When I sat down to write about detoxifying the body as one tool I used to heal from cancer, two things coincidentally disrupted my plans. One, the oil refinery near where I was temporarily living caught fire. Burning for hours, it spit out noxious fumes impacting those living in the East San Francisco Bay area. I could hear sirens blaring, warning people to stay indoors and close their windows and doors to avoid inhaling the outdoor air (as if you had a choice). My second disruption entailed getting physically sick from inadvertently breathing in mold over the preceding 5 weeks.
When an oil refinery burns you can see the large plume of thick, black smoke, hear the warning sirens, and smell the putrid pollutants. The clear evidence of toxicity is undeniable. When the human body is exposed to invisible daily toxins the external evidence is not as apparent or expedient. Instead of thick plumes of black smoke, our bodies send out small alarms signaling that poisons are building up in our system potentially sabotaging our health and well being. The signals can be subtle or obvious. I know this from personal experience.
For 12 years I owned a floating home in Seattle, Washington (near the “Sleepless in Seattle” houseboat). The home I lived in was originally built in 1918 and floated on Lake Union upon 100-year-old-growth cedar logs. Over the years as I remodeled various rooms in my home, I would coincidentally find myself breaking out in an annoying body rash. I went to multiple doctors including dermatologists and I received all kinds of oral pills and topical ointments to deal with the surface issue. I tried everything from Benadryl to oregano oil, which just left me dazed, itchy, miserable and smelling like a pizza. Nobody, including me, could identify the source, until later. In “Hinesight,” after seeing the pattern, I realized the rash was caused by exposure to hidden mold. Living on the water, mold is sometimes inevitable but in particular with a home that is older and primarily built of wood. As I updated the home and replaced old, moldy wood with good wood, the rash would go away, that is until I started another home improvement project and stirred up the mold spores. Now I know that when my body breaks out in a rash I need to test my living environment for mold. Then I need to handle the root cause that is making me sick, not just treat the symptomatic rash, the outward signal the body has given to tell me something is wrong in the system.
How is this relevant to cancer? I held the same philosophy about the Uterine Cancer diagnosis I received. Having surgery to cut out the “infected” body part felt a bit like putting ointment on a rash instead of addressing the source. I wanted to know why my body had manifested cancer and I wanted to know how to pull this weed by the root. Instead of chasing cancer around my body for the rest of my life with a knife and radiation gun, I went in search of the root cause of the cancer.
As I researched, I learned that we have over 700,000 cancer cells in our body. A strong immune system is able to constantly capture and kill the bad cells. But, if your immune system is compromised, as mine was (from over-work, over-indulging, stress, exposure to toxins etc.), there comes a point when the cancer overwhelms the system. A tumor is actually the body’s attempt to hold the cancer cells in one place so it doesn’t spread.
I believe that the human body has the capacity to do amazing things, including heal itself. You cut your finger and it miraculously heals. You break a leg, set it properly and it heals itself. If you watch the Olympics then you've seen the physical evidence of our body’s potential. Gold, silver and bronze medals are awarded; world records are made and broken. If you really stop to think about it, it’s incredible what the human body and mind can do. Obviously, peak health and athletic performance are only possible if the body and mind are operating cleanly without massive toxic loads. Here’s the set up; the body is overloaded with toxic exposure to household and environmental pollutants, and processed substances that we call “food.” The mind is taxed by work difficulties, relationship issues and other common emotional stresses (current and past.) Over time, the body weakens, the scales eventually tip, and you find yourself with cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and other scary multi-syllable syndromes.
This might seem like a simplistic explanation for very complex diseases, and it is. Every single person’s disease is different, and my set up scenario doesn’t illustrate how everyone gets cancer. But this is my story and I like to keep things simple. Imagine your cells as a strong, resilient army protecting your body from enemies. In a healthy body your cells are squeaky-clean getting the nutrients they need enabling you to have health, vitality and energy to do the things you want to do. In a body that's loaded with physical and/or emotional toxins, it's as if you've put a backpack on each of your cell soldiers. Every day you add weight to the backpack. If you don’t empty out the backpack from time to time, it eventually weighs 200 lbs. As if oblivious to the backpacks, you keep asking your cells to perform as if they don't have that additional weight. But they do. My doctor would say you are asking your body “to do unreasonable acts of biochemistry!” When any human being is loaded with toxins (known & unknown) the cells simply cannot do their job of operating your body on a daily basis, AND clear out the foreign enemies including cancer cells. The cancer cells have an open invitation to multiply. The guard is down and the invasion commences.
