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The Art of Purification
How to Completely Detox Harmful Heavy Metals and Chemicals From
Your Body
Medicardium | Safely Cleanse
Heavy Metals Like Mercury | Lead | Aluminum |
Arsenic | Cadmium
| Uranium
and Nickel from the Body With Chelation Therapy
Clemical Toxic Cleansing
EDTA Chelation Therapy
Heavy Metal Detox Supplements
Regularly detoxing heavy metals and chemicals from your body and
environment is a critical core element for creating vibrant,
lifelong health and wellness. these simple but extraordinarily
powerful methods for removing heavy metals from your body will make
a huge difference in your overall quality of life.
The Health Ranger’s Guide to Natural Detoxification
The cost of allowing your body and brain to be systematically
poisoned by heavy metals and chemicals is enormous: increased risks
of disease, deteriorating quality of life, increased medical costs,
loss of cognitive function, and much more. That’s why it makes such
good sense to invest in the knowledge and behavioral strategies
needed to eliminate and avoid heavy metals and the toxins that cause
these costly problems.
However, there’s a lot of misinformation about so-called “detox” in
the natural products and supplements marketplace. One of the most
unfortunate heavy metal detox memes that has emerged over the past
few decades is the idea that detox must be “heroic” to be effective.
This idea says, essentially, that an effective detox can only be
achieved through tremendous suffering and pain.
Usually, this is the narrative offered by companies selling
aggressive
heavy metal detox products made with ingredients like cascara
sagrada, which can cause extreme digestive irritation and diarrhea.
While a little cascara can be quite useful in a holistic formula
that’s also made with supportive, healing herbs, some companies go
too far and formulate their products to cause what they label a
“healing crisis,” a process in which the body attempts to eliminate
toxins and heavy metals faster that it can dispose of, resulting in
a temporary increase in symptoms.
The term “healing crisis” is often used to explain away the fact
that many heavy metal detox products are too aggressive and too
difficult for consumers to endure. The idea that “you have to get
worse before you can get better” is similar to the iron-pumping
slogan “No pain, no gain.”
Both ideas are blatantly false.
In fact, detoxification of heavy metals, chemicals and other wastes
is an everyday biological process that your body has been
automatically achieving from the moment you were conceived. Every
cell in your body has a natural detox process, and your body as a
holistic system is also quite adept at detoxification of heavy
metals and just about anything else for that matter. You have entire
organs dedicated to it: the liver, kidneys, and bladder, to name
three. Lungs are also involved in detoxification, as is your body’s
largest organ, your skin.
Realizing this allows us to step back, calm down, avoid the cascara
sagrada overdose, and think about how to truly support our body’s
own natural ability to remove toxins and chemicals.
Avoidance of Toxins
Because your body is “detoxing” every second, the best strategy
starts with the avoidance of toxins. Although this position won’t
make me popular among heavy metal detox supplement companies, I
believe that the first and foremost strategy for detoxification must
be avoidance.
“Avoidance” means avoiding continued exposure to toxic chemicals and
heavy metals in your food, water, medicine, personal care products,
home-cleaning products, lawn-care products, pet-care products, and
even the air you breathe. Everything you touch, inhale, or consume
becomes a part of your physical body. So removing toxic heavy
metals, chemicals and poisons from your system must begin with
eliminating new exposures to those very poisons.
In fact, the most sound method for what I call “lifetime detox”
works like this:
1. Identify the sources of your exposure to toxic substances.
2. Avoid those substances by reforming your behavior and consumption
choices to break the cycle of repeated exposure to those toxins.
3. Support your body’s natural detoxification and elimination
abilities.
Let’s explore each of these:
Identify: Identifying means educating yourself about all the sources
of exposure to toxic heavy metals and chemicals that are negatively
impacting your health and brain function right now. This step is
especially difficult because all the corporations that are poisoning
you with their toxic medications, toxic food additives, toxic
herbicides, and toxic home-care products are precisely the same
corporations who insist all of their products are safe and even
“green”!
