Podcast 041: Toxicity and Detoxification

This Podcast contains a great deal of helpful information for those who are looking to get their health back on track, or are searching for new ways to feel even better about their lives. Martin Pytela, founder of Life Enthusiast, is joined by his co-host Scott Paton as they discuss detoxification and the body.

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There are 20 different amino acids which are mixed and matched to create various systemic proteins. The body manufactures half of these amino acids on its own, while the other half must be obtained through proper diet. Research shows that many diseases flourish in environments where systemic proteins are not be adequately produced. On the other hand, certain amino acids in excess can be just as detrimental. It is important in all things health related to always be searching for the right balance.

There is no better way to achieve this than with the help of Life Enthusiast Doc's Aminos. It contains a perfect balance of free form amino acids and encourages the body to use nutrients, repair tissue and just generally keep you feeling great.

Scott Paton:  Welcome back everybody.  You are listening to the Life Enthusiast Co-Op podcast, restoring vitality to you and to the planet.  I am your co-host Scott Paton along with Martin Pytela.  Hey Martin, how are you doing today?

Martin Pytela:  Doing good Scott.  Ready for another one of these recording sessions we do together.  I actually find them really fun to do.

Scott Paton:  They are fun to do.  I always look forward to doing them too and they are fun and educational.  Like I learn so much and I really do appreciate having the opportunity to work with you on this project.  It’s just great.  So, we have been talking about the five…

Martin Pytela:  Forces of illness…

Scott Paton:  Of illness and we have talked… what are the three that we have talked about so far now?

Martin Pytela:  Well, we talked about the inflammation, the metabolism, and the oxidation, the oxidative stress, which would be the oxidative stress is how we are rusting on the inside, the metabolism is how we are able to create energy and the inflammation is how the tissue on the inside reacts to damage.

Scott Paton:  Right.

Martin Pytela:  So, this time I would like to talk about detoxification or lacking detoxification or toxicity in general.  Essentially, there is a constant battle between how fast toxins are coming in and how fast your body is able to get rid of them.

Scott Paton:  Right.  Right.  So, I assume that there is like two ways that toxins come into our body, one is because we live in an environment that has a lot more pollution in it than it did 500 years ago and also the different things that we eat.

Martin Pytela:  Absolutely.

Scott Paton:  Is there another way that we get toxins or have I got… you know, kind of basically what we put in our mouth or what comes in through our skin?

Martin Pytela:  Yeah, I think that’s pretty much it.  You know there are two issues.  One is the chemicals that didn’t use to exist, the unnatural stuff, you know the artificial coloring, flavoring, preservative, the wonderful, fantastic inventions of the chemical and petroleum and pharmaceutical industries that didn’t exist.  You know there is this huge issue about getting rid of toxins and you can only get rid of toxins by washing them out either if they are fat soluble, you need to have lecithin to emulsify them; if they are water soluble, you just need good structured water to dissolve them and wash them out of the body.  So, you know the water soluble things… umm… what could that be?  There isn’t that much that’s toxic.  Well, you know, things like coffee for instance.  You drink a cup of coffee, you need to drink about two quarts of water to wash out the toxicity that that created.

Scott Paton:  Oh boy, that’s a lot of water.

Martin Pytela:  Yeah.

Scott Paton:  And that just does that.  So, people say about eight glasses of water, but if that was true and you need eight glasses of water a day, but you drink a cup of coffee, then you need like 12.

Martin Pytela:  Double that, pretty close.  Yeah.  So, you know, if you are drinking coffee like four cups a day, you are constantly supplying the body with more stuff than what it is able to get rid of, that it doesn’t need and doesn’t want and so what does the body do with it?  The body takes it and sequesters it.  Sequestering means I shove it somewhere into a far corner where the body vital functions do not interfere with it and that is fat.  Fat is the place where there is least blood circulation and least chance for it to get disturbed.

Scott Paton:  So, what you are saying is the more toxic we are, the fatter we get.

Martin Pytela:  Your body has to essentially take on and blow up more fat cells in order to keep holding onto all the toxins it is not able to get rid of.  Yes, that’s your larder.

Scott Paton:  Wow.

