IonCleanse detoxification—getting the issues out of tissues

Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, June, 2004 by Morton Walker, Randall Walker

At the University Health Clinic in Seattle, Washington, Patrick Donovan, ND, tells of toxic components in daily living which increase an individual's susceptibility to cancer, stroke, cardiovascular illness, diabetes, free radical activity, and many other degenerations. Numerous toxic factors include allergies, metabolic by-products, anxiety, emotional distress, dysfunctional relationships, genetic/metabolic disorders, overnutrition with excessive fat, sugar or protein, nutritional deficiencies, environmental poisons, heavy metals, infectious agents, smoking, poor hygiene, lack of sleep, functional/structural disabilities, and other noxious agents. (1)

Such factors, Dr. Donovan advises, bring on oxidative stress and immune-system problems. They, in turn, reshape a person's physiology toward disease-related processes, including: (1) a breakdown or lapse in the functioning of routine self-repair for the protection of tissue integrity; (2) depletion of the buffering reserves that ordinarily maintain the body's acid/alkaline balance; (3) alteration of normal biochemical processes; and (4) metabolic changes leading to decreased production or utilization of high-energy compounds the body needs for optimal functioning. (2)

Aging Results from the Accumulation of Toxins

Most health professionals who practice Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) affirm: Aging is a gradual accumulation of toxic chemicals and other substances in the body which cause genome destabilization and resultant catastrophic breakdown of tissue homeostasis. There is an inevitability to this aging process. Even the most ardent adherents to a healthy lifestyle will experience some form of damage from toxic material that we absorb from the environment. Although the absorption of toxins is initially sublethal, gradual poisoning of one's physiology eventually becomes the source of chronic disease and fatal systemic failure. Such an insidious, inescapable process is the reason that detoxification is now accepted as a major component of anti-aging medicine.

Harmful manufactured substances that remain unrecognized by the cells tend to linger in the body. They become lodged in organ tissues as ever-present noxious elements. Most are industrial poisons which lie dormant while they accumulate, and the human body possesses no way to remove them on its own.

Detoxification includes ridding the body of actual physical pollutants such as toxic metals, harmful industrial chemicals, parasitic disease organisms, dead cellular material, and ordinary bodily waste products. Given the variety of harmful substances that accumulate in the body, knowledgeable holistic healers advocate a variety of methods to cleanse the patients' insides. Numerous techniques for detoxification are necessary because some procedures manipulate the gross anatomy and some operate at a cellular level. While some detoxification procedures are more effective than others, each step in the process has its job to do.

Dr. Karen Kelley Uses the IonCleanse Detoxification Process

Interviewing with us from her Holistic Healing Arts Center in Foley, Alabama, the homeopath, psychotherapist, and nutritionist, Karen Kelley, DC, ND, discussed her primary patient detoxification technique.

"I use a basin containing sea salt dissolved in one cup of purified water which carries the gentle electrical charge from a multiple-metallic array set into the water. This array is plugged into a down-charging unit drawing electrical power from the wall. The patient feels no shock but rather has positive and negative ions created around his or her feet in the footbath," Dr. Kelley explains. "Most patients test for a negative ion treatment; others need a positive ion treatment, and a few require a combination of both. During the beginning number of treatments, I use an array setting to generate for alternating positive and negative ions.

"Most of us are so loaded with toxins, detoxification using the IonCleanse actually makes energy for healing available. Toxic overload diminishes markedly for patients; the deleterious body ions are attracted out of the tissues through the feet and go into the water's ionic components," states Dr. Kelley. "The footbath water changes color which is a manifestation of toxin removal from the body's tissues. Reading the water's color change is diagnostic of what is being released by the patient (see photographs 1-5 on facing page).

"For instance, when the footbath color turns bluish, one recognizes toxic dumping from the kidneys; a yellowish tinge means that the bladder is giving up its toxins; orange relates to joint toxins. Fibrotic tissue in arthritic joints is an attractant for environmental toxins--they are more vulnerable," Dr. Kelley says. "Brown water indicates that a toxin dump from the liver has taken place. Candida albicans shows up as a cheese-like scum floating on the water's surface. Often then a Herksheimer's reaction occurs. Flecks of black in the water demonstrate that heavy metals are being released. Globlets of oil floating as a slick in the water means that fatty tumors such as lipomas are breaking up.