There is a philosophical belief in the natural health world that most of the disease conditions faced by patients today are created by the toxic environment in which we live. To begin the process of healing, these practitioners take their patients through detoxifying therapies. If the disease issue persists after the detox these docs, nutritionists and natural healers insist that further detoxification is needed. If the condition continues still further then the patient needs more detox. The thinking is that once the body is fully detoxified then full radiant health will return of its own accord because the toxicity was the root cause of what ever condition was ailing the patient.

Just in the telling of this philosophy so far we can begin to see its fallacies and limitations and begin to fathom the limited thinking of those whose sole means of dealing with disease-states is detox. There comes a point when the detoxification is done that the actual disease issues must be looked at and dealt with so their true causative issues be addressed. Detoxification IS NOT the do-all end-all of healing. Yes, removing the “terrain” is the foundation of a healthy body. Yes, detox can help the body work closer to the way is should. But, it is a fallacy that detox alone will restore the body to full health. In the 26 years I’ve been a Naturopath I’ve seen detoxification be done with patients repeatedly one program oral, IV and rectal one after the other, after the other and after the other. In many cases the patients felt considerably better after the detox or series of detox’s. But in just as many cases the detox did nothing to relieve the disease state. Why? It’s simple; issues of hormones, allergies, bacteria, funguses, hypo kinesis (lack of movement) and viruses were simply not addressed by the detox! It was expected by the practitioners that the detox would be the do-all end-all of the healing process. This is limited, foolish and physiologically unreasonable thinking. This is thinking limited by the walls of their own philosophy!

If we are truly going to be WHOLEistic in our outlook and in our practices to restore health then the detox processes we have our patients do or which we undergo must be linked to concurrent programs of dealing with the other issues involved with the disease state. The hormone imbalance, nutritional deficiencies, the viruses, the bacteria, the visceral dysfunction, the lack of muscle strength in the smooth and striated muscle (internal organ muscle and skeletal movement muscle), and any and all of the other issues involved with the disease state need to be addressed at the same time as the detox. This silly and circular process of one detox after another leading nowhere but to “another and more effective detox” has to stop. The thinking that the detox will “do it all” needs to be dashed into the trash heap of medical thinking to lay along side the use of mercury as an anti bacterial and the cholesterol theory of heart disease. Nuff Said.