Dr. Sherry A. Rogers

Very enlightening excerpt by environmental toxicity expert, Sherry Edwards, MD, and the increased risk of premature chronic ailments from a lifetime accumulation of toxins in the body. Other research references in the book for a deep dive into toxicity and internal cleansing.

Part 1

“A sauna used to be thought of as a luxury. Studies now confirm that diet and environmental chemicals cause 95% of cancers. Furthermore, as the first generation of man exposed to such an unprecedented plethora of daily chemicals, we have learned that stored or undetoxified chemicals can mimic any disease. ‘ Incurable’ chronic diseases that were thought to have no known cause often disappear once toxic chemicals are gone. Since the far infrared sauna is the safest, most efficacious and economical way of depurating stored toxins, this makes it a household necessity.”

Sherry Rogers, M.D., Northeast Center for Environmental Medicine - internationally known expert in environmental medicine and author of; Detoxify or Die, and Tired or Toxic?

The Secret of Sweat

So here we are riddled with disease-producing toxins and piling on more each day. Inevitably the axe will fall. But what if we could get rid of these toxins? What if we could have a body that only had the toxins we had accumulated up until 20 years ago, or better yet at age 16? What if we could get rid of our lifetime burden of toxins or even just turn the hands of time back a couple of decades?

I have followed hundreds of patients who used the oral, non-prescription mercury detox cocktail to get rid of mercury aluminum, cadmium, arsenic, and other heavy metals. For folks who have tougher cases we can use DMPS which is available by prescription as Chemet, or the infinitely cheaper and non-prescription and identical substance, Captomer (Thorne, N.E.E.D.S.). And for folks with high levels of calcifications in their arteries EDTA is an intravenous chelator, but requires sitting hooked up to an intravenous solution in a doctor's office for four hours three times a week for 20 to 40 sessions, costing thousands of dollars. Then you need a maintenance program. A safer proven way to reverse coronary calcifications is with the macrobiotic diet (Ornish, 1998). PET scans proved that the calcifications melted away. For the full directions on doing the health-promoting diet, start with You Are What You Ate, then proceed to The Cure Is In The Kitchen, and use Macro Mellow for the cookbook).

But what about the cancer-causing PCBs and the multitude of plastics and pesticides with all sorts of chemical configurations that the body has no way of metabolizing? What about all of the newly synthesized dangerous chemicals that firemen, for example, are exposed to when these plastics and pesticides burn, creating new compounds that have never before been seen by man? None of these chemicals are removed by chelation or any drug.

In the 1970s a controversial gentleman named L. Ron Hubbard designed a sauna program that enabled drug addicts to detoxify. He reasoned that folks were never addicted until they had taken drugs. And the more they took, the more they craved. He thought if he could get the drugs out of the body (the unmetabolized residues), the addict would no longer crave. He published his brilliantly successful program in his book Clear Body Clear Mind in 1990. Shortly after the results of the program were known, physicians from many specialties realized that this program might also be adapted for getting rid of all sorts of other types of chemicals, thereby restoring health in an endless variety of diseases (Kilburn, Schnare, Roehm, Rea, Root, Tretjak, Tei).

Sauna Proven in the Toughest, Most Resistant Cases

I always say, if you want to prove that a new medical therapy works, pick the most recalcitrant, impossible to treat conditions. For if it is a success on those cases, everything else is bound to be a "piece of cake". And that is exactly what folks have done with the sauna. By getting rid of years of drug residues in addicts, Hubbard freed them from their cravings and addictions, impressively lowering recidivism. Drugs are metabolic poisons, damaging the normal function of the body. Only when years of drug residues have been reduced are folks freed from the plague caused by the slow leeching out of subtherapeutic doses of stored drugs and toxins. For these trace amounts unmercifully trigger cravings, reminding them that they need a higher dose to block out all feeling. For addicts it is imperative to get rid of all drug residues in order to cure their cravings and addictive behavior. This includes alcohol, cigarettes, and prescription drugs.

In addition, the accompanying nutritional program has corrected long-standing deficiencies that also trigger addictive behavior, fatigue and a myriad of symptoms. For when it comes right down to it, chronic drug addiction has two causes: nutrient deficiencies which cause cravings and stockpiled unmetabolized drug residues that slowly leach out and cause cravings. That's why drug pushers give so many freebies, because once you get it in your system, it is difficult to resist wanting more, depending upon each individual's chemistry. The trick is to be smart enough to never take the first dose.

