If you Google foot detox, foot bath, Ionic Detoxification, Aqua Chi, or Bionic Hydrotherapy, you will find a lot of information about a new detoxifying treatment, the ionic foot bath. You will also find a lot of websites that emphatically state this treatment is a hoax, that you can’t draw toxins out of your body through the soles of your feet. I decided to test it myself.
The idea is that in 30 minutes, The Detox Foot Spa Purifier will pull toxins, including heavy metals, out of your body. The water in the foot-bath changes color. Each color relates to toxicity of a different organ or system of the body.
Brown = Liver and Joints
Green = Gall Bladder
Yellow = Urinary Tract
Orange = Joints
White = Lymphatic and/or Yeast
Blue = Kidneys
Black Flecks = heavy metals toxins
So if the water turns blue, your kidneys are the most toxic part of your body, and the foot bath is pulling toxins from your kidneys through the soles of your feet.
I must admit, it sounded pretty ridiculous. I’m a skeptic when it comes to this kind of thing. That’s why I decided I was the best person to try it out.
I am very in tune with my body. I know when something isn’t working right and I know why. I know if my kidneys are hurting, I know if my liver is over toxic, and I know if I am not getting enough minerals. I’ve always paid attention to my body and developed a good understanding through my own experiences and through research about how the body works, and how the body gets sick. I am not a doctor, but I do know my body.
I spent a few weeks living a not so “organic lifestyle” which included some alcohol and a lot of “regular” food. When I say some alcohol, I mean a good amount. In fact, this part of my experiment began during the Christmas holidays, and I did celebrate New Years Eve.
After three weeks of living a toxic lifestyle, my kidneys where not happy. Every time I woke up, my back was stiff. Urination was difficult, and my urine was nearly brown and had a strong odor. If I pushed an inch below my belly button I felt intense pain. I also had diarrhea off and on. I defiantly had kidney problems.
I went to see Dr. Tim Kelly, one of Organic Lifestyle Magazine’s contributors. I didn’t tell him I had been living a toxic lifestyle. I got all set up, put my feet in the water, and watched as the water began to turn a yellowish tint. Interesting. In about 5 minutes the water was a dark thick yellow. But then it turned blue, a nasty, dark, murky blue with big, black flecks in it. It was gross.
Those websites who call this treatment a hoax said the water would have changed color whether my feet were in there or not. But I never told Dr. Kelly my kidneys were hurting, and the water turned the right color. And after the treatment, I did feel better. Before the treatment I couldn’t stand upright after sitting for long periods of time. But after thirty minutes in the foot bath, I was able to stand right up without stiffness. The next day I woke up with about ½ the lower back stiffness and had no trouble peeing.
Step two was to go back to Dr. Kelly after I spent a few weeks detoxifying. I ate nothing but healthy foods, concentrating on raw, fresh organic vegetables. I took herbs to help cleanse my body. I felt like a new man. I regained my health. My sleep improved, my energy was up, and my kidneys were fine.
I went back to Dr. Kelly and again, told him nothing, just got myself hooked up to the foot bath equipment, put my feet in, and sat there for thirty minutes with a magazine. At the end of thirty minutes the water was yellow. Not a deep dark yellow, just a light yellow as if I had urinated in it. There were no black flecks.
One more test was in order. I wanted to see what would happen if my liver was toxic. I went back to eating crap, drinking, and I took some over the counter medications for allergies and to treat the headaches my new lifestyle had triggered. I also ate a lot of food with high fructose corn syrup. After a couple of weeks, I had deep dark circles under my eyes, regardless of sleep (a sign of a toxic liver). I was getting regular headaches (about three a week) and I was also stiff, tired, and achy all the time. I had gained 9 pounds. Throughout this time, I was drinking cranberry juice (organic, unsweetened), and taking Standard Processes Phosfood to keep my kidneys from getting backed up. I was also keeping my body alkaline. I was doing my best to keep the rest of my body relatively healthy, while overburdening my liver. Not very scientific, I know, but I got the results I wanted.
The third time the foot bath changed from green to orange and then to dark brown for the last 25 minutes—the color of a toxic liver. Once again, I felt a little better immediately and the next morning I felt and looked much better.
