A patient presenting with intense constant full body pain came in last week to the clinic.

She was about 54 years old, a bit overweight, medium height and had an absolute flat dull depressed appearance - which one sees in someone in chronic pain. She explained that it takes her 20 minutes to get out of bed as she has to lift each limb carefully and slowly due to the pain. She wakes every 2 hours in pain and has to get up and move about otherwise she would not be able to get up at all later. She walked in pain as both her knee joints were in pain. She was constantly shifting in her chair during the patient interview trying to find a comfortable position.

I asked her when the pain began - she said it began about 2 years ago. Ok - what happened around two years ago? She thought about that for awhile and said she began a detox and yeast cleanse that was pretty strict. The 'doctor' who prescribed this for her was a naturopath in Colorado. Now - I am going to be a naturopathic physician myself but I will be licensed. I have a feeling that this 'naturopath' was an unlicensed online course graduating nd. Super dangerous.

Anyhow - this 'doc' never saw the patient - it was all done over the phone. Now that is bad medicine and I have a feeling it happens all the time. This 'doc' told her that she had to take this and that and avoid this and that. She racked up a huge supplement bill.

Well - it caused this patient to have a full body flare up. We checked autoimmune panels for lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, raynauds, and others. Looked for fibromyalgia tendor points, asked and examed for chronic underlying infections, took a UA, CBC, TSH and ESR. All fine - the ESR was a tad elevated at 28.

I looked at the supplements she was taking and pulled her off of all cleansing supplements, gave her a natural herbal pain relieving formula and instructed her to come in 2 times this week for a full immersion peat bath. We also referred her to a rheumatologist to examine her to see if we missed anything.

I saw her on Friday with a big smile on her face. She had just finished the second full immersion peat bath and was still sweating from it. She told me she has not been this pain-free for about 10 months. She could get out of bed with only a bit of stiffness and soreness, walk around pain free and sleep longer. She explained that she wanted to begin exercising again! The supervising physician cautioned her on this and tried calming her excitement as it may be only temporary. She said, "I don't care if it is temporary because I have not felt this well in a long long time."

I smiled and held out my hand asking for her to 'give me 5.' She let her hand smash against mine and I returned the favor.

She's on her way back to health. I don't think it is a temporary fix at all. I also think it is beneficial to support the patient in how they feel and not take the momentum away. Unfortunately, the supervising physician took the gas out a bit but luckily, the patient was so strong and excited that the information he passed on to her was in one ear and out the other.

Lesson is this:
If one detoxifies too quickly, the body cannot process the highly toxic metabolites. They circulate around the body instead of being excreted in the feces or passed through the urine or sweated out or breathed out. I have a feeling that this patient has been improperly detoxing for so long that the level of circulating metabolites is insane. With nowhere to go, the metabolites head for the muscles, joints and other soft tissue. This causes intense inflammation, stiffness and soreness.

With my recommendation of removing the cleansing supplements, the added addition of more toxic metabolites was stopped. With the recommendation of a full body peat bath, the muscles, adipose and other soft tissues were able to sweat out the toxic metabolites out through the body's largest detoxifying organ: the skin. The supplement to decrease pain was temporary and will be stopped soon.

She will continue the peat baths and we will continue to see if there is another underlying cause of her pain and stiffness. I believe there is not - I believe it is purely detoxifying too long and too fast with deposited metabolites all throughout her body. We remove all those metabolites with sauna and full body peat immersion baths, and she will be exercising pain free once again.

Don't take aspirin to relieve the pain all the time. Think. Why do I have the pain? Address it. Remove the cause.