Participants: Christine Salter, John Dinsley
Series Code: WM
Program Code: WM000370
00:35 Hello, and welcome to Wonderfully Made.
00:37 My name is Dr. Christine Salter, 00:39 I am Board Certified in Family Medicine 00:42 in a private practice in St. Louis, Missouri. 00:44 Today we are going to be discussing a simple home remedy 00:49 called activated charcoal. 00:51 Mr. John Dinsley was our guest, has written a book about this. 00:54 Welcome John! 00:56 It is a real pleasure to be here with you today Dr. Salter, 00:59 I'm going to enjoy this. 01:01 Tell me, why did you write a book about charcoal? 01:05 Well, it is a good question, a lot of people do ask me that 01:08 and it goes back a few years, thirty some years ago. 01:10 Well not quite thirty. 01:11 I decided to hike around the world and on my adventures I 01:16 wandered into a small medical clinic in Guatemala 01:20 and there was a physician and his family who were working 01:23 and living there. 01:24 The Dr. Graves was a Board Certified California physician, 01:28 he was a graduate of Loma Linda University. 01:31 They had an amazing lifestyle which fascinated me, 01:35 one of the things that really captivated my attention was 01:37 their use of natural medicine, Natural Remedies. 01:42 Simple Remedies! - Simple, very simple! 01:44 You see a lot of the patients that came to the clinic 01:47 lived back in the mountains and they really didn't have 01:50 good access to the clinic and so the doctor tried to equip them 01:53 with things that they could use when they went back 01:55 to their villages. 01:57 So what impressed you about this particular village, 02:01 and what this physician was doing? 02:03 Well, again the natural medicine, 02:07 in the University I had an interest in Science and Biology 02:11 and I had taken a break from that, and I wanted to 02:15 explore the world. 02:16 But here was such a new idea to think about using 02:19 simple natural remedies. 02:21 I was used to going to a hospital, to an Emergency Room 02:26 visiting my doctor in a nice office back in America, 02:31 and this was a completely different setting 02:33 and one day I remember clearly, we were right along the 02:37 the Pan American Highway, and a bus stopped and these parents 02:41 came in rushing with this young child in their arms 02:45 obviously unconscious and convulsing. 02:48 The doctor immediately assessed the situation, 02:51 decided it was some form of food poisoning, 02:54 had the parents remove the blouse and he mixed up this 02:58 black stuff, this paste, and he smeared it all over her 03:02 belly and within 15 minutes the girl was resting quietly 03:08 and I thought Black Magic. 03:12 What was that black stuff? 03:14 Well, believe it or not, it was charcoal. 03:17 Now a lot of people say, so you mean charcoal briquettes? 03:21 No, it's not charcoal briquettes! 03:23 In this particular instance it was just ground up charcoal. 03:27 But what we are going to be talking about today is 03:31 medicinal charcoal, or activated gray charcoal. 03:34 Please tell our audience what you mean by activated charcoal. 03:38 Well, we start off with the raw product charcoal, 03:43 the leftovers from your camp fire, from your wood stove, 03:48 it is basically just carbon. 03:51 Most of the other products have been burned off, 03:53 it's been basically dehydrated and you have this charcoal. 03:59 Now when you activate charcoal you actually take that 04:02 raw product again and you heat it back up to a high temperature 04:07 say 800 degrees Celsius, and then you subject it to air 04:12 or maybe steam under pressure, and this erodes the 04:16 internal structure, the fabric of this charcoal particle, 04:20 and it gives us this tremendous surface area. 04:23 So that is what activated charcoal means. 04:27 Ok, so I know that in the Emergency Room, 04:30 the standard dose of activated charcoal, 04:33 which is 50 grams, that is actually the equivalent to 04:36 the size of 10 football fields. 04:38 Well, it is, it is absolutely amazing, this internal network, 04:43 this lattice work if you want, of the charcoal, 04:47 and maybe we could throw up on our screen a picture of 04:51 charcoal powder and you can see how really fine it is. 04:55 Charcoal is actually made from a number of different products, 04:58 I should say activated charcoal. 05:00 It can come from hard woods, it can come from olive pits, 05:08 or bamboo, or coconut. 05:09 There are many different sources for the initial product, 05:12 and then the activated. 