Coincidence? No. Not when the colors matched the symptoms. Not when the relief was so significant.
Dr. Timothy Kelly’s treatment center is located in the Buckhead community of Atlanta, Georgia. He is available for phone consultations. Check out his website at www.drtimkelly.net.
Lush Cosemetics Product Review
On their website, Lush lists its company’s core beliefs. The first is, “We believe in making effective products from fresh, organic fruit and vegetables, the finest essential oils and safe synthetics.”
Their second core belief is, “We invent our own products and fragrances. We make them fresh by hand using little or no preservative or packaging, using only vegetarian ingredients, and tell you when they were made.” They go on to say, “Preservatives are by nature poisonous.”
This sounds like our kind of company, right? We thought so…
Imagine our surprise when Lush sent us a number of samples, among them their Rub Rub Rub Shower Scrub, which happens to contain FD&C Blue # 1 and FD&C Red # 28, Sodium Laureth Sulfate, Sodium Cocoamphoacetate, Lauryl Betaine, and synthetic perfume.
Why send it to us? For that matter, why make it? Lush does have some good ideas. It sounds like they want to make things the right way. But their primary focus is on fresh more than natural or organic. Why not both? Why have one foot in and one foot out?
Oh, yes. Back to the issue of the product review for Rub Rub Rub Shower Scrub. Sorry, no review. We don’t take chemical baths.
Angels on Bare Skin Cleanser
Lush’s website says Angels on Bare Skin is the perfect, all-round cleanser. “Ground almonds gently exfoliate, rose absolute tones and lavender oil soothes. A pea-sized amount mixed with water in the palm of your hand to create an even paste is all you need. The result: angelic skin!”
The product looks a bit unusual. It’s like a rolled up chunk of clay, and it looks very “earthy” – but this is OLM, and we dig this kind of stuff. Does it work? Yes, it does. And it was not a problem for our sensitive skin testers. After using this product our faces felt soft and clean. It works, but it doesn’t work any better than the average product. And the fact that it does not list all of its ingredients (what’s in the perfume?) really bothers us.
The ingredients listed on their website are ground almonds (prunus dulcis), glycerine, kaolin, water (aqua), lavender oil (lavandula hybrida), rose absolute (rosa centifolia), lavender flowers (lavendula hybrida), *limonene, *linalool, and perfume.
Breath of Fresh Air Skin Toner
Lush says Breath of Fresh Air Skin Toner re-hydrates dry skin with soothing, nutritious, rejuvenating ingredients like real sea water, natural spring water, aloe vera gel, patchouli oil, rosemary oil and seaweed absolute. “A spritz after cleansing softens and balances, while a spritz any other time of day refreshes and renews.” Unlike the Angels on Bare Skin Cleanser, this toner has no perfume listed on the website as an ingredient, but it does have Methylparaben, a synthetic antifungal.
This toner feels good to the face, refreshing, and cooling, and it does moisturize. Most of the other products we have tried of similar nature will “wear off” leaving your skin feeling dry and itchy. Not this toner.
Vanishing Cream Facial Moisturizer
Lush says “This low fat moisturizer has minimal oil, making it perfect for those with acne, oily skin or a spotty T-zone (forehead, nose and chin). Light-as-a-feather Vanishing Cream sinks into the skin quickly… Vanishing Cream really does make skin troubles, well, vanish.” Ingredients listed in black include stearic acid, cetearyl alcohol, triethanolamine, methylparaben, and propylparaben. Our testers evaluated this product by putting it on one side of the face only. A few hours later all testers found that side drier than the other. One of our testers said, “Normally, I would go put more moisturizer on, but now I know that this stuff actually caused the dryness!”
Lush has a variety of all natural products on their website, and again, we are surprised by their decision to send us anything that wasn’t all natural to test. The one product which did meet our standards for ingredients was also the best according to our testers.
We do hope Lush continues making all natural, fresh, products and discontinues the products that contain artificial colors and preservatives.
Doc Shillington’s Total Body Cleanse
Dr. Ian Shillington firmly believes each individual has the right and the responsibility to take charge of his or her health. With this goal in mind, he sets out to inform, to educate, and to empower everyone who seeks his medical advice. Although he has officially retired from practice, he maintains an Internet presence with a Yahoo group where he answers health questions. He runs an online store, maintains a website where he shares information including recipes for his nutritional and detox powders and tinctures, and he owns and operates a restaurant and a health food store.
