Exploring the modern quest for immortality: detox, cleansing & rejuvenation

In the eternal quest to improve health, science and alternative measures have left no stone unturned to chase the immortality pot at the end of life's rainbow.
Having already discussed and exhausted the use of an array of supplements, both conventional and newer exotic ones sometimes difficult and expensive to procure, the innovative and hungry mind has wandered into the theory of cleansing and catharsis.
Walk into a health spa or rejuvenation center and this philosophy of expelling toxins, purging the damaged and probably diseased bacteria and repopulating the interior with newer healthier and younger nutrients, is the order of the day.
The colonic irrigation and bowel washes and not uncommonly, the forced vomiting, are some of the prescribed procedures.
Colonic irrigation involves flushing out the large intestine with a liquid ,usually water. This is medically approved only for cleansing the bowel before a scopy so that the inner lining is clearly visible. In alternative medicine however, they believe that lavages like this detox the body.
Protagonists also believe that repeated irrigations from below increase immunity(not evidence based in medicine).
For medical reasons water is used but for ‘detoxifying', herbal solutions, coffee etc are employed. Colonic cleansing should be carefully indulged and supervised since there can be side effects of both the procedure and the solution.
Kunjal Kriya is a Yoga technique which involves inducing vomiting voluntarily after drinking a saline solution on an empty stomach with a view to improving the pulmonary function in the body. It is beyond the scope of this article to debate about the pros and cons of this procedure but followers of this theory ,describe a fair degree of success.
The Jal Niti theory of cleansing the upper airways and sinuses by pouring warm saline water into one nostril and expelling it through the other, has been practiced for long. A technically simple but precise procedure, to irrigate the sinuses to rid them of the reactive and often hyper secreted mucus, is quite popular and successful.
Commonly practiced, this is believed to help patients of asthma and other respiratory diseases.
To get into the science of chelation is a different tale. Chelating agents are drugs, which when introduced into the body injectably or even orally, bind to unwanted heavy metals like lead, arsenic etc ,only to drag them out and excrete the offending component.
Used primarily to chelate the toxic levels of heavy metals, the dosage formulations and choices require sophisticated study, planning and execution in the hands of trained physicians and not recommended to be used liberally without supervision.
Which brings me to the cleansing of the mind which then unfolds into the body too and which can be done in multiple ways.
Meditation, reclusion to the hills and wilderness, vipaasana, chanting, satsang etc are only a few of the tested and remarkable modalities of freeing the mind of illness. Of course today,the one ingenuine way of cleansing both mind and body of everything toxic, is a ‘dip' in the holy Triveni Sangam during the only 144 year recurring Maha Kumbh.
The ‘Sky force ' of the above can bequeath the ‘Devaa' in your heart and mind.
With the adoption of any of the above disciplines, in the "Cold Play' of orchestrated cleansing, how much of the system comes back rejuvenated and reborn, is difficult to quantify. Perhaps this foray of health remodelling has still not reached its zenith and the best is still to come.
(Dr Hemant Thacker is a Consultant Physician and CardioMetabolic Specialist practising in South Mumbai and affiliated to TOI.email:dochpt@gmail.com)