But proof only began there. One of the worst occupations for bizarre chemically-induced or toxic symptoms is that of a fireman. This is because when modern home and commercial furnishings and construction materials burn, they release even more damaging chemicals whose carcinogenic potential has become magnified. Not only does burning of a multitude of phthalates and other plasticizers, PCBs, dioxins and related compounds create chemicals that are many fold more toxic, but when they are inhaled in massive amounts by fireman, it gives them as high a level as if they had had it by IV.

These chemical concoctions have caused the most difficult to diagnose and treat disorders, especially of the brain and the nervous system. But researchers using Hubbard's protocol (Kilburn) were able to accomplish what medicine was paralyzed in accomplishing. They restored these toxic firemen to normal once they got rid of their tightly stored chemicals. A sauna program is still the only known way of getting rid of these 20th century man-made chemicals.

Using Hubbard's protocol, other researchers (Schnare, Roehm) cleared people of PCBs and pesticides as well as Agent Orange (dioxins). These were folks who had undiagnosable and unbeatable symptoms, totally resistant to all therapies that medicine could offer. But the Master Planner, left one route for us to unload a lifetime of damaging, disease-producing chemicals: SWEAT.

Other clinicians reaffirmed the benefits of detoxifying saunas when, as a result of accidents involving pilots who did aerial spraying of pesticides, these men were also cleared of life-threatening symptoms. Likewise residents of Michigan gave us a huge amount of scientific information when a PCB-laden cancer-causing fire retardant was accidentally put into animal feed, contaminating their entire dairy industry, milk and cheese, statewide, forever (Wolff).

Clearly we have trashed our bodies. Luckily, you have the power to reverse that.

Studies six years later, showed that Michigan residents and folks from over 25 other states who also got the PCBs hidden in their dairy products, just did not get rid of those nasty PCBs. The body does not have the chemistry to do so. Even in the soil these chemicals are what we call persistent environmental poisons. But those who did saunas were able to eliminate the PCBs as well as other stored toxins from their bodies. The truth is we have all eaten foods from Michigan and have slowly bioaccumulated these and hundreds of other similar toxins that are known as some of the most powerful inducers of cancer in existence. Remember, EPA studies show 100% of humans harbor PCBs, one of the most potent causes of cancer known to man.

But the proof for the magic of sauna detoxification does not end with drug addicts, fire fighters, Vietnam vets, pesticide pilots, or consumers of polluted dairy. Other researchers and clinicians studied workers accidentally contaminated from occupations as diverse as electricians to farmers. Meanwhile, machinists to office workers also had their lives saved, as serious conditions that medicine was powerless to help were reversed through the use of sauna.

Then there are my hundreds of patients with severe chemical sensitivity, saddled with just about any symptom you can think of, who have traveled the world in search of how to get well. When exposed to simple everyday perfumes, fabric softeners, carpets, pesticides, malls or traffic fumes, they were left unable to think or in total body pain, as examples of hundreds of symptoms. Some were referred to the specialized environmental units like the Environmental Health Center of Dallas, (Dr. William J. Rea, www.EHCD.com) or to North Charleston, South Carolina (Dr. Allan Lieberman) and then returned home to continue saunas for life.

Dr. William Rea, medical director of the Environmental Health Center, Dallas, receives the most difficult to treat cases in the world, cases for which there is no more hope and many of whom are physicians themselves. By now you are getting the idea that whenever you hear a disease is "hopeless", it merely means no one has looked for the underlying cause, nor have they been committed to getting rid of it. For this is why Dr. Rea's program has been so successful, because he does just that. And sauna is an integral part of it.

Alcoholism is a biochemical disease, not a lack of will power. And curing it requires (1) correcting fatty acids, amino acids, vitamins, minerals, and orphan nutrients, plus (2) removing toxic residues of drugs, alcohol, and other chemicals that damage normal function of brain chemistry responsible for pleasure sensation.

In fact Dr. William J. Rea, medical director of the American Environmental Health Center in Dallas Texas, has treated literally thousands of patients with nearly every diagnosis, incorporating this technique into an all-encompassing environmental medicine program. Because these patients come from all corners of the world, are desperately ill and have all exhausted everything that modern medicine has to offer, getting rid of their underlying chemicals is crucial to their healing. In fact when physicians knowledgeable in finding the causes of disease are totally stumped and do not know what else to do for seriously ill patients, they often send folks (and themselves) to this unique center.

These people are so full of chemicals and their detoxification pathways are so damaged, that often they will need one or more months of detoxification saunas at the unit to be followed by months and years of saunas at home.

