Clean: The Revolutionary Program to Restore the Body's Natural Ability to Heal Itself (5 page)

One type of cell on the planet, the human cell, is behaving erratically, killing its own kind and every other type of cell. This cell has eating habits that are very different from those of all other cells. The human cell manufactures toxic chemicals that are mixed with food and used for many other functions as well as released into the circulation, through which they kill other cells even in distant places. The human cell reproduces fast and disregards the natural laws of population density, space, and food supply. Humans are cutting down all of Earth’s trees and clogging up Earth’s lungs. The balance has tipped: toxins, greenhouse gases among them, are accumulating faster than Earth’s ability to neutralize and eliminate them. Toxicity is killing us and the planet. The planet has cancer, and we are it. This is what I call “another inconvenient truth.”

My question was finally answered at the cellular level. My cells had never forgotten how to do their chemistry. They were actually desperately trying to do it. But the toxic chemicals I was consuming in my food and exposed to living in a large urban center such as New York had changed the inner climate. Many of these toxins were obstacles to normal cell functioning, causing irritation and inflammation. Toxins had damaged cells and tissues, and many systems had started to malfunction. My body’s natural ability to heal itself was further weakened because the chemicals needed for cells to do their chemistry, the nutrients from foods, were no longer present in sufficient amounts.

Starting with my guts and going all the way to my brain, these changes presented as symptoms that matched two lists from the “diagnosis” menu, depression and irritable bowel syndrome. More chemicals were prescribed, which I refused to take. Instead, I had finally found a way to remove these obstacles and provide what was missing, so my cells could do their chemistry. That is what happened in my case, through detoxification and cleansing. I finally connected the dots.

From the way I was feeling and looking, I knew that my cells were getting straight A’s in their chemistry reports. But I also knew that some of them had gone beyond and were not doing chemistry anymore—this was alchemy.

Toxicity: The Making of a Diagnosis

Doctors who are really good at finding the cause of symptoms are called “great diagnosticians.” One such doctor once told me, “We usually end up finding what we are looking for, but we only look for what we already know.”

The toxic attack we are under is so evident to me now. But during my training days in New York hospitals, despite suffering greatly and desperately looking for solutions, I never heard or read about global toxicity as a health hazard. I cannot understand how Western medicine continues to be blind to its existence and its contribution to disease. It was a revelation I stumbled upon outside of the hospital setting, and it allowed me to restore my own well-being beyond what I believed possible after all my study and years of training.

It’s not surprising that I didn’t know about this earlier. Toxicity continues to be a condition that modern medicine barely registers. When the word is used in hospital settings, it describes cases of acute poisoning (such as when a child accidentally ingests hazardous chemicals or someone takes too much of a certain prescription drug) or getting off alcohol or drugs. And when asked about detox from the Clean perspective, many physicians discard it as quackery. Doctors who are skeptical about the value of detox programs such as Clean will argue that there is nothing in “the literature” to support it. What they mean is that when you search the medical database, you find no scientific studies or published research on such detox programs.

Databases only contain what the editors decide to include, making them biased toward Western medical studies with Western protocols. This perpetuates and strengthens the status quo, which too often discards valuable approaches like chelation as anecdotal or quackery. Furthermore, the research game is biased before it begins. The cost of large-scale double-controlled placebo studies makes pharmaceutical companies the only ones that can afford to fund them. If there is no wonder drug with revenue potential in question, there are usually no funds for research. It is not good for business to prove that vegetables and fruits can be the most powerful medicine. But the new field of Functional Medicine is rapidly filling this void by validating a new database of its own design, taking into consideration the multidimensional matrix of influences that play a role in health. Functional Medicine is the perfect blend of Eastern thinking and Western technology, and the results are great.

Toxicity is not a disease or one specific symptom. It is a condition that exists right now, one we are responsible for and one that is threatening the planet and all life. I use the word toxicity to describe the wider, low-grade state that, to one degree or another, everyone who breathes today’s air, eats today’s food, and lives in today’s cities, suburbs, or rural areas is experiencing inside.

