Colon Detox Cleansing

One particular supplement that has been shown to remove mercury from your body is alpha lipoic acid. This substance isn’t routinely used medically (it’s not FDA-approved as a chelating agent) but, instead, physicians resort to the prescription compounds DMPS and DMSA—both of which carry their own set of risks.

Alpha lipoic acid has the unique ability to remove mercury from inside cells and the ability to cross the blood-brain barrier. Although it may not be as strong or work as quickly as the above prescription items, there are benefits from working at a slower pace.

Once mercury is removed from tissues or brain cells, it enters the bloodstream and is carried to the liver where it’s mixed with bile and dumped into the intestinal tract.

Ideally, from there it should travel out of the body in the feces. However, if the natural systems are overwhelmed, some of the mercury simply gets reabsorbed and redistributed throughout the body. For this reason, it’s imperative that, if you use alpha lipoic acid to remove mercury from your body, you maintain constant levels of the supplement in your body for periods long enough that the mercury has time to be “escorted” out of your body and not reabsorbed. That’s why detoxing with alpha lipoic acid requires that doses be taken faithfully every three hours.

Alpha lipoic acid “dumps” smaller quantities of mercury into the system, making it easier to compensate for this extra toxic release. The reabsorption of mercury can be further minimized or avoided through a higher intake of sulfur-rich foods (see blog from July 26, 2010). In addition to high-sulfur foods, other known intestinal chelators include:

• blue-green algae spirulina and chlorella
• aloe gel
• algin
• various calcium bentonite clays

I’ve seen a short mercury detox program using alpha lipoic acid work wonders for many people. The program consists of taking 1/8 to ½ mg of alpha lipoic acid per every pound of body weight, every three hours for three days and two nights. (The time can be stretched to every four hours during the night to avoid interrupting sleep as much and then returning to every three hours during daytime.) This would translate to 20 to 80 mg of alpha lipoic acid every three hours for a person who weighs 160 pounds. If you want to repeat the program, you can wait for 11 days following the initial three days and two nights before starting again.

Everyone reacts differently, so dosages often have to be adjusted depending on how you feel. It’s generally better to use the lower dosages to begin with and work with a doctor familiar with this program.

To make things easier, the alpha lipoic acid can be mixed with juice or water. For example, if you were taking 25 mg doses, you could mix a 100 mg capsule in water and then drink a quarter of the liquid at a time.

For more information on body toxins, how to detoxify the body, and eliminating body toxins, visit Dr. Williams’ Web site.

Natural diarrhea treatments are very effective, and easy to put to use. A few months ago, I wrote about preventing diarrhea with clay. Another simple method of preventing diarrhea is to address one cause: a stuck valve in your digestive tract.

Your ileocecal valve sits at the junction between your large intestine and small intestine. When it gets stuck, it can create several common digestive problems, including constipation and diarrhea.

This little valve has two very important jobs. First, it serves as a block that prevents the toxic contents of the large intestine from backing up into the small intestine. Second, it keeps the food products in the small intestine from passing into the large intestine before the digestive processes have been completed.

The valve can at times become either “stuck shut” or “stuck open.” Sometimes spicy or roughage-type foods will irritate the valve and cause it to stick one way or the other. Another factor that greatly influences the valve is stress or emotional trauma. Almost everyone is exposed to these factors, but some of us are more sensitive than others. When stuck shut, the closed ileocecal valve can cause constipation, and when stuck open, diarrhea will be the problem.

What to Do

When the valve is open, there are some temporary fixes that can be tried first. The valve is located on your right side, about halfway between the belly button and the hip bone. Many times you can get relief in one of two ways. First, you can hold the valve shut for several minutes. This is done by placing your hand over the valve and, while pushing in, pull up toward the left shoulder. The second way is to place a cold pack made of cold water or ice over the valve for about 15 to 20 minutes. This process can be repeated if necessary.

There are also several things that should be done for both open and closed valves. First, perform a good colon detox. Cleansing the bowel sometimes is all that's needed. I've provided several solutions for cleansing and detoxification elsewhere in this blog.

