by
Julie Crist, M. Ac.
Reprinted from the February 2005 Idaho
Observer:
Jesus healed the blind with it. Dams are
patched with it. The Native Americans used
it for money. The Russians capped Chernobyl
with it after the nuclear plant melted down.
NASA feeds it to astronauts to prevent
osteoporosis.
In a culture that worships high-tech,
"scientific" medicine, let me make the
following sacrilegious statement:
Clay is the most versatile, profoundly
effective, cheap, mysterious, underrated,
covered-up health treatment available.
I know this because I am a natural health
professional who uses clay personally and
professionally for healing and health
maintenance. I research and read everything
I can find on the therapeutic use of clay. I
have seen clay perform "miracles." I get
very excited about mud. And in case you
think I got my diploma out of a Cracker
Jack’s box, rest assured; I have a bona fide
Masters Degree.
There is a lot of confusion out there about
clay therapy. For everything I write about
clay here, someone else will give you
conflicting information. I think there are
two reasons for that:
1. In my experience with and research about
clay, I have come to the conclusion that
good clay is homeostatic. This means that if
you and I take the same clay at the same
time we might get different results, based
on what our bodies need. Homeostasis is the
"tendency toward a stable state of
equilibrium," so you may need some minerals
I don’t and I may need some detoxification
you don’t, and clay can do all of that.
2. The other reason is that every vein of
clay in the world is different. Weather,
geology, plate tectonics, mineralization and
a handful of other factors give clay
deposits their own fingerprints, much like
people. While some clays are quite alive,
others are deader than a doornail. These
subtle variations do not matter when using
clay for industrial purposes, but for
therapeutic treatment it does.
So you can see the challenge in trying to
standardize clay so we experts can make
sweeping, universally true statements about
clay therapy.
Speaking of experts, some "doctors", natural
or otherwise, want you to believe that
healing is a complicated process that
requires the intervention of "experts" with
all their fancy herbs, drugs, gee gaws and
whatchamacallits. So in the interest of job
security, they are probably not going to
spend much time educating themselves or you
about anything so cheap, easy and effective
as clay therapy. That’s why this may be the
first time you have ever heard of it.
Clay has been used for centuries – probably
since our humble human beginnings – to heal
everything imaginable. We just forgot how to
use it.
Kinds of clay
This is what you need to know about clay in
order to use it effectively:
1. The clay we are talking about is
Bentonite clay. Bentonite comes in a variety
of flavors.
2. You can buy an industrial Bentonite at
the feed store for about six bucks for a
fifty-pound bag. This is usually sodium
Montmorillonite. This is a low-quality
Bentonite used for ponds, sealing wells,
making paper, cat litter and so on. Sodium
Bentonite clay swells, sometimes up to 18
times its dry size when it becomes wet. I
keep a bag of this on hand for emergencies.
What do I mean by emergencies? This material
is used to patch dams. If you cut your leg
with a chainsaw, what do you think powdered
Bentonite will do for the bleeding?
3. The best clay to use for treatment is
calcium Montmorillonite. It is also known as
"living clay", for it principally consists
of minerals that enhance the production of
enzymes in all living organisms. It swells
zero to little. It is a source of highly
absorbable minerals (just ask NASA). It
absorbs radiation. Smart farmers use it with
their livestock – it treats several
veterinary diseases, animals gain more
weight on less feed, and production
skyrockets. Manufacturers use it heavily for
cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and food
processing. So just remember that while I
tell you about taking clay internally. Yup,
I eat dirt. Actually, I drink it.
In fact, try this on for size: the Otomac
Indians who live along the Orinoco River in
Venezuela hunt for fish with bows and arrows
when the water is low but for two or three
months of the year, when the water is too
high and rapid, they survive on a diet of
mud balls. The mud does not contain any
nutrient that we can recognize and yet these
Indians remain healthy and strong through
the "dirt eating" season.
Reasons to use clay
Compared to that, what I have to say next
about taking clay will seem downright
conservative.
Why would you want to take clay? Bentonite
attracts and neutralizes poisons in the
intestinal tract. It can eliminate food
allergies, food poisoning, mucus colitis,
spastic colitis, viral infections, stomach
flu, and parasites (parasites are unable to
reproduce in the presence of clay). There is
virtually no digestive disease that clay
will not treat. It enriches and balances
blood. It absorbs radiation (think cell
phones, microwaves, x-rays, TVs and
irradiated food, for starters). It has been
used for alcoholism, arthritis, cataracts,
diabetic neuropathy, pain treatment, open
wounds, diarrhea, hemorrhoids, stomach
ulcers, animal and poisonous insect bites,
acne, anemia, in fact, the list of uses is
too long for this article. It was used
during the Balkan war of 1910 to reduce
mortality from cholera among the soldiers
from sixty to three percent.
According to Dr Walter W. Bennett, PhD.,
Epistemologist and Research Scientist, "When
used as a media of raw material it inhibits
the growth of representative pathogens such
as staphylococcus, streptococcus,
salmonella, escherichia coli and pseudomonas
aeruginosa." So my rule of thumb is to try
it on everything.
