DETOXIFY
OR DIE
BY
DR. SHERRY A. ROGERS, M.D. (Excerpts)
The
Superior Sauna -- -- -- F I R S (Far Infrared Sauna) pg
199
What is the best way to get rid
of toxic chemicals including pesticides, heavy metals and hydrocarbon residues
when you cannot tolerate a sauna? When a sauna makes you feel weak, sick, have
a fast heart rate, faint, dizzy, panicky, headachy or just plain miserable,
what is the solution? The far infrared sauna. Thanks to improved technology,
the far infrared sauna is far safer and infinitely more tolerable, because it
uses a heat energy that penetrates tissues, triggering mobilization of
chemicals from subcutaneous fat storage, directly into the sweat. This
activating penetration allows for a much lower overall temperature to be used
(as I'll show you later), one that is enjoyable and not torture.
But more importantly, you haven't forced the body to
bear very high temperatures (160 degrees and higher), pulling chemicals back
into the bloodstream where they can duplicate original symptoms. Instead they
slip out the back door, so to speak, from just under the skin storage directly
into the sweat. Over weeks and months there is an equilibrium, or chemicals
that are stored in other organs slowly and safely disseminate throughout the
body and eventually empty into subcutaneous fat. It is the chemical load that
is stored beneath the skin that is the main area activated by the far infrared
sauna.
Another thing I always worried about in a
conventional sauna, even for a few brief moments I could stand one, was the
fact that my eyeballs burned so much. I couldn't believe that intense heat on
my corneas was good for them and feared triggering cataracts. To my knowledge,
no studies have ever been done on this, but this high-temperature on the
eyeball and lens cannot be good for them. It's unphysiologic. Anyway, I do not
get that type of eye pain in the infrared sauna, only profuse sweating. And
that is just the effect you want in order to release a lifetime of toxins from
the body storage. The body gets rid of stored chemicals in stool, urine or
sweat. The sweat route requires no drugs and is the most efficient and natural
(man used to physically work and sweat before computers were invented). As the
oldest of eight children I used to hesitate to recommend something as expensive
as a home sauna. I was looking for treatments that were natural, but
inexpensive and definitely not high-tech! But when you realize the lifelong
incapacity and expense of diseases such as chronic pain syndromes, heart
disease, chemical sensitivity, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, migraines,
Alzheimer's, cancer or any others caused by chemical toxicity, a sauna is
cheap. Let's face it: high tech pollution requires high tech solutions.
(1) Just
add up the time and money you wasted getting diagnosed. (2) or add up the cost
for a year of prescription medications and you will pay for it. But its
advantages do not end there. (3) Once you have it, it's yours to use forever,
for the world will never run out of ways to poison us. (4) The whole family can
use it. (5) It is not only capable of providing the primary "cure" or
solution for your current medical problem, but can free you from symptom
producing medications. Since we're continually being bombarded by new chemicals
every day, it is a tool to keep you "cleaned out" for life. It is a
win - win situation.
I'm
convinced that the far infrared sauna is something that everyone should do to
restore health, and then continue to do on a less frequent basis to maintain
the "cleaned out" state for the rest of their lives. It's therapeutic
as well as prophylactic.
The Hot Solution for Body Pollution: FIRS pg 202
How can
we bring aging and illness to a screeching halt? Better yet, how can we turn
back the hands of time? By booting those nasty disease-causing chemicals out of
the body. Sweat out the poisons is the answer, but not any old sauna or
sweating program will do, in fact some are dangerous.
FIRS, the Only Sauna Proven Safe for Elderly, Severe End-Stage Heart
Patients pg 202
Many
people who are sick, like heart patients, would never tolerate the extreme
temperatures of regular saunas. In fact it would make them worse, raising blood
pressure and heart rate, while triggering arrhythmias and shortness of breath.
Clearly heat is contraindicated. Imagine a man with cadmium-induced arthritis
and hypertension, or a woman with Mercury-induced shoulder pain and angina, or
toluene-induced migraines and arrhythmia. When environmental chemicals create
pain in addition to cardiovascular disease, as examples, what is the heart
patient to do?
If you are like most people,
you may have never learned much about the diagnosis of CHF or congestive heart
failure. Yet it attacks more people each year than cancer, and it is as lethal
as cancer. For with the diagnosis of cancer, the median survival (different
cancers have their own survival rates, but if you average them all together) is
six years. With CHF, the median survival is less: five years. When the
diagnosis of cancer is made, folks feel eminent doom and urgency. But with CHF,
it has received such scant press that it merely engenders a "So
What?" response. It fosters no doom and gloom urgency.