Martin Pytela:  Yeah.  So, of course, you know when you see the increase in people all around us that are just jiggly, blubbery, just expanding and they can’t get rid of it, I mean these are people who do think they are eating well, they do try to exercise, but they are not getting ahead of it and the reason is that they are ingesting stuff that they don’t even understand.  You know like the fast food industry is putting in preservatives and stimulants that simply are overwhelming the body’s ability to detox.

Scott Paton:  It always gets back to eating like good, raw fruits and vegetables, doesn’t it?

Martin Pytela:  Yep, it is the produce aisle and it is the raw fresh meat aisle and it is the… well, the dairy aisle is compromised because of the pasteurization and homogenization, that’s pretty much it.  You know anything that’s in the middle of the grocery store has got high value added to it, but unfortunately also high level of toxins.  Yeah, that’s, you know, and then come these wonderful things like the dryer sheets, you know, with the artificial aroma that comes off of that or the Glade electric, what are they called?  Fragrance generators…

Scott Paton:  Right.

Martin Pytela:  That stuff is pure poison, not to everybody.  See there is an issue that we need to discuss which is genetic differences between people.

Scott Paton:  Yeah because some people will have… will be exposed to something and get very ill and a lot of other people will be exposed it and don’t notice anything immediately, maybe 20 years later, there is a cumulative effect.

Martin Pytela:  Right.  Yeah, but you know like just the smells for instance, some people are sensitive to smells and others are not.

Scott Paton:  Right.  So, there is a genetic component to how sick people… how quickly they experience sickness maybe would be a better way of putting it, right?

Martin Pytela:  That’s right.  Well, you know, like for instance, my own body, about quarter of the population is unable to detoxify mercury effectively.  So, when I had my 12 fillings installed back when I was 25, within a year, I was unwell; within two years, I was sick; within three years, I was a basket case.  I mean it was awful.  I mean awful, awful, awful.  I no longer was able to hold a job that involved physical activity.  I was having to spend you know piles of money on care just to stay afloat.  I mean I spent several weeks a year essentially a wheelchair cripple because my body fell apart, thanks to the mercury poisoning that I caused myself by going into the dentist’s office.

You know this also happens with autism.  You have autistic kids that… there are so many stories.  A perfectly normal, beautiful child, 18 months old is brought to a doctor’s office, they inject him with a vaccine and within 10 days, the child is shot, gone, turned into an autistic nightmare.  Now, it could have been the mercury that’s used or it could have been the toxins like formaldehyde and who knows what else that’s used for killing the living culture to turn it into the dead vaccine that’s being injected, but all the same, there you have it, a system that’s unable to detoxify, turned into a total nightmare.  So, there is your example of impaired detoxification.  Now, fortunately, we do have some stuff that can deal with it, free from amino acids is something that is actually quite capable of working with both metal toxicity and even with the other toxins that the body has to help rebuild the damaged tissues.

Scott Paton:  Well, I guess that brings a question up for me, which is like what do you do to detox?

Martin Pytela:  Yeah, excellent, excellent question.  So, if you have, well, let me say it differently; #1, stop poisoning yourself.  Figure out what’s poisoning you and don’t do it.

Scott Paton:  [laughs]  Okay.

Martin Pytela:  Right, but the second, okay, now that you are poisoned and many of us wake up only too late, “Oh my God, I am poisoned” and you are, “Now, what?”  Well, there are the natural pathways, right?

Scott Paton:  Yeah.

Martin Pytela:  The elimination through kidneys and urine, liver, and the intestinal tract, through the skin, so, one of the better ways that we have found is this ionic foot spa which is able to drain your lymphatic system.  Lymphatic system accumulates a lot of the toxic stuff in your feet and so when you put your feet into a bath that’s been changed electrically, all of a sudden, the stuff that’s in your feet wants to come out of there because the bath wants to balance out.  Works great.

Scott Paton:  Right.  Your feet I believe has very large pores.  So, it can absorb and release a lot.

Martin Pytela:  Yeah, that is correct.  It works like that.  Of course we talked earlier about the Miracle II detoxifying baths, right?

Scott Paton:  Yeah.

