Suzanne Somers’ newest book TOX-SICK explores the relationship between toxins and illness, and asks expert physicians ways to stay healthy in an increasingly toxic world. We asked her to share with us her perspectives on living life on the NaturalPath.
You’ve used your platform as an entertainer to empower people, especially women, to be responsible for their own health. This is a very important principle in naturopathic medicine, giving people the information they need to make the best choices for their healing. What gave you the desire and courage to begin sharing your personal, natural health stories?
Everything I write about is an experience I have had or one that I am having. Most of the time it is my desire to solve a problem. Once I have accomplished that, I feel obliged to share my findings with my readers.
In your newest book “TOX-SICK,” you share stories of illness caused by toxin exposure, including your story of mold toxicity. People are often caught up in treating the symptoms rather that looking carefully at the root of the issue, which is at the heart of naturopathic medicine. You report that you and your husband were wrongly given diagnoses, including cancer and pre-Parkinson’s symptoms. What prompted you to look past the symptomology and seek to identify the cause?
As the child of an abusive alcoholic, I needed lots of therapy and therapy taught me to drill down to the source of the problem and then address it from the ground up. I have applied that principle to just about everything in my life, including my health. I always look for the cause.
You have become a public voice and persona of alternative medicine. Naturopathic medicine embraces that the body has an inherent ability to maintain and restore health. You are quoted as saying that you are not anti-pharmaceutical, but instead, an advocate for seeking natural options first, before putting a single chemical molecule in your body. What brought you to seek a natural path to healing?
Wasn’t it Hippocrates who said, “Let your food be your medicine, your medicine be your food.” It’s all about food. We are what we eat! I only eat organic food. I grow all my own vegetables. I realized that I also needed to clean out the chemicals in my life; skin care, hair care, and household cleaners. I also follow a strict detox program. Nature rocks!
Naturopathic medicine looks at the whole individual, mind and body, when addressing wellness. Causes of disease occur on many levels, do you feel these situations in what do you do to live in balance physically, mentally emotionally and spiritually?
Life is complex in its simplicity. There’s the body that carries the brain that produces orders for the body, creates beautiful images from something called the imagination, reacts to emotion and feels cleansed in Nature, commonly known as a spiritual experience. It’s a balancing act. The thing that tempers all of the above is my Wisdom, which is Nature’s gift of aging.
Razi Berry, Founder and Publisher of Naturopathic Doctor News & Review (ndnr.com) and NaturalPath (thenatpath.com), has spent the last decade as a natural medicine advocate and marketing whiz. She has galvanized and supported the naturopathic community, bringing a higher quality of healthcare to millions of North Americans through her publications. A self proclaimed health-food junkie and mother of two; she loves all things nature, is obsessed with organic gardening, growing fruit trees (not easy in Phoenix), laughing until she snorts, and homeschooling. She is a little bit crunchy and yes, that is her real name.