05:14 You can see on the screen here that it is very very fine. 05:17 If you want to take a look at the next one, 05:19 we have actually an electron micrographic picture 05:22 of a charcoal particle. - Ok! 05:24 On this one, even this very very minute particle you can 05:29 on this picture how much surface area there is there. 05:34 Now you can imagine taking 50 grams of that and 05:37 unfolding this and you can see the tremendous surface area 05:41 and it is that surface area that accounts for some of that 05:45 amazing qualities that charcoal has. 05:47 Well, actually the American Academy of Pediatrics 05:51 put out a physicians statement in 2003 that said 05:54 Activated Charcoal was the best intervention for reducing 05:59 the availability of ingested substances, 06:02 so we can see from that surface area why it does this. 06:06 Tell me, how far does charcoal go back? 06:09 Well, it has a long history, we can trace it back to 06:13 the 1500 years B.C. - OH! 06:15 Some interesting things back then, they were using it to 06:18 control odors from wounds. 06:20 Eventually they decided if it does so good with 06:25 controlling odors, they discovered lets bury our dead 06:28 in layers of sand and charcoal and was able to preserve 06:31 these dead bodies. 06:32 They had already experimented with posts along the 06:35 River Nile, preserve these dead posts. 06:37 So it preserved them, then moving up to 400 B.C. 06:44 Hippocrates... prescribed charcoal for anthrax, 06:49 and different things in his day, along with Plinni? 06:52 Then it starts moving into the 1700's and the sugar industry 07:01 started using charcoal to whiten sugar. 07:04 The activation process developed in the late 1800's 07:09 and then the use of charcoal literally exploded, 07:13 they were using it for all manner of things. 07:15 All kind of things. 07:16 Maybe we show up on our screen a graphic showing 07:21 some of these different uses of charcoal. 07:24 As I said it goes back to 1500 years B.C., 07:27 you will see that they were using it for Flatulence 07:30 and Indigestion, that's gas. 07:31 In fact when Europeans came to North America 07:34 they found American Indians using charcoal to control 07:38 Indigestion, but since then of course we found that it 07:42 works very well for Nausea and Vomiting, Diarrhea, 07:45 we will talk about that a little bit later. 07:47 Poisoning, we will talk about that as well. 08:02 There is even literature now talking about charcoal's ability 08:05 to reduce cholesterol. 08:07 Oh, that's important! 08:08 Heart disease is the number one killer, 08:12 and so something as simple as cholesterol lowering 08:17 with charcoal would be extremely useful. 08:20 It sounds almost like Black Magic doesn't it? 08:22 It does sound like Black Magic. 08:23 But you know there is a lot of science behind it, and so 08:26 it is used in industry every single day. 08:30 Vegetable oils are cleaned with charcoal, 08:33 we drink water that is filtered with charcoal. 08:35 As you saw on that screen, Kidney Dialysis machines 08:39 actually filter blood through a bed of granular charcoal 08:43 to make it clean. 08:44 Hospitals are using this on a regular basis. 08:48 We want our viewing audience to know, they are not hospital 08:54 personnel, so should they feel comfortable 08:56 about using this remedy in the home. 08:59 They certainly can, not everybody has the privilege 09:03 of living next door to a hospital or an Emergency Ward, 09:05 and some of our viewers are probably living 09:08 in other countries where even their medical facilities 09:11 are even more remote than we see them here. 09:13 But even in our own communities here in North America 09:16 people in their homes are using it every single day. 09:20 My wife and I use it in our home, 09:22 have been using it for almost 30 years. 09:25 Our children use it and they taught their children to use it, 09:28 so our grandchildren are accustomed to use it. 09:31 But again, health care professionals use it 09:36 not only in the hospitals... 09:37 I have a very close friend, she is a head nurse 09:40 she has worked across North America, Hawaii, Alaska, 09:44 in Emergency Rooms, and you have worked in 09:47 Emergency Rooms as well. 09:48 She has used it there, but she uses it at home as well. 09:53 Absolutely! 