Why you might feel worse after treatment
Why you might feel worse after treatment. Photo | Pool
What you need to know:
- A healing crisis occurs when the body detoxifies and releases stored toxins too quickly for the paths of elimination to manage
In this column, you regularly read about people who’ve come to see me and, as a result of their treatment, they start to feel better. But what if you felt worse, a lot worse?
About a week on from her first consultation, Yolanda was experiencing headaches, her skin was breaking out and she’d go through bouts of anger and depression. She was ready to give up when she called me, even though I had warned her that such a reaction (a healing crisis) might occur.
A healing crisis occurs when the body detoxifies and releases stored toxins too quickly for the paths of elimination to manage. The toxins then continue to float around in the bloodstream and basically poison you all over again. This is quite common when patients embark on an anti-Candida regime.
(Candida is a yeast that lives in our intestines (in women it is also found in the vagina), and it is kept in check by the ‘good’ bacteria that live alongside it. Under certain circumstances, it can start multiplying out of control, producing various symptoms from joint pain and fatigue to allergies.)
I should clarify that not everyone experiences such symptoms. As I mentioned before, it all depends on your eliminatory organs and how healthy they are. These are the lungs, bowel, kidneys and skin. The better they do their job, the less unwell you feel. It’s the reason why people are advised to drink plenty of fluids (flushes out the kidneys), eat lots of fruit and vegetables (promote cleaner bowel movements) and maybe even go to a sauna (toxins are released from the skin) during any sort of detox.
In Yolanda’s case, the auto-intoxication, or self-poisoning, was magnified because of her past history of constipation. Even though she was now having a daily bowel movement, her colon was clogged full of old putrefying material. And the colon is where liver and the lymphatic system tend to dump things when they get overloaded, making the situation worse.
But remember, whether you suffer from headaches, extreme fatigue, constipation or diarrhoea, cold and flu symptoms, ear infections or acne during your detox protocol, this is a natural part of the healing process and should be supported – whether it’s with the fluids, fruit and vegetables as I mentioned above, or by exercise/having a massage (stimulate the lymphatic system to carry toxins out) or even by eating a mono-diet of Khichdi (rice and green grams cooked slowly together).
A healing crisis really does signify true healing because old injuries and stored toxins are being released. It is only once these are released that true repair and regeneration of healthy tissues can begin.
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