While most health professionals admit a toxic body is a sick body, detoxification is often neglected, overlooked or ignored.  Toxic acids are normal products from cells’ catabolism, and we also assimilate varying amounts of toxic material from the air we breathe, the food we eat, the beverages we drink and other environmental sources.

When these toxins can be eliminated from the body, there isn’t a crisis.  But when toxins are being created and assimilated faster than they can be eliminated, or when one of the body’s eliminative systems is underactive, trouble lies ahead.  Many natural healers are convinced that toxic accumulations in the body create the necessary preconditions for disease.

When we think of detoxification, what first comes to mind?  Yes, it’s usually the large intestine, sometimes referred to as the colon.  When the colon and small intestine are underactive, toxic wastes are more likely to be absorbed through the bowel wall and into the bloodstream then go to affect all the body’s tissues in more or less ways.

If any eliminative system is underactive, more wastes are retained.  As toxins accumulate in the body’s tissues, increasing degrees of cell destruction takes place.  Digestion becomes poor and partially digested food particles add to the problem because the body cannot make good tissue out of half digested nutrients.  Proper function is slowed in all body cells in which toxins have settled.  This, of course, means if one is overweight, the more toxins have a residence in the fat cells.  More weight, more toxins.

When anyone has reached the degenerative disease stage, it is a sign that toxic settlements have taken the body over.  This is the time to take charge and consider detoxification – the cleansing of body tissues.

Our bodies can be overwhelmed by this situation as a consequence of fatigue, poor circulation and improper diet.  When we detoxify the body, we must also take care of those things so we aren’t making a bad situation the same or worse than it is.  As a body becomes increasingly toxic, proper oxidation cannot take place in the tissues.  Without oxygenation, we lack energy and a tired body continues the downward spiral.  It just can’t rid itself of toxins and sick people are always tired people.