Although Doc Shillington has shared a remarkably thorough list of natural treatments, he is always hesitant to discuss quick fixes for acute symptoms. His years of practice taught him that patients in search of the quick fix usually disregard the road to true health—the holistic mind, body, spirit approach to life which includes proper nutrition, exercise, and a regular schedule of total body detox.
Naturopathy Lecture – Dr. Ian Shillington, September 21 2002
Doc Shillington’s Total Body Detox includes a protocol for an intestinal cleanse, a gallbladder/liver cleanse, and a bladder/kidney cleanse. Together these three cleanses comprise his total body cleanse. For patients who are considered “incurable” (due to a chronic condition or a life threatening condition or disease) Dr. Shillington has designed a variation of his Total Body Cleanse, which can be found on his website.
The full Total Body Cleanse is intensive and expensive, but it is the best detox we have found to date. (Also note that many of the teas and tonics you will purchase will last for more than one detox.) Though the diet throughout the cleanse is vegan and as raw as possible, Dr. Shillington recommends eating as much as you want as often as you want. You won’t be hungry.
For most of the cleanse, we followed the incurables program and relied more on juicing than eating whole foods. Our energy was high and the results were exceptional.
One tester said, “My sleep was better. In the mornings, I woke in an instant, fully awake and aware. Aches and pains from old injuries disappeared. My eyesight improved. My attention and focus improved. My health was restored.”
One of the downsides to this cleanse is a lack of clear instruction. Doc Shillington’s website is confusing at best, very poorly designed, and at times difficult to navigate. Finding the regimen for the total body cleanse, and then making sense of it is difficult and time consuming. So we at OLM worked with Doc Shillington and put the regimen together for you (since we pulled much of Doc Shillington’s text word for word, we’ve given him the copyright from this point on).
OLM endorses this body cleanse program that requires you to adhere to a vegan diet during the duration of the cleanse. This means no meat, fish, fowl, or dairy. Eat nothing that had a face on it or came from anything that had a face on it, except for raw eggs, which are included in your Total Nutrition drink.
This is a three-part cleanse, beginning with the colon cleanse, followed by a liver and gallbladder cleanse, and ending with a kidney cleanse. If you have a particular problem with the kidneys, you can cleanse the kidneys before the liver and gallbladder.
The basic diet follows:
Upon Arising:
Drink 8 ounces of distilled water. This is a great way to start your day. The water rinses and flushes your digestive tract of any leftover food and digestive juices.
Breakfast:
Live, fresh fruit or vegetable juice is the best way to get your vitamins, minerals, and other essential nutrients. They are also very important for cleansing and detoxification. If you are hungry before lunchtime, you may have fruit, diluted fruit juices, and fruit smoothies. Stop all fruit or fruit juices at least 1 hour before lunch. It is best while on this program not to mix fruit and vegetables together.
Lunch:
For lunch you can have diluted fresh raw vegetable juices, raw vegetables alone or in salads, sprouts, potassium broth, and herb teas. You may make dressings for the salad if you like using olive oil, avocado, raw apple cider vinegar, lemon juice, garlic, onions, and any herbs and spices.
Afternoon Snacks:
Raw vegetables, raw vegetable salads, diluted vegetable juices, sprouts, potassium broth, Total Nutrition, and herb teas. All vegetable food must be stopped by 6 p.m.
Dinner:
Diluted fruit juices, fruits, fruit smoothies, fruit salads and herb teas.
This program requires you to exercise daily. Start with what you can physically tolerate and increase daily. Walking for 20-40 minutes twice a day is an excellent way to get your exercise. Make sure you sweat.
Hydrotherapy is the last requirement in this program. Hot and cold showers do wonders for your circulation and can speed your recovery incredibly fast. Start off taking a hot shower, as hot as you can stand it. Keep it hot for 3 minutes and then turn the hot all the way off. Stay in the cold water for 1 minute. Repeat this cycle at least twice for a minimum of 3 complete cycles. End with a nice hot shower.