In fact,
even though congestive heart failure is more prevalent and more lethal than
cancer, folks know so little about CHF that they do not concern themselves with
preventing it the way they do cancer. CHF starts with any heart symptom you can
imagine. High blood pressure, high cholesterol, angina, arrhythmias like atrial
fibrillation, dyspnea (shortness of breath, beginning with the stairs and
inclines), claudication (leg pain when walking), pedal edema (ankle swelling),
pericarditis, cardio-myopathy (heavy metal or other poisoning of heart muscle),
fluid in the lungs, recurrent pneumonias, bypass surgery (putting new coronary
vessels in) or endarterectomy (roto-rooting or reaming out the old plugged
arteries) can be the beginning that insidiously leads to congestive heart
failure. The most common symptom shortness of breath, especially on stairs,
inclines or while doing repeated deep knee bends, or jogging. An even worse
sign is swelling of ankles at the end of the day, indicating a heart so
overloaded that fluid backs up all the way to the leg vessels.
As with
every illness, in "modern medicine" CHF suddenly, becomes a
deficiency of a multitude of heart drugs. Drugs to control the rhythm, like
calcium channel blockers (proven to cause shrinkage of the brain and loss of
mental function as well as increase the risk of heart attack and cancer). And
ACE inhibitors are often prescribed, known to cause bronchitis (chronic cough).
Digitalis-type drugs like Lanoxin to boost the force of contraction, and
diuretics or fluid bills to decrease the swelling and work of the heart (and
known to cause worsening of high blood pressure and a chance of sudden death by
heart attack) are some of the other drugs added to the brew.
And the
list does not stop there, for the CHF patient has more drugs on board than most
other diseases. Meanwhile the real underlying causes, which can be totally
correctable, go consistently ignored by medicine. And once a congestive heart
failure victim starts accumulating drugs, it is extremely rare if any drugs are
withdrawn. Instead his physicians steadily pile on more to keep pace with his
worsening symptoms.
The Heart as Allergic Target Organ pg 205
The
number of drugs should tell you that medicine doesn't have a clue as to what
the true underlying cause is for CHF. But you know. It is anything that can poison
the heart; mercury from dental amalgams, fish and paints; cadmium from auto
exhaust, cigarette smoke (including secondhand from others), shellfish,
incinerator pollution, and industrial pollution in air, food and water. You
cannot escape heavy metals or other environmental pollutants. Yet even though
these toxic elements have been a recognized cause of high blood pressure and
heart failure for decades, they remain ignored by medicine.
What
else can silently poison hearts? You guessed it, herbicides and pesticides,
which are also hidden in our air, food and water. No one is protected, while
not one toxin is suspected. And the causes of heart disease do not end there.
They include hydrocarbons and other environmental pollutants or toxins, from
trichloroethylene in city water supplies, solvent extraction fluids used to
decaffeinate coffee, toluene in painted rooms, formaldehyde in carpets, and
benzene in air fresheners, to good old diesel and other common pollutants in
vehicle exhaust (EPA, Bond, Theriault, Levine, Atkins, Kesteloot, Alexander,
Goldsmith, Meyerson, Asokan, Williams, Mee, McLeod, Wiseman, Wright, Speizer,
Antti-Poika, Edling, Kobayaski, Sharp, Schroeder).
You might be tempted to fall
for the story that there is no way to get all these poisons out of the heart,
but you're much too smart for that by now. The far infrared sauna (FIRS) has
been proven by specialists at the famed Mayo Clinic to improve heart failure,
even when nothing more could be done by medicine. And in Japan, clinicians and researchers
have confirmed its life-saving properties when nothing else could be done to
(Time, Kihara, Imamura).
But not
any old sauna was effective, for example, the regular dry Finnish saunas
actually triggered worsening arrhythmias, increased hypertension and shortness
of breath (even at rest), and most heart patients could not tolerate them. In
fact, some of these heart failure patients could not even tolerate a hot bath
or a hot day out of doors without drawing closer to death.
As an example of how little
and increase in ambient temperature heart patients can tolerate, a July 7 2000
Wall Street Journal front page article reported that in Europe as temperatures
reached 113 degrees Fahrenheit from a high-pressure system trapping drifting
Sahara air masses, 25 people died. Later that not a July 14th, CNN reported
multiple deaths for heart patients as temperatures in Texas lingered between
105 and 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Clearly a regular sauna of over 140 degrees
Fahrenheit would be out of the question for the heart patient.
But hang
onto your hats, for the far infrared sauna (FIRS) was not only well-tolerated
with no adverse reactions, but it got rid of so many of the underlying chemical
triggers of CHF, that these end-stage heart patients actually reversed and
improved and were able to discard some other medications (Tei, Kihar, Imamura)!
This is unheard of. With CHF, the rule in medicine is you increasingly pile on
medications as you deteriorate. You rarely drop any, for there is no hope of
cure. It is a one-way street -- at least it is if you do not do a FIRS.
