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While the body is incredibly complex, understanding the basics of how the body works doesn’t have to be.

Here is a simplified version of how the body works and what happens when someone loses their health.

iStock_000016606488XSmallThe body is comprised of about 60-100 trillion cells that are all living. Everything living has to consume some form of food or nutrition and also expel waste. Each of these processes is vitally critical to the proper function of an organism. If something doesn’t get the proper nutrition, it dies and if something doesn’t eliminate waste properly, it will eventually drown in its own waste and die as well.

People put a lot of focus and attention on getting enough nutrients and vitamins in their diet and getting sufficient exercise which is all important to do.

However, rarely, does a person consider if their body is eliminating waste properly. As it turns out, most people’s problems do not arise from them not getting adequate nutrition, but rather from having problems eliminating waste properly from the body.

Let me explain this in more detail.

The common belief is that urine and feces and sweat is digestive waste from the food and liquids we consume. This is accurate, but there’s a lot more to the picture than just that.

Consider that when you eat, you are actually eating to feed your 60 – 100 trillion living cells. Remember that everything living has to eat and has to eliminate waste. That waste from all the cells has to get out of the body. Why? Because it is mainly acidic – waste from cells includes things like lactic acid, ammonia, creatinine, urea, etc. all things that you wouldn’t want accumulating inside you for any length of time.

Have you ever forgot to change a baby’s diaper? We all know that the baby will develop a bad rash from the urine and feces pushing up against the skin if left long enough. The redness or rash we call “inflammation” – and it’s not until we have cleaned off the skin and perhaps put something “cooling” on the skin like water or  aloe vera, that the rash disappears.

Consider now if the baby was constipated or consider if an adult is constipated – that same waste will do the exact same thing inside the body as what we can see on the baby’s bum –  a rash will develop inside the intestines (which, if left for a long enough time and depending upon the relative shape of someone’s intestines, can eventually lead to things like further constipation, irritable bowel syndrome, polyps, appendicitis, diverticulitis, ulcers, poor absorption of nutrients from digested food, and even cancer in some cases).

But that’s just what happens in the intestines. How does the waste from all the cells from all over the body get out of the body? To get a better understanding of this, we have to understand the role of the two primary fluids in the body. One is the blood and the other is a clear fluid that is often referred to as mucus or lymph.

The blood carries nutrients from food and oxygen to the cells of the body which feed the cells. The blood also moves by way of a heart pump and is always circulating and moving.


The lymph is the fluid that carries waste away from cells and it doesn’t have a heart pump that moves it. The body has a whole other separate system for moving the lymph with little vessels that is called the “Lymphatic System”. Lymph moves in this separate system by different means until the body eliminates the waste that it is carrying.

If you’ve ever seen an operation on television, when they open someone up to operate on them, is the inside of the body wet or dry? It’s wet even when there isn’t blood and the “wet” is the mucus or lymph. You actually have this lymph all over the inside of your body. In fact, it runs around every single living cell in your body, including in your bones, teeth, nails, skin (which are all porous). You may have noticed when you get a cut or had a pimple break, it’s not just blood that comes out, but also that clear fluid.

exercising to stay healthyA clear demonstration of how the cells of the body eliminate waste into the lymphatic system is experienced whenever you do moderate to strenuous exercise.

Remember that the cells of your body need nutrition and are always producing waste. At certain times, the body will produce more waste than others like when you exercise because your cells in your body and particularly your muscles are having to work much harder and using more energy thus also generating more waste. One of the types of waste is lactic acid and we can “feel” this waste building up during a workout or exercise which we experience as a gentle “burning” in the muscles (because acids burn). This waste is not accumulating in the blood because if it were, we wouldn’t feel the burning sensation because the blood is always moving but the “burning” sensation is relatively stationary. Thus the lactic acid is accumulating in the lymph fluid.

The colour of the lymph changes depending on the type of waste, toxin, dead bacteria, etc that it is carrying. We can see this when we have a cold or the flu and the body is expelling mucus or lymph when we have a  “productive” cough. We can see the mucus carrying things like toxins, bacteria, etc and there are different colours like yellow, green, cloudy white, brown, etc.

The body uses other ways to expel this waste (utilizing things like diuretic hormones for example) but we can also help assist this process through things like stretching, massage and what we put in the body to help “neutralize” the acids – like water and things with electrolytes (foods and liquids with sodium, potassium, calcium, etc), that contribute to the burn going away. Gradually this waste works its way towards where it can get out of the body via the kidneys and bladder (urination), intestines (defecation) or skin (sweating).

This is all fine while that elimination mechanism is working well and the natural way the body works. However, there are times when this mechanism stops working as well, lymph stops moving and acidic waste instead starts to accumulate inside the body. Since lymph is everywhere throughout the body, the accumulation of waste can happen anywhere in the body as well. If it accumulates long enough for whatever reason, since waste is acidic, by its very nature, it will gradually burn and break down tissue and result in inflammation. When this happens, over time, people will experience different symptoms where this is occurring in the body – things like pain, loss of function, abnormal growths, and many other manifestations. This process of accumulation and breakdown of tissue can happen over a very short period of time or conversely over many decades.

When someone goes in to see a doctor or specialist for a diagnosis, mostly all the doctor is doing is making a diagnosis based upon what symptoms they are seeing, giving this a label and then prescribing a corresponding “treatment”. However, the true underlying cause is still a mystery and people leave the physician’s office without a clear understanding of what actually caused the problem to happen in the first place or a strategy around how to address the deeper root cause(s).

Often treating symptoms is really the only thing that someone may wish to do to get some relief and that is fine. However, what often happens is when the root-cause of the problem remain unchecked long enough, symptoms reach a point where no allopathic medicines or natural supplements are working or the side-effects are overwhelming. At that point, the person may be very motivated and much more interested in an entirely different approach for addressing their health problem(s).

While there are things that people do unknowingly that negatively impact how well they eliminate waste from their body (i.e. eating foods that have them become constipated, certain things that have their kidneys not work as well, and stress patterns that affect function of the body), the really great news is that there are also ways you can assist this natural process for your body to start eliminating waste properly again and also help restore any damage from the inflammation that has already occurred if you’re open to making some simple changes in lifestyle. Current scientific literature suggests that nearly 80% of all chronic illness can be avoided by adjusting lifestyle.

eating healthy food

Some of the things that support this are moving towards more of a whole food, plant-based diet, paying attention to how different types of food digest in the body, developing a regular exercise and stretching routine, looking at ways to improve sleep patterns and developing more effective strategies for reducing stress.

These are all things that Jonathan goes over in his programs in much greater detail and customizes his programs to the specific needs of each person. Once a person has developed this awareness and experienced how it all fits together, all of a sudden, it often becomes possible to turn around something that previously may have been considered impossible – even things like late stage cancer and other serious degenerative conditions. This awareness is something that usually sticks with someone for the rest of their life helping them have a much better quality of life.