The Benefits and Challenges of Detoxification

[Guest guest]

The Benefits and Challenges of Detoxification by Dr. Mark Hyman MD

Thursday, May 08, 2008 by: Gianni

http://www.naturalnews.com/023194.html

(NaturalNews) This interview is an excerpt from Gianni's The Healthiest

Year of Your Life Program which can be found at

(http://www.thehealthiestyearofyourlife.com) . In this excerpt, Dr. Mark Hyman,

M.D. shares more on helping patients using the Functional Medicine Model and the

challenges and benefits of detoxification.

The Healthiest Year of Your Life Excerpt with Dr. Mark Hyman, M.D., a

best-selling author, respected medical consultant and a leader in the field of

functional medicine.

: So how do you approach it? If a patient comes in, how do you figure out

between those seven things what it could be or what the combination is?

Mark: That's a great question. We learn in medical school what we'll call 'the

differential diagnosis' and that means that we try to narrow down the

information to a specific diagnosis and anything that doesn't match that, we

ignore. In other words, if you come to me and you say, " You know, Dr. Hyman I

have joint pain. " I'm going to look at your joints. You say, " I also have

irritable bowel. " " Well, go see the gastroenterologist. " " I have this rash. " I

say, " Well, go see the dermatologist. " " And I get these headaches. " " Well, go

see the neurologist. " But in my world, the headaches, the rash, irritable bowel

and arthritis are all part of the same problem. It's not that this person

happened to get all these conditions simultaneously.

It's that they have some underlying roots to all these things. So what I do is

an inclusive history, a 22 page questionnaire that allows me to understand

everything about them, from whether they have root canals, to how many fillings

they have, to whether they have itchy scalp, to whether they engage in foreign

travel. Through this, a picture emerges and I can tell whether there is a

predominance of inflammatory problems, or hormonal problems, or whether it's

probably digestive, or whether there's major detoxification issues, or whether

there are major energy issues.

So I make use of those seven frameworks to think about problems. Now, they're

all related. They're not separate, but I take that information at the end of the

day and I say, " okay, well it seems like this is where we need to start " .

So for any of these systems, I have to ask two questions and it's very simple

actually. Functional medicine is really only about two questions. One is, what

do you need to get rid of that's making you sick. Is it a toxin, an allergen, an

infection? Is it poor diet, or stress? There's only five things. Sometimes it's

tricky, because people have multiple things. So you have to deal with all of

them.

The second thing we ask is, what does the body need to thrive? What are you

missing for your body to function optimally? We need the right quality food. We

need the right nutrients in the right amounts, depending on our genetic needs.

We need the right amount of light, air and water. We need exercise. We need

sleep and rest. We need rhythm; daily, regular rhythms because we're circadian

beings that function according to biological rhythms and also, we need

connection, community, love, meaning, purpose, all these things that make us

thrive. We need all those things. So we have to figure out what are they

missing, what's bugging them and we need to fix those two things everywhere

around the whole system of the body and we need to do it all at the same time,

more or less. So you take away the bad stuff and you put in the good stuff and

the body does the rest.

: What are some most prevalent factors of those seven? What do you see the

most of?

Mark: Well, I think you know there's a lot of ways to get entry into the whole

system and the reality is that when you work on any one system it works all the

other systems. So in a way you get to where the most important touch points are

for people and what I've experienced is there are two major touch points. One is

inflammation, because we're all on fire and two, detoxification, because we're

all toxic.

So what I do in my practice is I engage people in a lifestyle that is both

anti-inflammatory and detoxifying and I do it through diet, through supplements,

through various lifestyle treatments, such as saunas, cleansing programs and

detoxification and exercise and stress reduction and mind-body therapies, all of

which help fix these two major issues and then usually 90% of things go away,

maybe 80%...

: When you had the mercury issue in your body, how did you find out about

it and did you go through a specific protocol for that?

Mark: Very good question. How I found out about it was I developed chronic

fatigue and I was sick for about a year. I finally came across a naturopath, who

suggested to me that in cases of chronic fatigue there was often mercury issues.

So I actually got my hair analysis done, which showed a very high level of

mercury. I followed that up with a test, called a chelation challenge test. So I

collected my urine after I took this chelating agent. Normally your level should

be less than three. It shouldn't really be anything, but less than three is

considered okay. Mine was 187.

: Oh, my goodness.

Mark: Most people are in the 50 to 100 range, 30 to 50 range and very few over

100. There are maybe a handful of them over 200. So I realized that I was quite

sick. Then I began to search and read and study and talk to people and look at

the research, which there hardly was any. It was the Wild West. There really was

no clear, recommended protocol. They're still really isn't. I'd certainly tried

and experienced almost everything, including oral chelating agents, intravenous

chelation, high-dose vitamin C, saunas, which I think are extraordinarily

helpful, infrared saunas in particular and over time I really was able to drop

my mercury load down significantly to pretty much negligible. I did that through

very deliberate processes of detoxification and so I notonly learned on my

patients, but I learned on myself, as well.

