Principle 2: Getting Toxins Out (Part A)

If you are ill from a non-genetic disease, the truth is that your immune system is not doing its job fighting off pathogens. As we’ve discussed, 90-95% of cancer is caused by toxins overwhelming our immune systems. Many disease conditions, including auto-immune, improve drastically after removing toxins. If toxins bind to places good things are supposed to bind to, they gum up the works and your body will be out of balance. To let our bodies heal themselves, it is important our detoxification organs (liver, kidneys, lungs, skin) are strong and clean and doing their job. Fat stores toxins and toxins such as obeseogens, can cause us to store excess fat in a vicious cycle. We need to not only avoid toxins, we need to get the toxins we have accumulated over our lifetime out.

We change the oil and filter in our car regularly to keep it running well. When our vacuum cleaner bags or pool filters get full, we empty them out. When you see what comes out, aren’t you glad you did? Why should our bodies be different? We put all sorts of crap into it for years. We are walking bags of accumulated toxins. Doesn’t it make sense that our organ systems could benefit from a good cleansing? That if we routinely cleansed to get all the gunk out of the nooks and crannies, they could work more efficiently and be in a better position to help us withstand toxic treatments and/or to heal?  A proper detox can reset your hormones and restore health.

My scrappy little junkyard dog

Written October, 2012 – Soon after diagnosis of stage 4 and just before starting chemo and radiation

I dedicate this entry to my liver. What it has weathered throughout my life to get me this far is miraculous… a two-year bout with Hepatitis B, three bouts of malaria, liver trauma and near shutdown from taking the pill, two exotic strains of amoebic dysentery who probably still inhabit it, liver flukes, a lifetime of iron overload from hemochromatosis, the detox from a dozen surgeries and associated pharmaceutical poisons. Not to mention the alcohol and recreational toxins our culture enjoys in excess when we’re young and less than wise. : )

It’s been bloodied and scarred with one eye poked out but it’s licking its paws… my scrappy little junkyard dog, still protecting me fiercely. It has metastatic lesions on it and needs to care for itself but now, more than ever, its ability to filter and process toxins is vital to my existence. The role of the liver in cancer is large. Its ability to protect us from the carcinogens we are exposed to daily on such massive scales could very well be one of the most crucial factors of whether someone gets cancer. In Chinese medicine, every organ is paired with another. The liver is paired with the breast. Is it coincidence that the cancer that attempted to ravage my body is breast cancer?

My little fighter has taken a beating, but for the rest of my body’s sake, keeps plugging away to protect us. Now I’m subjecting it to unimaginable poisons? My daily potions and rituals include lots of care for him. I bend down to thank him. He licks my hand and wags his tail… my scrappy little junkyard dog.

The devils inside

In my book, Whatever Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Strong, I outline my discovery of the perfect storm that happened in my body to create a bioterrain where cancer was able to thrive. My discovery of iron overload was part of the storm but I discovered parasites played a role as well. This story shows the role parasites can play in health and sets the stage for parasite and liver cleanses.

In addition to detoxifying my body, I had been researching and ingesting substances that cultures around the world have been using for hundreds, if not thousands, of years to combat cancer. Someone handed me a list of kidney, parasite, liver, and colon cleanses from Dr. Hulda Clark from Germany. The list didn’t state that there was an order to the cleanses. I wondered where the hell I was going to get some of the ingredients (gravel root, uva ursi, marshmallow root, black walnut hull made from green walnuts harvested on the full moon!) I decided to try the liver cleanse which consisted of things already in my kitchen… Epsom salts, grapefruit juice, and olive oil.

I followed directions but did not get the desired result of green ‘stones’ expelled from my liver. See, you cleanse your colon with the Epsom salts, do the liver cleanse, cleanse your colon again, and what comes out next is from your liver because there is nothing in your system. I got orange paste. I tried again. Orange paste again. I found a hotline for Hulda Clark cleanses and called.

They said I must not have done the parasite cleanse first. By then, I had found a source for an easy parasite cleanse. It had the three necessary ingredients to kill all stages of most parasites that infest humans…. black walnut hull, clove, and wormwood. It’s important to take all three because you don’t want to just kill the adults then have the eggs and adolescents survive to reinfest you.

Two pills, 3x a day for two weeks. My son and I were travelling together in Chile. It was one of the rare times when I could monitor what went into his mouth 24/7, so he did it as well. His mood and powers of concentration improved greatly. Natural methods of treating his ADHD always appealed to me.

I did another liver cleanse and still did not get green stones. I did, however, cross into the Twilight Zone. The toilet bowl was full of little transparent leaves! Looking closely (don’t be grossed out, remember that what you are seeing is only from your liver and so it is not ‘poo’ per se), I saw that the leaves had a seed in the middle of them. I shook my head, completely confused.

I had ordered Dr. Clark’s book before I left. Upon my return, I did my fourth liver cleanse. The next morning, while waiting to see what came out, I started reading it. She launched right into her theory of cancer. Dr. Clark has her skeptics. But I had lost a bit of faith in published research anyway as it can be so often tainted by ego, greed, and outright deception. Since western medicine did not have safe, effective options for me, I had decided that if a credible person told me that something alternative worked for them, I would keep an open mind. I had met people who recommended her methods. So, I read.

What she said fascinated me. Allow me to paraphrase. She said she had never encountered anyone with cancer that didn’t have sheep liver flukes in their liver and intestines. They don’t normally infest humans as they cannot complete their life cycle in us. They need to complete it in the snail. A snail slimes your lettuce and leaves the eggs behind (one reason you should always wash your veggies, even if organic or from your own garden). If a person has leaky gut syndrome, the eggs can escape into the blood stream and travel to the liver.