Currently they are evaluating cutting out a part of the damaged heart muscle
(ablation) as temporary improvement for heart failure! As usual, when drugs
fail, medicine resorts to cutting it out and throwing away. They figured they
do yet with cancers, colitis and other problems, so why not the heart?
How is the Far Infrared Sauna Different pg 208
Let's
look at the energy that comes from the sun. It is responsible for
photosynthesis, the process by which plants make energy to grow. In essence,
solar energy is responsible for all of life (since animals must have plants to
eat or there are no animals).
The
spectrum of energy from the sun is classified according to the link of the
waves. The shortest (and most damaging) rays of the solar spectrum are gamma
rays. Think of a gamma gun in a sci-fi movie that vaporizes assailants in an
instant.
The next
longer rays of the sun are x-rays (carcinogenic), then ultraviolet (causes
sunburn, corneal and lens damage and skin cancer), and then visible light.
After that is the infrared spectrum, then radio waves.
At the
far end of the infrared spectrum are the longest and most healing rays, the far
infrared (FIR) spectrum, spanning from 1000 to 4 microns. Between 4-14 microns
in the FIR (far infrared) spectrum, fall most of the rays that are the safest
and most vital to health and healing. They are responsible for photosynthesis,
without which there would be no life on earth.
Even our
bodies radiate infrared energy through our skin between 3-50 microns, mostly
around 9.4 microns. This is the basis for Infrared glasses allowing Special
Forces to see the enemy at night. Palm healing and other hands-on therapies are
based on the healing properties of natural far infrared rays, with our palms
emitting infrared energy at between 8-14 microns. Our bodies absorb 93% of the
infrared waves presented to us, the basis for similar heaters being used to
warm premature infants in nurseries.
The FIRS
uses a patented zirconium ceramic infrared heater, emitting between 2 and 25
microns, with a third of the output in the 2-5.6 micron range for deepest
penetration, about 1.5 inches. Patented in 1965, it was used predominantly in
Japan, and then use extended to the U.S. since 1981. Safer, more economical to
operate, lower in a EMF, and inducing 2-3 times the sweat volume, while
allowing a much more tolerable and safer operating temperature, makes it my
preferred tool for purifying detoxifying the body. Naturally nothing stands
alone, and a clean diet, environment and soul are, of course, crucial
components to healing the impossible. I'll take you through more of the
"TOTAL LOAD" later.
Far infrared wavelengths have
other beneficial properties. They lower lactic acid (the acid that accumulates
and causes pain in muscles when you have overdone during exercising), stimulate
endorphins or happy hormones of the brain, and kill organisms like bacteria and
parasites. More important, they penetrate tissues, detoxify cells by vibrating
ionic bonds, stop swelling, improve lymphatic flow and blood circulation, and
attract calcium to cell membranes where it is needed for healing.
Far
infrared wavelengths also decrease the size of water clusters, giving them
greater mobility and penetration in and out of body tissues. For it is when
these hyperactive or energized water molecules move in and out of cells that
they also carry toxins that previously were stuck. FIR energy actually causes a
resonance dance between the water and chemical molecules to mobilize and unite
them. The lungs, urine, stool, and sweat are the main vehicles to body has for
getting rid of nasty chemicals. But by far sweat is the most efficacious. And
Mayo Clinic studies show that FIR is the safest way to healing sweat, using the
most heat-sensitive cardiac patients as proof (Tei).
In
studies published in Circulation and the Journal of Cardiology, both respected cardiology journals, physicians at
the famed Mayo Clinic used the worst classification of congestive heart failure
patients to demonstrate the safety and therapeutic value of the far infrared
sauna. The New York Heart Association (NYHA) classifies the most debilitating
heart patients with the highest, III and IV. The study used patients who were
end-stage heart patients who were maximally medicated and unable to walk across
the room without shortness of breath, and unable to tolerate warm baths, much
less tolerant a sauna. There were no further therapeutic options available.
They had reached the end of their ropes.
But not only did these
serious end-stage heart patients all tolerate the FIR sauna, but they had no
side effects from it. Furthermore, in getting rid of chemicals that were the
underlying causes of their diseases, they improved their heart function,
something that the latest in surgery or drugs was powerless to do for them. The
FIR sauna literally saved their lives.
During
the sauna, no patients had dyspnea (shortness of breath), angina (chest pain)
or arrhythmia (irregular heartbeat), nor complained of excessive heat. There
were no side effects,
something that never happens with drugs and surgery. Diastolic blood pressure
(the low number ) decreased but systolic pressure (the top number) was
unchanged. This means they did not get hypertensive, and in fact the work of
the heart was lessened. Furthermore the stroke volume and ejection fraction
increased, meaning the heart beat more efficiently with less effort.
Contrast this with warm baths
that caused an increase in systemic blood pressure and pulmonary vascular
resistance. Warm baths, by raising blood pressure cause more work for an
already failing heart. And in a regular sauna, the arrhythmias increased
20%, whereas in the FIR sauna, arrhythmias decreased or disappeared entirely.
