of acid while retaining all alkaline minerals, it alkalizes the water with beneficial minerals. These alkaline elements serve two functions: they neutralize acids and thereby restore proper pH balance to the blood and tissues; and they mineralize the cells with beneficial alkaline minerals in ionized micro-cluster form.

2. Ionize

Electrolysis ionizes the water molecules as well as the minerals with an extra electron, giving them a negative charge and turning them into potent antioxidants that scavenge free radicals throughout the body. Negative ions also charge each water molecule with a strong anti-toxin properties that enable it to neutralize and carry away positively charged toxic molecules in the blood and tissues.

3. Micro-cluster

This technology also breaks the alkaline minerals and the water itself into smaller micro-clusters, so that they pass more easily and swiftly into the cells and tissues to hydrate, alkalize, mineralize, and detoxify the body. Ordinary water clumps in clusters of about 12 molecules each, while micro-water is restructured into clusters of only 5-6 molecules. Similarly, the alkaline ionized minerals are reduced into smaller molecular clusters, so that they too pass easily into the cells to re-mineralize them.

There are many good reasons to get one of these units and use it for all of your water requirements at home and at work, including cooking, making coffee and tea, and preparing ice cubes. During a detox program, drinking microwater is a great way to neutralize and flush out all the toxins and acids that drain from the tissues and bodily fluids, and to quickly rehydrate the body and keep the blood alkaline.

If you use microwater for all your drinking and cooking requirements at home, it provides you with an ongoing “mini-detox” each and every day.

Microwater is a highly efficient antioxidant, and if you drink it throughout the day, it provides continuous antioxidant activity in the blood and tissues. Since free radical damage is now commonly acknowledged in medical science as the primary cause of premature aging and tissue deterioration, drinking microwater daily can help you slow down the aging process and prevent a lot of unnecessary debilitating damage to your tissues.

Many people complain that they find it difficult to drink large amounts of water, but drinking down two large glasses of alkaline microwater is both easy and pleasant, because the micro clusters allow it to assimilate so quickly through your stomach and into your blood and tissues. By contrast, drinking just one glass of ordinary “dead” tap water or commercially bottled water makes your stomach feel bloated and heavy, because it just sits and pools there, like a stagnant pond, and that’s why so few people like to drink water these days.

Microwater solves the problem of “hydrophobia,” as well as the problem of dehydration, by making it pleasant to drink sufficient amounts of water throughout the day, and its positive effects can be felt immediately.

Its alkalinity counteracts the excess stomach acidity caused by modern eating habits; its micro-clustered minerals and trace elements provide essential nutrients that are chronically deficient in modern diets; and its negative ion charge continuously scavenges free radicals and sweeps toxic substances from the bloodstream, enhancing overall vitality.

All these benefits come at a cost that amounts to only a small fraction of what you’d pay for expensive nutritional and antioxidant supplements sold in health shops, and in the long run it’s also much cheaper than buying bottled drinking water.

Source: Daniel Reid, The Tao of Detox