A patient of mine once told me, when we were discussing the regular drinking of water, that her doctor could see no reason why she should drink water if she did not enjoy it: as long as she was drinking enough liquids -- such as tea, fruit juice etc, that would be quite satisfactory. And all this fashionable emphasis on doing detoxes was a complete waste of time: just eating a sensible balanced diet would keep the system in good shape.
Now, I can see that the perennially popular post - Christmas ' detox ' in the form of cutting out the alcohol and rich foods for two or three weeks, whilst it will give the system a rest for which it is probably desperate, will actually achieve little if anything of lasting value. But beyond that point, I find myself in serious disagreement with the good doctor. I think that probably most serious complementary practitioners would emphasise to their patients the value and importance of detoxification. When it came to the detail, however, there might be little consensus, -- because what these practitioners actually understood by ' detoxification ' could vary widely.
Probably most of them would be thinking of ridding the kidneys, and intestines of unnecessary burdens. Undoubtedly, in many of us today -- the great majority of us, in fact, -- these organs have become overburdened, impaired, or clogged. And the reason is simple -- we have come to regard food more as an entertainment than as a living instrument which maintains the well-being and daily evolution of our bodies, and activates the linkage of body, mind, and soul.
There are many materials readily available from health food shops and other suppliers with which to work; kits from, for example, Vogel or Nutrigold, a homoeopathic kit from Heel, and -- perhaps the best in my view, comprehensive kits from Energetix and Physica-Energetics. I say they are best in my view, because they involve both herbal and homoeopathic agents, as well as mineral and enzymatic components, along with nutritional support to operate during the cleansing process. There are also many books on the market advocating specific techniques, or techniques aimed at specific parts of the system. TheBrenard Jensen 7-day , for example (a decidedly heroic procedure), or the Magnesuim Oxide cleanse, or the Amazing Liver Flush. All have their devotees.
But what I want to point out is that although these procedures of what is normally thought of as detoxing, they are all ways of undertaking one preliminary aspect of the process: the part that Bob Cass, the founder of Energetix and Physica Energetics, likes to call ' the cleansing of the emunctories '; or , to use the name of the Energetix product ' Opening Channels ' . These organs -- stomach, intestines, colon, liver, and kidneys, are all organs, at least in part, of excretion; and it is vital that excretion should be an easy rapid, and continuous process. We are all inevitably consuming, encountering, and playing host to toxins of many kinds every day of our existence. But in most cases, the damage occurs when they are held in the body and cannot be rapidly excreted -- via the 'emunctories', which must be cleansed and maximally efficient.
There are many forms of toxin that can impair our functioning. In an interesting article on" Massage for Detoxification" (PositIve Health, April 1999), Mario-Paul Cassar makes the point that toxins can include organic material, but also an excess of inorganic elements or compounds which are essential to us and form the mineral constituents of cells. Others are produced by bacteria; either released by them (except toxins) or the result of the destruction of those bacteria (endotoxins). They can of course be ingested with fluids, drugs, chemicals, additives, preservatives, or be protein residues, or the resultant of impaired digestive function. Dental materials and medical procedures may introduce us to sources of toxicity -- e.g. Mercury, Palladium, formaldehyde, or we may encounter them environmentally -- allergens like pollens, or poisons like insecticides.
The simple point is that, once in the body, they need to be processed and excreted as quickly and efficiently as possible, and this is why we need regularly to " cleanse the emunctories". As well as the systems mentioned, we should not neglect other elimination channels -- the lungs, the lymph, the mucous membranes, and the skin. Most of these are not going to be helped much by detox kits, and we need to include in our efforts other important techniques.
Exercise, including walking and swimming is essential. Mario-Paul Cassar's article is pointing out how massage can assist with most of the specific body systems we have mentioned, and I do think that for this and many other reasons, the value of regular massage by an experienced and well-trained master is greatly undervalued component of health maintenance programs.
Along with this, the use of enemas when required, in a domestic setting, and of colonic hydrotherapy by a well-trained professional are to extremely helpful practices. The latter could be a short course of three or four treatments once a year, or a single treatment every 4 to 6 months. Fasting is an extremely important practice which is greatly undervalued. The current enthusiasm for the 5+2 diet is one way of introducing it to our lives in an easily managed for; but it is usually the first day or two of a fast which is a bit tough (if it is going to be tough at all), so from that point of view it's a hard way to go about it. I have often undertaken fasts of 3 to 10 days, and so long as you are in good health and not on allopathic medication I think they are likely to be unproblematic. But if you want to go in for long fasting, of up to a month do it under supervision, and perhaps in a specialised location. If you are not in good health, and/or on an allopathic medication, discuss with your doctor first.
There is a further reason for placing stress on cleansing the emunctories, which is of great importance if you are having bioresonance treatment, or other EAV-based treatment. Rheinhold Voll, who of course developed EAV ( Electro-acupuncture after Voll), said "90% of my work is the reactivation of the mesenchyme ". For theEAV practitioner, a major objective is precisely this. It is the toxins -- especially viral and bacterial focal remains, or even possibly just the remaining frequency signals imprinted deep within the mesenchyme, which require to be neutralised and/or eliminated before the healing work can be completed and fully effective.
The mesenchyme is equivalent to the intercellular fluid, or ground matrix. It is within this fluid that nerve endings, capillaries etc terminate. If the body is kept in alkaline balance, the mesenchyme is a fluid; but if the body falls into an acidic state, mesenchyme itself can become a gel. When this happens, all communicative process within the mesenchyme can be slowed or impeded, so the overall efficiency, responsiveness, and resilience of the body is compromised. There are also tides in the mesenchyme, which moves into a predominantly acidic state at about 3 AM and back into an alkaline state at 3 PM.
The E AV or bioresonance practitioner works with homoeopathic or herbal remedies, or their frequency equivalents, to neutralise and expel toxic signals from the mesenchyme. The mesenchyme is if you like, "upstream" from the regular organs of elimination -- the emunctories. When detoxification occurs in the mesenchyme, it is vital that the latter are cleansed, and ready to do their job of eliminating the dislodged toxic material. If this is not the case, the dislodged material can be redeposited in the organism because it has no egress, and may give rise now or in the future to further difficulties (which may, or may not, appear in orthodox diagnostic terms to be causally or functionally related to previous conditions) and they may well be more severe and more resistant to treatment than the original condition.
This process, called" progressive vicariation", was identified and investigated by the late Hans-Heinrich Reckeweg, and discussed in his book "Homotoxicology".
It is for these reasons that I disagree so profoundly with the doctor whom I mentioned earlier. I think that detoxification is a process in which we should all be engaged all the time -- a basic health precaution of the utmost importance, and a necessary prerequisite for bioresonance and the E AV treatment.