Other cardiovascular improvements unique to the FIR sauna that would impress
cardiologists include decreased pulmonary arterial and capillary wedge pressure
as well as right atrial pressure, and in some cases disappearance of mitral
regurgitation. The Echo (echocardiogram) showed smaller left ventricular and
left atriall dimensions, and epinephrine levels did not change, but
norepinephrine increased. And FIR actually increased the core and intrapulmonary
arterial temperature to 38.2 +/-0.4 C (normal body temperature is 37 degrees
Centigrade).
Because
the far infrared sauna has so many physiologic benefits that improved cellular
detoxification (without making the rest of the body toxic or sick in the
process), no side effects were observed with the FIR sauna, even at 60 C
(140 degrees Fahrenheit). Meanwhile, recall warm baths adversely increased
cardiac work for heart patients, as did regular high heat saunas which
triggered arrhythmias in over 20% of patients at 90 C. (194F). In fact, even
mere high outdoor ambient temperature can kill the heart patient. In contrast,
with the FIR sauna, arrhythmias disappeared, even when these folks were exposed
to the high end of heat that the FIR sauna can reach. But the FIRS can generate
a total sweat and 120 F. and less, providing the opportunity for even longer
and more tolerable therapeutic time in the sauna.
In
regular high heat saunas, plasma norepinephrine (related to adrenaline)
increased 100-160% accompanied by subjective discomfort and intolerance.
Adrenaline can, of course, trigger arrhythmias or a heart attack. In contrast,
FIR sauna was extremely well tolerated and did the impossible. It improved the
cardiac status of folks who were at the end of their therapeutic ropes. Even
though medicine had nothing more to offer, congestive heart failure was
reversed by the far infrared sauna.
FIRS Cures the Most Mysterious Cases pg 213
The bottom line is that folks
with the most severe forms of heart disease and resistant to all medications,
tolerated the FIR with no side effects. Most importantly, it improved their
heart health in this Mayo Clinic study within three short weeks. Of course, it
is recommended to continue longer, say a year of daily or every other day
saunas for an hour or less to more completely lower stored chemicals that cause
disease. Then it is necessary to do them at least once a week for life, since
the world will never run out of ways to poison us.
It
should not surprise you by now the mysterious joint pain in war veterans
exposed to Agent Orange also disappeared, as did a host of other pain
syndromes. Schnare of the U.S. EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) also
showed that not only did sauna reduced body levels of HCB (hexachlorobenzene) and
PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) in electrical workers, for example, but it did
this even though the men were continually exposed at work.
This is
important because it means that if your livelihood depends on an occupation
with continual exposures, you still have a chance of being able to tolerate it
more safely, as long as you are reducing chemicals faster than you are taking
them in. And let's face it. Most occupations have their specific toxins. Also
this could allow tolerance of poorly tolerated inplanted items that we would
like to keep, like root canals and artificial joints.
Schnare
also reviewed different types of workers, drug users, victims of accidental
ingestions, and those poisoned by a variety of environmental chemicals; all
recovered with sauna detoxification. Meanwhile, scientists from the Tokyo
Medical and Dental University and others explained in further studies, once
more how the FIR is superior to just plain old heat of regular saunas. There is
no lack of data on this subject that remained a "secret cure" for
decades.
Sweating
is a God-given mechanism, but it must be done properly and safely to be
successful. The far infrared sauna is something that you will use for a
lifetime. It is a major tool not only in your detox program but also in your
anti-aging program. Because it is major expense, you might want to figure a way
to put it in a garage, basement, game room, patio, lanai or porch to share it
with neighbors, or have your church, physician, chiropractor, or organization
buy one, for example. There are smaller units that could fit into a corner of a
room. These units plug into a standard electric outlet.
At the
end of this chapter you'll find a letter for your insurance company, for they
can save untold dollars by covering the cost of far infrared sauna that not
only treats the whole family, but treats the family forever. And it can do what
no medication can do, reverse disease. Clearly the evidence bears out the
facts: FIRS will save untold lives and dollars.
Where is Your Focus? pg 218
No
matter what disease you look at, from the most seemingly innocent to the
nastiest symptoms, environmental chemicals are at the base. Look at
endometriosis. It is not a killer, you rarely hear about it, it has a
devastating effect on millions of women in the United States. It affects 15
percent of women in reproductive age range and is increasing each year. It
leads to extensive and expensive problems with infertility as well as loss of
much productive work time, not to mention loss of personal time because of
severe pain and/or abnormal bleeding.
Even worse, endometriosis
often cripples women to the point of forcing them to have a hysterectomy in
early 20s, before they've had a chance to marry and have a family. Or they are
put on drugs like Lupron, which is analogous to a chemical castration and may
contribute to irreversible infertility, chemical sensitivity, or cancer later
on.
