Toxicity is an Obstacle to Healing Your Eyes

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Carlyle

Welcome to the organic MD podcast with Dr. Damon Miller, and me, Carlyle Coash. Welcome back to our interesting, ongoing conversation about bettering your health. How are you doing today, Dr. Miller?


Dr. Miller

I am doing well today. We are recording this while the great fires in Northern California are happening. It is bad enough that we are stuck here because of social distancing due to the pandemic, but it is almost dangerous to walk outside. It is getting better, and it is a good day to record a podcast.

Today, we are covering toxicity, which is part five of the eight part series about things your doctor does not tell you when you are diagnosed a retinal disease, like macular degeneration, Stargardt’s, or retinitis pigmentosa.

Toxicity is something I wrestle with while talking with people in my office all the time. It is not the cause of a disease, it is an obstacle to getting better, no matter what kind of health problem. No matter what you are doing, toxicity gets in the way and it can stoep any progress from happening. It has to be addressed. People wonder all the time if they are toxic, but how do you find out?

There was a large study done to help find the toxins we have in our bodies. The study group consisted of hundreds of people, who were all seemingly healthy. They chose a healthy group of people to study toxins in, so they would have a control group to compare with those who have a disease or illness. Samples of everything were taken, stool, urine, spit, hair, and even skin biopsies. They tried to get as much information they could possibly obtain and came up with a list of about 150 toxins. The results were astonishing. Everyone had every toxin on the list, and in dangerously large amounts. This sparked a lot of interest in toxicity when the results were published in 2000 and doctors wanted to know if their clients were full of toxins.

It was a mini industry for a number of years and some of the centers where the study was taken, put an elaborate test kit together. Doctors would get these kits with different tubes, vials, and envelopes to gather all the information from their clients; everything would then get sent back to the centers. This kit cost about $4,000 and you would get a 13-page printout back showing the results. This did not last for long because every test came back completely positive for toxins, everyone is full of toxins.

This is a long conversation and we have a course on Do It Yourself, Detox. This first piece of work helps you mobilize the toxins in your body because they need to be shaken loose from where they have been stuck. This will help you from being sick while the toxins are floating around until your body can figure out a way to excrete them out. The toxins that are stuck are for a good reason and if it cannot deal with something it buries it in your solid organs, bones, tissues, brain, spinal cord, and in your eyes. This is so the toxins are not freely floating around your body, poisoning you; it is poisoning wherever it is stationed though.

There is not much done for toxic testing anymore, but there are still some doctors who do. When we look at toxins, like heavy metals, through a hair or urine analysis, the results only show what is being excreted by the body, giving inconclusive results. The issue we run into when trying to address the toxins, is not that they have been exposed to the toxins, but their body is, in a sense, crippled, and cannot get rid of them. Out body is able to excrete heavy metals through urine or hair, but only if the toxins are not sedimentary. You may be full of lead or mercury and not even know it. A workaround to this is to give an agent that will mobilize the lead or mercury; when the test is repeated, there is usually a huge spike in the new results. This tells us that yes, you do have toxins, but taking an agent to mobilize them may be useful.

Usually, the people doing this testing have the intention to do intravenous chelation. Chelation is the process of getting metals out of your anything, including your body and farmland. It has leading agents that bind up the metals so they can be either sequestered or removed. This is very profitable for doctors, but they need proof that that risky technique is justified. You have to go out of your way to get some data on paper that showing you really have these metals. They explain why they did this and apologize for causing any damage, but it was worth it because it was needed. It is completely the opposite. There have been people excreting metals out of their body for many more years by using oral medication, not intravenous chelation.

This leads us to another part of our discussion on toxicity, which we will deal with for the rest of our lives. We live in a very toxic world, and will always be taking toxins into our bodies, no matter how hard you try. Some of these may already be acquired, and they can take many years to finally clear. It will take good habits of detoxification and getting rid of the bad habits, which you know a lot about, Carlyle. Your dad had habits he needed to change, and it is a very motivating story.