09:55 I've used it in my home too. 09:57 I've seen it used in the Emergency Room for 10:00 toxic ingestions where somebody may die unless 10:05 they are given this, but something simply in the home 10:08 we are not suggesting that viewers use this in an 10:12 emergency situation while here in North America because 10:16 we know they can get to the Emergency Room. 10:17 But in other places where they may not have access 10:23 you would hope that they would use this, 10:24 but for something very simple like a sore throat. 10:27 or an insect bite... 10:30 Have you had any experiences with those? 10:32 Well yes, there are numbers of stories of insect bites, 10:36 I guess one that comes to my mind is Dr. Thrash 10:41 who is the Medical Director for the state of Georgia 10:44 has been for forty some years... 10:45 She tells the story of her granddaughter who was 10:49 outside playing and she found herself playing 10:52 on a hill of Fire Ants, and within seconds there were 10:57 literally hundreds of these insects biting her 11:00 and was screaming hysterically. 11:03 Dr. Thrash ran out, they grabbed the child, 11:07 ran for the house, filled a tub with warm water, 11:10 placed the child in the warm water, 11:13 they had already mixed in charcoal powder, 11:15 she said within two minutes this poor child 11:18 had stopped screaming. 11:20 That the charcoal had neutralized the poisons 11:23 and the child was basically pain free. 11:27 Now that is her experience, Dr. Agatha went so far as 11:32 to say if she was stranded on a desert island 11:34 and she could choose only one thing to take along 11:37 with her for infections, for emergency accidents, 11:42 she would choose charcoal. 11:44 Activated charcoal, Absolutely! 11:45 I do agree with her on that, I had an experience myself 11:51 when I was in Florida... I am highly reactive to 11:57 wasp stings or bee stings, and in fact I was actually 12:00 doing a demonstration about activated charcoal 12:03 and I really made up my poultice to be able to show 12:05 the audience and so that was all ready and waiting for me. 12:09 So in the interim we went outside and I was just out there 12:11 having a conversation and I felt something on my hand 12:14 and then the sting. 12:17 I knew that my hand would swell so immediately I grabbed that 12:21 poultice that was for the demonstration, 12:22 and I put that right on there and within 30 seconds 12:27 the stinging, the pain was gone and I had no reaction, and 12:32 usually I really would swell, and I had no reaction to that. 12:36 So when you think about the science of that, 12:37 you've already showed the graphic of the surface area, 12:43 there is something called van der Waal's forces where they 12:47 tracked different particles to them, so it makes sense. 12:53 I like to relate it to a black hole, 12:55 you know this phenomena up in space is able to pull things 12:59 to it and then it doesn't let go of them. 13:02 It sounds fantastic, but here we have charcoal, 13:04 you can't see black holes but you can see charcoal. 13:07 - Absolutely! If we had a quart jar here 13:10 of activated charcoal, we're told that that one quart jar 13:14 can hold up to 80 quarts of ammonia gas. 13:17 It's that tremendous surface area that binds these proteins 13:20 or gas molecules, or toxins, whatever they are 13:23 and holds them, and in the case of poisoning, 13:26 holds them until the charcoal and the poison is eliminated 13:28 from the body. 13:29 Now obviously we are not saying that people shouldn't 13:34 make use of Emergency Rooms... - Right, we are not saying that. 13:38 Some people may have gone into anaphylactic shock 13:41 because of a bee sting, but how much more sense 13:44 does it make to apply the charcoal while you are 13:47 heading towards an Emergency Room where you can get 13:50 professional help. 13:51 This is sort of like a fire extinguisher until the fireman 13:54 get to your help. Right! 13:57 Instead of the parents or family members feeling helpless 14:01 they will dial 911 and then they would put a poultice on 14:07 or they would have them drink some of that activated charcoal. 14:11 Exactly, in fact there is a number of the poison control 14:14 centers across North America do recommend in fact 14:16 that you have charcoal in the home. 14:18 I know there is some discussion whether parents are able to 14:22 properly administer it to their children but 14:25 whether that is true or not... It seems to me 14:28 that a parent who knows a child and the child who knows 14:31 the parent is going to have a lot easier time to apply 14:34 the charcoal in the home and then head off to the 14:37 Emergency Room. 14:38 What about something as simple as an ear infection? 