Why ‘The Dose Makes the Poison’ Is An Outdated Concept. It Must Go!

Why “The Dose Makes the Poison” Is a Myth (And Why It’s Time to Let It Go)

You’ve probably heard “the dose makes the poison” your whole life.

It’s meant to indoctrinate you that poison, in small amounts, is medicine.

[If you prefer listening to reading, you can listen to this article as a video.]

How We Were Taught to Believe Small Doses of Poison Are Safe

When did poison start being called medicine?

Let me give you some examples of how deeply you’ve been indoctrinated to believe that poison is good, if it’s in small doses.

First, the myth of “niacin,” or “vitamin B3,” is that it makes you detoxify. Your face flushes red, you sweat, and you might even throw up.

Technically, the nicotinic acid, the petrochemical-derived product that is in no way a nutrient your body needs, does not detoxify you.

Technically, it poisons you, and your body’s defenses rally to save your life, and it’s your immune system that detoxifies you. Good books by doctors practicing 60 years ago believed this myth. That “niacin” detoxifies.

Sadly, they were wrong then, and people are wrong now that this substance is anything but toxic for you, and they’re also mistaken that it’s a nutrient.

Here’s another example:

The cyanide in “vitamin B12” (cyanocobalamin) is not medicinal, even if it’s trace amounts that end up in each pill you may take daily.

An amount that makes you sick over time, even if you don’t notice it when you take it. In your vitamin B12, you are ingesting cyanide and cobalt, a heavy metal.

[Related: How To Detox From Heavy Metals Naturally: 3 Actions You Can Take]

There are other molecules besides cyanocobalamin, sold as Vitamin B12, and they’re not better – but cyanocobalamin is a very common one, and it truly is made of cyanide and cobalt.

We’ve had several people tell us on Facebook posts that they always get sick in reaction to taking “B vitamins.” None of which are vitamins, all of which are made from synthetic petroleum products, solvents, flow agents, and well-known poisons.)

A third example: The coal-tar-derived vitamin K isn’t a vitamin, and the poison isn’t a medicine, even if it’s in a small enough dose.

Perhaps this saying, “the dose makes the poison,” which sounds true or helpful, but isn’t, helped doctors explain to patients why troubling ingredients are often in their drugs.

Your baby has petrochemical-derived “vitamin K” injected into her as a newborn, with additional ingredients like propylene glycol, polysorbate 80, and acetic acid, before your baby even leaves the hospital.

For about 65 years now, it has been used supposedly to prevent a rare hemorrhaging condition.

(I wish I’d known this. If I were, at 26, 28, 30, and 33, the person I am now, I’d have birthed my babies I had at those ages, at home.)

[Related: This Supplement Made Me Feel Something, So It Works–Right?]

Why Most Supplements Aren’t Safe—or the Solution You’re Looking For

Supplements, also made by Pharma (not all of them, but 99%+), virtually always contain flow agents, often including shellacs and plastics.

And they virtually always involve petrochemical solvents, which your body does not eliminate easily.

Again, I’m not talking about prescribed drugs; I’m talking about supplements.

A $4,000 INUSpheresis treatment in Switzerland proved this to me. A quart of solvents and other toxic stuff came out of filtering my blood.

The petrochemical nature of the stuff eliminated was undeniable, by its look, but we sent it into a lab to identify various toxins in my blood. Many, I believe, came from the thousands of supplements I took, back before I knew better.

The base materials of supplements are generally the byproducts of numerous industries, as well as lab-grown bacteria, molds, and algae, sold to you as magical, health-giving pills.

My book, Take Daily, exposes what your supplements are made of and how and where they’re made. Discover what you deserve to know about supplements, so you can best protect and support your health – and save money, too!

What If Toxic Exposure Is Cumulative—Not Harmless in Small Doses?

The story goes that if the toxic substance is in only a small amount, it’s no big deal. Right? What if our exposure to toxins is cumulative?

