Sixty Canadian Reasons to Detoxify
by Tricia Naylor

Sixty Canadian Reasons to Detoxify by A new report by the activist group, Environmental Defence, shows that no matter how healthy we are, no matter how much we eat organic food, or live in remote pristine wilderness, we as Canadians are horrifyingly, carcinogenically toxic.

“If you can walk, talk, and breathe, you're contaminated,” said Dr. Rick Smith, Executive Director, Environmental Defence. “Canadians are exposed everyday and in incredibly insidious ways to harmful toxic chemicals. We are guinea pigs in a massive, uncontrolled, chemical experiment, the disastrous outcome of which is measured in disease and death.”

It might sound like typical scare-mongering rhetoric from an environmental activist, but Dr. Smith is backing it up with hard science. The report is called, Toxic Nation: A Report on Pollution in Canadians. The group studied eleven Canadians living across the country, including renowned wildlife artist and naturalist Robert Bateman.

It tested them for 88 known killer chemicals including carcinogenic metals, hormone disrupters, fire retardants, and pesticide residues. A whopping 60 of the chemicals were detected in the group, and the average participant had 44 of them coursing through their bloodstream. Mr. Bateman, the 75-year-old artist residing in nature's paradise on beautiful Salt Spring Island in British Columbia, had a higher than average 48 killer chemicals.

Bateman loaned his name, and his blood, to the cause to draw attention to the problem of toxins permeating our lives, but he was somewhat shocked to see his own results.

“In learning about my own situation, I would hope to be able to take steps to improve things or at least change my ways to limit further insults to my physiology.”

What the report failed to note is that in Ontario both medical doctors and naturopaths who are leaders in their fields are already treating chronic illnesses and cancers resulting from this everyday over-exposure to toxins, and they're showing remarkable success.

“Sauna therapy is the only way I know of to remove most of these toxins,” says Dr. Sat Dharam Kaur, author of the newly released, Complete Natural Medicine Guide to Women's Health.

Last year, Dr. Kaur, ND, installed a low-heat far infrared sauna into her practice in Owen Sound, Ontario. She had read studies showing that dioxins could be almost eradicated from the body even after decades-old exposure. The study was done on American soldiers exposed to the defoliant Agent Orange in Vietnam. Kaur started sweating her patients and many started feeling better.

“These carcinogenic agents are in all of us, and they're sitting in our fat cells like time bombs. They accumulate to the degree that each individual can stand, and then can mutate into cancer and ravage the body,” says Kaur.

Another doctor, Alison Bested, MD, has been using a far infrared sauna in her practice in the Toronto suburb of Scarborough where she specializes in treating fibromyalgia, an increasingly common chronic pain disorder associated with toxic overload in the body.

Two years ago Dr. Bested noted that a number of her patients were improving while others in the same treatment group were not. A quick poll revealed those improving had been sweating in far infrared saunas.
This is a relatively new type of sauna that utilizes low-heat ceramic emitters to gently coax sweat from our skin. It is easier to breathe inside than in a traditional high-heat sauna, and therefore patients stay in much longer and sweat an unprecedented amount.

Toxins are carried out of the body on the sweat droplets, and simply wiped off. Over time toxins from deep inside the body move out to the skin and eventually are removed via sweat.

When she first installed the sauna in her clinic Dr. Bested noted that most, if not all of her patients, had lost the ability to sweat—a common symptom of toxic exposure. Coaxing out toxins from the over-clogged sweat glands was only possible after repeated exposure to the ceramic heaters in the sauna.

“The most important change, in my opinion,” says Dr. Bested, “is that patients who were unable to sweat before are now beginning to sweat. They can now use their skin as a vehicle to detoxify their bodies.”

Like Dr. Bested, Dr. Kaur is on the leading edge of this field, treating mostly women who tend to show symptoms of toxic exposure more than men. This is partly because testosterone has been found to naturally keep symptoms at bay. Men begin to show symptoms in their fifties when testosterone levels subside, while women show symptoms much younger.

Dr. Kaur is now seeking funding for a full-scale study to prove what she has been observing in her practice; sweating helps to detoxify the body of all those poisons.

The Environmental Defence group also urges action among Canadians, suggesting we all take a five-step pledge to limit our exposure to daily toxins such as pesticides and flame retardants. For pledge details visit www.environmentaldefence.ca/toxicnation/pledgeSupport/index.php or call (416) 323-9521. Avoiding them completely is next to impossible, but the idea of sweating them out brings new hope.

Tricia Naylor is a science journalist who investigates leading edge health therapies. She has twenty years' experience as a journalist working for CBC, PBS, and Discovery Channel. For information on the far infrared sauna see their display ad on page 10 of the 11.5 January/February issue of the WHOLifE Journal.