In one study by Dr. Rea, 210 patients with a variety of symptoms did only one or two 40 minute sessions a day for one month (Rea). Even a program this short with people for whom medicine had nothing more to offer yielded impressive results. Within one month 63% measurably decreased their levels of toxic chemicals and 31% improved their symptoms. Clearly, sauna is the only proven method for depurating a lifetime burden of xenobiotics producing "incurable" symptoms.

As lifesaving as sauna programs are however, there was a problem with saunas. Not everyone could tolerate them. In fact I was one who could not even spend five minutes in a sauna. For starters, as you have learned, the nervous system is one of the most commonly damaged areas of the body. Many of us just plain had broken, poisoned, thermostats and could not tolerate high heat.

I sprayed herbicides (atrazine) on our farm and my autonomic nervous system became damaged. For decades, whenever I got overheated, I would never sweat, but just remained bone dry and beet red. If I tried to go in a sauna I couldn't stand it even five minutes, feeling like I would go crazy. Many people experience this because of a damaged autonomic nervous system, especially those with multiple chemical sensitivities, chronic fatigue, MS, and fibromyalgia.

And then there are heart patients who are notoriously intolerant of heat. The newspapers predictably report on the numbers of heart patients who die whenever there is a heat wave. Consequently, heart patients and especially those in congestive heart failure would be the last people on earth you would want to put in a sauna. So what do you do when the worse the poisoning, the less chance you have of tolerating a regular high heat sauna?

The Superior Sauna —FIRS (Far Infrared Sauna)

What is the best way to get rid of toxic chemicals including pesticides, heavy metals and hydrocarbon residues when you cannot tolerate a sauna? When a sauna makes you feel weak, sick, have a fast heart rate, faint, dizzy, panicky, headachy or just plain miserable, what is the solution? The far infrared sauna. Thanks to improved technology, the far infrared sauna is far safer and infinitely more tolerable, because it uses a heat energy that penetrates tissues, triggering mobilization of chemicals from subcutaneous fat storage, directly into the sweat. This activating penetration allows for a much lower overall temperature to be used (as I'll show you later), one that is enjoyable and not torture.

But more important, you haven't forced the body to bear very high temperatures (160 degrees and higher), pulling chemicals back into the bloodstream where they can duplicate original symptoms. Instead they slip out the back door, so to speak, from just under the skin storage directly into the sweat. Over weeks and months there is an equilibration, where chemicals that were stored in other organs slowly and safely disseminate throughout the body and eventually empty into subcutaneous fat. It is the chemical load that is stored beneath the skin that is the main area activated by the far infrared sauna.

Even if you are on your deathbed, it is not too late to turn the tide of disease. Many others have (Nussbaum, Rogers).

Another thing I always worried about in a conventional sauna, even for the few brief moments I could stand one, was the fact that my eyeballs burned so much. I couldn't believe that intensive heat on my corneas was good for them and feared triggering cataracts. To my knowledge, no studies have ever been done on this, but this high temperature on the eyeball and lens cannot be good for them. It's unphysiologic. Anyway, I do not get that type of eye pain in the infrared sauna, only profuse sweating. And that is just the effect you want in order to release a lifetime of toxins from body storage.

The body gets rid of stored chemicals in stool, urine or sweat. The sweat route requires no drugs and is the most efficient and natural (man used to physically work and sweat before computers were invented). As the oldest of eight children, I used to hesitate to recommend something as expensive as a home sauna. I was looking for treatments that were natural, but inexpensive and definitely not high tech! But when you realize the lifelong incapacity and expense of diseases such as chronic pain syndromes, heart disease, chemical sensitivity, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, migraines, Alzheimer's, cancer or any others caused by chemical toxicity, a sauna is cheap. Let's face it: high-tech pollution requires high-tech solutions.

If you're overwhelmed by medical bills with no end in sight, it's time to consider reversing the hidden causes of your diseases.

(1) Just add up the time and money you wasted getting diagnosed. (2) Or add up the cost for a year of prescription medications and you will have paid for it. But its advantages do not end there. (3) Once you have it, it's yours to use forever, for the world will never run out of ways to poison us. (4) The whole family can use it. (5) It is not only capable of providing the primary "cure" or solution for your current medical problem, but can free you from symptom-producing medications. Since we are continually being bombarded by new chemicals every day, it is a tool to keep you "cleaned out" for life. It is a win-win situation.

I'm convinced that the far infrared sauna is something that everyone should do to restore health, and then continue to do on a less frequent basis to maintain the "cleaned out" state for the rest of their lives. It's therapeutic as well as prophylactic.