A colleague of mine says that cholecalciferol, the active ingredient in many rat poisons, is fine, as “vitamin D,” as long as you don’t overdose. The package of rat poison instructs you on how to treat your dog or cat if they accidentally ingest the cholecalciferol.

[Related: Are Vitamin D and Vitamin C Supplements a Toxic Scam?]

Why “Small Amounts” Ignore How the Body Actually Accumulates Toxins

It reminds me how, when I opt out of the backscatter machine at the airport security, the TSA agents tell me, “You get less radiation from that machine than from 15 minutes in the sun.”

Some TSA agents seem to be fighting the urge to roll their eyes that I would think there’s any threat to human health, using radiation to scan your whole body for potential tools of terrorism.

Not only is that not true, that amount of radiation is equivalent to brief sun exposure, and something their superiors likely told them to say, but it also ignores the fact that exposures to radiation are cumulative.

I didn’t get the wrinkles on my 58-year-old skin from just one sunburn; I got them from hundreds of sunburns over the years.

I’m a fan of exposure to the sun, as people throughout history have been in the sun – good for your hormone system, your eyes, and much more.

I consider the aging of the skin to be part of growing older, and I don’t panic about aging or the lines on my forehead. The laugh lines around my eyes, I think, are fun and proof of how much laughing and smiling I’ve done.

(I’m less enthusiastic about the frown lines, but, well, that’s part of the human experience as well.)

I don’t chase anti-aging products, with all their associated plastics, solvents, and petrochemicals.

(I research them, and find this stuff in them—even oils, they’re rancid and in the supply chain a long time, especially the bigger the company is. I use them sparingly. At least, castor oil is a very thick oil that goes rancid more slowly.)

Marketers know that you can sell most things to affluent women over 50 if you tell them a great story about how it slows down the aging process.

I recently saw an ad for a Shark Tank-funded product, a plastic stick-on for your forehead and other parts of your face that physically freezes your face while you sleep at night. I guess if we’re going to freeze our faces, that’s better than injecting neurotoxins!

A Small Dose of Poison Isn’t Safe—It Just Harms You More Slowly

So a small dose of poison isn’t medicinal, and it’s not safe – it’s just going to harm you more slowly than a large dose.

And if the body cannot digest, assimilate, and eliminate it well – and the body is not well-equipped to eliminate chemical toxins – then the effect can be cumulative.

And as with the popular rain barrel metaphor, you can keep filling it up with rainwater, but once it’s full, it’s going to tip over.

My Health Tipping Point—and What Cumulative Toxicity Really Looks Like

I'm familiar with that metaphor from my own experience, having reached the tipping point for my health with a flu vaccine while working at a hospital during graduate school.

It certainly wasn’t my only toxic exposure. I’d left the whole-food diet of my childhood, for the Standard American Diet that I found myself surrounded by, in university life, where I couldn’t exactly grow a garden and have fruit trees, like my parents did, plus trying to survive on $10/week, and then marrying into a family where the Standard American Diet reined.

When I tipped over, I was lying on my side for four years. That was a long time to consider whether each small exposure was all that small:

or whether I’d accumulated toxicity from years and years of disregard for my health, taking it for granted, until I couldn’t, anymore.

What a great, critical moment that was. I remember it clearly.

Driving home in the rain, with my 1-year-old in a car seat behind me, having been told by the pediatrician with regard to my son’s life-threatening asthma that began immediately after his 4-month MMR vaccines, he said:

“You’ve had the magic bullet, it’s liquid steroids, five times we’ve given it to him now—all we have for you is more of the same, and taking this prescription for steroids I’m giving you now is guaranteed to stunt his growth.”

That is the day that I didn’t fill the prescription, but I cried all the way home, realizing: I have to take charge of my health, and my family’s health. Today. Starting now.

I stopped at a health food store, my sick baby in his car seat in the cart. Wandering around, looking at things, starting to try to learn. Overwhelmed. Also motivated. He was very sick, and I was, too.

Some days, I wouldn’t have been capable of that trip to the doctor’s office or the health-food store.

