Elimination is essential to health recovery!
It’s not something that we like to talk about all the time, but elimination is an essential part of maintaining a healthy and balanced environment. Most of us think about going to the bathroom when we hear body elimination, and in part, that is accurate. However, the idea of elimination goes further than just a trip to the loo. Every cell in your body is producing waste at this very moment. This waste is called “metabolites,” as it is what is left over from the cell metabolizing nutrients used for energy.
Naturally, we have so many pathways and processes for getting rid of all that waste, that it usually isn’t a problem. As these systems become corrupted by chronic inflammation and disease, the processes for getting rid of the metabolites becomes impeded. We lose our ability to get rid of the waste products from the trillions of cells that exist within each organ system. This backup leads to further disease as our body adapts to the new environment that has been created. Adaptation can have many benefits, but it also signifies that there is a problem that needs to be adapted to.
When we lose the ability to eliminate toxins from our body, they accumulate and further plug the original path of elimination. If we allow toxins to build and delay opening the elimination pathways, we find it takes much more effort to reestablish the original, natural way of eliminating toxins. This cannot be restored through taking medication or surgical intervention, but takes focus and a more concerted effort to reclaim a healthy internal environment. I addressed this in more detail in a blog I wrote about better ways to help people heal. You can read it here.
When we talk about organ systems that are used to eliminate toxins, we are discussing “emunctories,” or our organs of elimination. There are 5 emunctory systems that we address when looking to decrease the body’s burden of toxic waste products. These systems are the intestinal, liver, kidney, skin, and lung systems. Each of these systems has the ability to relay the internal information to the outside world. In this case, the internal information is the cellular waste products. The longer these waste products accumulate the deeper they reach into our tissues and, again, the more difficult they are to remove.
Restoring elimination is a multiple step process, requiring acceptance, understanding, and commitment to healing. The first steps involve a focus on nutrition and putting foods into your body that increase elimination. For the intestines, this means more dietary fiber in the form of fruits and vegetables, while for the liver the focus is more on healthy fats. Each system has a different speciality and must be maintained in its own way.
Next steps for promoting elimination address physical exercise and movement. Physical exertion creates movement in the body, and elimination is predicated on the idea that we need to move toxins out of the body. We’ve already discussed that when the toxins don’t move, they accumulate and contribute to progression of disease. Our body’s were designed to move around. We were never meant to sit around in chairs or on couches, letting all the fluids in our body remain still. This is called stagnation. A good way of thinking about this is thinking about the difference between a dead body and a living body. A dead body doesn’t move, accumulates toxins, and eventually decomposes. An alive body is moving all the time, even when sleeping. This is the difference between stagnation and movement. You want movement rather than stagnation.
As we address movement, there are a variety of ways to stimulate movement within the body. You more than likely first thought about cardio training through running and strenuous exercise, or weight lifting to strengthen muscles. These are both great ways to get your body moving, and there are other, less obvious ways, to stimulate movement within the body. Remember, this is discussing the movement of toxins out of the body, not just moving the body. We really want to promote the flow of toxins from accumulating in various tissues. This can involve many other techniques.
Hydrotherapy is any form of therapy that uses water, from drinking it, to putting it on our skin. A great way to get fluids within the body moving is to put cold water over your skin. This is easily done at the end of your shower. At the very end, after you’ve washed your body and are just about to get out, turn the temperature to cold for 30 seconds. Wait, how cold? It should be cold enough that if it were any colder, you’d want to get out of the shower. After 30 seconds of cold, go back to warm for 2 minutes. Repeat this 3 times and end your shower with cold water. This alternation or “contrast” shower helps to create a pump-like system in the body, shuffling fluid (particularly in your abdomen) to other areas, creating movement. This is a great way to get rid of metabolites.
There are a variety of other ways to stimulate movement and promote elimination of your emunctories, these are just a few. For more ideas on how to recover your health, download my free Simple 3-Step Plan here. Improving your body's ability to eliminate all the waste that is created is a game changer in terms of recovering your health. You cannot expect to improve your health if you do not address your elimination. It’s my hope that this isn’t rocket science, and that you have a much better understanding of the steps you can take right now to improve your elimination. It’s not just to extend your life, but to improve the quality of the life you have!
Dr. Buttler