The Hot Solution for Body Pollution: FIRS

How can we bring aging and illness to a screeching halt? Better yet, how can we turn back the hands of time? By booting those nasty disease-causing chemicals out of the body. Sweat out the poisons is the answer, but not any old sauna or sweating program will do, in fact some are dangerous.

FIRS, the Only Sauna Proven Safe For Elderly, Severe End-Stage Heart Patients. Many people who are sick, like heart patients, would never tolerate the extreme temperatures of regular saunas. In fact it would make them worse, raising blood pressure and heart rate, while triggering arrhythmias and shortness of breath. Clearly heat is contraindicated. Imagine a man with cadmium-induced arthritis and hypertension, or a woman with mercury-induced shoulder pain and angina, or toluene- p induced migraines and arrhythmia. When, environmental chemicals create pain in addition to cardiovascular disease, as examples, what is the heart patient to do?

If you are like most people, you may have never learned much about the diagnosis of CHF or congestive heart failure. Yet it attacks more people each year than cancer, and it is as lethal as cancer. For with the diagnosis of cancer, the median survival (different cancers have their own survival rates, but if you average them all together) is 6 years. With CHF, the median survival is less: 5 years. When the diagnosis of cancer is made, folks feel imminent doom and urgency. But with CHF, it has received such scant press that it merely engenders a "So what?" response. It fosters no doom and gloom urgency.

In fact, even though congestive heart failure is more prevalent and more lethal than cancer, folks know so little about CHF that they do not concern themselves with preventing it the way they do cancer. CHF starts with any heart symptom you can imagine. High blood pressure, high cholesterol, angina, arrhythmias like atrial fibrillation, dyspnea (shortness of breath, beginning with the stairs and inclines), claudication (leg pains when walking), pedal edema (ankle swelling), pericarditis, cardio-myopathy (heavy metal or other poisoning of heart muscle), fluid in the lungs, recurrent pneumonias, bypass surgery (putting new coronary vessels in) or endarterectomy (roto-rooting or reaming out the old plugged arteries) can be the beginning that insidiously leads to congestive heart failure. The most common symptom is shortness of breath, especially on stairs, inclines, or while doing repeated deep knee bends, or jogging. An even worse sign is the swelling of ankles at the end of the day, indicating a heart so overloaded that fluid backs-up all the way to the leg vessels.

Unless you get rid of stored trash, it eventually causes disease and death. You have complete control. Is that heart disease really cadmium toxicity in disguise?

As with every illness, in "modern medicine" CHF suddenly becomes a deficiency of a multitude of heart drugs. Drugs to control the rhythm, like calcium channel blockers (proven to cause shrinkage of the brain and loss of mental function as well as increase the risk of heart attack and cancer). And ACE inhibitors are often prescribed, known to cause bronchitis (chronic cough). Digitalis-type drugs like Lanoxin to boost the force of contraction, and diuretics or fluid pills to decrease the swelling and work of the heart (and known to cause worsening of high blood pressure and the chance of sudden death by heart attack) are some of the other drugs added to the brew. And the list does not stop there, for the CHF patient has more drugs on board than most other diseases. Meanwhile the real underlying causes, which can be totally correctable, go consistently ignored by medicine. And once a congestive heart failure victim starts accumulating drugs, it is extremely rare if any drugs are withdrawn. Instead his physicians steadily pile on more to keep pace with his worsening symptoms.

Part 2

The Heart as Allergic Target Organ

The number of drugs should tell you that medicine doesn't have a clue as to what the true underlying cause is for CHF. But you know. It is anything that can poison the heart; mercury from dental amalgams, fish and paints; cadmium from auto exhaust, cigarette smoke (including secondhand from others), shellfish, incinerator pollution, and industrial pollution in air, food and water. You cannot escape heavy metals or other environmental pollutants. Yet even though these toxic elements have been a recognized cause of high blood pressure and heart failure for decades, they remain ignored by medicine.

What else can silently poison hearts? You guessed it, herbicides and pesticides, which are also hidden in our air, food and water. No one is protected, while not one toxin is suspected. And the causes of heart disease do not end there. They include hydrocarbons and other environmental pollutants or toxins, from trichloroethylene in city water supplies, solvent extraction fluids used to decaffeinate coffee, toluene in  painted rooms, formaldehyde in carpets, and benzene in air fresheners, to good old diesel and other  common pollutants in vehicle exhaust (EPA, Bond, Theriault, Levine, Atkins, Kesteloot, Alexander, Goldsmith, Myerson, Asokan, Williams, Mee, McLeod, Wiseman, Wright, Speizer, Antti-Poika, Edling, Kobayaski, Ludomirsky, Sharp, Schroeder).