Next, spicy foods should be eliminated from the diet for a week or so. If the problem is diarrhea (open valve), it is also helpful to eliminate all roughage-type food for a short period of time. If it is a closed valve and constipation is a problem, then increase the roughage. And in both cases, alcohol, cocoa, chocolate, and caffeine products should be eliminated.

With a closed valve (constipation), add calcium and vitamin D to the diet. With an open valve (diarrhea), add a product called lactic acid yeast to the diet, which can be obtained at Village Green Apothecary at 800-869-9159. This product alone can sometimes stop even the most stubborn cases of chronic diarrhea!

Finally, and most important of all, by rubbing out the “reflex” points shown in the picture above for either an open or closed ileocecal valve, you can relieve the problem almost instantly. The areas illustrated should be massaged with firm pressure for about 10 to 20 seconds each. (It's not beneficial to rub the points any longer than that. In fact, it may negate the effect.)

A number of doctors have informed me they've been able to detoxify the body successfully  using cilantro for  removing heavy metals and other neurotoxins. I suggest consuming at least ¼ cup of tightly packed fresh cilantro stems and leaves per day during a body detoxifying regimen.

Since cilantro may release more heavy metals than the body can remove, and to prevent any metals from being deposited in the colon, I also recommend using a form of calcium bentonite clay called Pascalite. While using the cilantro for a detox period of two weeks, take 1–2 teaspoons of Pascalite mixed with water three times a day between meals. Pascalite is available at www.pascalite.com.

Tips to Keep in Mind While Detoxing

Detoxing may be a simple process, but powerful forces are at work. What an individual experiences depends on his/her level of toxicity (everyone will be different). Those who are more toxic may need to start off slowly, using smaller doses of cilantro but the same amount of Pascalite.

Signs of increased toxicity include headaches, nervousness, flu-like symptoms, or fever. Those who have taken drugs much of their lives could experience the normal effects associated with those medications or any of their side effects. You may even experience some common digestive problems such as constipation or diarrhea as your bowel adjusts to the new amount of toxins it's removing. These may be signs to slow down the detox. For some individuals, it is better to detox for only one week three or four times a year, rather than all at once. In addition to its action to remove toxins them from the body, Pascalite has a tendency to cleanse excess mucus and debris from the colon. Don’t be alarmed if this happens; it’s a good thing. But if it’s too much for you, simply reduce the dosage. 

Finally, don’t be surprised if you experience a permanent feeling of increased energy and well-being, or if any of the toxic symptoms mentioned earlier disappear. After years of  suffering from the effects of toxin exposure, most people are amazed at how effective the poor man’s chelation therapy can be.

Lately I've been receiving quite a few e-mails from readers who are concerned about possible gluten in nutritional supplements. The e-mail generally is something like, "I just read your information about (supplement X), and I'd like to try it. I'm allergic to gluten, however, so I need to know whether it contains any gluten."

In an earlier post I wrote about gluten allergies, and the ways in which you can address them. Once you've made the appropriate changes to your diet and undertaken a natural detox program, gluten may no longer be a concern for you.

Meanwhile, unless a product is made using a dedicated manufacturing process, it's not possible to claim that it's completely gluten-free. Even when there are no ingredients that contain gluten, there may be some residual gluten from other products made using the same equipment.

To realize the full benefits of a liver detoxification routine, you need to begin with the gallbladder, which is often overlooked.

Your gallbladder can become clogged with small stones or thick gelatinous bile. This bile contains body toxins that have come out of the liver, and a flush is an important tool for helping restore normal gallbladder function so the toxins can keep flowing out properly. While the flush is easy to do, I would never recommend doing so without the approval and guidance of your doctor. I have supervised hundreds of flushes and never had any problems, but each patient should be screened to rule out the possibility of large gallstones that might not be able to pass through the bile duct during the flush.

