Medical Medium Cleanse to Heal - critical summary review

Writing in the Foreword to Anthony William’s “Medical Medium Cleanse to Heal,” Ilana Zablozki-Amir, a Functional Medicine Specialist from Brooklyn, New York, notes that there are four major root cause categories that contribute to the majority of health conditions: severe deficiencies (such as malnutrition, dehydration and sleep deprivation), stress and trauma (both physical and psychological), infections, and toxic exposures. “Medical Medium Cleanse to Heal” is a guide to dealing with them all in a proactive, preventive and nontraditional manner. So, get ready for a food-based, self-care healing plan that – at least according to its author – is not man-made, but comes from a higher source.

Natural balance and detoxification

“Inside of our body,” writes self-described Medical Medium Anthony William, “is a complicated warehouse of millions of items jostled about, and it’s trying to create balance constantly. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, there is never a moment when our body is not trying to harness balance within us.” This is a difficult and draining job, but it is also crucial because “imbalance” is another word for “disease.” The right amount of pepper makes your soup taste great, but put a lot of it in and you won’t be able to taste the other spices; moreover, you’ll also start sneezing.

There are numerous ways your body balances things out, a process usually referred to as detoxification. The major organs tasked with detoxification are your kidneys and your liver, but your skin and your lungs also help eliminate waste produced by your cells. Though weighing a mere 300 grams combined, your kidneys filter more than 200 liters of blood per day, expelling waste through the urine. Your liver helps in this process as well. Meanwhile, your lungs eliminate carbon dioxide and water vapor through exhalation, and your skin removes smaller amounts of urea and salts through sweating. Finally, the solid, undigested wastes of digestion are dealt with by your digestive system.

Unfortunately, your body is up against so many balance-disrupting pathogens that it needs your assistance with detoxing. Chances are, instead of helping it, you’re actually making things worse. More specifically, instead of letting your body balance things out naturally on a daily basis, you gather more and more pathogens through the foods you eat, the places you go, the behaviors you practice. Yes, that’s all connected. “Viruses and unproductive bacteria are responsible for chronic illness,” writes William, “along with toxins such as toxic heavy metals and whatever stressors may be weighing on us that weaken our immune systems, whether a lack of resources or emotional struggles. This combination of toxic troublemakers is why we’re sick.”

The troublemakers list: viruses, foods, and bacteria 

“Troublemakers” is the umbrella-term William uses to refer to the toxins, poisons, viruses and unproductive bacteria that cause the imbalances in our bodies which, in turn, lead to almost all known diseases. Even though you may not be aware of it, your body is probably dealing with some of these troublemakers at the moment you’re reading this. “No matter how much you may want to believe that you haven’t encountered viruses, bacteria, and toxic heavy metals,” William comments, “and that they haven’t had any effect on you, nor will they ever hurt you, the truth is that any symptoms you experience are physical proof of the fact that something is going on inside your body. No one is spared from exposure in this day and age.”

There are several categories of troublemakers that can pose problems to your health if you don’t actively deal with them beforehand. Let’s start with the three that are from organic nature.

• Viruses and viral waste matter. Some viruses, such as the cytomegalovirus, the HSV, and the HHV, have been discovered, but others – such as more than 30 varieties of shingles and over 60 varieties of the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) – are, according to William, known only to him and the Spirit of Compassion with whom he converses.
• Bacteria and other microbes. Ever since the term microbiome exploded in popularity and the microbiome-explains-everything trend took over, everybody seems to know a little something about E. coli, C. difficile or Staphylococcus. These are not the only bacteria you should pay attention to nor – as microbiome health advocates claim – can they be dealt with by introducing good bacteria to your gut flora. Pathogens, claims William, “don’t care about how much good bacteria you have in your gut.” Killing them off and removing their fuel sources from your body is the only way to address the real issues behind many illnesses. “You can’t kill unproductive bacteria or viruses with probiotics,” he concludes.
• Troublemaker foods. If you want to protect your health, you must help your body by eliminating certain meals from your daily regime. William divides these troublemaker foods into five levels, the first one being the most important to remove from your diet. It includes eggs, dairy, gluten, and soft drinks. Level two troublemakers include pork, tuna, and corn, while level three consist of soy products, lamb, industrial food oils and all fish except for salmon, trout and sardines. William places vinegar, fermented foods and caffeine in level four, and describes all grains other than millet and oats, as well as all oils, as level five food troublemakers. 