To really get up to speed on this step, you’ll need to learn to read
and understand food labels, educate yourself about hidden toxic
chemicals in personal care products, learn about the toxic additives
and heavy metals hidden in vaccines and medications, and awaken to
the dishonest marketing strategies invoked by corporations to
deceive consumers about the supposed safety of their products.
Avoid: Once you identify the sources of these chemical and heavy
metal toxins, you must then pursue aggressive reforms in your own
behavior and consumption patterns to avoid purchasing or consuming
these products.
To begin, this step will require you to go through your entire home
medicine cabinets, pantry, refrigerator, garage, laundry room, and
so on and throw out the products containing toxic heavy metals
chemicals. Yes, this includes your toxic laundry detergent and dryer
sheets, your toxic cough medicine, your toxic weed killers and bug
sprays, and even your toxic air fresheners (which actually pollute
your air rather than clean it).
This step can sometimes stress marriages, so here’s a tip: If you’re
a woman reading this, and you want to get your husband on board with
the household detox program, just remind him that these toxic
chemicals reduce sperm count, diminish male virility, and interfere
with male hormones (which is true). Tell him that endocrine
disruptors really do promote the “feminization” of males, and
pesticides like atrazine really do cause amphibians to develop dual
sets of sex organs (both male and female). This knowledge might open
your husband’s eyes to a legitimate reason to reduce your household
chemical exposure.
If you’re a man who wants to convince your wife to get on board with
the program, explain to her that corporations have been violating
our bodies with toxic chemicals and heavy metals that aggressively
promote cancers, including breast cancer and ovarian cancer (this is
also true). Suggest that one of the best ways to reduce cancer risk
is to detox the heavy metals and chemicals out of your lives, which
will also reduce future hospitalization expenses and healthcare
costs.
An important strategy here centers around the replacement of toxic
products with non-toxic products. For example, after you throw out
your toxic laundry detergent, you’ll need to discover non-toxic
brands that still clean clothes without saturating them in synthetic
chemicals.(Ecos is my favorite brand of natural laundry detergent.)
Nearly all the toxic soap products in your home can be replaced with
Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps. Toxic air fresheners can be replaced with
essential oil diffusers. Toxic personal care products can be
replaced with organic products made with non-toxic ingredients. For
every toxic product you used to buy, there’s a non-toxic alternative
available today that’s safer, cleaner, and more environmentally
friendly.
The Environmental Working Group, a consumer advocacy organization
that specializes in identifying toxic chemicals, launched an online
database called Skin Deep that provides safety profiles for
cosmetics and personal care products, as well as offers tips on how
to find the best products that are free from chemicals and heavy
metals. EWG scientists compare the ingredients of personal care
product labels to information in nearly sixty toxicity and
regulatory databases, giving consumers the power to protect their
health by choosing clean, non-toxic personal care products and
cosmetics. You can access the profiles and tips at ewg.org/skindeep.
Support: Your body won’t eliminate water-soluble toxins very well if
you’re dehydrated, so drinking plenty of water is the first and
simplest way to support your everyday
heavy metal detox strategy. Physical movement is also key, both
for circulating lymph, which allows your body to expel metabolic
garbage more proficiently, and producing sweat, which eliminates
toxins through your skin. However, when you sweat, many of these
toxins then get absorbed by your clothing. This is why changing your
clothes after a sweaty workout is very important.
It’s also smart to support the healthy function of your detox organs
(liver, kidneys, and digestive system) with medicinal herbs,
superfoods, and other dietary strategies. Herbs such as yarrow,
dandelion, and yellow dock are well known to support liver function.
Superfoods like chlorella help support the body’s natural
elimination of toxic elements through its ability to remove
chemicals and detox heavy metals. Even everyday foods like beets and
white carrots are “liver cleansers” that give the liver added
support to carry out its job. Supporting your body’s detox of toxic
elements and heavy metals also requires boosting your body’s intake
of nutritive elements. Nearly all people living in Western society
today are chronically deficient in vitamin D, zinc, selenium,
magnesium, and many other nutrients. Nutritional supplements that
help restore the balance of those vitamins and minerals in the body
are remarkably safe, effective, and affordable. But the best method
for acquiring minerals is to grow them into your own food, and then
eat that food.
