Clay for detoxification, health and healing
Different ways to remove toxins from the body
Clay has been used for thousands of years
How clay works
Which toxins will clay remove?
How to use the healing clays
Different ways to remove toxins from the body
Detoxification of the body naturally occurs with aerobic exercise, sweating, fasting, foods that chelate, and sufficient sleep. Grow Youthful discusses how you can assist these normal toxins outlets in several ways:
- Take a colonic.
- Improve the effectiveness of your aerobic exercise.
- Heat to increase your sweating (sauna, hot bath soak).
- Fast (with no food, or special foods).
- Antioxidants.
- Mineral saturation.
- High-chelating foods (such as some seaweeds, which chelate heavy metals and radioactive contamination).
- Massage and bodywork.
- Deep breathing.
- Meditation.
Clay has been used for thousands of years
Clays have been used for thousands of years to promote health and healing. The ancient Egyptians used to apply clay facial masks and take clay baths to improve their skin cosmetically and heal many illnesses. French sailors ate a small quantity of clay to prevent and cure dysentery, a serious bacterial infection of the intestines. In my home continent of Africa, I have seen many animals wallowing in and covering themselves with mud. This protects them from insects and the sun, and provides an important source of minerals through their skin, as well as drawing out toxins. People from many cultures have applied clay directly on themselves and their animals - as a poultice to draw out toxins, and heal infections in open wounds.
How clay works
When dry clay is mixed with water, the plate-like particles of clay open up and create a porous network with a large surface area. The clay acts like a magnet, because the tiny clay particles have a strong negative ionic charge. Most of the toxins in the body happen to be positively charged. So depending on the clay and the toxins, they are quickly and strongly drawn out of the body.
Certain healing clays have a strong attraction to heavy metals, radioactive elements or many other toxins such as pesticides. These clays are known as smectites, having formed from weathered deposits of volcanic ash. In France they are called montmorillonite clays after Mont Morillon where they are found. In the USA deposits are mined near Ft. Benton, Wyoming and are called bentonite clays.
Which toxins will clay remove?
Specific clays are attracted to certain toxins in your body. These pollutants can come from what you absorb through your skin, from what you eat, and what you breathe. Dental amalgams, cosmetics, pesticides, food additives, drugs, municipal water, air pollution, household products, the list goes on ...
Some types of clays have more attraction than others to:
- Mercury, cadmium and other heavy metals.
- Arsenic, aluminium, lead and many industrial chemicals.
- Inorganic residues from tea, coffee, food additives, vaccinations, pesticides and herbicides.
- Drugs (both recreational and pharmaceutical), food preservatives and other chemicals.
In addition, some of the better clay bath mixtures have added herbs with characteristics that help the process.
How to use the healing clays
The best way is to have a hot soak in a tub of water, mixed with a cup or more of the clay mixture. Expose as much of your skin as possible to the clay mixture.
Simply lie in the hot bath for twenty minutes and the mud draws the toxins out through the opened pores of your skin. The first time you take a clay bath, a dark sludge containing the poisons will settle in the bottom of the tub. Sometimes you may feel physical or emotional release, a feeling of lightness, fatigue. This is quite normal.
After sweating in a hot bath, have a drink of mineral-rich water and maintain the diet recommended in Grow Youthful. It is important to keep up healthy levels of minerals that are needed in trace quantities, such as copper, molybdenum, tin and zinc.
Foot Bath. A foot bath is a delightful and economical way to enjoy a detox by soaking your feet in a basin that contains a smaller amount of clay.