Do not underestimate this procedure; it is powerful and miraculous. There are spas in Europe that specialize in curing “terminally ill” cancer patients using hydrotherapy alone. If you have a particular area of your body that is ill, buy a shower wand and concentrate more “hot & cold” on that area in addition to the above. Hot and cold packs will also work well to increase circulation to an affected area.
Special note: Never take Echinacea for more than three weeks at a time. This is one herb from which you need to rest.
Remember, this program restricts the types of food you will be eating, not the amount. If you are hungry at any point during this detoxification program, drink and/or eat more. The more you eat and drink, the more you will flush the toxins out of your body. Also remember to have a fun time. A positive, healing attitude is important. To achieve maximum benefits from this program, be loving to yourself.
Colon Cleanse, Week One:
8 oz of water in a.m. Total Nutrition —morning. Echinacea—2 droppers 3X a day Total Tonic—2 droppers 3X a day Intestinal Cleanse —Most people need from one to six capsules, but some have needed as many as 30 capsules.
To the diet listed above, add 8-16 ounces of carrot/beet juice per day with 4 garlic cloves.
Colon Cleanse, Week Two
Repeat week one and add Intestinal Detox. Take 5 to 6 times each day (every 3 hours on the average) for 5 to 6 days. Finish the jar of powder and/or bag of capsules within the week.
One hour after your morning nutritional drink mix 1 heaping teaspoon of Intestinal Detox powder with 8 ounces of diluted juice. Mixes best if you shake it in a small jar. (Or if you are taking capsules, take 8 capsules with your juice).
Do the same ½ hour before lunch, between lunch and dinner, ½ hour before dinner and 1 hour before bed, so that you are consuming a minimum total of 5 heaping teaspoons (or 40 capsules) each day.
During or after dinner, take your Intestinal Cleanse capsules as usual. When you start Intestinal Detox increase your regular dosage of intestinal cleanse by 1 additional cap, or more if necessary to have sufficient bowel movements. It is helpful to drink additional liquid after each dose of Intestinal Detox, at least 8 ounces.
Liver Cleanse, Week Three
The evening before you start, make the Liver Detox tea per instructions.
Liver Detox Tea
Total nutrition
Echinacea—2 droppers 3X a day
Total Tonic—2 droppers 3X a day
Intestinal Cleanse & Detox
–Liver Cleanse Day #1:
Continue with the same diet you have been eating for the past two weeks. First drink 8 ounces of distilled water. Within 1 hour prepare for the following morning drink: In Spring or Summer mix 8-ounces of fresh orange juice or a citrus juice combination (1 lemon or 1 lime and enough orange, grapefruit or tangerine to make 8 ounces). In Fall or Winter mix 8 ounces of fresh apple and/or grape juice with:
8 ounces of Distilled Water
1-5 clove(s) of garlic (start with one and increase daily)
1-5 tablespoon(s) of organic virgin cold-pressed olive oil (start with one and increase daily)
1-5 small pieces of fresh Ginger root (1 inch long – start with one and increase daily)
NOTE: IF YOU FEEL NAUSEATED AT ALL – ADD MORE GINGER
15 minutes after this drink, consume 2 cups of the Liver Detox Tea & 2 dropperfuls of Liver/Gallbladder Anti-Parasite tincture. The tincture can be taken straight or in a few ounces of purified water or mixed in with the tea. Repeat the tea and tincture 2 more times during the day.
Liver Cleanse, Days #2, #3, and #4:
Begin the 3 day juice fast. Start with your water, morning flush drink and herbal tea. Drink diluted fruit juices and herb tea until noon. Drink diluted vegetable juices, Potassium Broth, Total Nutrition and herb tea mid-day and afternoon. Take diluted fruit juices and herb tea again in the evening. Consume at least 1 gallon of liquid (8 ounces every hour)! If you get hungry, DRINK MORE!
Liver Cleanse, Day 5 – Liver Gallbladder Bomb:
This is the day you break your fast. After your morning drink, you can have some fresh fruit. Chew it very slowly and mix each mouthful with plenty of saliva. Remember, breaking your fast is a very important part of this program. Chew your food well and eat until satisfied, not full. You can always eat more later if you are still hungry. After 1:00 PM you should have a small vegetable salad and fruit again in the evening, chewing everything to a liquid pulp.