To help support this effort, I launched www.foodrising.org, which
features a revolutionary nonelectric hydroponics grow technology you
can easily build yourself. Using mineral-enhanced plant-food
formulas I developed in my lab (using an Agilent ICP-MS instrument,
a tool capable of detecting metals and nonmetals at very low
levels), you can grow your own lettuce, strawberries, tomatoes, and
other garden vegetables that are exceptionally high in selenium,
zinc, and other trace minerals. By eating or juicing these foods,
you are “supplementing” your body with potent sources of truly
organic (plant-based) forms of these nutritive minerals.
Eliminating Toxins in Household Water
Hydrating our bodies with clean, chemical and heavy metal free,
non-toxic water is equally as important as avoiding toxins found in
food. Unfortunately, tap water contains many impurities and often
times heavy metals, highlighting the need for an optimal water
filter.
I strongly recommend every household be equipped with some sort of
water-filtration device due to the very poor quality of municipal
water. Never drink unfiltered tap water! It contains many toxic
chemicals and often times heavy metals as well, including some that
were not added by the water treatment plant but rather formed in the
pipes as the water made its way to your home. One example would be
chloramines, carcinogenic chemical compounds that form when ammonia
and chlorine are added to treated tap water.
As part of my laboratory investigations into healthy living, I’ve
conducted detailed testing of the ability of commercial water
filters to remove toxic heavy metals.
I tested all the popular gravity water filters, including the Big
Berkey, ProPur, Zen Water Systems, and other brands. All the results
are published on www.waterfilterlabs.com.
The bottom line from the results? The Big Berkey (with fluoride
filters) and Zen Water Systems filters removed the most toxic heavy
metals in our tests. For countertop water filters, the Zerowater
brand did the best job by far. In fact, many cheaper brands of
countertop water filters barely removed any toxic heavy metals at
all. Reverse osmosis (RO) water systems do an excellent job of
removing toxic heavy metals.
I am also the inventor of 3D-printable water-filtration devices that
you can download free and print on most 3D printers. You’ll find
those downloadable water-filter files at
www.foodrising.org.
Use Plants and Air Filters to Clean Your Indoor Air
In addition to filtering your water, you can also remove toxic
elements and chemicals from your indoor air. Indoor air quality is
atrociously bad in newer U.S. homes due to the “green building”
phenomenon. Although it seems counter-intuitive, “green”
construction techniques actually make homes more airtight (and thus,
because of reduced air loss, less expensive to heat and air
condition, which is what most of the “green” claims are based on),
not less toxic.
By making your home more airtight, this construction method also
means toxic chemicals remain at a higher concentration inside your
home. With less outside air mixing with indoor air, there’s nowhere
for toxic off-gassing chemicals to go. That’s why so-called “green
homes” can actually be extremely toxic environments, filled with
VOCs from glues, formaldehyde, plastics, wood varnishes,
home-cleaning chemicals, molds, fungi spores, and more.
There are essentially two ways to eliminate these airborne toxins:
living plants and high-efficiency particulate arresting (HEPA) air
filtration.
Living plants are living air filters. The more plants you have
thriving in your home, the cleaner and more refreshing your indoor
air will be. So make it a goal to invite more living plants into
your home and enjoy their many benefits on your physical and even
emotional health (plants make humans happy!).
Related Content: Read about the top 4 Air Purifying Plants
(according to NASA) for cleaning toxins and chemicals from your home
here.
For serious HEPA air filtration, the best unit on the market today,
to my knowledge, is the IQAir system. It’s European-made and very
expensive, but it works flawlessly, moving a tremendous volume of
air through its HEPA filtration modules.
Personally, I use HEPA filtration in my lab but living plants in my
home.
