Toxic Dangers & Natural Detox

Natural Detox

Words: Dr Rajgopal NIDAMBOOR 

Exposure to toxic metals and other toxins, which is part of contemporary life, can lead to several health problems. This includes neurological disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease and multiple sclerosis [plaques in the brain and spinal cord], and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder [ADHD] and learning disabilities in children. Besides, it can lead to excessive free radical build-up, which can clog the arteries, and lead to heart disease and cancer, and other illnesses. What can you do to overcome the hazard — naturally?

Try home chelation therapy.

Scientists observe that heavy metal overload has a direct connection to heart disease and stroke too. It is reported that congestive heart failure patients have approximately 20,000 times more mercury and 15,000 times more antimony in their hearts.

Studies blame this on mercury toxicity, which we receive from silver amalgam tooth fillings, a common dental practice, and even from consumption of fish.

Research also suggests that heavy metal exposure, at work, or outside, can lead to chronic fatigue, cancer, and auto-immune disorders, especially in people who are poorly nourished.

This is, of course, a slow process, and you may not even be aware of what’s wrong. So, better watch out for symptoms before they lead to full-blown health affections.

Symptoms 

  • High blood pressure
  • Disturbed bone health
  • Fatigue
  • Anaemia
  • Constipation
  • Gas
  • Skin affections
  • Sleep disorders
  • Emotional disorders
  • Tissue aging; aging, in general
  • Hyperactivity
  • Musculoskeletal pain
  • Tingling sensation in the extremities
  • Learning disabilities in children.

Toxins In The Air 

All of us are exposed to a wide variety of pollutants in the air we breathe — this is yet another inescapable hazard of modern life. This includes —

  • Carbon monoxide and lead from fuel exhaust [This has been reduced in a few countries; but, it persists elsewhere]
  • Hydrocarbons from industrial waste
  • Burning of fossil fuels
  • Radiation leakage from nuclear power plants and radon at home
  • Contaminants found in tap water, including lead, cadmium, industrial chemicals, and pesticides
  • Other chemicals that have seeped through the soil to contaminate water.

Toxins in the air can cause a host of problems — from respiratory and other allergies to lung and other diseases. The list is long.

Mineral Imbalance

One may, likewise, experience, or suffer, from imbalance in minerals, due to accumulation of toxins within the body. This can lead to certain health problems. Here they are — 

  • Allergies
  • Decreased resistance to infection
  • Poor wound healing
  • Anxiety and depression
  • Obesity
  • Low libido, or impotence
  • Joint pains
  • Loss of hair
  • Elevated cholesterol
  • Anaemia
  • Heart problems
  • Raised glucose levels.

Self-Help Guide: Assess Exposure 

Toxins in excess can strongly affect your well-being.

Here’s how you can effectively assess if you have had toxic exposure and/or nutritional imbalance.

If a ‘yes’ corresponds to two, or more, of the following items, you may have excess toxins, or mineral imbalance, in your system.

  • If you use anti-perspiration sprays, lotions, or antacids
  • If you have had metal tooth fillings
  • If you consume seafood regularly
  • If you live, or work, in an industrial setting
  • If you go through the daily grind of being stuck in traffic
  • If you have chronic symptoms of any known, or unknown, illness
  • If you suffer from chronic gastrointestinal symptoms, such as bloating, diarrhoea, or gas
  • If you do not take minimal amounts of vitamin C in diet and/or supplement
  • If you have periodontal [dental] symptoms
  • If you have rough skin, or poor wound healing
  • If you suffer from allergies
  • If you have high blood pressure
  • If you are subject to moody blues
  • If you are not able to concentrate; and, feel that you have memory, or learning, problems
  • If you get infections at the drop of a sneeze and recover at a snail’s pace
  • If you have a reduced sense of taste, or smell, or poor night vision.

If you answer ‘yes’ on most counts, it is time you took immediate stock, and thought of getting treated — naturally.

Oral chelation treatment is one useful way of getting rid of toxins from the body — naturally — without strong medications.

Why Chelation Treatment? 

Many of us have tiny pieces of metal, like mercury in our tooth fillings, for example, or lead, or even iron. They are like land mines, waiting to explode. These tiny pieces of metal are actually toxic, although they are still used in conventional medicine.

It is, however, an established fact that they may cause heart disease and cancer. Just think of it. When a free radical wallops into one of these tiny pieces of toxic metalit can cause a gush of free radicals. A dangerous prospect.

We need to do something quickly.

It is precisely here that a method called oral chelation comes in handy.

What Is Chelation?

You could think of chelation therapy [pronounced, key-lay-shun] as something we do to clear our drainage system. When a drain is clogged, we add a chemical. The substance dissolves the blockage. Soon after, the resulting compound is also removed from the drain through the plumbing system.