Toxicity can manifest as many different symptoms. It can also show no symptoms at all. Regardless of whether you notice it or not, there is no escaping its reach. And to different degrees, everyone is paying the price.

Toxicity, as I present it to you in Clean, is a problem that reveals an evolutionary glitch. Evolution is what happens as organisms adapt and overcome obstacles and threats. Driven by the instinct for survival, organisms grow wings, develop ridiculously long necks, or learn how to transform certain chemicals into others. The human body has developed a very effective and incredibly sophisticated system of organs and functions that complement each other in the effort to achieve one sole purpose—to detoxify. Somehow our physical body has evolved just right. But that evolutionary state must be helped by our thinking and behavior.

The evolutionary glitch I am referring to stems from the fact that, despite an exponential increase in the exposure to and damage by toxins in modern life, our modern “lifestyle” has slowed down the single most important evolutionary tool that was so intelligently designed for our bodies. Our thinking and habits need to evolve or our bodies will die of dust while we hold a state-of-the-art vacuum cleaner in our hands. To help you understand how to plug in and use that vacuum cleaner effectively is the purpose of Clean.

Toxins that cannot be eliminated in a timely manner remain in circulation, causing irritation and damage. Cells and tissues trap these toxins and coat them with mucus in an attempt to buffer the irritation. This survival mechanism, like inflammation, is life-saving for a while, but can turn fatal when turned on continuously for a prolonged time.

In Eastern traditions, one of the first things practitioners check is the ability of the body to eliminate toxins. Indian Ayurvedic doctors or Chinese medicine practitioners immediately hunt for clues to toxic-waste retention or accumulation. They look for signs like dullness in the skin, white coating on the tongue, or gray, yellow, or pink tones in the whites of the eyes. They want to know if you have regular bowel movements, urinate a lot or a little, and when and how much you sweat. Their traditions, thousands of years old, consider the ability to detoxify—to eliminate toxic waste and toxic thought and emotion—as the “root” source of your physical and mental health. The loss of this ability helps explain why you might have allergies, headaches, constipation, nightmares, fertility problems, and unidentifiable pain among a host of other ailments.

Toxicity is not a new problem. Long before we added the burden of humanmade chemicals to our bodies, toxic buildup could occur from eating too much, especially too many heavy or hard to digest foods, and eating under stress. In Europe and America, there were early proponents of cleansing who taught that damage to the intestinal tract from overeating and ingesting refined foods was the main cause of disease affecting civilized, affluent society. They called the condition that resulted “autointoxication.” Some of them, like the famous turn-of-the-century naturopath Arnold Ehret, put his patients on a “mucus-less” diet to promote health and longevity, which was his form of the Elimination Diet, which you will experience as part of Clean. These pioneers and all those after them who taught natural healing methods understood that the digestive and detoxification systems are well engineered to keep us healthy, but they must be kept in balance. As you will discover, even basic foods, when not well digested and eliminated, can create a polluted inner state. This can then harm the whole balance of health—even before humanmade chemicals enter the picture.

Western medicine had this understanding in the past. Many older people will tell you how their family doctor would dose them with castor oil when they were sick in bed, because a big expulsion of toxins could be enough to alleviate the sickness and start recovery. Colonic rooms used to be standard in hospitals at the turn of the century. In the rush to make medical care more “advanced” and more profitable, basic wisdom—and low-cost, drug-free protocols—got dropped. But they’re needed now more than ever. If you live in today’s environment but never pay attention to good detoxification, you end up like a tree that has been growing by a busy highway for years, absorbing smog, dirty water, and the stress of loud cars going by. You end up polluted and wilted, with dull, spindly leaves.

No matter how you look at it, understanding what toxins are, where they are, how they affect your health, and what to do about them in a safe way may save your life, and if things don’t change dramatically soon, this understanding may be needed to save life on Earth, and ultimately Earth’s life.