: Yeah. Well, a lot of people on this call have an incredible interest in

cleansing, detoxification and fasting. So what kind of protocol or how should

someone recognize or figure out what sort of issues they are dealing with and

then go on to a detoxification program?

Mark: Well, that's a great question. I think we can assume, based on living in

the 21st century, that all of us have a certain load of petrochemical,

industrial toxins. There was a study from the Environmental Working Group on 10

fetal cord blood samples. This is blood that comes from the umbilical cord of

infants who are just born. So they have not even been in the world, but it's

their blood. They found over 260 toxic chemicals. 210 were neurotoxic and they

found things such as phthalates, which is from plasticizers, flame retardants,

pesticides, heavy metals and so on and so all of us, we have to assume, are

subject to enormous loads of petrochemical toxins. Most of us seem to tolerate

them more or less, but on the flip side of that is the question, how many of our

other illnesses are related to this. We've seen an epidemic, for example, of

allergic and autoimmune diseases. There's a hypothesis out of s Hopkins

coming out now, that environmental toxins are connected and perhaps they are a

very important cause of autoimmune disease, which I do believe and see in my

practice.

So the first thing, you have to assume that everybody needs to be detoxified in

some way and there's really no reason to test for petrochemical toxins, although

we can, because you have to assume everybody has them.

Second, is heavy metals and I think this is an area where we can test and should

test and I believe that heavy metal mercury screening tests should be the most

important way we assess for chronic toxicity, particularly chronic illness,

whether it's depression, or Alzheimer's, or chronic fatigue, or heart disease.

We saw, in the last few days, articles in the New York Times talking about

mercury in fish in New York City and sushi. Just having one sushi meal every

three weeks is enough to make you toxic.

Then there's the issue of dental amalgams, which is a whole can of worms and

dental fillings with silver fillings. They're not really silver. They're mostly

mercury, which do vaporize and get absorbed and have also heavy metal issues. So

I think heavy metal testing is very important and this should really be done

under doctor supervision. Once you've done that, then there are very simple ways

that you can use to help detoxify. I think, everything needs to be customized.

There's no one-size-fits-all.

In fact, I saw a case yesterday of a woman, who was very healthy, was a marathon

runner. She was very fit. She thought, well, " I'm going on a cleansing program. "

She followed a book, which talked about using greens and juices and she did it

and got extraordinarily sick. In fact, she didn't go to the bathroom for the

whole time.

: Wow.

Mark: She didn't have a bowel movement. So this is part of the problem. She went

unsupervised and it probably would've been okay if she had eliminated, but she

actually developed chronic fatigue syndrome after, from being perfectly healthy.

So I tell you to be careful with it when you do extreme fasting. My preference

is more gentle types of fasting, which I wrote about in The Ultra Simple Diet,

which is an anti-inflammatory detox program that simply takes away all the

garbage. So you get rid of alcohol, sugar, caffeine, processed food, junk food.

Then you add in and you also get rid of the common food allergens, because those

create tremendous inflammation: gluten, dairy, eggs, corn, yeast and a number of

other things.

Then you just eat whole, fresh food along with a vegetable broth and some

detoxifying rice proteins and the reason I recommend that is we do need amino

acids to detoxify. Our liver has some very clear systems that it uses to get rid

of garbage, including amino acids. So if you're not eating amino acids, you're

going to be breaking down your own muscle and tissue to get amino acids, because

you body needs them. I recommend supplementing with amino acids that are in the

form of a rice protein, which is hypoallergenic, but you can use other proteins

or whey proteins if you're not allergic to dairy, to help boost your own

detoxification systems, as well as other nutritional and herbal support, it

helps the liver maximize its function. I also recommend really being attentive

to bowel function. As you can see from this patient who got very sick, you have

to go to the bathroom every day, once or twice a day.

I had a workshop last week and there was a woman there who was overweight and

had many, many chronic symptoms and her symptom score was 111 on our quiz, The

Health Risk Assessment... Now, anything over 20 is sick. Over 100 is really bad.

In five days, her score came from 111 to 30 and she lost eight pounds. So the

benefits of this are fantastic. You're eating plenty of food that helps you

detoxify like lots of garlic, cruciferous vegetables, green tea, which can be

decaffeinated. I recommend things like watercress, cilantro, artichoke, burdock,

pomegranate, all of which have very powerful detoxifying effects on the body.

To read the rest of this transcript as well as access more information on

creating and living a healthy lifestyle and hear from other health experts just

like Dr. Mark Hyman, M.D., please visit (http://thehealthiestyearofyourlife.com)

..

About the author

Gianni is a health advocate, author and speaker. He has helped thousands

of people in over 85 countries learn how to take control of their health--and

keep it. To view his popular internet TV Show " The Renegade Health Show " (and

get a free gift!) with commentary on natural health issues, vegan and raw food

diets, holistic nutrition and more click here.