BY KEISHA JOHNSON
Over the summer I reconnected with an old friend I hadn’t seen for almost ten years. During her visit, she introduced me to a holistic nutritionist she had raved about after completing an ionic detoxification. I had heard of the ionic footbath, was curious, but tentative when she suggested I get one done.
Maybe subconsciously, I was still traumatized from the annual ritual of having a ‘wash out’. For in the Caribbean, along with getting new uniforms and going to a new grade every September, so was detoxing – a.k.a, a ‘wash out’ – with some dreadful tasting laxative to purge the system.
With adult maturity, I have to agree that my elders were right. I’ve come to appreciate the value of cleansing the body periodically to remove toxins and supplementing it to maintain a good pH balance, which is among the first line of defence against diseases. But I had never done an ionic footbath.
All I knew was that this process pulled toxins from the body through the 2000 pores on the foot bottom through an ‘electrified’ footbath and that people are often creeped out by the stuff that surfaces in the water.
“The worse it can do is give a snapshot of your health,” my dear friend urged.
Well. Wow! The process was pleasantly relaxing but very revelatory.
After thirty minutes, the floating debris with its myriad of textures, colours and even the air bubbles that formed spoke volumes.
According to the nutritionist, the features of the gunk in the water indicate the extent of toxicity within the body, the type of toxins and the specific areas of the body most affected and in need of intervention. As you may know, toxicity indicates acidity, which is the environment in which diseases thrive.
More intriguing, was that this process quickly cleared the fog for me to now know how to specifically nourish and care for my body for it to function optimally, like a well-oiled machine. Not just look like one.
As I got clarity to move forward, it dawned on me that with the exception of some fitness buffs, pro athletes and other professionals for whom fitness and nutrition are imperatives, few of us are really acquainted with our body and how to make it run like a well-oiled machine.
We all know the winning formula for good health – balanced nutrition, rest and exercise – but sometimes we abandon it in practice.
Because the body is created to naturally heal itself, it works to overcome most of our abuse. But overtime, that abuse takes its toll. Compounded with aging, our bodies struggle even more to stay well. The aches, pains and malfunctioning our elders complained of, start to surface in us and if we don’t pay attention, their medical history becomes ours.
But it doesn’t have to if we heed Hippocrates notion of letting your food be your medicine and your medicine your food. The premise is that food should nourish and fuel the body, not clog, retard, poison and harm it.
Most holistic or naturopathic nutritionists operate by these two principles. “We see the body as a well-oiled machine in need of care and we give you the tools through nutrition and natural remedies to allow it to fix itself,” explains Registered Holistic Nutritionist (RHN) Moya Gayle.
For the holistic nutritionist, the journey to health begins with mental readiness, then detoxification to clean out the organs and help the body better absorb the nutrients and natural remedies they add to help it heal itself. After that, the course of clinical care to rebuild cells and restore the body to a well-oiled machine begins.
Processes like the ionic foot bath I’ve come to experience, do double duty to eliminate toxins and indicate areas of the body most in need of support and intervention to heal. And for almost the same price of a mani-pedi, I admit, it’s well worth a try!