14:41 I remember my son was just a toddler and woke up screaming 14:47 pulling at his ear, and I knew exactly what was going on. 14:49 I was a medical student at the time and I looked in his ear 14:52 and he had a bulging eardrum. 14:53 I quickly made up a charcoal poultice and applied it to the 14:58 external ear, and of course I had to find that information 15:01 from Dr. Agatha Thrash. 15:03 I applied that and within a few minutes he calmed down 15:09 and he was able to sleep through the night, 15:11 I still took him to the doctor the next morning 15:13 and she did determine that he did have an ear infection 15:16 but it was amazing to have him just settle down 15:20 and sleep through the night with a bulging eardrum. 15:23 Of course that let you relax a little be too. 15:26 Exactly! 15:27 Well, I use an acronym called S.A.F.E. 15:29 - Tell us what S.A.F.E. means. 15:30 S.A.F.E., as I travel in different countries 15:34 I've come back to North America with our amazing 15:37 health care system. 15:38 It is so readily available for most of us, 15:41 and then I compare them to countries like Nepal, 15:44 or working out in the Pacific where you may be hours 15:47 from the nearest road or you may be days 15:49 from the nearest clinic... 15:50 I came to ask myself the question, 15:53 "Do you have to be wealthy to be healthy"? 15:55 Or does God only love rich people? 15:57 - No! - Well, I don't think so either. 15:58 So I came up with this acronym, I looked at 16:02 If God really loves us wherever you are in the world, 16:05 whatever your social and economic status is 16:07 then is seems to me that remedies should be Simple, 16:10 they should be Affordable, they should be Accessible. 16:13 You are going to have to measure out a little bit of Faith, 16:17 when you take it with you, and lastly, they should be 16:21 Easy to apply... 16:23 Charcoal is easy, it's a little bit messy, 16:26 as you have used it over and over again it gets 16:30 easier and easier to use. 16:31 It does get easier to use, I have my fare share 16:34 of making a mess with charcoal, 16:35 I know how to do it quite expertly now but initially 16:39 we had charcoal powder everywhere. 16:42 That S.A.F.E. acronym is really important... 16:46 You said that maybe a place like Nepal would be a place 16:50 for it to be used, but even here in North America 16:52 there is a lot of people who do not have access to health care. 16:56 They cannot afford it, and they are out in the 17:00 rural areas, and in some counties the physicians are 17:04 moving away because of malpractice litigation 17:07 and so we do have a tremendous amount of people who do not 17:11 have access, and this is something that is fairly simple 17:14 that really could save someone's life. 17:18 In fact I was talking with one of the technicians 17:21 before we did our program today and he's training to be 17:26 an EMT, and he was saying that yea, on board 17:30 they carry charcoal. 17:32 - They carry activated charcoal. - So on the way to the hospital 17:33 if you haven't applied it, it's a good chance 17:35 they may apply it on the way to the hospital. 17:38 There are a number of different ways that we can use it 17:41 in the home, you mentioned the ears, 17:43 you can apply it as a poultice, or an eye wash 17:48 for the eye infections. 17:49 - Tell our viewing audience what a poultice is. 17:52 You make a paste with charcoal, you can make it just with water, 17:58 it tends to dry out more quickly but if you mixed it with 18:02 something like ground up flax seed 18:05 it makes a paste, a jell, and that moisture holds longer, 18:11 it's that moist contact with the skin that allows charcoal 18:15 to somehow mysteriously draw out toxins or poisons 18:19 through the skin into the charcoal poultice. 18:22 - And we want to make a point that if his is not 18:24 absorption, it is not sucking up, it is adsorbing, 18:30 A D onto the surface through all those little crevices 18:33 that are exposed to. 18:35 It has this electro static type of affinity for other molecules 18:42 some of them are... we might want to call them 18:44 loose cannons, they are in our body, maybe free radicals 18:48 or toxins or waste products and thee Lancet Magazine 18:52 which is a premier medical journal for England 18:54 has reported that when they applied charcoal poultices 18:57 superficially that somehow the mystery of charcoal 19:01 is actually able to pull these toxins from deep tissue 19:04 and as well deep organs. 