The good news, the body is smart and it gives us strong clues when it's out of balance and the immune system is compromised. My recent red flag was a body rash coupled with unexplained fatigue and focus issues. I’d been here before and knew the source – prolonged exposure to mold. And, I knew the solution. Remove the source (or get away from it) and detoxify the body so it could return to vital health. Sometimes a headache is just a headache and a cold is just a cold. But, if the headache turns into a perpetual migraine or the colds are coming on more frequently, or your fatigue won’t go away, sometimes it’s an indicator that there is something more chronic going on in your body. For ideal health, WE, along with our doctors have to be detectives to find the root cause of our issue and not just take pills that suppress the body’s highly efficient alarm system. This approach is like blowing away the smoke and pretending the oil refinery isn’t still on fire.
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| Refinery Fire: Photo by Drew Dellinger |
For 12 years I owned a floating home in Seattle, Washington (near the “Sleepless in Seattle” houseboat). The home I lived in was originally built in 1918 and floated on Lake Union upon 100-year-old-growth cedar logs. Over the years as I remodeled various rooms in my home, I would coincidentally find myself breaking out in an annoying body rash. I went to multiple doctors including dermatologists and I received all kinds of oral pills and topical ointments to deal with the surface issue. I tried everything from Benadryl to oregano oil, which just left me dazed, itchy, miserable and smelling like a pizza. Nobody, including me, could identify the source, until later. In “Hinesight,” after seeing the pattern, I realized the rash was caused by exposure to hidden mold. Living on the water, mold is sometimes inevitable but in particular with a home that is older and primarily built of wood. As I updated the home and replaced old, moldy wood with good wood, the rash would go away, that is until I started another home improvement project and stirred up the mold spores. Now I know that when my body breaks out in a rash I need to test my living environment for mold. Then I need to handle the root cause that is making me sick, not just treat the symptomatic rash, the outward signal the body has given to tell me something is wrong in the system.
How is this relevant to cancer? I held the same philosophy about the Uterine Cancer diagnosis I received. Having surgery to cut out the “infected” body part felt a bit like putting ointment on a rash instead of addressing the source. I wanted to know why my body had manifested cancer and I wanted to know how to pull this weed by the root. Instead of chasing cancer around my body for the rest of my life with a knife and radiation gun, I went in search of the root cause of the cancer.
As I researched, I learned that we have over 700,000 cancer cells in our body. A strong immune system is able to constantly capture and kill the bad cells. But, if your immune system is compromised, as mine was (from over-work, over-indulging, stress, exposure to toxins etc.), there comes a point when the cancer overwhelms the system. A tumor is actually the body’s attempt to hold the cancer cells in one place so it doesn’t spread.
I believe that the human body has the capacity to do amazing things, including heal itself. You cut your finger and it miraculously heals. You break a leg, set it properly and it heals itself. If you watch the Olympics then you've seen the physical evidence of our body’s potential. Gold, silver and bronze medals are awarded; world records are made and broken. If you really stop to think about it, it’s incredible what the human body and mind can do. Obviously, peak health and athletic performance are only possible if the body and mind are operating cleanly without massive toxic loads. Here’s the set up; the body is overloaded with toxic exposure to household and environmental pollutants, and processed substances that we call “food.” The mind is taxed by work difficulties, relationship issues and other common emotional stresses (current and past.) Over time, the body weakens, the scales eventually tip, and you find yourself with cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and other scary multi-syllable syndromes.
This might seem like a simplistic explanation for very complex diseases, and it is. Every single person’s disease is different, and my set up scenario doesn’t illustrate how everyone gets cancer. But this is my story and I like to keep things simple. Imagine your cells as a strong, resilient army protecting your body from enemies. In a healthy body your cells are squeaky-clean getting the nutrients they need enabling you to have health, vitality and energy to do the things you want to do. In a body that's loaded with physical and/or emotional toxins, it's as if you've put a backpack on each of your cell soldiers. Every day you add weight to the backpack. If you don’t empty out the backpack from time to time, it eventually weighs 200 lbs. As if oblivious to the backpacks, you keep asking your cells to perform as if they don't have that additional weight. But they do. My doctor would say you are asking your body “to do unreasonable acts of biochemistry!” When any human being is loaded with toxins (known & unknown) the cells simply cannot do their job of operating your body on a daily basis, AND clear out the foreign enemies including cancer cells. The cancer cells have an open invitation to multiply. The guard is down and the invasion commences.
The good news, the body is smart and it gives us strong clues when it's out of balance and the immune system is compromised. My recent red flag was a body rash coupled with unexplained fatigue and focus issues. I’d been here before and knew the source – prolonged exposure to mold. And, I knew the solution. Remove the source (or get away from it) and detoxify the body so it could return to vital health. Sometimes a headache is just a headache and a cold is just a cold. But, if the headache turns into a perpetual migraine or the colds are coming on more frequently, or your fatigue won’t go away, sometimes it’s an indicator that there is something more chronic going on in your body. For ideal health, WE, along with our doctors have to be detectives to find the root cause of our issue and not just take pills that suppress the body’s highly efficient alarm system. This approach is like blowing away the smoke and pretending the oil refinery isn’t still on fire.
Next post - Detox Part II, common themes for healing.
In Peace,
Emily Hine
