Part ONE: Interview between Dr. Z and Healing with Clay Author Ran Knishinsky
This is PART ONE of a SIX PART Interview series.
Dr. Eugene Zampieron, ND interviewed Ran Knishinsky, author of Healing with Clay: A Practical Guide to Earth’s Oldest Natural Remedy about the health benefits of edible clay. - -
Dr Z: We’re really excited to be here. This is Dr. Z, naturopathic physician, professor, founder of the Bridgeport College of Naturopathic Medicine and co-host of today’s program, The Natural Nurse & Dr Z. We’re going to do an interesting show…today we are going to talk about clay as a very interesting dietary adjunct to health and wellness.
We have Ran Knishinsky and he has a MBA from Arizona State and has been studying the science of consuming clay for more than 30 years. He has worked in the naturopathic and allopathic medicine industries.
And is the author of several books like Prickly Pear Cactus Medicine. That sounds interesting. We know prickly pear is so good for our blood sugar. And The Prozac Alternative. He wrote a recent book which is an update to The Clay Cure, called Healing with Clay: A Practical Guide to Earth’s Oldest Natural Remedy. Let’s talk a little bit about how you got interested in clay.
RK: Sure, I am excited to be speaking to you about the health benefits of edible clay. I learned about clay like so many people learn about natural medicine – when a problem presents itself and there is no traditional treatment. I was diagnosed with a benign tumor called a ganglion cyst. It’s a growth that appears at the back of the wrist. I went to a physician after it kept growing and growing.
I was told that the only way to get rid of it was surgery. And I wasn’t excited about this treatment option. I was looking for alternate ways when I stumbled on a doctor who told me to eat dirt. I said, “Dirt”? Yes, he answered. But it’s a very special type of dirt called clay: montmorillonite clay. That began my journey to eating clay which started 30 years go.
Dr. Z: I am trying to think of the mechanism of action (MOA) of how that helped your cyst. How do you think that worked at a molecular level?
RK: There is a lot of clinical evidence that supports the eating of clay. I am excited that there are a number of randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials published in peer reviewed journals.
Clay’s MOA really works by absorbing and adsorbing toxins in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. So how it might have worked on a ganglion cyst isn’t exactly clear outside the fact that the physician said, in the naturopathic view of the world, that the ganglion cyst was a crystallization of toxins in the joint area.
Dr. Z: I can see…cysts are kind of like, if the body can’t get rid of things it walls them off. I had some interesting work with clay too. I had a woman that had hundreds of lipomas which are a fatty cyst. The conventional folks wanted to cut them all out. And I was like, cut them out? You have hundreds. And that’s not going to work too well. Sure enough when I ran some analysis on the patient, we found out her mercury, heavy metals were very high and that she had sensitives to petrochemicals, worked on these things. We did a biopsy of one of these cysts. We proved that inside the cyst was high levels of these organic compounds. It proved to me that a cyst can hold onto these compounds. But once the body moved the fats from the area of the tumor into the digestive system, it gets into the blood stream, becomes part of the biliary system, kidneys, liver, and what not. Eventually it ends up in the gut. That is where using the clay as part of her detoxification program worked. That is something that I noticed in your book that caught my eye. Clay seems to be universally known since antiquity for grabbing hold of toxins.
RK: Within about 60 days, the cyst had complexly disappeared. And I got to tell you, I was absolutely surprised with this new natural supplement. A lot of people in my circle dismissed it, that it was bound to disappear on its own. But I gave the clay a little more of a nod than that. It began for me a journey into researching and understanding the benefits of clay. And just as you pointed out, way back in the days when the Roman empire loomed large, Pliny the Elder who was a Roman naturalist and natural philosopher devoted an entire chapter of his natural history book to the many uses of clay. And the Mesopotamians and ancient Egyptians used clay medicinally for internal and external issues.
Dr. Z: The great Dr. Galen also used an Armenian type of clay to help with acne, which is a type of cyst too by the way. Interesting if you look at it, the pathology of acne. And even hemorrhoids. We know then that the earth has lots of healing benefits. I use as a supreme tonic an ayurvedic remedy called shilajit. Stuff from the earth is very powerful. But you know most people might be familiar with fangotherapy where they soak in clays to remove toxins. Fango is very big in Europe, in spas, and things like that. But you’re actually talking about using it internally more?
Read PART TWO: Interview between Dr. Z and Healing with Clay Author Ran Knishinsky or listen here: https://thenaturalnurse.podbean.com/e/the-natural-nurse-and-dr-z-040522/