The Healing Response

Our Stressful World

We live in a contaminated world where toxins are present in many forms.

We contaminate our bodies through our eating habits, addictive substances, medicinal and recreational drugs, environmental chemicals, and stress at the physical, mental and emotional levels.

All toxins create stress and deplete our energy resources.

Besides this there are the unwanted yeasts and bacteria present when we eat high sugar, refined, acid-forming and low mineral foods.

These foods help unwanted guests such as toxins excreted from bacteria, virus, and fungus replication in your body, thrive and create endotoxins further adding to the toxic stress.

What’s more many people are sensitive to gluten, dairy, and isolated soy and these can contribute to leaky gut syndrome and other digestive issues.

Once our digestive system is compromised so is our immune system.

Cleansing is not the body’s first priority. So when we lack the energy to cleanse toxins build up in our body often at very deep levels.

What’s more in an attempt to keep the toxins away from our heart and brain, our body encapsulates them in fat—another unwanted guest.

Energy maintains our life force. Keeping our heart pumping and our lungs breathing so that our brain and the rest of our body get enough oxygen are the first priority of our life energy. Detoxification is way down on the list.

But any time you make a positive change to your lifestyle and eating habits, or when you withdraw from addictive substances, medicinal and recreational drugs or begin to eliminate environmental toxins, instead of using energy to “fight” the invaders, your body can now use this energy to get rid of what’s already in us that we don’t want.

But there is an even more fundamental component to energy production that has only been discovered within the past thirty years.

They are called redox signaling molecules. At birth we have a full component of these molecules. At age 70 we are down to 10%.

Besides naturally declining with age, it appears that toxins from all the sources mentioned above may affect these molecules.

Since they are fundamental in the energy production of the mitochondria of EVERY one of our 50 trillion cells, you can understand why they are a critical component to the functioning of every tissue and organ in the body.

The Magic Formula

Cleansing is a natural force. It’s part of the equation: Nourish + Cleanse = Balance.

Balance or homeostasis is our fundamental nature and if we are out of balance, so is our life force.

So you can see cleansing is essential to your well-being, vitality, longevity and quality of life.

The Cleansing Process

Today it is well recognized in both the conventional and complimentary medical fields that the body along with the emotions and mind become ill when they don’t have the energy to expel or cleanse chemical, bacteria, virus, fungus or the stress from negative thoughts and emotions.

That means many people experience mild to severe discomfort when they begin a healing program to reduce or eliminate drugs, drug residue and environmental toxins from their body.

It can even happen when they make healthier food choices or eliminate foods to which they are allergic or sensitive.

There is a name for the uncomfortable “illness” symptoms that show up during cleansing: the Herxheimer reaction!

Here’s what it is: You may feel worse before feeling better.

This phenomenon, also called a healing crisis or die off, was first described over a hundred years ago by Adolf Jarisch, and a few years later by Karl Herxheimer.

They were two doctors treating syphilitic lesions on the skin of their patients, and they noticed that in response to treatment, many patients’ illness symptoms intensified before improving.

In fact, they found that those patients, whose uncomfortable reactions to treatment were the strongest, healed the best and fastest.

Rather than being a bad sign, it’s important to recognize the symptoms as a good sign and realize that your body has begun to “clean house”.

It finally has the strength to get rid of those things that were keeping your life force down.

Sometimes our excretory organs release the toxins and “clean house” faster than our body can easily handle at the time, so this can create symptoms such as:

• Skin eruptions including acne
• Sore throat
• Headaches including migraines
• Itchy skin
• Muscle and joint aches and pains—flu like symptoms
• Vaginal discharge and itching
• Fatigue and weakness
• Swollen glands
• Nausea
• Constipation, bloating, or diarrhea
• Low grade fever
• Depression

When this happens stick with it.

Give yourself the opportunity to heal. You could cut back on your healing program for a short time, but NEVER stop AND don’t go back to the bad habits that contributed to the situation in the first place. Your body wants to get rid of all its toxins. It naturally wants to be in balance.

So does your mind and your emotions.

Don’t get discouraged if you find yourself as sick, if not sicker than before. On the other hand some people feel better in some ways.

The good news is, when this healing reaction is over, you will feel stronger and better than ever!

Give your body time. It could take as little as a few days, or as long as a few months depending on the depth and level of issues in your body.

The end result will be a healthier in tune body, clearer focus, and greater vitality and peace.

In the meantime, here are some tips that will help you through this time:

As mentioned earlier when your body starts to cleanse, your bowels may stop moving and just at the time you need them to eliminate efficiently, they don’t.

• Eat a little less than usual, but drink more fluids. Drink plenty of pure water, and warm healing herbal teas. Avoid black tea and coffee.

• Make an infusion (tea) of any of these herbs to ease constipation: licorice, dandelion, ginger, and yellow dock. Drink three to four cups each day. This will help keep your small intestine and colon moving. Prunes, raisins, apples and berries added to your diet will help. In many cases just adding fiber and fluids to the diet will fix the problem. Soluble fibers are found in fruits, vegetables and seeds or non gluten grains such as rice quinoa, millet, chia, uncontaminated oats, teff, and amaranth will help keep the intestine working smoothly. Avoid the gluten grains: wheat, contaminated oats, barley, rye, spelt, kamut, and triticale. It is estimated that 75-80% of the population are sensitive or intolerant to gluten. When you are again full of energy introduce some of the ancient grains such as spelt, kamut, barley, rye and uncontaminated oats. Wheat has been so hybridized with increased gluten which is why so many people are sensitive to it.

• Eat as many alkaline meals as possible, especially during the beginning of a cleansing process.

• Eat warming foods like miso soup, vegetable broths made from real vegetables and not powdered ingredients, and cream soups without dairy.

• Take a good probiotic. BioK is excellent and available at most grocery stores. They now have a rice variety which is gluten free as well as dairy and soy varieties. Another probiotic that has multiple guaranteed live strains is Natren. It’s available in dairy and dairy free versions at most health food stores.

• Be kind to yourself. Allow your body’s natural healing to take time.

• Avoid stressful situations.

• Find someone to talk to. We all need support and understanding but especially when we are healing.