Detoxification: A Very Different View

Detoxification: A Very Different View

Detoxification: A Very Different View

Detoxification is one of the most cherished tools used by many holistic or alternative healthcare practitioners. It’s easy to understand the concept: we live in a toxic environment, eat toxins in our food, slather toxic personal products on our skin, and often take (very) toxic drugs, both for recreation and prescription.

All this nasty stuff must build up and cause stress, malfunction, and disease. Therefore, taking special supplements while eating and drinking specific foods over some time to purge toxins from the body seems like a no-brainer.

Maybe It’s Not That Simple

There are two opposing schools of thought about detoxification:

Traditional, Scientific Medical View: “Detoxing – the idea that you can flush your system of impurities and leave your organs squeaky clean and raring to go – is a scam. It’s a pseudo-medical concept designed to sell you things.” (theguardian.com)

Holistic, Alternative View: “Health isn’t possible with a toxic body. Specific detoxes such as liver and colon cleanses are necessary.”

It’s been my experience that, as usual, both viewpoints have truths and falsehoods.

If detoxing was as simple as “eat this way and take these supplements to flush out these toxins,” labs could be done to measure toxic loads before and after the detoxes to show how efficient the process was. Sadly, I have seen no credible information that “before and after” toxicity has ever been conclusively measured by a lab. I say “sadly,” because healthcare would be so much simpler if I could detox all my patients into high states of health.

On the other hand, the idea that our bodies can stay perfectly healthy just by eating a standard American diet and exposure to all manner of drugs and chemicals (and worse) in the environment is even more ludicrous (this is the “accepted medical viewpoint”).

Detoxification

Your Body Never Stops Detoxing

Your body’s health and function can be compared to a scale: On one side is your body’s ability to function correctly and handle stress (such as toxins). On the other side are a total load of toxicity and lifestyle-induced stress. If your body can keep up and the scale stays tipped in the healthy direction, you will be fine. Other than some particular situations (heavy metals, radiation, etc.), toxins don’t load up in a body that is maintaining its health.

Things go wrong when your body’s function can’t keep up with the toxic and stress load you are giving it.

Honestly, your body never stops detoxing because the toxins never stop getting into it in our current environment! The trick is to get your body into a health condition where it can “keep up” with the toxic load.

One disagreement I have with the “culture of detoxification” is that often people think they can detox once a year for a week or two as a substitute for a truly healthy lifestyle and effective therapy for their health problems. It’s not true!

Real Benefits of Detoxification Programs

A correctly done detox program has the effect of kicking off a long-term improvement in lifestyle and diet while addressing acute stress in the liver and digestive systems. While I may not be sold on the “Detox to be less toxic” bandwagon, I am very sold on proven and effective ways to improve function and reduce stress.

My favorite detox? It’s the Standard Process “Detox Balance” program. This is a 28-day program of diet improvements and whole-food supplements in smoothies.

Does this “get out all the nasty toxins?” Probably not.

What it does with efficiency for every patient I’ve ever put on the program is:

  • Better energy
  • Better sleep
  • Better digestion
  • Improved mental clarity

Often there are many other benefits, such as improved libido, improved skin, weight loss, etc.

The detox works because doing the program can radically shift your personal “scale” toward the good side.  Suddenly your body has a lot less stress and a lot more function. What does it do with this? It compensates better for stress and starts the healing process.

You get the benefits that are touted for a “detox,” just for different reasons!

You Can’t Stop with the Detox

Let’s say you do a detox and feel lots better. Yea! But how long will this last?

Sadly, not long.

With no follow-up, it’s just like you washed your car. In a week, you can’t tell it ever happened.

However, with the proper follow-up, it’s just the beginning of an entirely new level of life and health!

BUT: How do you know what to do for the follow-up?

Should you “eat healthily?” Well, sure, but what does that mean? And are there specific dietary recommendations that YOUR body needs?

Should you take supplements? Which ones? How do you know they’re correct? How do you know you don’t need more or fewer supplements? How do you know when your body is done with a supplement?

Are there functional problems with your body that will override all efforts to maintain your health? This could be hormone problems, allergy problems, nervous system problems, etc. Do you need therapy for this type of issue? If so, what therapies and for how long?

A Simple Solution: Attend our Virtual Detox Seminar

Every year I host a Detoxification Seminar in January.

This year it’ll be virtual!

I will show you how to do an effective detox, answer your questions, and get you started correctly on your detox program.