To flush the gallbladder, follow these directions precisely:

1. Monday through Saturday noon, in addition to your normal diet and supplement regimen, drink as much apple juice or cider as you can. The apple juice or cider should not be from concentrate or contain sugar or additives.
2. At noon on Saturday, eat a normal lunch.
3. Three hours later, take 2 teaspoons of disodium phosphate, dissolved in about one ounce of hot water. (Disodium phosphate is available from The Vitamin Shoppe at 800-223-1216, or from Mountain Home Nutritionals at 800-888-1415.) The taste may be objectionable—it’s okay to follow it with a little fresh-squeezed lemon or grapefruit juice.
4. Two hours later, repeat step 3.
5. For the evening meal, you may have grapefruit or other citrus fruits or juices.
6. At bedtime, drink a half cup of unrefined virgin olive oil either followed by a small glass of grapefruit juice or blended with a half cup of lemon juice.
7. Go to bed immediately and lie on your right side with your right knee pulled up close to your chest for 30 minutes.
8. The next morning, one hour before breakfast, take two teaspoons of disodium phosphate dissolved in two ounces of hot water.
9. Continue your normal diet and any nutritional program that may have been prescribed.

The olive oil/citrus juice may cause slight to moderate nausea, which will slowly disappear by the time you go to sleep. In the rare instance where the olive oil causes vomiting, the procedure should not be repeated at this time.

Once you have finished this process you'll be ready to start on your liver cleanse & detox program. All the environmental toxins that are moving out of your liver will now have an escape route. You won’t notice the toxins as they’re being flushed out, but be assured they are leaving.

As a bonus, you should see an improvement in bowel regularity, because the gallbladder will become more efficient at releasing bile into your small intestine.
 

The benefits of a good cleansing and detoxification regimen just keep coming. One you might not suspect is that getting rid of body toxins can improve your bone health.

Your bones are a storehouse for minerals, which your body uses to keep pH within a very narrow range (for most people 7.35 to 7.45, which is slightly alkaline). As I've written in my Alternatives newsletter, eating a diet high in acid-forming foods can pull minerals out of your bones. I recommend cutting out foods such as sodas and "white" foods--white flour, white rice, and white sugar--partially because they increase your body's acid levels.

But food isn't the only source of body acidity. Many metabolic wastes are acidic, as well. The most common example is carbon dioxide; the simple act of breathing helps regulate your blood pH by getting rid of acidic CO2. Sweat is acidic as well, as low-pH body toxins leave through your skin.

Many promoters of body detox regimens tout the value of removing environmental toxins. Certainly this is beneficial, but you need to keep all your body systems in top condition so they can efficiently remove metabolic waste as well. Begin with a thorough liver detoxification program, follow it with a colon detox and cleansing, and you're on your way to stronger bones.

Another part of a detox regimen is a colon cleanse. Most individuals are aware that they should be doing some type of colon detoxification regimen, but many of those people are not completely clear about the benefits. After completing a comprehensive colon cleanse, here's what you can expect:

• Improved digestion.
• Reduction in bloating and gas.
• Improved bowel regularity.

All these benefits depend on restoring the health of your digestive tract after you've gotten it cleaned out. To do this, I suggest looking to two digestive supplements.

The first is L-glutamine. This amino acid is a food source for cells that line your gut, which makes it critical for total GI health. It's available in many high-protein foods, but a focus on low-fat diets has led many people to cut back on their consumption of these foods. L-glutamine supplements are widely available on the Web.

The second supplement us a high-quality probiotic. Benefits come from a rebalancing of the bacterial flora in your gut. There's just no way to keep all the bad bacteria out; your gut has developed an efficient mechanism to keep them under control so they don't cause disease or discomfort.

If you haven't indulged in a good colon cleanse recently, then the time to begin is now.

Many natural detox programs you see out there address liver detoxification. In this post I'll let you know why a natural liver cleanse is so important.

Your liver uses two process to detoxify and remove toxins from the body. In Phase 1, biological and environmental toxins are broken down into molecular fragments, a process called glucuronidation. This is where a group of enzymes known as P450 do their work, and the stage at which many drug interactions occur.

In Phase 2, the toxins are bound to other molecules, a process called conjugation. The toxins are then dumped out through the bile into the bowel for elimination. This is why cleansing the liver isn't enough on its own. The longer material sits in your gut, the more opportunity bacteria and enzymes in your gut have to break the bonds, known as deconjugation. This allows those toxins to be reabsorbed into your body, doubling (or more) the workload on your poor liver.

A thorough liver cleaning helps repair any damaged areas in your liver, as well as clearing out the toxins that have built up over time.

In an earlier post I wrote about the signs that you might need to undertake a body cleansing & detoxification program. This time around, I'll let you know what you can expect to occur.