Carlyle

He had a clear understanding of his issue with his gallbladder because he ate very heavy and rich foods. He had the option to change his diet or remove his gallbladder, but he hates surgery and did not see it as an option for himself. He opted to make a change in his diet, started taking lecithin, along with some other supplements, and he lost a lot of weight. He knew he had to keep a healthy diet for the rest of his life, and he did. I was about eight years old when he started making these changes and had many more life experiences with him because of it.

Along with changing his diet, he set a routine for himself. By setting a routine, he would be able to stick to the changes for rest of his life and knew if he goes back to eating like he used to, the issues with his gallbladder would arise again. If he stopped doing the things that helped him get to this place of feeling great, he would be right back in the same place.

Usually, you are not just cleared and recovered for the rest of your life. It is different with a broken arm, once it has healed, it will not necessarily continue to break in the exact same location. We are talking about toxins and other health issues, which require changes you make for the rest of your life. Change is always hard at first, but once you are comfortably in your routine, it will be like second nature to you. In today’s time, we want a quick solution and never have to think about it again. The world is toxic and it does not seem to be getting better anytime soon, so we need to balance it out.

The same can be said with COVID or the flue, we all need to do things on an ongoing basis to keep your resilience high. You are likely always going to get exposed to something like the flu bug or COVID, even if you take precautionary measure. We need to keep our immunity boosted by taking vitamin C and D3, so when you are exposed to something, it will not have the same effect.


Dr. Miller

I heard someone refer to this as fragility, when you are trying to avoid a state where you are vulnerable to whatever comes in from you. This says it perfectly and will bring our discussion into the habits we have. I have some inspiring papers on habits, that are written by someone I have known for years, and we will have a segment on our habits in the future.


Carlyle

I experience this in my own life when I am not feeling well or under the weather. If I reflect on myself and think about the last couple of weeks. I realize I have not been taking my vitamin C, D3, or my diet has not been that great. I need to make sure I am, at least, drinking some juices or smoothies so I can get the healthy greens and nutrients in my systems again. When I do not do this, my body has much more work to do to maintain, regulate, and give my body the resources it needs.

We need to ask ourselves if we want to have a cold now or feel rundown in a week. None of us do, but we can lose track of it. I used to think I do not get sick in summer, but the worst colds I have had have been in the summer months. Having the cold or flu is more prevalent in the winter months, but it is still around. It is not like these bugs take a vacation from getting people sick, it will accompany you on your trip to Hawaii. We need to continually help our body, so it can fend off different illnesses.


Dr. Miller

We need to do these things that will keep us healthy, and continually do them. More and more, we are seeing people who are willing to engage and do the program we are talking about. They let us know years down the road that they are still feeling so much better. By taking care of their health, they can now sleep better, have more energy, and have not had a cold in years. We receive feedback from a broad range of people, and I have been seeing this since I left the hospital-based practice and stepped into integrative medicine, two decades ago. I wanted to address the root of the problem more than the branch; I did not want to keep treating symptoms with drugs. I have always had a bit of a skeptical mind, asking myself if these drugs are really useful and if they actually work. I also wondered if it was worth people taking the effort to do our program. It was worth it. We have helped so many people already and want to continue doing so.

Our Better Eye Health program does take commitment, and if you want the detoxification to work in your body you will need a 10-year commitment. In terms of eye disease, specifically, to avoid taking toxins into your system you want to clean up your body, get toxins moving out, and clean up your environment. We have found this simple, general work is important for everyone. We also incorporate microcurrent stimulation, which has shown to improve detoxification at the area you are treating. When you treat your eyes with microcurrent stimulation, day after day and week, after week, you are receiving localized detoxification in those tissues. There are similar effects with people with Parkinson's disease, which show a clear connection between toxicity and Parkinson's disease.

Along with changing your diet, a simple change is starting to eat organic foods. This is not a popular idea, but there is so much information written about the value of eating organic foods. You still get equivalent nutrition in the non-organic foods, but your urine will be full of agricultural chemicals, which are toxins to the body.