You might be tempted to fall for the story that there is no way to get all these poisons out of the heart, but you are much too smart for that by now. The far infrared sauna (FIRS) has been proven by specialists at the famed Mayo Clinic to improve heart failure, even when nothing more could be done by medicine. And in Japan, clinicians and researchers have confirmed its life-saving properties when nothing else could be done (Tei, Kihara, Imamura). But not any old sauna was effective, for example, the regular or dry Finnish saunas actually triggered worsening of arrhythmias, increased hypertension and shortness of breath  (even at rest), and most heart patients could not tolerate them. In fact, some of these heart failure patients could not even tolerate a hot bath or a hot day out of doors without drawing closer to death.

As an example of how little an increase in ambient temperature heart patients can tolerate, a July 7, 2000 Wall Street Journal front-page article reported that in Europe as temperatures reached 113 F. from a high-pressure system trapping drifting Sahara air masses, 25 people died. Later that month on July 14th, CNN reported multiple deaths for heart patients as temperatures in Texas lingered between 105 and 110 F. Clearly a regular sauna of over 140°F would be out of the question for the heart patient.

When the heart is broken, you need to identify and correct nutrient deficiencies, then safely get rid of the toxins that poisoned the heart muscle and its nerves.

But hang onto your hats, for the far infrared sauna (FIRS) was not only very well tolerated with no adverse reactions, but it got rid of so many of the underlying chemical triggers of CHF, that these end-stage heart patients actually reversed and improved and were able to discard some of their medications (Tei, Kihar, Imamura)! This is unheard of. With CHF, the rule in medicine is you increasingly pile on medications as you deteriorate. You rarely drop any, for there is no hope of cure. It is a one-way street — at least it is if you do not do a FIRS. Currently they are evaluating cutting out a part of the damaged heart muscle (ablation) as temporary improvement for heart failure! As usual, when drugs fail, medicine resorts to cutting it out and throwing it away. They figured they do it with cancers, colitis and other problems, so why not the heart?

How is the Far Infrared Sauna Different?

Let's look at the energy that comes from the sun. It is responsible for photosynthesis, the process by which plants make energy to grow. In essence, solar energy is responsible for all of life (since animals must have plants to eat or there are no animals).

The spectrum of energy from the sun is classified according to the length of the waves. The shortest (and most damaging) rays of the solar spectrum are gamma rays. Think of a gamma gun in a sci-fi movie that vaporizes assailants in an instant. The next longer rays of the sun are x-rays (carcinogenic), then ultraviolet (causes sunburn, corneal and lens damage and skin cancer), and then visible light. After that is the infrared spectrum, then radio waves.

At the far end of the infrared spectrum are the longest and most healing rays, the far infrared (FIR) spectrum, spanning from 1,000 to 4 microns. Between 4-14 microns in the FIR (far infrared) spectrum, fall most of the rays that are the safest and most vital to health and healing. They are responsible for photosynthesis, without which there would be no life on each.

Even our bodies radiate infrared energy through our skin between 3-50 microns, mostly around 9.4 microns. This is the basis for infrared glasses allowing Special Forces to see the enemy at night. Palm healing and other hands-on therapies are based on the healing properties of natural far infrared rays, with our palms emitting infrared energy at between 8-14 microns. Our bodies absorb 93% of the infrared waves presented to us, the basis for similar heaters being used to warm premature infants in nurseries. The FIRS uses a patented zirconium ceramic infrared heater, emitting between 2 and 25 microns, with a third of the output in the 2-5.6 micron range for deepest penetration, about 1.5 inches. Patented in 1965, it was used predominantly in Japan, and then use extended to the U.S. since 1981. Safer, more economical to operate, lower in EMF, and inducing 2-3 times the sweat volume, while allowing a much more tolerable and safer operating temperature, makes it my preferred tool for purifying and detoxifying the body. Naturally nothing stands alone, and a clean diet, environment and soul are, of course, crucial components to healing the impossible. I'll take you through more of the "TOTAL LOAD" later.

Far infrared rays are the healing, safe rays of the sun's spectrum, responsible for photosynthesis. Without this wavelength, plants would be unable to make energy, and consequently, there would be no life on earth.

Far infrared wavelengths have other beneficial properties. They lower lactic acid (the acid that accumulates and causes pain in muscles when you have overdone during exercising), stimulate endorphins or happy hormones of the brain, and kill organisms like bacteria and parasites. More important, they penetrate tissues, detoxify cells by vibrating ionic bonds, stop swelling, improve lymphatic flow and blood circulation, and attract calcium to cell membranes where it is needed for healing.