The troublemaker list: hidden exposures

Even more important than eliminating the troublemaker foods from your diet, is eliminating troublemaker food chemicals, such as artificial sweeteners and flavors, alcohol, preservatives, formaldehyde and citric acid. But that’s just the beginning: there are many similar and similarly hurtful hidden exposures you should try to protect yourself from if you want to help your body detoxify itself. Here are some of the others:

• Toxic heavy metals. Anything from aluminum and arsenic through cadmium and copper, to lead and mercury. None of them are tolerant when they enter our bodies: they weaken our immune systems, cause emotional and mental struggles and feed viruses aggressively. And we’re constantly exposed to them. For example, we breathe in mercury, one of the most toxic heavy metals, from the vaporized solutions emitted by airplanes and jets.
• Pharmaceuticals. Many medications can be life-saving in certain circumstances, but using almost any of them excessively can burden and damage your liver.
• Chemical industry domestic invaders. This is William’s name for all synthetic chemical products meant to create pleasant smells, such as air fresheners, scented candles, perfumes, dry cleaning chemicals, cologne, and aftershave. You shouldn’t underestimate the toxic levels of the chemicals in this category. They rapidly lower the immune system and some of them hurt the lungs even more than cigarettes do.
• Chemical neuroantagonists. Chemical companies are constantly indoctrinating institutions and corporations into using their dangerous products. As a result, you’ve probably been exposed to many chemical neuroantagonists. For example, most clothing today is laced with fungicides, as is most of our money (that’s why it smells different than it used to). Chemical fertilizers, herbicides, insecticides and other pesticides are constantly used in high quantities for plant protection, but they “denature and damage our cells in critical places such as our brain.” Finally, our brain is affected by smoke exposure of any kind as well.
• Petrochemicals. Even though we act as if gasoline is safe, it is a very toxic substance. Case in point, many people who have had increased exposure to gasoline due to their jobs, have not enjoyed a high quality of life. The same holds true for all other petrochemicals, whether diesel fuels or gas grills, kerosene or lacquer, paint or plastics. Stay away from them.
• Toxic adrenaline from emotional traumas. Even though emotions are never the cause of physical illnesses, they can act as triggers. Fortunately, dealing with the other troublemakers prepares your body to deal better with betrayals, fears, abuses, financial stresses, and heartbreaks.
• Radiation. Being exposed to radiation doesn’t only include medical procedures, such as MRIs, X-rays, PET and CT scans. It also includes cell phones and airplane travel. Even luggage that’s been through airport security is a source of radiation.
• Rainfall exposure. According to William, you can be exposed to toxic materials through precipitation contaminated with chemtrails (not just contrails).

What is cleansing and why it is necessary

Whenever we’re exposed to toxic metals or radiation, to perfumes, gasoline or herbicides, and whenever we’re eating troublemaker foods, we’re actually feeding the dangerous pathogens inside our bodies – namely, the viruses and the unproductive bacteria. So, instead of helping our immune and excretory systems get rid of the organisms that produce internal imbalances, we’re actually working against them and exacerbating the effects of the poisonous contaminations. This is how most diseases are born. 

True, there are some people whose immune systems are more resistant to pathogens and can endure more exposure, and others who are born with a small amount of toxins in their bodies, allowing their bodily systems to deal more effectively with external threats. However, to remain healthy, most people have to try their best to aid their organs in eliminating the pathogens inside them, while limiting the amount of new toxins that may enter the body. This is cleansing and is usually done through dieting, fasting and avoiding specific foods and practices.