If one has a compromised liver, its immune functions are suppressed and they can set up shop and progress to the next stage. Then, egg bodies leave the liver in search of benign growths where immune functions are suppressed (cysts, warts, etc.) and set up for the next phase… reproduction. In order to reproduce, these egg bodies emit a chemical growth factor which, according to Dr. Clark, initiates mitotic cell division which the surrounding human tissue imitates and voila! Cancer… uncontrolled cell division.

Now bear with me, I am not saying that Dr. Clark’s theory of cancer is right. It needs to be tested under scientifically acceptable circumstances. But just listen to my story for a while longer… I wondered what these flukes looked like. I turned the page, saw a drawing, and there was what had come out of my intestines by the hundreds, after my last liver cleanse, after the parasite cleanse!

Shaped like a leaf, there was a dark, nuclear body in the center. You can call her a quack all you want, but I had cancer popping up all over and I clearly had had liver flukes so there’s something to her theory. A recent study showed that many Vietnam vets suffering from cancer are also suffering from an infestation of liver flukes they contracted during the war. Additionally, Artemesinin, or wormwood, is a known anti-cancer agent. Food for thought.

The Epsom salts were doing their job and I ran to the toilet to see what came out of my liver now that the parasites were gone. Dozens of large, green stones! I chose two of the largest, most beautiful ones, put them in a jewelry box, took them to a dinner party, and exhibited the new “emeralds I had purchased in Chile.” Before I could stop her, my friend grabbed them and held them to her ear. She exclaimed that they would make beautiful earrings! I explained that they had come out of my intestinal system (granted, a clean intestinal system) so she may not wish to do that. She had no problem returning them.

Some claim that these ‘stones’ are gallstones and contain toxins so it is a powerful way to detox as well as prevent gallstone surgery. Naysayers cry bull and say it is just olive oil. In fact, my ‘stones’ disintegrated into powder and a greasy stain after months (so much for earrings.) and studies have found that olive oil is in these excreted ‘stones.’ So, they aren’t clearing out existing stones.

But let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water here. They have also found cholesterol and bile in them. Perhaps … they are forming ‘stones’ around detritus that is gumming up your bile ducts. The way the cleanse works is that fasting and Epsom salts clean out your intestinal system. The olive oil is a fat, thus processed by your liver and goes straight there. The citrus acts on the liver like a hand squeezing water from a sponge. So, the liver engorges with fat, which then gets squished out through the bile ducts, reaming them (taking toxins with them), and forming little green balls of compressed olive oil.

But that’s good, I reasoned. The reason my first two liver cleanses had delivered orange paste was that my bile ducts had been full of parasites. My liver couldn’t properly deal with the olive oil mixture and was trying to squish out through bile ducts that were clogged with vile little parasites that were clinging on like leeches. Ewwww! Now that the little suckers were gone, my bile ducts were clear and my liver was able to process the fats correctly.

Are these cleanses good for you or not? After seeing those flukes? Damn straight I’m glad they are out of me. Whether they caused my cancer or not, I don’t want them in me. We are all infested with more parasites than we care to imagine. What other health problems could they have been causing? Parasites by definition sap your energy… energy that you could be using for healing. It also seems to me that reaming toxins out of bile ducts so that the liver functions properly would be a good thing. Changing the bags and cleaning the hoses is proper maintenance for our organs, too. A well-functioning liver is vital to our overall health and certainly when healing.

So how does one get leaky gut syndrome? This is a condition that is difficult to find information on in western medicine but is talked about a lot in naturopathic medicine. Many things can cause it and many conditions are linked to it… from autism to arthritis. Basically, the theory is that toxins and pathogens such as allergens (e.g., gluten), vaccinations and Candida overgrowth, can damage the microbiome. This causes the intestinal lining to become permeable to large molecules allowing toxins, pathogens and nutrients to leak directly into the blood stream through a path they are not intended to pass.

In my case, I had done an intestinal cleanse a couple years earlier and had drastic results. I doubled over from intense stomach cramps. I felt so gassy that if you pricked me with a pin I would fly around the room like a balloon. It was so severe that I was completely incapacitated. Luckily, I had some antacids and it calmed enough for me to call the cleanse hotline.

They told me that I must have had a massive Candida overgrowth and that the cleanse was killing it. As the yeast was dying, it was off-gassing. I was told to expect black tar in my stool. If that were so, it would be evidence of the amount of Candida that had been lining my intestine for years. When I saw the black tar that did come out, I was glad that I had done the cleanse, in spite of the pain I endured.

Mental retention of toxins

Holding onto anger is like drinking poison

and expecting the other person to die. — Buddha

Research shows toxins affect your mental health and there is significant consideration suggesting it can go the other way, too… that negative energy can be absorbed from others (Negative Energy Absorption) and can cause retention of toxins. Perhaps that a little woowoo for you but I can dig it. I imagine that negative thoughts (thus toxins) will stick to you magnetically… like the hair of your white cat who knows to lay only on your black sweater. Get that lint roller out, man, and get those little suckers off of you. They look horrible on you!

Next week… the second half of this chapter with detailed cleanse info…

Disclaimer: I am only sharing my path. I am not a medical doctor and nothing I say should be construed as medical advice. Research organ cleanses and discuss with your doctor before you give them a try. Note that western medicine sources will most likely say that there is no benefit and may even be dangerous. Naturopathic sources make possibly exaggerated claims of benefits. I found cleanses effective. In October, 2012, no western medical doctor thought I would live beyond 2 months on their treatment plan. I am now NEAD with no residual side effects of the intense chemo and radiation I endured, showing me that my protocol was good for me. You must follow a path that resonates with you. Bless you all on the path you choose.