Avoiding Toxins Where You Live
Another key strategy in avoiding chemical and heavy metal toxins is
choosing to live far from congested cities. It’s no exaggeration to
say that if you’re living in Los Angeles, you’re inhaling tens of
millions of microscopic pollution particles each day. If you live in
Mexico City, it’s far worse.
Living in cities subjects you to pollution sources you may have
never considered. For example, vehicle brake pads often contain
cadmium a potent heavy metal that needs detoxification. Walking
along the sidewalk of a busy street quite literally results in you
inhaling trace levels of cadmium with every breath.
Lead is still used in the aviation fuel used by most small aircraft.
(The fuel is called 100LL, in which “LL” stands for “Low Lead.”) If
you live underneath a common approach or departure path of small
aircraft, you are literally having microscopic lead particles
dropped on your yard and house any time aircraft are directly
overhead, that you need to regularly be detoxing to keep your body
free of heavy metals.
Chemically ignorant municipal decision makers may also subject you
to toxic chemical fumigation by spraying your entire neighborhood
with malathion or other mosquito-deterrent chemicals. City workers
are also known to spray toxic glyphosate (Roundup) to kill weeds on
sidewalks, curbs, and city streets, subjecting you to an extremely
toxic substance that has been linked to cancer at parts per billion
concentrations.
The only reliable way to control your environment and dramatically
reduce your exposure to heavy metal toxins and chemicals is to get
out of the city. Move out to the country and buy as much land as you
can to have buffer space between yourself and your chemically
ignorant neighbors who still probably douse their weeds with
cancer-causing chemicals. Buying a buffer zone is really the best
strategy, because you can only truly control the land that you own.
Defensive Eating
The avoidance of dietary toxins and chemicals can be significantly
enhanced through the defensive eating strategies covered in this
book that help your body to detoxify heavy metals. By consuming
chlorella (an extremely nutritious green algae), strawberries, fruit
fibers, or even activated charcoal at the same time you are eating a
meal with a high likelihood of containing toxic heavy metals and
substances, you can “bind up” those toxins, push them through your
digestive tract, and avoid absorbing them into your blood and
tissues.
I won’t eat at a restaurant without bringing a bottle of chlorella
with me. I never eat meat unless it’s accompanied by a fresh salad
or whole fruit. Interestingly, the Southern tradition of eating
barbecued meat with coleslaw coincides with this same advice: The
cabbage in the slaw helps block the absorption of heavy metals and
prevent the carcinogenic effects of the charred meats. Vitamin C
found in fresh fruits creates yet more of a protective effect during
digestion. That’s why people who say things like, “It’s unhealthy to
eat barbecued meats” really only grasp half the picture. In truth,
it’s only unhealthy to eat such meats if they are consumed alone,
without the chemical and heavy metal protective benefits of fresh
fruits and vegetables.
One of the simplest things you can do when eating questionable meals
is to take extra fiber supplements. The best choice for this, in
terms of ability to bind with toxic elements and detox heavy metals
and chemicals, is apple fiber. As it turns out, apple fiber
supplements are very inexpensive and readily available.
Detoxing From Bad Fats
How do you eliminate the toxic effects of bad fats you’ve consumed
in the past? The simplest answer is also the most scientifically
sound: Start eating good fats, and they will eventually replace the
bad fats.
It really is that simple. Every cell in your body consists of a
membrane made with fat molecules. But those molecules aren’t stuck
there for life; they are eliminated and rebuilt quite frequently,
using whatever fat molecules are found in your blood at the time. If
your blood is circulating fats from low quality cheese, onion rings,
and genetically modified soybean oil, then all your body’s cells
will have membranes made from the same garbage. But if your blood is
circulating fats from avocados, chia seeds, clean fish oils and high
omega-3 oils, then all your body’s cells get a boost in health as a
result.
If you want to change your body, I’ve always said, change your blood
first. And if you want to change what’s in your blood, change what
you eat.
Detoxing From Heavy Metals
Eliminating heavy metals from your body can be significantly more
challenging than a chemical detox. There’s evidence that mercury,
for example, can almost never be fully eliminated from brain tissue.