Carlyle

It is almost like our brains want to be convinced that organic foods is a hoax because it has the same nutrients. Organic does not mean Superman fruits. They are normal fruits and vegetables, but you are not ingesting the chemicals sprayed on and processed through it.


Dr. Miller

A great benefit to organic food is knowing where it came from, so start a little garden and grow your own food sources. You can taste the difference.

The last thing I want to talk about it emotional toxicity, and I know you are an expert on this, Carlyle, from the work you have done. It is major and one of the hardest things to address. Emotional toxicity is when you cling onto something, and we have a habit of clinging to the negative things. We will all experience troublesome, difficult, and sometimes traumatic occurrences throughout our lives, and there are things and ways to live your life so these negative toxins do not become corrosive. Would you please share about how someone might address their emotional toxicity?




Carlyle

To some extent, it is very much connected to be able to grieve and move through things. It is one of the places that is most underestimated, processing what it means to be in a life with changes happening all the time. We may not want to acknowledge the changes happening, but they are. We each may have a day to day routine to help us feel consistent, but everything around us is constantly changing. I certainly saw this while working in hospice, my family, and in supporting other friends and their family.

Whether it is trauma or grief, if you have things that are not resolved or worked on, they will stay stagnant and eventually become poison. I have people in my family who have some mental health issues and this can help drive some of the activity and toxicity levels. I know of others who created a lot of turmoil and agitation for themselves and others around them because they were not working on these core things. They had something going on and they would not let go of it.

These toxins are stored in you, just like the toxins in your body. If we are not able to process the unworked emotions and grief, it holds in a certain part of the body and builds a pattern of how one deals with things. There are no statistics to show, but if you were to do interviews with people who have struggled with any type of addiction, like alcohol, drugs, or food. An addiction is when you are out of control, and so much of the time we see a root of something unresolved or worked on.

You may not feel like you have the mental capacity to deal with your feelings and emotions, and sometimes we do not want to talk about it. Maybe you were raised in a family that did not talk about anything and everything gets shut down. This is when masking your feelings by food, drugs, and alcohol can become an addiction. You realize the first drink or bite takes away your negative feelings, but this action destroys you and exacerbates the trauma. Your behavior starts to turn worse and worse, leading you to act out more.

We need to take emotional toxicity as seriously as cancer because it is a deadly chemical that is lingering in you. It might be slower acting, but I have seen what happens when you do not deal with it, over and over again. Once you do deal with it, it may not be fully done, to some extent. This is something you will work on your entire life, especially if it connected to a trauma or loss.

There may be things you do not understand, like the impact of a loss, until you are in a place that triggers this understanding. I will use my mother’s death as an example. There were things from her death that I did not understand that would impact me, like when I got married. I wish my mom was there to be part of the supporting unit for me at my wedding, but she had passed quite before it happened. When you are in the situation and come to the realization they are not there, it brings up the grief again.

I had to work through it and relate to that pain again, which is fine because I have done the work for myself. I have made a commitment to not only work on it, but be willing to work on it. It may not be perfect, and I have people in my life that can look at me and tell something is going on. I can talk to them about what I am going through and see if it connected to a past loss our trauma. Part of that honesty is to be able to explore in yourself because I might be affected, and may be causing the choices I am making now.

I have known people who would say were not drinkers their whole life, but when something triggers them, and they start to drink. This may have happened over 20 years ago, but it can still be active because life has a tendency to bring up situations that triggers us again. There may be something we do not understand about the loss, and that is okay. We are not in any way a failure with our experiences, we are human and constantly changing beings. I am not stupid or broken for having these feelings of my mother’s death, even though she had passed more than 15 years before, and I cannot hold that in.

I know people who become ill and it is directly connected to an experience they had. Dr. Miller can attest to this, when someone comes in and gives a list of what they have going on. So many of us are used to the western medicine mind of having a diagnosis for everything going on with us. I have always appreciated your more eastern medicine approach by being more curious about the person and asking them more questions. You want to hear the story about them and see if they have been triggered by something in their past.