Did you
know the dioxins are one of many causes of endometriosis? Totally unavoidable
in the 21st century lifestyle and diet, dioxins are even in everything from our
foods and toilet paper to coffee filters, diapers, tampons, and much more
(Birnbaum). Since they are persistent environmental poisons, they never leave
the soil or water permanently, but cycle through rain, plants, animals, and
into our food and bodies. The only way out is through sweat.
Remember the EPA study where 29%
of folks had high levels of trichloroethylene in their exhaled breath? This can
come from wearing a dry cleaned suit, and it out-gases from carpeting,
cardboard and a multitude of other everyday sources. It is not exotic. It is in
the water supply of many municipalities as an industrial contaminant. It can
cause bizarre numbness and tingling, dizziness, inability to concentrate,
headaches, depression and brain fog. And that's just in the brain. In terms of
cancer, is been associated with kidney cancer, liver cancer, Hodgkin's disease
and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma as well as cervical cancer, leukemia, and esophageal
cancer (Wartenberg). And it can cause cardiac arrhythmia endometriosis, and
much more.
Clearly
our most potent environments are in our homes, but we are not safe regardless
of where we go. Most work environments add even more to the total daily body
burden. And depending upon meteorologic conditions, cloud cover, wind velocity,
temperature and other factors, outdoor air pollution definitely fluctuates
causing increased death by heart attack (a Janssen, Zanobetti, Laden, Wong).
In our
outdoor as well as indoor air, we have the heavy metal, lead, as one of
hundreds of contaminants that is rarely looked for. It causes devastating
effects from lowering children's IQ (Schwarts 1994) to loss of hearing
(Schwartz 1991). But if that were not enough, the level that causes brain
damage in children is lower than 10 mcg/dl, which has been designated by
"authorities" to be the cutoff point for diagnosing whether lead is a
problem (Lanphear). Because this arbitrary cutoff has been inappropriately
assigned, to too low a value, regular testing often will not pick up a lead
level less than 10. The only way brain-damaging lead in the body can be found
is with the same provocation test we used for mercury. But instead of asking
for mercury to be analyzed in the urine,the doctor should order lead.
But
where are the physicians who are doing lead and other heavy-metal provocations
for children whose IQs do not match their parents? I can't tell you the number
of times I see children who are not half as smart as their parents, but no one
is curious about why they are not. Where are the physicians who are looking for
environmental triggers for hearing loss, endometriosis,high blood pressure,
heart disease, disparate I.Q. or cancer? We have a true information warp. We're
focused on drugs, surgery, organ transplants and genetic manipulation, when we
should be focused on merely getting the causative chemicals out. Or as they
say, GET THE LEAD OUT!
The
bottom line is that sweat is the only proven method for getting the most
damaging toxins out of the body. There are no drugs, no surgery, no chelation,
nor other detoxification methods with before and after measurements proving
that unwanted chemicals like PCBs and pesticides were eliminated. Regular
saunas have a disadvantage of generally starting well above 160 F.degrees, and
could be damaging to the eye lens and other delicate tissues. But far infrared
technology is safe enough for elderly end-stage heart patients, because you do
not even have to go above 100 F. degrees. It makes no sense to push the body to
unphysiologic temperatures or to make someone who is already sick even more
uncomfortable.
Let's face it. You and your doctor have been screwed into believing every
symptom is a deficiency of some drug or surgery. You've been led to believe you
have no control, when in truth you're the one who must take control.
The
ailing heart for example, is a result of a lifetime of tanking up on heavy
metals like cadmium, mercury, lead, aluminum, in addition to chemicals like the
plasticizers, PCBs, volatile organic hydrocarbons, pesticides, dioxins, and
more. The heart truly is a toxic target organ. No wonder it is the number one
cause of death and disease. When there are only two causes for disease (diet
and environment), it's imperative that we be able to reverse both of these. And
we can!
Far
infrared sauna technology is the only proven, most efficacious way of getting
rid of stored environmental chemicals. Preferably start with an oil change to
get rid of trans fatty acids, and restore missing fatty acids while correcting
mineral deficiencies, like selenium, manganese, zinc and magnesium, to
facilitate safer detoxification. The formula is really quite simple. The
problem is it doesn't make any money for the drug industry that owns medicine.
In fact the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA 287: 6 12- 6 17, 2002) documented
how over 87% of physicians who make up the panels of "experts" who
determine the practice guidelines for medicine receive compensation from the drug
industry. These are the guidelines that your doctors and insurance companies
follow.
Meanwhile,
the ball is in your court. For those who want to get well, let's go to the next
chapter where you learn how to orchestrate wellness.
The
following is a sample letter that could be used for your insurance carrier to
provide the evidence that might persuade them to reimburse you, at least in part,
for your far infrared sauna. Be sure to put the date at the top and your name
at the closing and include the references.