This is a good reason, by the way, to completely avoid all vaccines
that contain thimerosal as a preservative. It’s made from mercury,
and it’s still used in vaccines sold in the United States (despite
the myth being circulated that falsely claims mercury was removed
from all vaccines).
Heavy metals are difficult to detox and remove once they become
embedded in tissues. Just as mercury clings to neural tissue, lead
gets “stuck” in skeletal tissue (your bones). Once lead is
integrated into your bone tissue, it’s almost impossible to
eliminate it unless you undergo hormonal changes that lead to an
erosion of bone mass. This is why many elderly women can experience
lead poisoning even when they have had no recent exposures to lead:
The heavy metal is literally coming out of their bones.
The difficulty of eliminating and detoxing heavy metals from body
tissues and organs underscores the importance of avoidance. Your
first defense against heavy metals is to avoid exposure. Your second
defense is to block them during digestion with formulas such as the
one I invented and patented called Heavy Metals Defense. It’s made
of an ion-ex-change material, derived from selected seaweeds, which
efficiently binds with lead, cadmium, mercury, and other toxic heavy
metals. When taken during a meal, it can bind with those substances
during digestion, supporting your body’s natural elimination process
that shuttles these substances out of your body through digestive
elimination.
If you don’t have specialized formulas like Heavy Metals Defense,
eating more whole fruits and vegetables with every meal can go a
long way toward blocking the absorption of heavy metals and
detoxifying them from your body.
Health Foods That Are High in Heavy Metals
Beware of the hidden sources of heavy metals in many foods and
beverages that are considered “healthy.” Many tea products are
shockingly high in lead and fluoride. Tea is generally viewed as a
healthy beverage, which may lead many people to mistakenly believe
all teas are “clean” when it comes to heavy metals. They aren’t.
As I also documented, many organic foods and superfoods can be
surprisingly high in toxic heavy metals. As a general rule, anything
imported from China, India, or Thailand has a much higher risk of
being contaminated than foods from North America, Europe, New
Zealand, or many South American countries like Bolivia. In my lab,
I’ve seen alarmingly high levels of lead in mangosteen powder, and
almost all spices from India are consistently contaminated with
lead. China’s agricultural sector is widely contaminated with heavy
metals, so almost anything you get from China is immediately
suspect.
On the good news side, however, fresh foods grown in the United
States and sold at local grocery stores were found to be quite
clean. Local farmers’ markets in North America or Europe are likely
to offer foods with very low levels of toxic heavy metals.
Purchasing and eating more of these foods is a smart way to avoid
toxic heavy metals in your diet and detoxify heavy metals from your
body in general.
Infrared Saunas and Sweat Lodges
One other option for healthy
chemical and heavy metal detox is infrared saunas. These saunas
can be extraordinarily useful but only if these two conditions are
met:
1. The sauna must cause your body to produce sweat. If there’s no
sweat, there isn’t much health benefit; the chemical and heavy metal
toxins aren’t exiting your body.
2. You must wash off the sweat immediately after exiting the sauna.
(Otherwise, the chemical and heavy metal toxins can be reabsorbed
through your skin.)
Some people are fans of sweat lodges, which sometimes combine
fasting with heat-induced delirium that’s marketed as a spiritual
experience. After the death of two sweat lodge customers a few years
ago in a “spiritual journey” retreat, more people have come to
realize just how dangerous it can be to torment your body in the
hopes of detoxing it of heavy metals and other impurities. The key
to staying safe is to limit your time in the heat to fifteen minutes
or less per session.
The bottom-line truth I hope you remember in all of this is: heavy
metal detoxification doesn’t have to hurt. It should never involve
diarrhea, hallucinations, or intense cramping. You don’t have to
suffer to heal. In fact, the best way to detox your body of heavy
metals and chemicals is to pursue cleansing diligently but
patiently, allowing time to work in your favor as your body does
what it already knows how to do: heal itself from within.
Read more...
Balanced Health Today
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Kahului, Hi 96732
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