Martin Pytela:  Where you take soap to lower the surface tension of the skin and take the neutralizer, which essentially is alkalizing minerals, put it in the bath and cause the osmotic pressure to draw acidic toxins out of the body.

Scott Paton:  So, what I keep hearing consistently in our podcasts is the right type of bath is really important for our health and of course that just keeps reminding me of these well known famous spas in Europe or hot springs in like Banff or some place like that that have always been known to have healing properties and I guess because they are full of minerals and… because I mean I always think of detoxifying as you know taking something or sticking something in my mouth and whatever and yet we can have a very gentle detox through the bath.

Martin Pytela:  Absolutely.  Yeah.  I agree and you are right and these are the alkalizing baths.  You know lots of magnesium, lots of sulfur, lots of well just high mineral content, and when you have high mineral content water, but you dunk yourself in, it will pull the minerals out of your body through the skin.

Scott Paton:  Including the toxins.

Martin Pytela:  Including the toxins, it’s the unwanted stuff.  It will not deal with heavy metals, but it will deal with toxic minerals and the acidic metabolites of natural stuff.  Yeah, so, that’s useful.  Yeah, at least once a week.  So, ever since I got my ionic foot spa, I use it here; once a week, I just sit myself down for half an hour and just drain the storage.  Feels great.  Makes me feel much lighter.  My wife’s mother, 83-year-old, shows up here and says, “Hey guys, could you help me out?  I would like to get drained again.”

Scott Paton:  [laughs]

Martin Pytela:  [laughs] And she gets up and she says, “I feel so much lighter” and she does, you know.

Scott Paton:  Right.  Right.  All the metals out of the feet, we would feel lighter, wouldn’t we?

Martin Pytela:  Yes indeed.  So, you know some people just will wonder who mentioned the metals, some people will say, “Well, this is nonsense you know.”  Like a dentist has been able to get away with it because 75% of the people don’t get a problem, but 25% do get horrendous problems or you know the drug companies, too.  Did you know that for instance you take one aspirin and you need to drink about a gallon of water to neutralize the effects of that?

Scott Paton:  No, I had no idea.  That’s amazing.

Martin Pytela:  Yeah.  So, you know, one headache, two aspirin and two gallons of water before you wash out all of that.  It’s toxins, I mean the drugs are essentially poisons.  They are not natural food.  You know, they do not grow on trees or meadows.  So, when you take it, it of course, does the action that’s required in the body.  It will interrupt the neural transmissions, stop the pain or stop the swelling or whatever it is that you do, but at a price.  So, if you want to actually repair and rejuvenate you need to wash out all of the toxins.  So, you need to be drinking structured water.  So, there is the other aspect of the toxicity and that’s the natural metabolites of your body’s process.  You know like your digestive system is processing the food, but if your digestive system is not functioning correctly, it is actually leaving stuff behind.  It’s sort of like your septic tank, where you know if you are putting stuff in your septic tank and the septic tank is not working right, it will start stinking to high heaven.

Scott Paton:  That’s right.

Martin Pytela:  So, now you need to find some way to correct the  culture in the septic tank and typically you would do it with microbes and with changing the pH of it.  So, this is impaired digestion which we are dealing with.  If your body is not able to deal with what you are eating, it is going to turn into toxins.  You will be stinking.  Your feces, when you go to the toilet, will smell really awful.  Your urine will smell strong and awful.  Your skin when you sweat will smell awful.  Those are all signs of impaired metabolism and impaired digestion.

Scott Paton:  What about… you just… when you were talking about the skin and sweat, one of the questions I have is like if you have got like adult acne or your children have acne as they are growing up, is that a symptom of detoxifying?

Martin Pytela:  Yeah.  Well, yeah.  That’s a symptom of the body trying to get rid of toxins and it just can’t do it the natural way.  Acne itself is always related to the liver and large intestine problems.  If you would get the large intestine back in good order and detoxify the liver, the acne is gone, just gone.

Scott Paton:  Well, that’s good to know.

Martin Pytela:  Yeah, it’s good to know.  So, we can help people with that.