Insurance Company Letter pg 223
Dear
Insurance Carrier,
I am
writing this to provide you with the evidence to help you understand why you
will benefit me and your company by covering a far infrared sauna as a
legitimate therapeutic medical expense for helping treat my
___________________________.
1)
researchers from Columbia's school of public health in New York report that 95
percent of cancer is caused by diet and environment (Pereira).
2)
Likewise thousands of scientific papers and books document how invironmental
chemicals obtained through our air, food, and water can trigger every disease
known to man and even the serious "undiagnosable",
"untreatable" diseases which have no label (Kaloyanova, EPA,
Arlien-Soborg, Repetto, Casarett, Sullivan).
3) And
the mechanisms of how unavoidable environmental chemicals can cause disease are
well described (Schook, Halliwell, Halsted, Lieberman, Bemis, Steventon,
Betarbet, Brucker, Kohn, Piscator, Baldi, Arnold, Hoiwdeshell, Colburn,
Wiseman, Wartenberg, Birnbaum, Siblerud, Bigazzi, Packer).
4)
Further research shows that environmental pollutants are so ubiquitous that
there's no place on earth to escape them, not even polar ice caps. Even the
breast milk of nursing arctic women has been found to be dangerously high in,
for starters, PCBs and Mercury (Mickle, Perskey, Abe, Grandjean,
Weisglas-Kuperus).
5)
Furthermore, EPA studies of breath analyses of New Jersey residents show 93%
harbor perchloroethylene in their bodies, 89% had benzene (a known cause of
leukemia), and 29% were exhaling carcinogenic trichloroethylene in addition to
numerous other carcinogens (Wallace). In fact there are no longer any oceans,
seas, lakes, rivers, animals in the wild nor humans on the face of the earth
that do not harbor detectable levels of potent carcinogens and other disease
producing environmental chemicals (U.S. EPA 1984, 1987, Rogers).
6) The government's EPA studies
of hundreds of Americans have shown 100% of fat human biopsies reveal styrene,
dioxin, xylene, dichloralbenzene and more (U.S. EPA, 1984, 1987). Most of these
are carcinogens and can mask any symptoms imaginable.
7) As
well, the EPA and other researchers have been startled by the amounts of
phthalates or plasticizers in humans that are potent environmental hormone
disrupters, again mimicking a multitude of endocrine diseases as well as
triggering cancers (Blount, Jones, Ratlofff).
8)
Whether one studies heavy metals, pesticides, PCBs, dioxins, volatile organic
hydrocarbons or other xenobiotics, research studies and toxicology textbooks
confirm that these very same chemicals can produce any disease from cardiac
disease, autoimmune, recurrent infections, allergies, and cancer, to endocrine
and neurologic diseases, congenital defects, low IQ, thyroiditis, and every
disease of every organ and system in between (Steingraber, Colburn, Baker,
Pavia, Colon, Rea, Ashford, Gupta, Osius, Waalkes, Kipling, Visser, Hoyer,
Peters, U.S. Department Health Human Services, Lieberman, U.S. EPA, 1983,
Pelletier, Solonen 1995, 2000, Crinnion, Sood, Sug, Enestrom, Fredericsson,
Rier, Echeverria, Jobling, Schantz, Rogers.
9) When
clinicians have been stumped or they have exhausted all that medicine has to
offer, with their backs against the wall, they reversed recalcitrant medical conditions by getting these unavoidably ubiquitous
chemicals out of the body. From drug addicts to firefighters, from high blood
pressure to congestive heart failure, from undiagnosable neurologic problems
and cognitive deficits to chemical sensitivities, the formula has been to the
same: get rid of the underlying environmental chemical causes that have been
stockpiled over a lifetime (Kilburn, Rea, Schnare 1984, 1986, Root, Roehm,
Tretjak, Hubbard, Tei, Ikeda, Imamura).
10)
Unfortunately, the modus operandi in medicine
is to fifnd a drug to turn off the damaged part that is producing symptoms. A
simple example is the prescription of calcium channel blockers, the number one
drug used by cardiologists for angina, hypertension, congestive heart failure,
or arrhythmia. But as with any drug, this does not fix anything that is broken.
It merely poisons normal physiological pathways, thereby forcing the chemistry
in a direction that attenuates symptoms.
Since
nothing has been done in terms of getting rid of the underlying cause, the
disease continues. In addition the missing fatty acids and minerals in the cell
membranes that house and calcium channels are not identified and repaired. Nor
are the sequestered membrane chemicals that caused the damage, like unavoidable
PCBs and Mercury, gotten rid of (Bemis). If this were not enough perpetuation
and acceleration of damage, the side effects of drugs are not innocuous. For
example, calcium channel blockers have been shown by MRI to cause definitive
shrinkage of the brain and loss of brain function, a side effect rarely
mentioned by clinicians or news media (Heckbert, Havlik).