What Is a Toxin?

A toxin is something that interferes with normal physiology and negatively impacts bodily function. Toxins are of many different kinds, with totally different qualities, from an infinite number of different sources; just as varied are the complex mechanisms by which they cause irritation and damage.

Some toxins, known as endotoxins, are waste products from the normal activity of cells. Uric acid, ammonia, lactic acid, and homocysteine fall in this category. When these toxins build up, they cause diseases. Some are very specific; for example, when uric acid lingers, it causes gout.

Exotoxins, or xenobiotics, are humanmade toxins that we are exposed to intentionally or inadvertently. Thousands of chemicals are being invented every year. These chemicals, alone or in combination, may cause disruption of the normal cell function. Throughout the following chapters, Clean will continually point out the toxins you need to be aware of (including specific names), where they are, and how to measure them. It will also describe how these toxins affect your health and what you can do to prevent disease or repair the damage that has been already done

Where Are Toxins Located?

The Four Skins

Studies now show that every person living today carries measurable levels of several hundred synthetic chemicals in his or her body. These contaminants did not exist prior to the twentieth century and have no role in our body chemistry. It is safe to assume that all of us are burdened with a toxic load from exposure to synthetic substances: pesticides, phthalates, mercury, trans-fatty acids, benzene, trihalomethanes. Exotoxins have names scary enough to make any smart person want to avoid them. The evidence is now undeniable that what we don’t know can hurt us. It’s estimated that the average American comes into contact with thousands of potentially harmful chemicals every day.

To understand the way we are exposed to toxins, it is useful to imagine four layers separating our inner chemistry from the rest of the universe, as if we had four skins.

THE FIRST SKIN

The first skin is what separates our blood, tissues, and organs from the outside world; it is the outermost edge of our physical bodies, just one layer of cells thick. To the naked eye, it may seem like a barrier, deceptively leading to a sense of separation, even protection. But under the microscope, things become less clear, since the first skin is in constant motion, selecting from the environment what to reject and what to actively capture and absorb. It also discards to the outside what we don’t want or need inside anymore. The first skin uses two types of cells to form our body surfaces, depending on the location.

Epithelial cells. We see epithelial cells (dry, tough) at a simple glance. They form what we commonly call skin. When this part of our first skin gets sick, we visit a dermatologist. The major source of toxins entering through this skin are the cosmetics and toiletries we use. Think of everything you rub or spray onto your skin on purpose. Do you read the labels? You should think of cosmetics as food. Ideally, you should only use cosmetics that you feel safe eating, because, just like food, they will end up circulating in your blood. Your choice of products should be guided more by the ingredients list than the promised effect. This information is no secret. Doctors use creams, gels, and ointments to deliver many prescription drugs into the blood through the skin.

Dyes, fragrances, foaming agents, heavy metals as stabilizers and texturizers, tanners, inks, alcohols, and hundreds of other potential poisons are frequently included in cosmetic formulas. Nail products, hair products, deodorants—all the ordinary products in your bathroom cabinet and makeup kit as well as the ones in your neighborhood beauty salon and nail spa have chemical compounds that don’t exist in nature. They can cause irritation, allergies, and sensitivities, just like food. Endocrine-system disruptions are problems linked to a group of chemicals found in skin and hair products called parabens. Many deodorants contain aluminum to stop you from sweating. They give you a double whammy, introducing one more chemical into the circulation while shutting down your pores, which were originally designed to eliminate toxins.

The water we shower with is absorbed through the skin and ends up in our circulatory systems, just like the water we drink. Most city-supplied water has some amount of chlorine, which was used upstream to prevent bacteria from growing. It makes for a bacteria-free shower, but contributes to bacterial genocide in the intestines. Recent reports reveal that your shower and tap water may contain increasingly detectable levels of most of the popular prescription medications such as antidepressants, antibiotics, hormones, and immunosuppressants.