Far infrared wavelengths also decrease the size of water clusters, giving them greater mobility and penetration in and out of body tissues. For it is when these hyperactive or energized water molecules move in and out of cells that they also carry toxins that previously were stuck. FIR energy actually causes a resonance dance between the water and chemical molecules to mobilize and unite them.

The lungs, urine, stool, and sweat are the main vehicles the body has for getting rid of nasty chemicals. But by far sweat is the most efficacious. And Mayo Clinic studies show that FIR is the safest way to induce healing sweat, using the most heat-sensitive cardiac patients as proof (Tei).

In studies published in Circulation and the Journal of Cardiology, both respected cardiology journals, physicians at the famed Mayo Clinic used the worst classification of congestive heart failure patients to demonstrate the safety and therapeutic value of the far infrared sauna. The New York Heart Association (NYHA) classifies the most debilitated heart patients with the highest numbers, III and IV. The study used patients who were end-stage heart patients who were maximally medicated and unable to walk across the room without shortness of breath, and unable to tolerate warm baths, much less tolerate a sauna. There were no further therapeutic options available. They had reached the end of their ropes.

But not only did these serious end-stage heart patients all tolerate the FIR sauna, but they had no side effects from it. Furthermore, in getting rid of chemicals that were the underlying causes of their diseases, they improved their heart function, something that the latest in surgery or drugs was powerless to do for them. The FIR sauna literally saved their lives.

During the sauna, no patients had dyspnea (shortness of breath), angina (chest pain) or arrhythmia (irregular heartbeat), nor complained of excess heat. There were no side effects, something that never happens with drugs and surgery. Diastolic blood pressure (the low number) decreased but systolic pressure (the top number) was unchanged. This means they did not get hypertensive, and in fact the work of the heart was lessened. Furthermore the stroke volume and ejection fraction increased, meaning the heart beat more efficiently with less effort.

Contrast this with warm baths that caused an increase in systemic blood pressure and pulmonary vascular resistance. Warm baths, by raising blood pressure cause more work for an already failing heart. And in a regular sauna, the arrhythmias increased 20%, whereas in the FIR sauna, arrhythmias decreased or disappeared entirely. Other cardiovascular improvements unique to the FIR sauna that would impress cardiologists include decreased pulmonary arterial and capillary wedge pressure as well as right atrial pressure, and in some cases disappearance of mitral regurgitation. The ECHO (echocardiogram) showed smaller left ventricular and left atrial dimensions, and epinephrine levels did not change, but norepinephrine increased. And FIR actually increased the core and intrapulmonary arterial temperature to 38.2 +/- 0.4 C (normal body temperature is 37 degrees Centigrade).

Fifty percent of heart attack victims do not have high cholesterol. They need to get irons fatty acids and toxins out of the heart.

Because the far infrared sauna has so many physiologic benefits that improved cellular detoxification (without making the rest of the body toxic or sick in the process), no side effects were observed with the FIR sauna, even at 60 C. (140 F.). Meanwhile, recall warm baths adversely increased cardiac work for heart patients, as did regular high heat saunas which triggered arrhythmias in over 20% of patients at 90 C. (194 F.). In fact, even mere high outdoor ambient temperature can kill the heart patient. In contrast, with the FIR sauna, arrhythmias disappeared, even when these folks were exposed to the high end of heat that the FIR sauna can reach. But the FIRS can generate a total sweat at 120 F. and less, providing the opportunity for even longer and more tolerable therapeutic time in the sauna.

In regular high heat saunas, plasma norepinephrine (related to adrenaline) increased 100-160% accompanied by subjective discomfort and intolerance. Adrenaline can, of course, trigger arrhythmias or a heart attack. In contrast, FIR sauna was extremely well tolerated and did the impossible. It improved the cardiac status of folks who were at the end of their therapeutic ropes. Even though medicine had nothing more to offer, congestive heart failure was reversed by the far infrared sauna.

Part 3

FIRS Cures the Most Mysterious Cases

The bottom line is that folks with the most severe forms of heart disease and resistant to all medications, tolerated the FIRS with no side effects. Most importantly, it improved their heart health in this Mayo Clinic study within 3 short weeks. Of course, it is recommended to continue longer, say a year of daily or every other day saunas for an hour or less to more completely lower stored chemicals that cause disease. Then it is necessary to do them at least once a week for life, since the world will never run out of ways to poison us.