11) Far
more therapeutic and ethical is the far infrared sauna therapy as reported by
Mayo Clinic researchers where they reversed hypertension, pulmonary wedge
pressure, endothelial (arterial) dysfunction, and congestive heart failure.
(Tei, Ikeda, Imamura). This is particularly impressive since these patients had
exhausted all that medicine had to offer. And clearly they are not candidates
for a regular sauna, as even high-temperature heat waves increase their death
rates.
12) But
it should not come as a shock that this type of information is ignored, since
studies in the Journal of the American Medical Association document how the practice
guidelines for American medicine are made by physicians who receive
compensation from the drug industry. (Choudhry, JAMA 2002;
287: 612-617). In addition so is the FDA, the very government regulatory body
that approves drugs, riddled with advisers with financial ties to (and is
heavily lobbied by) the very drug industry that is seeking its approval
(Cauchon, Cohen, Epstein, Haley, Glenmullen, Breggin, Stelfox). And as the New England Journal of Medicine and Journal of the American Medical
Association warm,
even the hired clinical investigators for new drugs may have their price
(Bodenheimer, Chalmers, Freidberg, Angell).
13)
Let's return to congestive heart failure as our continuing example of a
dead-end disease, since it kills more people in each year than cancer. The
average person only lives five years once the diagnosis of congestive heart
failure is made and is usually on well over $600 a month in medications alone,
not to mention frequent doctor visits, x-rays, blood tests and
hospitalizations. There is literally nothing in medicine that reverses the
process of congestive heart failure once it is started. Instead, progressively
more medications are piled on making the average survival less than cancer.
Median survival for cancer is six years; median survival for congestive heart
failure is five years. Furthermore more people get congestive heart failure
each year than get cancer.
Contrast
this bleak prognosis for congestive heart failure with the Mayo Clinic studies
where pulmonary wedge pressure, shortness of breath, ability to discontinue
medications and many other parameters of congestive heart failure improved with
use of the far infrared sauna. In other words, it accomplished what no medication and no surgery could for a disease that
is worse than cancer.
Obviously
not any old sauna will do, because high heat is contraindicated and poorly
tolerated by heart failure patients, and in fact is a cause of early death, as
newspaper reports during heat waves testify. But because far infrared sauna
provides safe, low temperature depuration through sweat of the very heavy
metals, pesticides, dioxins, PCBs, plasticizers, and other environmental
chemicals that caused the heart damage in the first place, it is successful.
And in contrast to drugs, it has no side effects.
The far
infrared sauna pulls otherwise permanent toxins out of the body by causing a
molecular dance with molecules of water and zenobiotics stored in the surface
fat. In this way it does not drag chemicals out of safe storage and into the
bloodstream where they could cause exacerbation of symptoms. Instead, it causes
a resonance between the water and chemical molecules, enabling topical
excretion via sweat where they can be wiped and showered away forever. This is
the only known and proven mechanism for getting rid of the past diverse array
of disease producing toxins/environmental chemicals. Medicine has no other
option for lowering the body burden of chemicals that underlie all disease.
In the Mayo Clinic studies,
the far infrared sauna accomplished what nothing else in medicine could. No
surgery, no drug is available to give this type of therapeutic result.
Likewise, other studies with other xenobiotics, other occupations, other
medical conditions which were also totally resistant to all that medicine had
to offer were improved once the chemicals were the depurated. In addition, the
whole family can use the far infrared sauna and they can use it forever. For as
research and history both testify, the world will never run out of ways of
poisoning us.
14) In
terms of expense, depending upon size, the cost is only a couple thousand
dollars. Insurance companies allow $100,000 for chemotherapy, radiation, bone
marrow transplants, tests and hospitalizations for the treatment of various
types of cancer, for which they know the median survival will be 6 months to
five years at best. Paying $100,000 for no cure is not cost effective. They
allow $1000 a month for a rheumatoid arthritis drug that works by lowering the
tumor necrosis factor (Enbrel), thereby increasing the chance of cancer. And
they cover biological response modifiers at $10,000 per injection that often
only buy the patient two to three months of life. Again, thousands of dollars
with no cure.
In
contrast, with the far infrared sauna we're talking about reversing disease,
getting rid of the underlying causes and therefore getting rid of the symptoms,
once and for all. We're talking about restoring the body to a level of
chemicals it had maybe 20 - 50 years ago. A life sentence to medications that
block physiologic pathways is avoided. And bear in mind that since medications
do not fix anything, they allow the underlying problem to continue uncorrected
and actually accelerate. Meanwhile, new symptoms and new seemingly unrelated
diseases are the inevitable consequence of this biochemical faux pas.