How often do you see someone and you ask to hear a bit about their story about the story of what this problem might be. They tell you they have this, this, and this going on and what they were doing when it happened. Well, maybe some of it is connected with what you are experiencing now, and they suddenly start talking about it. Doing self-exploration and talking about experiences can help you and other issues will start to calm and resolve.

I have seen this so many times, especially working in hospice and bereavement groups. A person is having real, genuine emotions about a loss that they have experienced. It can be overwhelming, so they go to a therapist and are immediately put on Zoloft, which shuts your whole process down. People want to be given something for the easy fix, especially when overwhelmed. This is all too easy, and our medical system is happy to prescribe anything.

If someone has been crippled by their illness, sometimes a medication can help bring some balance, but we need to deal with the grief and the things happening around it. I have seen so many people in bereavement groups that come in five years after the loss happened. They were immediately prescribed Zoloft, so they felt better and did not work through the grief. After some time, they stop taking the medication because they were feeling good, then crash hard when they do. The emotions and feelings have not disappeared, it was just masked over, and now you have to deal with it again. The same is true for alcohol, the drinking will deaden or smooth things over, but it is still there to be dealt with. Doing the work can be in conjunction with medication, but you will find yourself in a different place.


Dr. Miller

Western medicine has started to notion there is a connection between the mind and body, but it does not know how to make the connections. You need to understand this is real and it is important. It can be hard to deal with, but it is not hard work. The work you do will do on your emotional and physical detoxification is hugely helpful.


Carlyle

The obstacle we all seem to face is time, but that is what it takes. With the general healthcare system, many physicians are only given a 15-20 minute window to meet with their patients. We have all experienced this, and have been trained, in a sense, to have a quick fix for your issue. There are practitioners out there who would rather not talk, and I have seen this meeting with them at different hospitals. They would prefer to focus solely on their specialty, and not necessarily spend 40 minutes talking to you.

This is part of the reason why I stopped working as a chaplain because it was becoming more and more standardized. When I did, I got permission to spend to spend a couple hours with a family and would still get questioned why I took so long. To get where we need to go, they have to be able to trust me, to get into it and work through it because it cannot be prescribed. We cannot get ample work done if I have to do everything in a 20 minute window. These practitioners need to look productive, so they need to have so many visits per day. What is being productive though?

Dr. Miller, you are productive with each person because you can spend as much time as you need with them; and you want to do it. This does take some time, you do need to put some effort in, and you will need some energy to be willing to do it. You will do some work in the beginning when you start to dig in, but will end up with the resources you need to help you in the long-term maintenance. You will be ready when situations arise because you will have done a lot of the work already and have new tools to use in the future. You will be able to take on the new, emotionally toxic experience, resolve it relatively quickly, and move forward.


Dr. Miller

There is a huge payoff to this, but you do not really get it until you have done it. When you are not drowning in grief and need for forgiveness your anger and actions, there is an immediate payoff just terms of feeling better.

We only briefly touched on toxicity today, and I am sure there are more questions about mobilizing toxins and getting them out. We need to keep ourselves healthier when living in a toxic world, so we do have a course. We will send out notifications when we will be doing our Detoxify Your Body, Detoxify Your Home course. Please make sure to subscribe so you will be notified. We are also going to look at making a new course that will deal with emotional toxicity because it does take time.

We will end it here for today, but I want to urge you all to contact us. If you have any questions or have ideas for topics to cover in the future, please let us know. You can subscribe and like our podcast, so you can see our upcoming discussions. It also helps us get the word out to more people.

This was huge, thank you. There is so much we can say about this, but we will save it for the future. I really appreciate you, Carlyle. Thank you.


Carlyle

Right back at you, Dr. Miller. Thank you for joining us. Check back in for Part Six, which is coming up soon. Thank you.