Scott Paton:  So, if I wanted to detox my liver, what… I know we are going off on a little bit of a tangent here from where we want to go, but I am kind of curious, what would I do to detox the liver?

Martin Pytela:  Well, before I get to the liver, I would like to suggest that you want to actually make room for all of the stuff in your intestine.  So, I would first do a colon cleanse and I would do a digestive system restoration.  So, you know, we for instance have a product called Strata-Flora which we definitely recommend to people because #1, if you have ever taken antibiotics in your life, you have killed off a lot of the good flora that’s supposed to live in your gut.  If you are drinking chlorinated water, you are killing off the good flora that’s supposed to be living in your gut.  I mean it is logical right?  Why is the chlorine put in water?  To kill…

Scott Paton:  Bacteria.

Martin Pytela:  Well, so, when you drink it, guess what?  Anyway, the Strata-Flora will help you restore the proper function in the digestive tract and as that’s making room, we actually stimulate the liver.  We put silymarin in there.  That’s an extract of milk thistle and that’s a stimulant to the liver and that’s pushing it out.  So, you could take the herbal route and stimulate the liver.  There is also a very gentle external stimulation route and that’s done with, oh, gosh, my… [laughs] I have a mind block, one sec.  [laughs]  Oh, seesh, it is not coming to me.  Could you just put a marker up?

Scott Paton:  So, what could we do to cleanse the liver?

Martin Pytela:  Well, one of the gentlest ways to cleanse the liver is to use castor oil packs.  You don’t need to drink the oil.  You actually just put it on externally.  You would get yourself some decent castor oil, most every pharmacy has that and you would soak a hand cloth or paper towel in it, put it over your liver area and then warm it up with either a hot water bottle or electric blanket.  So, you would use a saran-wrap type of thing to wrap yourself with, you know, like put the oily thing on your liver directly on your skin and then saran-wrap it so you don’t mess up your clothes or whatever else you put over the top of it and then start warming it up and that stuff just stimulates your liver beautifully.

Scott Paton:  Well, glad I don’t have to drink it.

Martin Pytela:  Yeah, no kidding.  Oh, that stuff is awful for drinking.  Yeah.  Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I mean… sure, people used to serve it to kids as… you know, to drink to it purge everything.  It is a rapid solution for constipation, right?

Scott Paton:  That’s right.  That’s right.  So, that’s interesting.  You get a cloth or a paper towel, you put it in castor oil, put it on your liver, and then warm it up.

Martin Pytela:  Yeah and as that oil goes in, it stimulates the liver function and causes it to cleanse.  Simple, inexpensive, natural solution.

Scott Paton:  Yeah and easy to do.

Martin Pytela:  Indeed.  So, that’s you know detoxification.  We are talking about… there are so many different systems that you need to detoxify.  Some people have a problem with kidneys and create kidney stones.  Some people have problems with their liver and create gallstones.  Some people have problem with their pancreas and create diabetes.  You know, there are different angles of what happens in the body that’s just overwhelmed with toxicity.  So, we breakdown in different ways, but the essential problem is are you able to stay ahead of the pollution that’s coming in?

Scott Paton:  That’s right and that’s the key because our… we are not getting less polluting.  I don’t think…

Martin Pytela:  No, unfortunately not.  No.  So, you know what would I say… it’s a common problem, everybody should think about it, it is not at all innocent, what you are ingesting in food.  You know, if you are not eating organic, if you are not eating properly, carefully selected stuff, you are toxifying.  You are ingesting pollutants.  Okay, so, now that you know that you are doing it, you need to also find some ways to get rid of it.

Scott Paton:  That’s right.

Martin Pytela:  So, if you are living a very toxic life, you need to probably do a lot of detoxifying baths.  Maybe, you need to own the ionic foot bath because you are living a very busy lifestyle with too much coffee.

Scott Paton:  Yeah or if you were sitting in traffic all day, breathing in all those fumes…

Martin Pytela:  Not good.

Scott Paton:  It’s not good.

Martin Pytela:  Yeah, not good.  Yeah, you need to move out you know from the big city, live out where I am…

Scott Paton:  That’s why I really enjoy where I am living because I am right beside a nice river and a park and I get in there with the trees and it is just another world.