15) Furthermore, drug side
effects are the leading cause of death. The Journal of the
American Medical Association shows that far in excess of 106,000 people
die per year in hospitals from diagnosed drug side effects. (Lazarou). But as
former FDA head Dr. David Kessler has shown in the same journal, less than 1
percent of adverse medication reactions are reported to the FDA. As other
researchers have shown, over 16,000 people die each year just from
gastrointestinal hemorrhaging from NSAIDs, while another 100,000 get congestive
heart failure from them. As well NSAIDs cause osteoporosis and hip and knee
degeneration, necessitating joint replacement (Shield). And these are just some
of the side effects of one category of drugs. NSAIDs as an example of only one
group of medications, are fatally toxic to thousands of people each year by
damaging joints, lungs, kidneys, eyes, hearts, and intestines. And they are
covered by insurance.
No
wonder the Journal of the American Medical Association study shows the death by
prescribed drugs in the hospital's is the number four cause of death in United
States (Lazarou). But that study ignores the hundred thousand people who get
congestive heart failure each year just from the NSAIDs (page, 2000). This
would more than double the statistic making drug reactions in hospitalized
patients the number three cause of death. And this does not look at death
outside of the hospital, nor deaths unrecognized as being attributable to drug
side effects. As Dr. David Kessler, previous head of the FDA, has reported in
the Journal of American Medical Association a maximum of 1-5 percent of adverse
medication efects get reported to the FDA.
On the
flip side, sweat is the only proven mechanism that removes heavy metals, PCBs,
pesticides, and other foreign chemicals from the body. Nothing else does. The
far infrared technology is the only one that allows sweat depuration of at
xenobiotics at low, safe temperatures, even tolerated by heart patients. That
is why the far infrared sauna has been able to accomplish what nothing else in
medicine can in terms of reversing the true underlying causes of disease.
16) Sometimes a reason for
insurance rejections is that the therapy is not "reasonable and
customary". But I should not be penalized for physicians' lack of
knowledge. For example, according to the Journal of the American Medical
Association (June
13, 1990), it is reasonable and customary for 90 percent of physicians to fail
to look for something as rudimentary and lifesaving as a magnesium deficiency
in over 1033 patients hospitalized for cardiovascular problems. A sad fact is
that many of these patients died from myocardial infarction secondary to
arrhythmias and their undiagnosed magnesium deficiencies. Instead they were
loaded up with many symptom masking drugs.
It is
"reasonable and customary" for over 16,000 patients to die in the
hospital each year just from gastrointestinal hemorrhaging secondary to
non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. It is "reasonable and
customary" for over 100,000 patients to get congestive heart failure each
year secondary from non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (Page, 2000). And it
is "reasonable and customary" for patients to have $50,000 of bypass
surgery, even though they start re-clotting their new vessels within six months.
And it
is "reasonable and customary" for doctors to British prescribe
Mevacor, Pravachol and other HMG COA reductase inhibitors to lower cholesterol,
when many proven and safe nutrients will do the same without side effects.
Meanwhile the cholesterol-lowering drugs inhibit the gene for this enzyme,
thereby turning off the body's production of coenzyme Q10 (Willis). This
medication induced coenzyme Q10 deficiency in turn leads to depression,
fatigue, a mitochondrial dysfunction, high blood pressure, cardiomyopathy,
periodontitis, congestive heart failure and more (Tomasetti, Folkers, Jusy,
Nakamura, Mortensen). But the patient thinks he is getting a bargain at over
$100 a month because his cholesterol level looks good on paper.
Drugs do
not cure anything, they merely turn off poisoned and malfunctioning pathways.
That is why their classifications are anti-inflammatory, ant-acid,
beta-blockers, alpha-blockers, calcium channel blockers, angiotensin inhibitors
or ACE inhibitors, HMG COA a reductase inhibitors (cholesterol-lowering drugs),
selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or SSRI, etc. And by not fixing the
underlying problem, they allow it to worsen as the innocent patient accumulates
side effects from the drug as well. And we know why the practice guidelines for
every medical disease make it look as though every symptom is a deficiency of
some drug (Choudhry). Arthritis becomes a Celebrex deficiency, heartburn
becomes a Prilosec deficiency, and depression becomes a Prozac deficiency.
Fortunately there are many heavily reference books that document the unethical
practices of the drug industry in perpetuating the pharmacologic feast for
patients, rather than finding and getting rid of the underlying causes
(Glenmullen, Berkson, Breggin, 1991, 1998, Moore 1995, 1998,Epstein, Haley,
Fagin, Moss, Cohen, Wolfe).
I hope that with this summary
(and extra documentation and references) you can appreciate the logical,
scientific, cost-effective and moral reasons to cover the far infrared sauna. I
have much more data and evidence, should it be necessary to carry this to
another level. However, I believe that you will do the right thing the first
time.
