Hello, As you see I am repeating some posts to you each week for the benefit of new members of the group. BTW, if some of you have sent me e-mail and I have not replied, please accept my apologies. Sometimes my  broswer deletes e-mail and it never reaches me.  Ellie

12. Physical Symptoms

Toxicosis -  Since the time of Hippocrates it has been understood that symptoms of most diseases, other than degenerative disorders where irreversible organic damage has been sustained, represent the efforts of the body to eliminate toxins (4). Any substance, endogenous or exogenous, that cannot be utilized by the cells is recognized as toxic and eliminated. When elimination is impaired, toxins accumulate. The cells adapt to toxicosis, but when levels of toxin become intolerable the body initiates a detoxification process. Toxicosis is the true disease, and what we call disease is remedial action, a complex of symptoms caused by the vicarious elimination of toxins. Recovery from disease is not because of remedies but in spite of them. The illusion that remedies cure disease is based on the periodicity that characterizes functional disorders. When levels of toxin are reduced to the toleration point, the sickness passes and health returns. But the true disease is no! t cured. With continued enervation toxins again accumulate and another crisis occurs. Unless the causes of toxicosis are discovered and removed, crises will recur until functional derangements give way to irreversible organic disease. In 1848 Thomas Sydenham, the English Hippocrates, wrote, "[a] disease, however much its cause may be adverse to the human body, is nothing more than an effort of Nature who strains with might and main to restore the health of the patient by the elimination of the morbific matter" (5).

This is true for what we generally call physical disease. The common cold is an example of a series of detox crises. But this is also true for emotional disorders, in which case the toxins are primarily endogenous. The emotional disorders are physical. It  would be better to speak of disorders of the brain and of the periphery. 

When you are experiencing the emotional detox crises, i.e. the excitatory nervous symptoms, and doing the redirecting, you are detoxing excess accumulations of endogenous neurochemicals that store repressed emotions. These substances will travel through the blood stream and may impinge on pain receptors, causing discomfort. You may at the same time be detoxing some toxins from the periphery. If you experience increased symptoms after doing the redirecting, the toxins flowing out are probably more from the brain than from the periphery. Physical symptoms of all kinds are likely to get worse until you are post flood. You may have headaches, high fever, sore throat, colds, diarrhea, etc. These are all healing events. This is because toxins are flowing out of the brain and body, and can cause symptoms. These physical symptoms are detox crises and unless you have irreversible organic damage, like metastatic cancer, they are not serious.

HARVEY:

Regardless of what you are trying to achieve in the area of your health, certain fundamental principles can be used. The most basic of these deserve mentioning. Although these principles are described in detail in Fit for Life, it is important at least to review them. The approach to eating suggested by and described in Fit for Life is designed to accomplish the vital function of keeping the inside of your body clean and in tiptop working condition. When everything is fine on the inside, it is reflected on the outside. Even though Fit for Life addresses itself to energy enhancement and weight loss, its underlying goal is to cleanse the body. Keep in mind that your body, like anything else, can become dirty. if the inner workings of your car become all sludged up, it will not operate well until it is cleaned out. The same holds true for your body. Your insides can be impeded in their operations by uneliminated metabolic waste. You can either clean it out or ignore it. Of cou! rse, ignoring it, which in effect is allowing it to become cumulatively worse, makes about as much sense as jumping in front of a speeding truck. How does your body become clogged up-- By what is called a metabolic imbalce, or toxemia. Metabolism is the sum total of all the processes of the body in taking in food, using what it can, and gettitig rid of all the rest. Stated a little differently metabohsm is the building up (anabolism) and the breaking down (catabolism) of tissue in Ilie body. When waste builds up faster than the body can eliminate it, you become toxic (or poisoned). The more toxic you are, the sicker you can become.

Every day your body breaks down somewhere between 300 and 800 billion cells. Every day! They must be eliminated. Why? Because, besides being no longer of use to the body, they are in fact toxic or poisonous to the body, which is where the word toxemia comes in. Spent cells are dead. if they are allowed to build and build at a faster rate than the body can eliminate them, then you will reach a point where they begin to poison the body and start damaging its internal organs. The breaking down of cells is not the only soce of toxic material. There is another contributor to the level of toxemia with which the body must contend. Food! That's right, our old friend that we all know and love. The people of the United States have a diet that has more than its fair share of highly processed and overcooked food. Because the body absorbs nonusable debris and toxic additives from the intestinal tract, there is a slow buildup of food residue and additives (which are toxic) that cannot be! used by the body. This waste matter coupled with the toxic debris generated by the breaking down of cells is what creates a metabolic imbalance or toxemia. You want to have a system as clean and free of toxic waste as possible. The key to living a long, disease-free, pain free life lies in understatiding and minimizing your level of toxemia.

Dr. John H. Tilden, who discovered the phenomenon of toxemia in the early 192Os, first laid out his findings in his landmark hook Toxemia ExpLained. Dr. Tilden was a practicing physician who became disillusioned with the drugging approach to healing and turned to Natural Hygiene. The success he had employing the principles of Natural Hygiene with his patients totally convinced him of the worthiness and excellence of this field of science. He described the extent to which toxemia is the root cause of the many ailments we humans suffer. He demonstrated dramatically that, more often than not,

WHAT WE CALL DISEASE IS NOTHING MORE THAN THE BODY'S OWN EFFORT TO CLEANSE ITSELF OF TOXINS.

Of course, the different problems are given different names depending on the area used for the elimination ot waste, creating the illusion that there are thousands of separate maladies when, in fact, most of them are one and the same-- toxemia. To think that every single malady is a distinct and different problem is like thinking that water, dew, ice, frost, snow all have a distinct and different essence. Envision a dike holding back a large body of water. This dike is made of bricks and mortar. Because of a prolonged rainstorm, the body of water becomes larger and larger, putting more and more pressure on the dike. Ultimately, the dike starts to succumb to the ever growing body of water. First, some of the mortar loosens and water starts to trickle through. Then some bricks pop out and water starts to come through those openings. With the breach, some the structure itself starts to crack and crumble, and finally the foundation starts to erode, with the result that some of ! the structure collapses. Finally, the water level becomes so great that water simply surges right over the entire dike and floods it under. The problem here is not the bricks or the mortar or the foundation of the structure itself. The problem is the ever increasing, vast amount of water that ultimately became more than the dike could withstand. There were not four problems, there was one: an overload of water. To understand what happens with toxemia, imagine that your body is the dike and that the water is your level of toxemia. No matter how strong you are, no matter what measures you take to remain strong, an ever increasing level of toxemia will in time take its toll . It will overwhelm you and lay you low with some malady. This is why I say that the secret to longevity (and sanity! my addition) is in keeping your level of toxemia as low as possible. "

This is where I got the flood analogy. In the brain, the large body of water held back by the dike would be the excess accumulation of toxic amounts of neurochemicals that are responsible for the expression of emotions.

This same Dr. John Tilden wrote the following: 'Drunkeness and crime of all kinds are vicarious toxin eliminations--crises of toxemia.'

What is different about the nervous system is that nerve cells, or neurons, are formed at birth and generally do not replace themselves as do the cells in the periphery. This means they must periodically repair portions of the cytoplasm during periodic detox crises (which are excitatory nervous symptoms). In the hypothalamus, which is not protected by the blood brain barrier, some of the toxins are from exogenous food and other sources. But most of the toxemia in the neurons--toxicosis is a better word since toxemia usually refers to blood--is from excess noradrenaline, acetylcholine, and related metabolites, which have accumulated in the neurons as a result of the suppression of anger and grief.