According to the Canadian Journal of
Microbiology (31 [1985], 50-53), Bentonite
can absorb pathogenic viruses, aflatoxin (a
deadly mold), and pesticides and herbicides
including Paraquat and Roundup. The clay is
eventually eliminated from the body with the
toxins bound to its multiple surfaces.
Clays contain a slew of minerals — mostly
calcium, potassium, magnesium, and
manganese. Additionally, zinc, copper,
selenium, and aluminum can be found in some
types.
Externally, every condition I have applied a
good quality clay to has responded or been
cured. Heck, I’ve even gotten results from
using poor quality clay. Lacerations,
bedsores, spider bites, poison ivy and
mysterious rashes seem to vanish. In fact, I
"discovered" clay when I sliced my fingers
open with a razor knife while cutting
sheetrock. I sprinkled dry clay into the
cuts and they stopped bleeding within a
minute. Then I bandaged them up and went
back to work. And then to my great
astonishment, within 15 minutes the pain was
gone and the cuts completely healed within 3
days. I also used it on a cat bite that
wasn’t healing (very dangerous) and it
cleared it up overnight.
Clay has a negative electrical attraction
for particles that are positively charged.
Most toxic poisons, bacteria and viruses are
positively charged. These toxins are
irresistibly drawn towards the clay. Clay is
made of flat, microscopic,
credit-card-shaped "flakes". Laid
edge-to-edge, one gram of these particles
has the surface area of somewhere around 10
football fields. The greater the surface
area the greater its power to pick up
positively charged particles.
How to use clay
"How do you use it?" is usually the next
question. Well, since we live in a free
country, I probably can’t tell you how to
use it. But I will tell you how I use it.
For cuts or wet, open wounds I sprinkle it
on dry until the bleeding/oozing stops. Then
I shake off the excess and wrap it in a
clean bandage. For dry skin conditions like
stings, splinters, bites, rashes etc. I make
a paste of powdered clay and clean water,
smear it on thick, and cover it with a leaf
or some plastic (I prefer collards. I hate
plastic) and wrap the whole thing in a
bandage. This works best for overnight. The
clay pack will draw like a monster truck at
a tractor pull. Just ask Michael (not his
real name).
Mike had been stacking wood when he noticed
his lower lip started to burn and itch. Five
days and three doctor’s office visits later,
the doctor found a spider bite on Mike’s lip
and determined that a Fiddleback spider
(also known as the Brown Recluse) caused the
problem. By then the lip was about four
times its normal size and Mike was very sick
from the spider’s poison. Fiddleback bites
can be deadly, sometimes leaving large, open
wounds that don’t heal.
I gave Mike’s mom my clay poultice blend and
showed them how to mix and apply it. When I
left, he had smeared it all over his lip and
was wearing a lettuce leaf over the plaster
to keep it moist.
I visited Mike the following day and found
him wolfing down a big plate of food. He had
slept well, the pain was receding, and his
color was normal. His mom said that she
gagged at all the infection and dead tissue
that came off with the clay pack after just
a couple of hours. He continued applying a
couple of clay packs a day and by the next
day his lip was halfway back to normal size.
Even I was amazed at how fast and completely
he healed.
I like to soak or shower with clay, but you
have to be really careful not to get it in
your septic system. They do patch dams with
it, after all. We have an outdoor shower for
that purpose, so why not a soaking tub, too?
It just takes a pound of clay in a nice, hot
tub of water. For folks who are quite sick
it’s best to start with about half that
because these are very powerful detox
treatments.
Clay can be mixed with water, formed into
little balls, and used for very effective
suppositories for whatever is bothering your
nether regions.
I also like to drink about a teaspoon of
clay in a glass of water once, sometimes
twice a day, and sometimes a lot more than
that. Work up to this slowly – maybe every
other day at first. If you get constipated,
back off until your body can move it out.
The clay is just parking in there a little
longer because you have extra nasties to
clean out. If even that is too strong you
can mix it up, let it settle for a couple of
hours and drink the clay water. We
occasionally do juice fasts, and clay really
helps boost the detoxification process. Let
common sense be your guide, and, (gasp!),
listen to your body instead of the experts
for a change.
It is recommended that you take clay an hour
before or after nutritional supplements or
drugs. The common wisdom says that it can
absorb those, too.
Some folks also soak cotton in that same
clay water and wear it between their cheek
and gum all night for dental problems, and
fine clay makes an excellent tooth powder.
The clay water has also been used as an eye
wash. Clay has also been added to water for
centuries to purify it for drinking.
There are a couple of good books on the uses
of clay — Earth Cures: A Handbook of Natural
Medicine for Today, by Raymond Dextreit, and
The Clay Cure, by Ran Knishinsky.
After several years of experimenting with
clay on myself, friends and family, I have
found it to be the most user-friendly,
forgiving material I have ever worked with.
It’s cheap, foolproof, side-effect free, so
simple a child could use it, and endorsed by
Jesus Christ, Mahatma Ghandi and
Hippocrates. I dare all you "experts" out
there who may want to challenge this
information to show me just ONE drug or herb
that can make the same claims.
I use a variety of clays in my practice and
blend different varieties for different
purposes. You can find more information
about buying and using clay at my website –
www.acupla.net.
