Question: What is the best and safest way to get rid of toxins in the body? Also, how can I clean out my arteries of plaque safely?

Dr. Hibberd's Answer:

Eat a well balanced diet, exercise regularly, avoid processed and chemically treated foods when possible, and avoid unnecessary medications.

Detoxifying your body is the precise role your liver and kidney have. Without the detoxifying effects of both these organs, our body would be overcome with the metabolic byproducts of cellular activity.

Emergency detoxification in cases of poisoning involves charcoal binding and catharsis and/or bowel irrigation. In some cases, antidotes are available that convert the toxic products to less toxic substances our body can excrete effectively. Very rarely, chelation therapy is used for heavy metal poisoning (i.e. lead), but this is not the chelation therapy you read about in outpatient offices. The office based chelation therapies have no role in our general health maintenance, and are a source of continued deceptive advertising that many states would like to eliminate for the safety of the unwitting public.

Other alternatives for detoxing from poisoning include removal of some products by dialysis, plasmapheresis, or exchange transfusions. Almost all these therapies require close observation and monitored hospitalization, and are not initiated for outpatient use. The detox clinics and spas you read about are a wonderful story of the blind leading the blind. Anyone promoting detoxifying your body using oral or bowel cleansing techniques are essentially fooling the foolish who pay their fees.

Oh, by the way, no toxins are expelled through your skin, so don’t buy that commonly quoted phrase either. Show me a medical doctor (MD) promoting these and I will show you a licensure board poised to remove his or her license to practice medicine. Unfortunately, not all medical licensure boards are able to discipline those who are not licensed. Consumer beware.

The only way to clear your arteries of plaque is to minimize its deposition in the first place. There is reasonable evidence that lowering your lipid (blood fat and cholesterol) levels is correlated with plaque regression and stabilization. Of course, controlling an underlying condition that predisposed you to plaque formation would also be optimal (diabetes, smoking, etc.).

Plaque tends to calcify after a while and then there may be no method to remove it short of surgical removal or vessel replacement. "Bypass" does not remove segments, rather it sets up a bypass or alternate route that circulation can go around.