The medical community as a whole is not that fond of either the term or the practice of cleansing. Most experts nowadays – whether they are dieticians, nutritionists or doctors – will tell you that cleansing is a myth, and that the body’s natural cleansing processes are enough. William begs to differ. In his opinion, cleansing is “a vital tool for anyone concerned about their health” and, “a very real technique to fight against the burdens of our modern world.” Moreover, he claims that it is only through cleansing that people can deal with chronic illnesses, whose nature is yet to be understood by modern medicine.

That’s why he doesn’t consider cleansing as merely an aspect of a healthy lifestyle, but as a lifesaver. For William, healthy lifestyles such as food diet programs or intermittent fasting are “rooted in guesswork and ideology, not truth.” The reason they sometimes work is that if you guess a million times, you’ll get things right more than once. But it’s our health we’re talking about here. We shouldn’t be guessing; we should know. And William claims that he does know, thanks to a psychic connection with a Spirit from the future. It is supposedly from him that William’s trademarked 3:6:9 cleanse program originates from. Let’s outline it in brief.

The 3:6:9 cleanse: life protector

The nine-day 3:6:9 cleanse is the cornerstone of William’s cleansing philosophy. It comes in three different versions – original, simplified, and advanced – each of which should be repeated in cycles and can be coupled with hundreds of targeted and condition-specific strategies. All 3:6:9 cleanses share the same structure, beginning with a three-day preparation phase (The 3), moving on to a three-day cleansing period (The 6) and ending with a three-day, toxins-releasing stage (The 9). Here’s what, in brief, each of these stages entails in the simplified 3:6:9 cleanse which, according to William, is especially useful for migraines, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, fatty liver and type 2 diabetes:

• The 3. Start each of the days with 16 ounces of lemon or lime water. Half an hour later, drink 16 ounces of celery juice and 30 minutes after that, enjoy the breakfast of your choice (avoiding, of course, the troublemaker foods). You can eat almost anything you like for lunch and dinner as well. End the day with another 16 ounces of lemon or lime water, in addition to hibiscus, lemon balm or chaga tea.
• The 6. Drink 16 ounces of lemon or lime water upon waking. Half an hour later, drink 24 ounces of celery juice and half an hour after that, have a fruit-based breakfast. After breakfast and lunch, get in another 16 ounces of lemon or lime water and enjoy a pre-bedtime mug of hibiscus, lemon balm, or chaga tea.
• The 9. The first two days of the 9 are the same as the 6 – only the amount of celery juice should be increased to 32 ounces. On the ninth day, you go back to 16 ounces of celery juice and switch from a fruit-based breakfast to a fresh-squeezed orange or watermelon juice. End the cleanse with some spinach soup.

Of course, William’s guidelines are much more detailed, but in essence they mean relying on fruits, vegetables, and leafy greens to get through the day. However, the cleanses are much more than a specific diet – they can even be a spiritual experience. At the least, as Zablozki-Amir notes, William’s cleanses “illuminate the power of the food we choose to eat: not only the kinds of foods, but the ways we combine them and when we eat them.”

Final notes

The list of endorsements for Anthony William’s books reads like a “Who’s Who” in the world of show business: Hilary Swank, Robert DeNiro, Naomi Campbell, Pharrell Williams, Novak Djokovic… Trust us, we can go on for a while. 

Even so, we can’t help but feel that this is just another Hollywood lifestyle fad. At least from what we know about how our bodies work, “Medical Medium Cleanse to Heal” is nothing more than easily disprovable pseudoscience. That, of course, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be more careful about what you eat and how you consume it!

12min tip

To paraphrase an old Animaniacs song, “we like some foods a lot, but they make our insides rot. So, remember it's your body – it's the only one you've got!”