The paths of elimination must be honored and respected if you’re going to get better and stay young and energetic well into your golden years.
When people get a cold or flu, they tend to run to the drugstore to take something that will stop the fever, snot, coughing, sneezing or diarrhea. This is actually the worst thing you can do to the healing process and slows it down tremendously, turning a 24-hour flu into a much longer beast. A better response is to take things like ginger tea to help the body eliminate the mucous faster and resolve yourself to watching your favorite DVD while clutching a box of very soft Kleenex. Wrap up and sweat, this helps the lymphatic system. The consequence of these flow-stopping actions is the toxins go deeper, where you cannot see them. They will fester and cause cysts, cancer and arthritis.
To maintain health and balance, the paths of elimination must be kept clean and flowing. The main path is the colon, nothing does as much work or carries as much trash as the colon. The lymphatic system uses the colon and also the skin, eliminating toxins through sweat. The circulatory system uses the lymphatic, liver and kidneys. The urinary system is a path of elimination for salts, minerals and acids, thus we can tell a lot about someone’s health from their urine. The sinuses are a path, as is the mouth through purgation, or vomiting, and the ears. The vagina is a path of elimination.
Each path, when blocked or chronically overloaded, can back up into another path. The sinuses will use the throat and ears, for instance, via canals, and thus lead to constant ear infections. The liver uses the sinuses, which is why black pepper and direct sunlight makes us sneeze – they both wake up the liver, irritate it just enough for it to spontaneously cleanse. Meridians (energy channels) connect paths too, so you may get something like tinnitus or ear infections when cleansing the kidneys or liver.
The cleansing and detoxing stage is all about getting our major organs, systems and cells to get rid of their reserves of toxic waste. When you’re dis-eased, it’s time to take out the garbage, and even when you’re not, it pays to do a bit of maintenance twice-yearly.