Martin Pytela:  Yes, I relate to it.  I remember what you are talking about.  I have driven there myself a number of times.

Scott Paton:  So, we want to do what we can to detoxify.  We want to stop putting stuff into our mouth that is basically poisonous and poking ourselves with stuff that’s basically poisonous.  Being aware also of, you know, just because, like you, I think it is really interesting what you talked about, vaccines and stuff, because I do know people that were perfectly fine before they had a vaccine and were very autistic after they had it and they… the doctors wanted to give them more, which just turned them right into a vegetable I think.

Martin Pytela:  Most likely.

Scott Paton:  And I think that those people are the people that are like the canary in the coal mines; they are showing us early signs right as I think somebody that doesn’t maybe show a reaction or autistic reaction to vaccines is… maybe it won’t show up for 20 years, when it is compounded with everything else in our environment.  I don’t think it is a… I think it is a matter of it’s going to happen… it’s not a matter of if it is going to happen, it is a matter of when it is going to happen.

Martin Pytela:  Yeah, everybody has a threshold, you know, that proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back.  You know, for me, it was when I was 25, I gave myself a dose of mercury and it totally broke me.  For some people, they hit the wall at 35, others only at 60.

Scott Paton:  Yeah, well, I mean we’ve all heard of someone who said, “Well, my dad smoked until he was 85 when he passed on,” right?

Martin Pytela:  Yeah, correct.  Well, you know, there are some people who are simply endowed with a great eliminative system.  You know 25% of the population is genetically challenged.  I mean I am one of those.  I don’t detox well.  So, I have that problem.  I know it now, I didn’t know it then.  People who are like me and there is really 25% of us here, if you are living in the American northeast where coal burning plants are putting out tons and tons of mercury in the air, you are in a huge risk.  You know, you compound it with eating high mercury content fish like tuna, you know, boom, there goes if you are eating lot of farmed salmon, boom more mercury.  I don’t know what else to take it.  You know cadmium is another one.  Cadmium is actually mostly ingested through smoking, cigarette smoking.  Anyway, the good news is that there is a way to eliminate toxic metals and you know the Platinum Plus Amino Acids that we have available, Dr. Vickery did some research on that and developed a product and it is a wonderful way to getting rid of these metals when your body is not able to do it.  Just as an example, we have had this 12-year-old kid who is autistic, just totally wasted, curled up in the corner, unable to function, we put him on 12 to 20 of these capsules a day.  Within two weeks, he was in school, in class, normal kid talking with people.

Scott Paton:  Wow.  That’s amazing. And I think that’s the big part of our story is there is hope, it doesn’t… you know, you don’t have to mortgage your house to do any of these things and you can feel a lot better, a lot healthier, and live longer.

Martin Pytela:  This is where the establishment, the pharmaceutical companies who are so invested in using poisons to cure or to at least treat conditions, they are completely, completely focused on using toxic substances in an attempt to change your health state.  It is so backwards.  Anyway, the establishment does not tell the parents of autistic kids that they don’t have to have a $60 000 a year therapy session.  All they need is about 100 bucks a month of those things for about a year and it is done and yet, I’ve watched shows on television with parents of autistic kids saying, “I have spent $200 000” or “I had to give up my $100 000 career to stay home with my child because I just simply had to” and that’s all unnecessary, absolutely unnecessary.  If only we could get the news out and we don’t get the news out because the corporate owned media out there is controlled by the interests of the pharmaceutical and chemical and petrochemical industries who are the producers of these pollutants.  They don’t want you to know that you shouldn’t be breathing the volatile fumes of gasoline and the exhaust and all of that.  I mean you already know it, but it is just that they are hiding from you the fact just how bad it is.

Scott Paton:  Yeah, that’s right.  So, you got to do… you do your own research, do your own figuring out and take advantage of people with knowledge like you have got Martin.