Oh, and the seminar is free!

GUESS WHAT! YOU DIDN’T MISS IT!

Here’s a link to a recording of the Webinar and lots more information on how you can detoxify yourself successfully.

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Watch this video for a seven-minute explanation of how your body can be assisted to heal itself.

Caring: Why Health Care Fails

Caring: Why Health Care Fails

Caring: Why Health Care Fails

There are some remarkable technologies available in our modern health care system. Sadly, these are often unavailable or misused in ways that limit or stop their effectiveness.

Partly this lack of access is from the debacle of our health insurance system. Partly it’s the maze of your primary care doctor linking you up with various specialists, each with their scheduling and plan coverage. Then, there’s the bigger problem of whether this drug or treatment will be effective or damaging.

But perhaps the most important and overriding issue is one you might not realize: caring.

Good communication is a direct result of liking and caring.

I can categorically state that patients will not recover unless they are in excellent communication with their practitioner.

Poor communication means the patient may misunderstand instructions, do the wrong things, or fail to do the right things needed to heal.

Poor communication means that the doctor fails to get the patient’s correct information and makes errors based on that incorrect information.

There’s only one way to be in good communication with a patient: You must care about them and like them! This results in the patient caring and liking the practitioner as well. How well do you communicate with someone you don’t like? Not so good, correct?

Communication before technology

Technology is based on science. It’s observable, provable, and concrete. Communication is based on the interaction between people, which is hard to measure objectively.

Therefore, health care money and attention tend to gravitate to technology, not improving communication.

Good communication is based on actual caring, an activity that gets lost easily in large bureaucracies (think how much caring you’ve experienced at the DMV and IRS?)

Despite this, technology can’t work without excellent prior communication. When this is ignored, we get “the operation was successful, but the patient died.”

Communication is the solution to chronic health conditions

Most chronic health conditions are created or prolonged by lifestyle issues. Diabetes, blood pressure, heart disease, and obesity cause most health problems in the US, and all are lifestyle diseases.

Medicine has focused on technology (drug) solutions to these problems. I’ve asked many doctors why they don’t work harder on lifestyle solutions to chronic conditions. The answer is almost always, “Because people won’t change.”

I beg to differ. I’ve effectively changed the diets and lifestyles of over 10,000 patients, resulting in often dramatic improvements in their health.

A more valid reason why medical doctors have trouble changing their patients’ lifestyles is that the medical system doesn’t care about caring.

A patient may have difficulty making changes to their diet or lifestyle and may need help. The best help a practitioner can give is to be on the patient’s team! This makes the patient feel they have a responsibility to get well and to do their program very well, that their practitioner cares about them and will be excited about their success. In that case, this can overcome many difficulties the patient may be experiencing in making the changes in their life needed for them to heal.

Our sad medical system

Our sad medical system suffers from short visits and overworked doctors who can come off as not caring. They often aren’t in good communication with their patients, a fact that leads to many devastating medical errors.

Often the providers do care. But they’re stuck in a system that values the delivery of products and services while caring little about how and why this happens.

Yes, we need better and affordable health insurance, and we need more access to health care technology. But unless there’s a fundamental shift toward caring for the patient, where the outcome is much more important than the process, we will be stuck with high-cost, low-result, and often deadly health care.

There are many reasons why my treatment programs are so effective

  • I work WITH your body to assist it to heal in the way it is already trying to. I don’t work ON your body like a mechanic.
  • I don’t use any invasive treatments. Everything done is helping your healing process; there are no “side effects.”
  • I provide sufficient help, consistent help, and help over the entire healing period (which is often years).

But, you see, the reason that I do these effective things is that I care!

Caring about the wellbeing and recovery of patients creates effective solutions.

Caring about power, money, and politics creates an entirely different result: our current health care system.


 

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Here is a free booklet with the story of how I developed my techniques and how those techniques work (practical information that shows how your body works and how to start recovering your health for the rest of your life).

 

 

 

Want Some Help?

Complete this Online Evaluation: Your First Step to Ending Severe, Long-term or Frustrating Health Problems

If you answer the questions on this symptom evaluation, we’ll be able to answer these questions for you:

  1. What areas of physical stress in your body are most likely creating your problems?
  2. What could be done to help your body recover from this stress?
  3. What are our recommendations to start you back on the road to health?

