Toe Pain

The ends of your feet get the poorest "service" from your blood supply. They are the furthest away. The blood here has the most accumulated acid and the least oxygen supply. The body produces quite a bit of uric acid and this should, of course, be excreted into the bladder by the kidneys. But if the kidneys are doing a poor job of this, levels in the body and blood stream rise. The blood can only hold so much. It holds even less in acid conditions such as the ends of your feet experience. Uric acid begins to settle out or precipitate at our feet.

Hippuric acid, too, is found where pain is found. Hippuric acid is made in large amounts (about 1 gram/day) by the liver because it is a detoxification product. It makes no sense to consume benzoic acid, the common preservative, since this is what the body detoxifies into hippuric acid. Read all labels on food you buy. Don't buy any beverages or baked goods preserved with benzoic acid. Citric acid is fine. The joints of the big toes are favorite places for pain to develop. This is made even worse when circulation is poor. Take a cayenne capsule with each meal to improve circulation. If you cannot find your pulse just below your inner ankle your circulation is poor.

The accumulation of uric and hippuric acid invites bacteria to feed on them. As bacteria multiply the tissue fights back with inflammation. Now the stage has been set for pain. Some people do not have pain although these acids and other deposits are present making their joints knobby and unbending. Bacteria have not found them yet or haven't multiplied sufficiently in them to invade your tissues. Perhaps there are other reasons as well.

If you have toe pain your course of action is this:

1. Kill all bacteria possible with your NEOClark. Repeat daily until no further benefit is seen.

2. Dissolve the deposits away. An herbal recipe, quite elaborate, is capable of doing this. It is called the Kidney Cleanse (page 549). Toe deposits are made of the same crystals as kidney stones, which is why the Kidney Cleanse works for toe pain. But because these deposits are far away from the kidney, it takes longer than merely cleaning up kidneys. It may take six months to make a significant dent on these deposits. This will at the same time remove kidney crystals so that these are no longer a source of bacteria.

3. Get teeth cavitations cleaned (cavitations are bone infections in the jaw where a tooth was pulled; it never healed; see Dental Cleanup). This can "magically" stop the toe pain the same day as they are cleaned. The effect lasts for days afterward showing it is not the dental anesthetic that is responsible. It also teaches you that the bacteria in the toes can come from the teeth. But pain may return as other bacteria find the deposits.

4. Clean the liver of stones using the Liver Cleanse. This, too, can give immediate pain relief in the toes showing you they are a source for bacteria. Liver cleaning may take you two years to complete! Meanwhile your toe pain is receding. And, of course, this pays extra dividends in health for your body.

5. Reduce the acidity in your toes. First, check your acidity with pH paper meant for testing urinary pH, called Nitrazine^TM paper. Ordinary pH paper, as for fish tanks, is almost as accurate and will serve as well. Tear a ½ inch piece and hold it in the urine stream. Early morning is the time your urine is most acid. If this reads below 5.5 your feet must have been even lower in the night (lower is more acid).

Once deposits start, it is hard to stop them. If they start forming at 2 a.m., they are likely to continue for several hours even if the pH goes back up to normal. Your tactic will be to go to bed with an alkalizing action. Taking a calcium and magnesium supplement at bedtime, drinking milk at bedtime, using baking soda at bedtime are all remedies to be tried. They should raise your urinary pH to 6 in the morning.

Balance Your pH

Most persons with painful deposits anywhere in their feet have a morning urine pH of 4.5! At 4.5 it is safe to guess that a lot has precipitated again in the night. During the day, your body's pH swings back and forth. The urine gets quite alkaline right after a meal; this is called the alkaline tide. Three meals a day would bring you three alkaline tides. During these periods, lasting about an hour, you have an opportunity to dissolve some of your foot deposits. But if you allow your pH to drop too low in the night you put the deposits back again. The net effect decides whether your deposits grow or shrink.

To alkalinize yourself at bedtime, choose one of these options:

1. Two oyster shell tablets, equaling 750 mg. of calcium plus a magnesium oxide tablet, 300 mg (see Sources). The magnesium helps the calcium dissolve and stay in solu

tion. Taking more calcium at one time is not advised because it cannot be dissolved and absorbed anyway and might constipate you. For the elderly only one calcium tablet is advised. Take calcium tablets with vitamin C or lemon water to help dissolve (¼ tsp. vitamin C powder; adding honey is fine).

2. One cup of sterilized milk or buttermilk, drunk hot or cold, plus 1 magnesium oxide tablet, 300 mg. (adding cinnamon is fine). If these two remedies work for you, your morning urinary pH will come up to 6.0 but if for some reason they don't, you need to take more drastic measures. Take the supplements and milk earlier in the day and reserve bedtime for:

3. ½ tsp. baking soda in water. This is sodium bicarbonate. But don't use baking soda from a store because most brands I have tested are polluted with benzene! (See Sources for safe baking soda.) Using a combination of sodium and potassium bicarbonate in a ratio of 2:1 is actually a much more healthful potion. You can make your own or ask a pharmacist to make it for you. Mix two parts baking soda and one part potassium bicarbonate (see Sources) in a jar. Keep tightly closed. Label it sodium potassium bicarbonate alkalizer (this potion is also very useful in allergic reactions of all kinds). Take 1 level tsp. in water at bedtime. If your pH reaches 6 in the morning continue each night at this dose. If it does not, take 1½ tsp. Keep watching your pH, since it will gradually normalize and you will require less and less. If you are using plain baking soda, instead of the mixture, watch your pH each morning, also, so you can cut back when the pH goes higher than 6.

Persons with a limit on their daily sodium intake must carefully count the grams of baking soda consumed in this way.

Each tsp. weighs about 2 grams, of which half (1 gram or 1000 milligrams is sodium. The sodium/potassium mixture would only give you half as much sodium (½ gram per tsp.). By comparison, the usual daily intake of sodium is about 5 gm., although salt eaters consume twice that amount.

You have done five things to pull the rug out from under the bacteria living in and around the deposits in your toes. Now when you kill bacteria with your NEOClark, you can expect the pain to go away and stay away.

Locations at the base of toes may be painful due to a neuroma. Deposits and bacteria here are even more painful because this is the location of nerve centers. If the build-up is large, you may prefer some surgical help or a cortisone shot rather than wait several years for solid relief.