The Detoxification Debate
SunViva: 17/2/01
By: Benjamin Drewe
Throughout the ages, humans have turned to herbal medicine for better health longevity and freedom from disease through detoxification. In every culture of the world, there is a system of applying herbs, diet, fasting and other modalities too free the body of accumulated wastes.
Some debate surrounds this issue however, from the medical community due to the misconception of the traditional term for detoxification that is "blood cleansing". If the blood were indeed in need of cleansing, then there would be a major medical emergency at hand.
The prevailing medical view is that disease has a specific cause and by identifying the individual factor responsible, for example a virus, bacteria or deficient chemical, then a drug to destroy the virus or bacteria, or replace the deficient chemical will bring about a cure. It is this single pointed specificity of modern medicine that is partly responsible for the modern resurgence in alternative therapies around the world in an effort to fill in the gaps in health care that this attitude creates.
In actually, there is strong scientific foundation for detoxification when understood in a modern terminology. All natural therapies agree that the body’s health is only as good as the health of each of the cells of which it is composed. The process of cellular nutrition and cleansing is impaired by many factors such as chemical toxins from food and drugs.
These metabolic wasters and other toxic factors accumulate in the body’s connective tissues, impeding the natural process of nutrition and the acid-base equilibrium of the body.
Most commonly, the areas of focused for these "toxin" are those places of hereditary weakness and susceptibility.
Natural therapies recognise that the organ of elimination such as the liver, bowels, kidneys and skin are often over-burdened and unable to sufficiently carry out their tasks of detoxifying unwanted chemicals. For example, this occurs in modern diets when fibre is lacking and excess meal consumed. This may result in chronic constipation and a gradual loss of equilibrium in the digestive, eliminatory, lymphatic and immune system. Over time, or when coupled with frequent exposure to chemical toxicity such as excess alcohol or drug consumption, junk food and smoking, then an ideal atmosphere for disease develops.
Pegaga is a powerful skin cleanser.
To deal with this toxic burden on our body’s organs of detoxification, particularly the liver, numerous modalities have been developed to assist the body in eliminating these potentially harmful substances.
Foremost of these are herbs, which assist the organs responsible for detoxification and speed up the removal of harmful substances. The main herbs from our Malaysian rainforest for this purpose are:
Major sources of human toxicity