Page 44 - Spring2015

All internal in illness.” The Finns understood the healing (foolishly) running up a steep grade in the middle
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organs power of saunas as early as 1112. There is an old of a hot summer day. Sympathetic nervous ac-
Finnish proverb that says “the sauna is Finland’s tivity, as in stress, inhibits toxin elimination,
detoxify medication . . . and a poor person’s apothecary.” according to Larry Wilson, MD, who specializes
during a Native American Indians have also been using in detoxification.
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Sweating in a rested state encourages the
sauna while saunas, aka sweat lodges, for thousands of years. body to eliminate chemicals from body care

When the body is in a state of chronic sym-
the body pathetic dominance (stress), our detoxification products; toxic metals (copper, mercury, and
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is in a processes slow down or in some cases come to other metals ) accumulated from exposure to
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relaxed state. a halt. When in sympathetic dominance, our certain medications, vaccines, dental materials,
organs receive a signal that we are in a state polluted air, and commercial fertilizers; residues
of flight or fight. This is no time to eliminate from pharmaceutical drugs; DDT, PCBs, DDE,
toxins. All hands are on deck for survival mode. dioxin (found in Agent Orange), and other pes-
Unfortunately, many of us living in modern, ticides. Additionally, heat therapy increases
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industrialized cultures live in a frenzied state of circulation drawing the blood toward the skin. 25
constant sympathetic dominance. Rather than As the body sweats toxins are eliminated. Drugs
enjoying long periods of rest dominated by the such as methadone, amphetamines, metham-
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parasympathetic branch of the autonomic ner- phetamines, and morphine have been measured
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vous system, people today live in constant “fight in human sweat.
or flight” mode. D.C. Roehm reported in 1983 the results of a
One of the benefits of sauna therapy is that Vietnam veteran who had been exposed to dioxin
you are able to easily shift into parasympathetic and DDE, a persistent metabolite of the pesticide
dominance, unless of course you sit in the sauna DDT, and who underwent a managed detox pro-
with a cell phone engaged in an intense conversa- gram, which incorporated sauna therapy. After
tion or play loud music. In that case all bets of two hundred fifty days, the DDE was measured
benefit are off. The autonomic nervous system to be 97 percent reduced.
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stays in sympathetic dominance, limiting the The humanist scientist René Dubos stated
ability of the body to detoxify. twenty-five years ago that “The greatest danger
While the skin holds the second largest of pollution may well be that we shall tolerate
surface area of all the body’s organs (with the levels of it so low as to have no acute nuisance
small intestinal tract having the largest surface value, but sufficiently high to cause delayed
area), it is not the only organ that benefits from pathological effects and despoil the quality of
dry sauna therapy. All internal organs detoxify life.” Four million distinct chemical compounds
during a sauna while the body is in a rested, have been identified since 1965. As many as sev-
parasympathetic state. In actuality we eliminate enty thousand of these compounds are in current
more toxins while relaxing and sweating in a commercial production, with more than three
sauna than we do working out on a treadmill or thousand chemicals added to food and seven

KIDS 'N CAVIAR

Randy Hartnell of Vital Choice Seafood teaches
WAPF children to eat salmon jerky and salmon caviar at
Wise Traditions 2014. Vital Choice has been an extremely
generous supporter of our conferences over the years.

42 Wise Traditions SPRING 2015 Wise Traditions

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