ARE YOU POISONED?
“Sola dosis facit venenum – the dose makes the poison”
Paracelsus, 16th century physician
In 1962, John F. Kennedy proclaimed the third week of March as National Poison Prevention Week. This week has been promoted by poison centres in Canada since the 1980s. In 2017, a proclamation on poisoning by President Donald J. Trump reported that there were 27 childhood deaths per year due to accidental poisoning. While this kind of poisoning certainly matters, it is important to remember that we are all a little bit poisoned every day.
In 2018, the average human body contains over 200 things that should not be there. This includes lead, mercury, cadmium, arsenic and other toxic metals. It also includes plastics, pesticides, PCBs, antibiotics in fish, hormones in chicken and antidepressants in drinking water. The list goes on, and while it may seem a bit depressing, it leads to an important message.
The hundreds of chemicals that don’t belong in your body are likely causing you harm. While our focus at Seekers has been on healing the brain, these poisons affect every part of the body. There are studies on the effects of each individual toxin on the body, but science has no way to measure the damage done by all 200 at once. If you suffer from pain or fatigue, if you have trouble with your memory or concentration, if you suffer from depression or anxiety, asthma or allergies, heart disease or diabetes, cancer or Alzheimer’s, these poisons are almost certainly playing a role.
The damage done by low-level poisoning is more obvious in some people than others. In most cases, this is not because they are more poisoned than the rest of us. It is because they have become hypersensitive to one or more of these poisons. This leads them to react in bizarre ways that doctors usually cannot diagnose or treat.
My medical career has been focused on treating blockages, which are left over from previous injuries or trauma. These hidden scars create disturbances in the nervous system, creating restrictions in tissue that create pain. Blockages also affect lymphatic drainage and blood supply, which can hinder the body’s efforts to eliminate these poisons. While they were first described by the Chinese thousands of years ago, I did not learn about them in medical school. That is because are completely unknown to modern medical science. And I want to change that.
Our immune system evolved to distinguish between self and non-self. The hundreds of chemicals in your body affect the immune system in every person. Sometimes the effects are obvious, but in most cases they are silent.
Even if you are one of the few people left who feel perfectly fine and have no health issues at all, the poisons in your body are probably shortening your life. Many pollutants are linked to cancers, even in trace amounts. There are harmful particulates in the air in every city, including ours, that damage arteries and cause heart attacks and strokes. Endocrine disruptors are partly responsible for the diabetes epidemic. Another depressing list, another important message.
While we should continue our efforts to prevent dangerous sudden and acute poisonings, there is a far bigger problem that our society needs to address. It is time to start preventing the poisoning that affects us all. Those who can afford it should consider investing in air filters, water purifiers, organic food and non-toxic cosmetics and cleaning products. Some may even take detox supplements, do lymphatic massage, colon cleanses and sauna therapy. IV chelation therapy is the first medical detox therapy to be rigorously tested in clinical trials. The TACT2 study that we are supporting will hopefully confirm that this treatment saves lives.
Those of us who are on tight budgets can tackle the poisons in our bodies in other ways. Eating beans and lentils instead of meat is one way to detox that will also save you money. Walking in nature will give you clean air and exercise and make you sweat. Fasting for a day or two each month is a great way to detoxify yourself and save money. These are just a few simple things that anyone can do to improve their health, regardless of their income.
Taking steps to detoxify yourself is important, but we cannot stop there. We need to work towards eliminating these poisons together. Humanity is in the early stages of a paradigm shift. We are waking up to the fact that we as individuals need to take action to create the world we want for our grandchildren and their grandchildren. And one of the most important things we have to do as a species is to clean up the world.