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The Problems with “The Pill”

The Problems with “The Pill”

The Problems with “The Pill”

Women are rarely fully informed of the potential problems and health hazards from the birth control pill.  Somehow we think we can take a precisely-running organism like the human body and then insert into it foreign chemicals and other substances, which pharmaceutical labs have explicitly created so that they have a patented product to sell in the marketplace. And then we wonder why the body malfunctions and may develop cancers and other life-threatening conditions as a result. Based on current studies and concern for your health and longevity, you must understand the hormones (birth control pills are hormones) you are being prescribed and how they affect your health and your life.

Preventing Babies

As much as people want babies, they also want to prevent them for myriad reasons.

Birth control has been around for as long as we have been making babies, and its history is quite interesting.  In ancient Egypt, women used a combination of dates, honey, and acacia, and it seems that when fermented, acacia does have a spermicidal effect.

Around 3000 B.C., humans made condoms from fish bladders and animal intestines. Closer to modern times, in 1838, condoms were made from vulcanized rubber.

Birth control has had a very conflicted history.  Religion has long had opinions regarding reproduction and women’s rights that date back into early history.

In March 1873, the United States Congress passed a bill to ban birth control, known as The Comstock Act. Its full name was an “Act of the Suppression of Trade in and Circulation of Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use.” This act prohibited advertisements, information, or distribution of birth control.  It also allowed the post office to confiscate any birth control products it found being sent through the mail.  The ban came about because of anti-vice and temperance groups that considered birth control obscene and worked to outlaw it.  (5)

The Advent of Oral Contraceptives

Oral contraceptives, otherwise known as the birth control pill, were approved by the FDA on June 23, 1960.  The first pill was called Enovid, and millions of women began using it in the first few years of its introduction. It was almost 100% effective at preventing pregnancy and gave women more control over their sexuality and family planning.  The side effects that developed as a result of this new contraceptive, however, were severe.

Barbara Seaman, women’s health advocate, patients’ rights advocate, American author, and co-founder of the National Women’s Health Network in Washington D.C., wrote an important work called The Doctor’s Case Against the Pill.  It was published in 1969 and presented the facts that high estrogen doses posed serious and even fatal health risks to women.  Doctors were not informing women of these risks, including heart attacks, strokes, blood clots, cancer, suicide, and depression.  This book led to Senate hearings in 1970 on the safety of oral contraceptives. The drug companies were required to include printed warnings on all pill packs about birth control risks and clotting disorders because of these hearings. Today, the pill has a much lower dose of estrogen but still comes with its own set of similar risks, still detailed in that printed warning inside every pill prescription pack due to Barbara Seaman’s activism.

How The Pill Works

The combined pill that most women use today contains synthetic estrogen and progesterone that trick your body into thinking it is pregnant.  Mid-cycle, when you would normally ovulate, no egg is released from the ovaries, so pregnancy cannot occur.  The organs that run the menstrual cycle are shut down and do not function as they usually would. When a woman takes the pill, her natural cycle stops.  She has a period because when the artificial hormones stop for a week, and she takes the sugar pill, the uterine lining is shed and her period is often lighter.

Some doctors have recommended women not having cycles at all.  In 2003, pills were released that enabled a woman to go months without her cycle and, on doctor’s recommendation, to have only four menstrual cycles or less a year. Some doctors told patients that no cycles were necessary.  Depo Provera is given by an injection that often stops women’s cycles for three months at a time.  I have seen some extremely negative symptoms and side effects with this injection in some women.

Female Balance and Rhythms

Our bodies ebb and flow with a natural rhythm just as the tides and the moons do.  We live in a world that values convenience over balance, and in doing so, we lose the beauty of our bodies and our cycles.  Being female, having a cycle, being fertile are all things to celebrate!  Taking time from your life to acknowledge this gift can enrich your life as a woman.  The “curse” is really a blessing.

When our cycles are “off” or painful, it is often a sign that our lives or our paths may have veered somewhat from a more balanced existence.  Our diets, exercise levels, and stress may have increased beyond what our bodies can easily handle.  It signifies a time for us to regroup and examine ourselves to see what we can do to bring our lives and bodies back to a healthier state.

In our modern lives and our modern “must have it all” mentality, we can pay the price for ignoring our natural balance and rhythms. Chemically suppressing our bodies’ natural functions can cause many side effects, even death.