It should not surprise you by now that mysterious joint pain in war veterans exposed to Agent Orange also disappeared, as did a host of other pain syndromes. Schnare of the U.S. EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) also showed that not only did sauna reduce body levels of HCB (hexachlorobenzene) and PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) in electrical workers, for example, but it did this even though the men were continually exposed at work.

This is important because it means that if your livelihood depends on an occupation with continual exposures, you still have a chance of being able to tolerate it more safely, as long as you are reducing the chemicals faster than you are tanking up on them. And let's face it. Most occupations have their specific toxins. Also this could allow tolerance of poorly tolerated implanted items that we would like to keep, like root canals and artificial joints.

Schnare also reviewed different types of workers, drug users, victims of accidental ingestions, and those poisoned by a variety of environmental chemicals; all recovered with sauna detoxification. Meanwhile, scientists from the Tokyo Medical and Dental University and others explained in further studies, once more how the FIR is superior to just plain old heat of regular saunas. There is no lack of data on this subject that has remained a secret cure for decades.

In addition, some saunas are a combination of far infrared along with regular sauna heaters. This is self-defeating for heart patients. They need just the far infrared, for they cannot tolerate any extra heat. Likewise for highly poisoned people, they do not need auxiliary heat forcing chemicals out of storage into the bloodstream to duplicate symptoms. They just need the far infrared technology to pull chemicals out of subcutaneous fat storage directly into the sweat. Furthermore, being the oldest of eight children from a poor family, I'm much like a mother hen. I needed a supplier with whom I could trust my precious patients and readers.

Do not let a lack of diagnostic label or "mysterious" illness keep you from getting the toxins out. That's when you need to do this the most. Do not wait too long, for the longer you do, the more you damage other parts of chemistry.

Sweating is a God-given mechanism, but it must be done properly and safely to be successful. The far infrared sauna is something that you will use for a lifetime. It is a major tool not only in your detox program, but also in your anti-aging program. Because it is a major expense, you might want to figure a way to put it in a garage, basement, game room, patio, lanai or porch to share it with neighbors, or have your church, physician, chiropractor, or organization buy one, for example. There are smaller units that could fit into a corner of a room. These units plug into a standard electric outlet.

At the end of this chapter you'll find a letter for your insurance company, for they could save untold dollars by covering the cost of a far infrared sauna that not only treats the whole family, but treats the family forever. And it can do what no medication can do, reverse disease. Clearly the evidence bears out the facts: FIRS will save untold lives and dollars.

Solar waves or energy

• Gamma, shortest rays, most destructive to life

• X-rays = penetrate tissues, carcinogenic,

• Ultraviolet = sunburn, corneal and lens damage

• Visual wavelength

• Infrared: contains at the lowest end of spectrum, far infrared (FIR); Far infrared = lowest = 1000-5.6 microns; the rays most vital to healing are 4-14 microns, also are the majority of sun energy or photons (safest and most beneficial) responsible for photosynthesis; lowers lactic acid, stimulates brain, kills organisms, penetrates tissues, stops swelling, improves lymphatic flow, attracts calcium to cell membranes; detoxifies by vibrating ionic bonds and reducing the size of water clusters; by creating a resonance dance between water and chemical molecules, it  facilitates water in moving stored toxins out of the cell and into sweat.

• Short wave radio waves

• Broadcast radio wavelength

Far Infrared (or FIR) Saunas vs. Dry Saunas

• 72 F. room temp

• 98.6 F. body temp

• 100.4 F. FIR body core temp at 140 F.

• 105.8 F. Jacuzzi

• 100-150 F. FIR sauna

• 160-220 F. dry & Finnish saunas

• 212 F. boiling water!

Centigrade-Fahrenheit Conversion Chart
Degrees Centigrade = 5/9 (Fahrenheit - 32)
Degrees Fahrenheit = 9/5 (Centigrade + 32)

Where is Your Focus?

   
No matter what disease you look at, from the most seemingly innocent to the nastiest symptoms, environmental chemicals are at the base. Look at endometriosis. It is not a killer, you rarely hear about it, but it has a devastating effect on millions of women in the United States. It affects 15% of women in the reproductive age range and is increasing each year. It leads to extensive and expensive problems with infertility as well as loss of much productive work time, not to mention loss of personal time because of severe pain and/or abnormal bleeding.

Even worse, endometriosis often cripples women to the point of forcing them to have a hysterectomy in their early 20s, before they have had a chance to marry and have a family. Or they are put on drugs like Lupron, which is analogous to a chemical castration and may contribute to irreversible infertility, chemical sensitivity, or cancer later on.