Tincture–The “Bomb”:
At bedtime, drink ½ cup of warm, unrefined olive oil blended with ½ cup of fresh lemon juice. Immediately go to bed and lie on your right side with your right knee pulled up close to your chest for 30 minutes.
Thereafter do the bomb each evening before you go to bed until there are no more gallstones (little dark green globules from the size of BBs up to the size of a mothball) coming out the following day. Do not start on the Week 4 program until the bomb is over and done with.
Kidney and Bladder Cleanse, Week Four
The night before you begin, make the Kidney/Bladder Tea per the instructions on the package.
Stop taking echinacea, Intestinal Cleanse #1 & #2, and discontinue the Liver Detox Tea and tincture. Continue taking Total Nutrition, Total Tonic, and cayenne drops (in tea or water).
Day 1 Upon Arising:
Drink your water. Within 1 hour prepare the following Morning Drink:
Kidney & Bladder Flush Morning Drink
Juice of one lemon and one lime
16 to 32 ounces of distilled water
A pinch of cayenne pepper or 1 to 10 drops of Cayenne Tincture
Optional – maple syrup (a little) to taste:
End of Cleanse, Week Five
Begin all over again at Week #3 if you wish to do a more concentrated detox and cleanse program.
Take it easy when returning to a new healthy food program. Choose lighter foods for a few days and be careful not to overeat. Chew your food well. Eating smaller meals more often is better than one or two large meals. Enjoy your new set of values on food choices and amounts. For the best health, eat lots of raw, organic foods that are grown locally and in season. Repeat this program until you are well, but do it at least twice more after you have recovered. OLM
Doc Shillington’s Total Body Cleanse Program copyright (c) 2001 by Ian Shillington N.D.
In our quest to find the best organic shampoo and hair care products for our personal use, we tried Morrocco Method. Our first purchase was an expensive package with four shampoos, a hair detox treatment, oil, a hair massager, a volumizing spray, and two conditioners.
There are things we love about this company and other issues we feel they should address. First and foremost, the products are wonderful. Honestly, it doesn’t get any better than Morrocco Method. They truly represent top of the line, best of the best, without cutting any corners. The ingredients are natural, gluten free, and raw. Nothing is synthetic. This company is dedicated to fair trade and extremely sensitive to environmental issues in all of their business practices.
Their shampoos can be used as a body wash and a shaving cream; one of their conditioners doubles as a deodorant. And their products do more than detox hair and scalp and restore luster to your hair, their products actually help regrow hair. (From our experience, we can agree this claim is true).
I wish we could say we liked everything about this company. We don’t. While it would be a mistake to assume customer service for an individual would be the same as a corporate response to a magazine asking for samples for a product review, we must report we were not at all pleased with the way they treated us at OLM. Rather than go into details, let’s just say that they were more than willing to send us samples, but their level of professionalism left much to be desired.
The same can be said for the company website and the written material and instructions that accompany a purchase. Morrocco Method would benefit from hiring an editor to proof its written copy and by revamping the navigation and layout of its website to make it more user-friendly. The site also boasts about its forum, but a question we posted 11 months ago has never been answered. It looks as if no posts have been answered since 2007 Morrocco Method’s prices are steep, especially if you follow their suggestion and buy all 4 shampoos for $75.00 so you can rotate them each time you wash your hair.
Rotating the four shampoos is said to provide optimum results, so it is a bit confusing to see literature that states that one shampoo is for normal to oily hair, one is for normal to dry hair, and two are for all hair types. On the other hand, words are inadequate to describe how your hair feels after using these products. It’s as if you are rediscovering your true hair, they way it is meant to feel with its natural oils. We found for the first time that we didn’t need to wash our hair each day, or even every other day. We could go as long as four or five days between shampoos thus making these shampoos affordable in the long run.
We highly recommend Morrocco Method’s hair care products for everyone, but especially for anyone who is losing hair. Try these products and follow the written advice regarding daily brushing and massage.
Update 7/1/2014: Their customer service is much better, but it’s still hit or miss. The people are nicer, but there are inconsistencies that are annoying.