The Risks of Hormonal Contraceptives

One of my favorite books to recommend to patients is The Pill: Are you sure it’s for you?  One chapter is titled Dying Not to Get Pregnant.  This chapter details the side effects of the pill we aren’t told and the ones that could cost us our lives.  This same chapter mentions that in 1995 government health ministers went public in Britain about the increased risk of thromboembolism in the third-generation pills.  The incidence of pill use went down in Britain at this point, as did the incidence of deep vein thrombosis.  Women die every year from this side effect and from strokes, heart attacks, and cancers — deaths related to this form of contraception.  We all need to know the risks.

In 2005 the World Health Organization’s cancer research group, The International Agency for Research on Cancer, reclassified the pill from a “possible carcinogen” to humans to “carcinogenic” to humans.  This places the pill in the Class 1 Carcinogen category, along with asbestos and tobacco.  It does appear that the pill is protective against developing ovarian cancer.  I am not sure, though, that one would choose this path only for this reason, considering the other health concerns.  Anything that suppresses ovulation or its frequency, such as full-term pregnancy and breastfeeding, is preventive of ovarian cancers.

As women are given the pill to “regulate” their cycles, it is important to remember that suppression is not regulation.  Taking the pill triples the lifetime risk of breast cancer when taken before the age of 18. It can cause insulin resistance, cervical dysplasia, ovarian cysts, and infertility.

There are many, many other side effects in addition to these.  They include Increased risk of thyroid and liver problems, nutritional deficiencies in Folic Acid, B12, B6, Magnesium, Manganese, Zinc, reduced antioxidant levels, especially in the liver, and a deficiency of Vitamin A. These deficiencies can lead to many more severe health risks.  The liver is extremely stressed in attempting to “detoxify” and clear these synthetic substances.  This hardworking organ can sometimes be damaged long term with synthetic hormones from the pill and conventional HRT.

Deciding on Contraceptive Solutions

Read, educate yourself, and learn about other more natural and safe means to protect yourself from unwanted pregnancies.  Finding alternative solutions may make the difference between health and ill-health. Weigh the risk for yourself, now and for the future.  After “having their cycles regulated” by the pill for many years, I have seen many women who stopped the pill but were unable to get pregnant for months, if at all.  We spent many months cleaning and rebuilding the body after the damage of long term synthetic hormone use.

Read the warnings in the pill packets carefully and see if you feel that this is the right move for you.  I’ve included some links to natural contraception choices at the end of this post.

Make choices that will help solve your body’s health problems instead of making more!

You are beautiful, and your body is an amazing miracle of systems and organs and hormones.  You can be well at any age.  Work towards health and wellbeing. You are a beautiful woman, and you are here to share your gifts with the world. There is only one you!

Beneath the Sweater and the Skin

How many years of beauty do I have left? she asks me. How many more do you want? Here. Here is 34. Here is 50.   When you are 80 years old and your beauty rises in ways your cells cannot even imagine now and your wild bones grow luminous and ripe, having carried the weight of a passionate life.   When your hair is aflame with winter and you have decades of learning and leaving and loving sewn into  the corners of your eyes and your children come home to find their own history in your face.   When you know what it feels like to fail ferociously and have gained the  capacity to rise and rise and rise again.   When you can make your tea on a quiet and ridiculously lonely afternoon and still have a song in your heart Queen owl wings beating beneath the cotton of your sweater.   Because your beauty began there beneath the sweater and the skin, remember?   This is when I will take you  into my arms and coo YOU BRAVE AND GLORIOUS THING you’ve come so far.   I see you. Your beauty is breathtaking.   -Jeannette Encinias

Here are links to more information on these topics:

Natural family planning tools:  https://www.fertilityfriend.com Natural fertility tracking devices:

Barrier methods of birth control:  https://www.webmd.com Fertility tracker:  https://usa.daysy.me/

 Find Out More Evectics Book Cover

Here is a free booklet with the story of how I developed my techniques and how those techniques work (practical information that shows how your body works and how to start recovering your health for the rest of your life).

Want Some Help?

Complete this Online Evaluation: Your First Step to Ending Severe, Long-term or Frustrating Health Problems

If you answer the questions on this symptom evaluation, we’ll be able to answer these questions for you:

  1. What areas of physical stress in your body are most likely creating your problems?
  2. What could be done to help your body recover from this stress?
  3. What are our recommendations to start you back on the road to health?

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ANXIETY, WORRY & DEPRESSION

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  • Cutting edge natural healing techniques and advice
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Anxiety and Depression

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