19:06 Those van de Waal forces that are on the surfaces 19:10 of the charcoal really do pull and attract. 19:14 - Big Black Hole! 19:18 Recently a friend sent in a story of their daughter, 19:23 now this lady is a nurse, practices at a large hospital. 19:28 Her husband is an anesthesiologist, 19:31 and their daughter developed a urinary tract infection 19:36 at the age of two years I believe, and for the next 19:39 51/2 years she suffered with this problem chronically. 19:43 It got to the point where their physician decided that he would 19:48 have to go in and scrape the ureters, scrape the bladder, 19:52 dilate it and check out the kidney as well. 19:54 That is a major procedure and you can imagine the trauma 20:00 just for the child, but the parents, what it must put 20:03 them through, thinking oh, there has got to be 20:05 some other solution. 20:06 Well, after 51/2 years it was time to do another procedure 20:11 and the parents said no, there has got to be something else, 20:14 and they knew a chemist, and this chemist said 20:18 why don't you try charcoal? 20:20 Place it in water and have her drink this charcoal slurry. 20:23 Well they did and when the child took it, 20:26 the nurse friend told me that the child was symptomatic 20:29 at the time, she was in a great deal of discomfort and pain. 20:32 Within two hours she was pain free and the last report 20:39 was after a period of time, I am not sure the period of time 20:42 but the child was symptom free. 20:44 - Symptom free and no more urinary tract infection. 20:47 Can you imagine if they could have discovered this 20:49 5 years ago. - Five years and sooner. 20:51 You know I have used charcoal for food poisoning, 20:55 no one likes to be running to the bathroom with diarrhea 20:59 and that cramping that occurs. 21:01 Yes, you don't have to wait for a severe case of poisoning. 21:05 We may go out to eat at a restaurant or some friends 21:09 may invite us home, or we are traveling overseas for 21:12 whatever reason and we eat some strange food or drink 21:15 some strange water, and we suddenly find ourselves 21:18 with an upset floppy stomach. 21:20 It's not bad enough that we have to go to the Emergency 21:22 but we don't really want to lay there all night either. 21:25 Take a glass of water stir the charcoal into the water. 21:30 - Into the water, not the other way around. 21:31 Not the other way around and drink that down 21:34 and usually within a half an hour that upset stomach, 21:39 that indigestion, gas, or heartburn, or acid reflux, 21:41 is brought under control. 21:43 You know on Pubmed in the American Journal of 21:47 Gastroenterology, they did do a study, it was a double-blind 21:52 clinical trial that looked at activated charcoal in 21:56 decreased intestinal gas. 21:57 So those things that we were doing through faith there is 22:01 actually some clinical research to substantiate that. 22:06 There are lots of anecdotal stories out there, 22:09 but I found as I gathered some of the stories for the book 22:14 how many people who had good stories were actually 22:18 health care providers, whether doctors, physicians assistants, 22:23 nurses, chemists, lab techs, people who are really informed. 22:29 This is something unusual because back in 1908 the 22:33 Sears and Roebuck Catalog actually carried charcoal 22:36 in their catalog. 22:38 They said as everybody knows charcoal is so good for 22:42 indigestion, heartburn, and gas and so forth. 22:46 But that was 1908 and somehow charcoal disappeared off the 22:50 radar screen and it's only now people are becoming 22:54 more aware of it. 22:55 We attended a trade show and somebody picked up the 23:01 literature when I wasn't there and contacted me after the show 23:04 and he was a head nurse in an Emergency Room and he said 23:06 charcoal, it's absolutely amazing. 23:09 He says, I don't even wait to get sick, if I feel the symptoms 23:12 of a flu coming on or a bug or upset stomach, 23:15 I take the charcoal because I don't know how it works 23:18 but it seems to eliminate those symptoms, 23:22 and I don't have to go through the whole flu cycle. 23:26 That's a principal in simple home remedies that you 23:31 do start at the very first sign of symptoms, 23:34 don't wait until all the symptoms track in, 23:37 because by that time you will need to go to the 23:41 Emergency Room. So whatever it is 23:43 whether it is a cold, or an upset stomach, 23:45 right away we want people doing those simple home remedies. 