Chelation works in the same manner — in our body.

To illustrate a natural example. Green vegetables contain iron. When we consume them, our digestive process releases the iron to which it is bound. Reason: iron needs to be chelated, or combined, with amino acids and carried through the intestinal mucous membranes into the bloodstream.

Another common example you could think of is green tea. When we drink the brew that cheers, with a meal, as is the custom in China, the tannin content in tea will chelate with iron to form iron tannate — a non-soluble compound.

Easy Chelation Home Treatment Plan: Option 1

Do you know there are some easy-to-do chelation programmes that you could do at home — to flush out toxins and/or catch the free radical ‘phantom’ by its neck? Here goes —

  • Maintain two bowel movements per day. If you can’t get it going, you may add psyllium, or isapgol [from the genus, plantago] to your diet
  • You may also use chlorella to remove toxic metals, especially from the connective tissue.

Chlorella is green algae with protein and high levels of chlorophyll. It is one of the purest, most potent forms of food.

  • You can also use garlic, or MSM [methylsulphonylmethane], a natural form of organic sulphur — an essential nutrient — or, cilantro to remove the toxic effects of some metals.

What is more easy and natural is — just use garlic in food. Garlic improves the body’s sulphur reserves, and helps flush out toxins from the body. Sulphur, as you may know, is a good anti-mercury agent.

Clove is also another good purifying agent. Try to eat 2-3 cloves every day.

  • You may also introduce cilantro [a member of the carrot family; it is also referred as Chinese parsley, or coriander] to your diet. Cilantro helps gather mercury and other toxins and throws them out of the body through excretion. Cilantro is available in most grocery stores.

It is also imperative that you take a multi-purpose vitamin supplement, along with the natural detox programme. However, make sure that it contains all the essential nutrients.

Note: It must be mentioned that our body works better with toxic metals than having no metals. Enzymes, as you may know, require metals for them to perform their function. But, excess metals, bordering on toxicity, is not what you, or your body wants. Also, remember — in deficiency states, or when we have depleted reserves of magnesium, sodium, zinc and other minerals, our body clings to these metals, which won’t do us any good.

Natural Garlic-EDTA Chelation Treatment: Option 2 

This is available as an OTC [over-the-counter] formula. Hence, you’d be able to buy them without a prescription. A synthetic amino acid, EDTA [ethylene-diamine-tetra-acetic acid] is a well-known chelating agent. It binds itself to various toxic metals in the blood. The ‘attached’ toxins are, thereafter, flushed from the body through the kidneys.

In addition to its chelating effects, the product also —  

  • Prevents and reduces plaque build-up in the arteries
  • Restores blood flow, and provides oxygen, and nutrients to the tissues and cells
  • Improves heart, brain, kidney, lung and all organ functions
  • Makes bones stronger
  • Reduces cholesterol
  • Improves skin texture and reduces wrinkles [anti-aging]. 

Note: The garlic-EDTA chelator should be supplemented with a complete high-potency multivitamin/multimineral supplement that also includes sufficient amounts of magnesium and zinc.

Most important: Speak to your physician, or better still a doctor who practices chelation therapy. This will help you find out how best you can undergo your self-help oral chelation therapy outlined above, and derive its natural benefits in the best manner possible.

More On Chelation

Chelation has been praised as a useful detox therapy. It flushes out toxins from the body without ill-effects. The therapy also reduces oxidation of lipids, DNA, enzyme systems, and lipoproteins [lipid and protein complex]. In the process, it stops the bad influence of free radicals and helps marshal the body’s healing process, often reversing the damage caused by toxins.

Therapists suggest that adding nutrients to a chelation formula [Ethylene-diamine-tetra-acetic acid {EDTA}, or any of the naturally available chelation agents, such as garlic], has been evidenced to support liver function. It is also said to improve the process of detoxification further.

More importantly, antioxidants within the nutrients, expand the chelation process. They promote healing and prevent free radical damage to the tissues.

In actual practice, more than 30 different antioxidants are added in a given chelation formula to work on free radicals that are formed by a variety of oxidising agents.

Chelation therapy is not without its critics, or detractors. It is recommended that you speak to a physician well versed in the technique, or seek your doctor’s advice whether, or not, to undergo your chelation detox programme.

Dr RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR, PhD, is a wellness physician-writer-editor, independent researcher, critic, columnist, author and publisher. His published work includes hundreds of newspaper, magazine, web articles, essays, meditations, columns, and critiques on a host of subjects, eight books on natural health, two coffee table tomes and an encyclopaedic treatise on Indian philosophy. He is Chief Wellness Officer, Docco360 — a mobile health application/platform connecting patients with Ayurveda, homeopathic and Unani physicians, and nutrition therapists, among others, from the comfort of their home — and, Editor-in-Chief, ThinkWellness360. 

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