Then I became interested, and then borderline-obsessed, with what our alternative doctors of the past did to help people like me. The people who had tipped over. And needed to detoxify.

What Actually Helps the Body Detoxify—Without Poisoning It

And thus my career was born, where I have now spent well over 10,000 hours studying what works (also, what doesn’t) to help human beings detoxify.

You know what DOESN’T help human health? This idea that poisons are fine as long as they’re in small amounts.

Let alone the insidious idea that if it’s a small amount, it might even be medicinal and useful.

Show me a poison posing as medicine, and I’ll show you an alternative.

Several years ago, a young couple recruited John and me to a ceremony in which we’d all be injected with toxic frog venom.

We’d all sit around and throw up, each with our bucket, and “purge,” as well as be under the influence of a psychoactive component to the frog venom, to achieve higher enlightenment, together, discussing things we usually wouldn’t, if not under the influence of the frog venom.

We did not do this, so that’s all I have to say about it.

I’m just saying, we’re sold many toxic supplements, some with effects we notice, so we immediately jump to the conclusion that “it’s working!”– and most with no noticeable impact at all, that we hope is addressing some “deficiency.”

Did you also purge other nasty stuff that needed to come out, sweating and/or throwing up after a “niacin or B3 flush?” Or a frog-venom purge? Maybe, but this is a weak argument.

You can also open up your pores and sweat regularly, with an inexpensive sauna in your home.

And you can detoxify twice a year, as I’ve helped over 20,000 people do, over the last 11 years.

It's safe, we don’t poison you to create the illusion via violent means, of a “detoxification”–

– we work with the body’s natural processes to open up elimination channels to eliminate faster and more effectively, but also safely. Additionally, remove some toxic buildup that may have accumulated over years or decades.

You can watch my video about my 25 years of research into human detoxification here.

Why “The Dose Makes the Poison” Belongs in the Past

Meanwhile, I think people have gotten smarter, and especially after we all watched the toxic injections 80% of the world got, backfire–

–involving millions of injuries and deaths in 2021 and beyond:

We’re smart enough to question the idea that we have to poison ourselves to be healthy.

While “the dose makes the poison” is tempting, clever, and used by many, I think we’re ready for that to go in the dustbin of history. Or, if it continues, you can always opt out.

 

Read Next: How To Detox Your Body Quickly, Safely, And Naturally: 6 Steps Everyone Can Take

 

Frequently Asked Questions

Question:
Is “the dose makes the poison” actually true?

Answer:
The phrase is often used to suggest that small amounts of toxins are safe, but it ignores how the body accumulates toxic exposures over time. Many substances aren’t easily eliminated and can build up, even in small doses.

Question: Are small amounts of poison safe for the body?

Answer:
A small dose of poison may not cause immediate symptoms, but that doesn’t make it safe. If the body can’t properly eliminate it, the damage can occur slowly and cumulatively.

Question:
Can toxic exposure be cumulative?

Answer:
Yes. Chemical toxins, heavy metals, and radiation can accumulate in the body over years. The effects may not appear right away, but long-term exposure can eventually overwhelm the body’s ability to adapt.

Question:
Are supplements safe to take long term?

Answer:
Many supplements contain synthetic ingredients, flow agents, and petrochemical-derived compounds. Even when taken as directed, long-term use may contribute to cumulative toxic burden.

Question:
Why do some supplements cause flushing, nausea, or sweating?

Answer:
Strong physical reactions can occur when the body is responding defensively to a substance. Feeling something doesn’t necessarily mean the supplement is beneficial—it may simply mean the body is trying to protect itself.

Question:
What’s a safer alternative to taking toxic supplements?

Answer:
Supporting the body’s natural detoxification systems—through diet, sweating, and proper elimination—can help reduce toxic burden without introducing additional harmful substances.

Question: How can I detox safely without harming my body?

Answer:
Safe detoxification works with the body’s existing elimination pathways rather than overwhelming them. The goal is to support, not stress, the systems responsible for detoxification.