Reflexology is an alternate form of medicine, which believes that
locations on your feet correspond with parts of your body, and that
massage and other forms of treatment for your feet can help with whole
body health and detoxification. It has been used in medical practice
for thousands of years in Eastern cultures and is today starting to
gain a foothold in Western cultures as well. Reflexology methods
applied to detoxification have proven to be particularly effective.
It is common knowledge that toxins will build up in your body from
food we eat, the air we breathe and from many other environmental
sources. If you don't use some sort of detoxification procedure to get
this bad stuff out of your system eventually it will cause health
problems for you. Liver disease, cardiovascular complications, stomach
problems and even infertility and impaired brain function can result
from an excessive buildup of environmental toxins in your body.
Traditional Western medicine, which relies heavily on surgical
procedures and prescription medications, is often at a loss for how to
deal with body detoxification. In fact, if you look at the extensive
list of negative side effects for some prescription medications it
makes you wonder if traditional Western medicine is helping with
detoxification or simply making things worse.
In the face of this gap in Western medicine, and the increasing
danger in our culture from toxins, a whole host of alternate forms of
medicine have surfaced to try and deal with detoxification. Special
diets, fasting, colon cleansing, spa treatments and herbal
applications and supplements have become more popular with health
conscious people trying to deal with detoxification. Some are Western
in origin, but most have Eastern roots. Some seem to be nothing more
than common sense, but others seem to be a bit surreal and bizarre.
Reflexology may be among the strangest of these concepts to our
western way of thinking. How can parts of your foot correspond with
organs in the rest of your body? How can doing something to your feet
remove toxins from your heart, liver and kidneys? It may take the
scientists hundreds of years to prove or disprove the claims of
reflexology but if it works for you today isn't that all that matters?
The list of negative side effects from reflexology is pretty much
non-existent and the potential benefits are significant.
So how exactly is reflexology used to remove toxins from our
bodies? For thousands of years, Chinese and Japanese medical
practitioners have known that certain tree root and trunk extracts can
be placed on your body and be used to remove all kinds of ailments.
Pain, infection, swelling, blood flow congestion and even toxins can
be removed by applying a patch or plaster of herbs combined with these
tree extracts.
Taking this knowledge one step further, several companies have
developed self-adhesive herbal foot patches. You apply a pair of these
to the soles of your feet at night before you go to bed, remove them,
and throw them away when you get up in the morning. When you put them
on at night they will be white but when you remove them in the morning
they will be dirty looking. No, this isn't dirt from your feet; it is
toxins removed from your body. After a few weeks of doing this the
patches you throw away in the morning will get cleaner and cleaner as
there are less toxins to remove from your body. It is relatively cheap
to try, easy to use, efficient, has no common negative side effects
and if it works for you then that may be all that really matters.