As environmental toxins begin to leave your body, you'll notice several changes. Some of them might be surprising, but remember what's happening: you're removing toxins even faster than you were before. These conditions pass within a few days at most.

 

• Your breath could get worse. As your lungs clear waste and toxins from the bloodstream, you'll detect the evidence on your breath.
• Your skin might get itchy and red. Again, your skin is an organ your body uses to detoxify itself, so as more toxins pass through the skin it may become more irritated temporarily.
• Your digestion may temporarily get worse. Bowel problems such as constipation and diarrhea or bloating and gas may come and go.

Again, don't worry about these occurrences--they're perfectly normal, and will disappear as you continue your program. What's left behind is the benefits:

• Clearer thinking
• Easier-moving joints
• Improved digestion
• Clearer skin, brighter eyes, shinier hair

A comprehensive detox program is definitely worth the effort.

Considering the world we live in, it's almost a given that you need to perform some kind of a body cleansing & detoxification regimen once a year or more. Readers have asked me how to know when it's time to begin. The answer almost certainly is, "Now." Environmental toxins accumulate daily, and every elimination route is constantly under pressure. Here are some of the signs that it's time to remove toxins from your body:

• Sluggish thinking, and/or depression
• Dull hair and skin
• Feelings of fatigue
• Joint aches and pains
• Constant bad breath
• Chronic indigestion

All these symptoms relate to either the routes your body uses to remove toxins, or the places that toxins tend to accumulate.

It's possible to detoxify the body naturally, to get rid of some or all of these symptoms. A thorough liver cleaning is a good early step in body cleansing. Detoxification involves more than that, certainly, but it is a necessary component. A liver cleanse is another necessary component of any detox program. I've provided full guidance and resources for a natural detox program on my Web site, detox.drdavidwilliams.com.

Nearly every attempt to remove toxins from your body will begin with a colon cleanse. Benefits include the purging of all sorts of environmental toxins and natural waste products as you improve your bowel regularity.

Ironically, one of the side effects when you begin to detoxify your body naturally is constipation, and it happens for a very simple reason: It takes plenty of water to keep things moving freely. To prevent constipation, you'll want to increase your intake of water, even if you're already drinking eight glasses a day. Here's a simple guide: If you're not urinating a couple or three times during the day, then you're not drinking enough water.

One of the most basic steps you can take in a full body cleansing and detoxification program is a colon cleansing. You'll notice that nearly every natural detox program focuses on bowel regularity. There's a reason for this: Your gut receives all manner of body toxins as they're cleaned from the blood in the liver, then dumped into the gut through the bile. Any measures you can take to help remove toxins from your intestines lessens the risk that they'll be reabsorbed before they've had a chance to be eliminated.

A thorough digestive cleansing also requires a little maintenance afterward so you can keep up the benefits. Even so, an effective program is remarkably simple.

• Add more fiber (of course). No matter how healthy your gut is, if it doesn't have something to push against, you're headed for bowel irregularity. Don't bother counting fiber grams; just add more fruits and vegetables to your diet, and replace any "white" foods (bread, pasta, etc.) with whole-grain versions.
• Try a natural laxative. If you find that adding fiber isn't enough to produce the bowel changes you want, then add a laxative to your regimen for up to two weeks. Avoid the chemical-based products (which tend to be hard on your digestive tract) and look for ones that contain herbs such as senna or cascara sagrada.
• Heal your gut with glutamine. The amino acid glutamine is a basic food for the cells that line your gut wall. Glutamine is found in most high-protein foods such as meat and beans, but for focused gut healing take an additional 5 grams a day.
• Take a daily probiotic. Benefits of probiotic supplementation come from normalizing the bacterial balance in your gut. Healthy gut flora promote a healthy gut wall, which means that you're not reabsorbing all the environmental toxins that have just been cleaned by the liver.

That's the basics. You should begin to see the benefits of a colon cleanse almost immediately, as you just feel lighter and more refreshed. The benefits will continue long after, as other organs have their loads lightened (because they're not trying to get rid of everything that wasn't leaving through your colon.)

• Your skin will be clearer.
• You'll breathe more easily.
• You'll think more clearly.

All in all, a regular colon cleansing is well worth the effort.