Martin Pytela:  Well, you know I got to it because I had to.  I mean I was… I was lucky right?  [laughs] I got sick about the time when I was already able to make decent amount of money.  So, yeah, I was paid well in the career I was in.  I was in corporate sales and I was making oodles of money and I was spending oodles trying to figure out what to do with myself.  So, I tried dozens and dozens of different therapies and finally, it dawned on me, it is not in chasing the symptoms.  It is in the management of the cellular function.  That’s why functional medicine or orthomolecular medicine as it was called earlier days is the only way to go.  Holistic is… you see lot of people don’t understand holistic.  There are naturopaths and chiropractors that are symptom chasers just as silly as the doctors that I am making fun of.  It is not what you practice, but how you are thinking about what you are doing.  If you are looking for strategic solutions to the problem, you are on the right path.  If you are only chasing the tactical issues, you know, it is the tack, that’s a funny play on words, you know the three tacks in a problem, if you are sitting on three tacks, if you remove one tack, you have still got two tacks up your butt.

Scott Paton:  That’s right.

Martin Pytela:  [laughs]  So, you need to actually take care of all three of them.

Scott Paton:  That’s a good point.

Martin Pytela:  So, you know, people go to a doctor who has been trained in singular diagnosis, singular thinking and he says, “Well, if you have diabetes, we have to give you x” whatever, insulin or such and such or if your thyroid is malfunctioning, we need to support you with thyroid hormones, like Synthroid, but that’s not so.  You know diabetes is not caused by diabetes.  It is caused by something else.  If you go after the causes and this is what this functional medicine is all about, if you go after the causes, you will understand cellular function at the cellular level and you will fix it and when you fix that, you have a body that essentially can run forever.

Scott Paton: Isn’t that nice?

Martin Pytela:  Yeah, longevity.  So, detoxification, of course, the five forces of illnesses, so, toxicity is one of them.

Scott Paton:  There you go.  So, that I think is a good place to end this particular podcast episode Martin and I just want to thank you very much for sharing your passion and your information with us.  It’s just been very enlightening for me and I am sure for all of our guests.

Martin Pytela:  Well, I am sorry, it was such a dark mood recording today, but toxicity is that sort of a thing.

Scott Paton:  Yeah, it is kind of a heavy metal topic…

Martin Pytela:  [laughs]  Very good puns just keep piling on.

Scott Paton:  They do, they do.  So, you have been listening to the Life Enthusiast Co-Op podcast and get out there and detoxify and we are working on restoring vitality to you and to the planet and detoxification is one of those five things that you have got to pay attention to and if you have got any questions for Martin, you can get him at…

Martin Pytela:  1-866-543-3388.

Scott Paton:  Yeah, and you know what?  He answers the phone.  You don’t necessarily… I mean if he is on the phone, you’ll get an answering machine, but it is not like you will be in… if you have ever phone some company Martin and they said, push 1 and then push 2 and then push 3 and push 4 and the next thing you know you are totally lost in voicemail hell…

Martin Pytela:  Yeah, we are not one of those.

Scott Paton:  You are not one of those.  So….

Martin Pytela:  We are still small.  You know what?  In two years, God willing, you won’t be able to get to me on the first try, but right now you can get me.

Scott Paton:  [laughs]  That’s right and if you want more information about anything that we talked about, you can head over to www.life-enthusiast.com.  there is hundreds and hundreds of pages of articles on every thing to do with health and the natural ways that you can have a healthy life and lifestyle and if you would like to listen to previous episodes of our podcast, you can go over to lifeenthusiast.podomatic.com.  They are all archived there for you and feel free to leave a comment or question.  We will do our best to answer them in future podcasts.  Let us know what you think and before I forget, if you have gotten any value at all out of this podcast or any of our previous podcasts, please tell your friends because we appreciate the support.

Martin Pytela:  And we need it because you know…

Scott Paton:  We got to get the word out.

Martin Pytela:  This research does cost money and [laughs] nothing is free.

Scott Paton:  Although our podcast is.

Martin Pytela:  There is a price.  I pay it.

Scott Paton:  And I do too. [laughs]  Yeah, that’s right.  You pay the price.  I forgot about that.

Martin Pytela:  [laughter]

Scott Paton:  All right everybody, until next time.  You have been listening to the Life Enthusiast Co-Op podcast and I am Scott Paton along with Martin Pytela, see you next time.  Bye bye.