Did you know that dioxins are one of many causes of endometriosis? Totally unavoidable in the 21st century lifestyle and diet, dioxins are even in everything from our foods and toilet paper to coffee filters, diapers, tampons, and much more (Birnbaum). Since they are persistent environmental poisons, they never leave the soil or water permanently, but cycle through rain, plants, animals, and into our food and bodies. The only way out is through sweat.

Remember the EPA study where 29% of folks had high levels of trichloroethylene in their exhaled breath? This can come from wearing a dry cleaned suit, and it out-gases from carpeting, cardboard and a multitude of other everyday sources. It is not exotic. It is in the water supply of many municipalities as an industrial contaminant. It can cause bizarre numbness and tingling, dizziness, inability to concentrate, headaches, depression and brain fog. And that's just in the brain. In terms of cancer, it has been associated with kidney cancer, liver cancer, Hodgkin's disease and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma as well as cervical cancer, leukemia, and esophageal cancer (Wartenberg). And it can cause cardiac arrhythmia, endometriosis, and much more.

Clearly our most potent environments are in our homes, but we are not safe regardless of where we go. Most work environments add even more to the total daily body burden. And depending upon meteorologic conditions, cloud cover, wind velocity, temperature and other factors, outdoor air pollution definitely fluctuates causing increased death by heart attack (Janssen, Zanobetti, Laden, Wong).

In our outdoor as well as indoor air, we have the heavy metal, lead, as one of hundreds of contaminants that is rarely looked for. It causes devastating effects from lowering children's IQ (Schwartz 1994) to loss of hearing (Schwartz 1991). But if that were not enough, the level that causes brain damage in children is lower than 10 mcg/dl, which has been designated by "authorities" to be the cutoff point for diagnosing whether lead is a problem (Lanphear). Because this arbitrary cutoff has been inappropriately assigned, to too low a value, regular testing often will not pick up a lead level less than 10. The only way brain-damaging lead in the body can be found is with the same provocation test we used for mercury. But instead of asking for mercury to be analyzed in the urine, the doctor should order lead.

But where are the physicians who are doing lead and other heavy metal provocations for children whose IQ's do not match their parents'? I can't tell you the number of times I see children who are not half as smart as their parents, but no one is curious about why they are not. Where are the physicians who are looking for environmental triggers for hearing loss, endometriosis, high blood pressure, heart disease, disparate I.Q. or cancer? We have a true information warp. We're focused on drugs, surgery, organ transplants and genetic manipulation, when we should be focused on merely getting the causative chemicals out. Or as they say, GET THE LEAD OUT!

The bottom line is that sweat is the only proven method for getting the most damaging toxins out of the body. There are no drugs, no surgery, no chelation, nor other detoxification methods with before and after measurements proving that unwanted chemicals like PCBs and pesticides were eliminated. Regular saunas have a disadvantage of generally starting well above 160 F. degrees, and could be damaging to the eye lens and other delicate tissues. But far infrared technology is safe enough for elderly end-stage heart patients, because you do not even have to go above 100 F. degrees. It makes no sense to push the body to unphysiologic temperatures or to make someone who is already sick even more uncomfortable.

   
    
Let's face it. You and your doctor have been screwed into believing every symptom is a deficiency of some drug or surgery. You've been led to believe you have no control, when in truth you're the one who must take control.
    
  

The ailing heart for example, is the result of a lifetime of tanking up on heavy metals like cadmium, mercury, lead, aluminum, in addition to chemicals like the plasticizers, PCBs, volatile organic hydrocarbons, pesticides, dioxins, and more. The heart truly is a toxic target organ. No wonder it is the number one cause of death and disease. When there are only two causes for disease (diet and environment), it's imperative that we be able to reverse both of these. And we can!

Far infrared sauna technology is the only proven, most efficacious way of getting rid of stored environmental chemicals. Preferably start with an oil change to get rid of trans fatty acids, and restore missing fatty acids while correcting mineral deficiencies, like selenium, manganese, zinc and magnesium, to facilitate safer detoxification. The formula is really quite simple. The problem is it doesn't make any money for the drug industry that owns medicine. In fact the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA 287: 6 12-6 17, 2002) documented how over 87% of physicians who make up the panels of "experts" who determine the practice guidelines for medicine receive compensation from the drug industry. These are the guidelines that your doctors and insurance companies follow.

Meanwhile, the ball is in your court. For those who want to get well, let's go to the next chapter where you will learn how to orchestrate wellness.

    
This is an excerpt from Sherry Roger's book, Detox or Die.

Order it on-line for a more in-depth dive into toxins and her protocols for
detoxification. Book will have other references for detoxification.