23:49 Charcoal, drinking lots of water, we like to do that 23:53 water flush, we drink several glasses in just one hours time, 23:57 and that really flushes the virus... the virus likes 24:02 dry membranes, so if you flush those membranes 24:06 the virus is not able to attach as easily. 24:10 Then you couple that with activated charcoal 24:12 with those van De Waal forces pulling and sucking in 24:16 those toxins, then we've truly got a nice simple remedy. 24:21 Well, you mentioned water... charcoal as a simple home remedy 24:26 is only as effective as we use a holistic health program, 24:30 you mentioned water, of course we know about exercise, 24:32 and good nutrition and all these other preventives. 24:34 So charcoal is not a magic bullet, it's not a cure all, 24:39 sometimes it works. For many people it does work. 24:42 Sometimes it may not work and you are going to 24:44 have to look for some other safe remedy as an alternative 24:49 before you have to go to the hospital if need be. 24:51 Another thing that people sometimes say... 24:55 oh charcoal is burnt toast. 24:56 Now I am not saying that burnt toast might not be a 24:59 home remedy, but it is not charcoal. 25:01 It's not charcoal, in fact burnt toast is actually 25:03 carcinogenic. - Yes, it's super heated 25:06 carbohydrates, proteins, and fats, and these things 25:10 can be carcinogenic. 25:12 Carcinogenic meaning cancer forming. 25:14 Correct, and since you brought us carcinogenic 25:18 let's briefly talk about briquettes. 25:22 I know that there are natural briquettes, 25:26 but most people when they, go to the store to buy briquettes 25:29 it is impregnated with fossil fuels to help them ignite. 25:32 That is not something that you would want to apply... 25:34 take internally, or apply superficially. 25:37 Now it has also been... some people have said 25:40 charcoal is carcinogenic and the reason is 25:43 the connected to benzopyrenes. 25:44 A lot of people barbeque their food, braze their food, 25:48 and what happens is when they are cooking their food 25:51 and these fats, juices drip down into the hot coals they 25:55 vaporize, form these benzopyrenes and then embed 25:58 themselves against the bottom of the food that 26:00 they are barbequing. 26:02 But that's not charcoal, it's the heat from the charcoal 26:06 that produces these benzopyrenes. 26:08 So there we have the list, we have charcoal is not toast, 26:11 it's not briquettes, and it's not a cure all. 26:14 I would want to mention to you, charcoal has an 26:18 indefinite life span. 26:20 When you buy it at the store, it will come either as a powder, 26:26 as a tablet, as a capsule, and sometimes it will be 26:30 stamped with a shelf life. 26:31 It's only for marketing purposes, 26:34 actually if you keep the lid tight, 26:36 it will last indefinitely. 26:38 I've had charcoal for years, I've had it for 10 years. 26:43 - It's still very very active. - And it's very effective. 26:46 Right! In fact the W.H.O. World Health Organization 26:51 has passed a resolution encouraging other nations 26:54 to really study into using simple, natural, harmless, 26:59 scientifically proven remedies, and I can think of no 27:03 remedy that fits that description better 27:05 than charcoal. 27:07 In fact when you think of diarrhea, diarrhea according to 27:11 the W.H.O. kills around 5,000 people every single day 27:16 of the year. Cholera is a major killer 27:20 in some developing countries, we do not have it here. 27:23 But charcoal deals with severe diarrhea... 27:26 When I was working on a remote island out in the Pacific 27:29 the community nurse was dealing with a patient 27:31 who had severe Cholera she was not able to help him 27:35 with her standard medicines and she gave charcoal, 27:40 it stopped the diarrhea, she then gave the re-hydration salts 27:43 and she was able to save his life. 27:46 So for something as simple as a bee sting to something 27:50 as Cholera... activated charcoal is 27:54 simple and scientifically proven. 27:56 Yes! 27:57 John, I want to thank you for coming and sharing this 27:59 wonderful information with us and with our viewing audience 28:02 and those around the world. 28:04 Thank You! 28:05 We wish above all things that you will prosper and 28:08 be in health, even as your soul prospers. 28:11 May God Bless You! |
Revised 2014-12-17