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From The Bottom of Your Sole | A recent posting titled "Kinotakara" on the HSI Forum has me intrigued. A member named Tom writes, "I came across a Japanese product (Kinotakara) that has fantastic testimonials. It supposedly detoxifies the body with wood vinegar through the soles of the feet. Has anyone used this product? If so, what were the results?"
Good question. But no responses followed and after a few days of inactivity the Kinotakara thread was deleted from the Forum. In the meantime, I've done some research on Kinotakara, and now, like Tom, I still have questions.
"The old adage 'you are what you eat' is fast being replaced by the more accurate 'you are what you absorb.' And what we're absorbing is shocking."
HSI Panelist Ann Louise Gittleman, Ph.D., C.N.S., made that observation in a Members Alert about detoxification several years ago. She noted that symptoms like indigestion, bloating, headaches, fatigue, and allergies, as well as the more severe diseases of our time, like cancer, Alzheimer's, lupus, muscular dystrophy, environmental illnesses, and fibromyalgia, may all be connected directly or indirectly to some form of toxic overload.
Unfortunately, each of us is bombarded by toxins daily; through preservatives, pesticides and other food additives, chemicals in tap water, air pollution, pharmaceuticals, mercury in dental fillings, and even hidden external stressors such as radiation.
So the question is: how can we detoxify our bodies in order to give good nutrition, exercise, and supplements the optimal chance they need to help us stay healthy? Of course, there are a number of detoxification methods. Kinotakara would seem to be not only one of the newest of these methods, but also one of the most unusual.
Anyone familiar with acupressure treatment knows that the soles of the feet present an unusually high concentration of acupressure points. In fact, among Asian healers, the soles are known as "the second heart" because they are purported to be covered with numerous "reflective zones" of major internal organs.
According to information I found on a number of different Kinotakara web sites, toxins can be drawn away from internal organs and extracted from the body by applying a sachet containing a resinous substance of beech, sakura, and oak trees called wood vinegar to the soles of the feet. The sachets are pasted in place before bedtime ("Kinotakara" is a Japanese word meaning "while you sleep"), and then removed eight hours later after waking up.
The testimonials claim that after each treatment the sachets that were white before going to bed, became darkly discolored by morning. This discoloration is said to be toxins removed from the body. By any measure, this is an unusual treatment. Nevertheless, Kinotakara is enormously popular in Japan where monthly sales are reported to be around $30 million (U.S.).
What we don't know about Kinotakara, however, is a lot. This product is the result of 26 years of research (again, according to various web sites), but details about the specifics of that research are apparently unavailable in any Western medical journals. So I'm certainly not yet ready to recommend Kinotakara, especially because it's a bit on the expensive side. On the other hand, you might say I'm a skeptic with an open mind. So I'm hoping that today's e-Alert will reach someone who has firsthand experience using Kinotakara, who can respond with a completely unbiased report about the pros and cons.
Since I've opened the subject of detoxification, tomorrow I'm going to expand on this topic with some guidelines about the right ways and the wrong ways to rid your body of toxins.
To Your Good Health,
Jenny Thompson
Health Sciences Institute |
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