Cleansing & Detoxifying the Body

See also Detox Products, or Consultations

My thoughts on cleansing the body is that it should be done gradually & gently. From my experience, severely limiting your food intake, fasting, juice fasting, etc. can be dangerous & tends to drop the blood sugar which can lead to shakiness, irritability, headaches, & feeling faint. Cleansing kits often contain strong herbal laxatives which most people do not need. None of this sounds too appealing & most people find it hard enough to want to take some time to restrict their diet to do a cleanse.

If you have health problems, or are on prescription medicine you should consult your doctor before attempting any cleansing. Do not cleanse during pregnancy or nursing.

What I recommend is gentle daily cleansing, which can be done for several months, or years at a time just through the use of a custom blended tincture to cleanse the body systems which are most toxic. This could involve candida cleansing, liver cleansing, bowel cleansing, cleansing the kidneys, lymphatics or any other major organ or body system.

If you would also like to clean up your diet for a week or so a few times a year, while using your tincture & a cleansing tea, this will work even better.

What I usually do for cleansing twice a year is to eat only
• Fruits
• Vegetables
• Grains & nuts
• Lots of filtered water (1 – 2 liters)

Here is a simple outline with some ideas of how to structure a cleanse:

You can eat as much as you want, and should eat often if your blood sugar tends to drop. Fruits should be eaten at a separate time of day from the vegetables & grains.

If you like to eat light in the morning, make a whole blenderful of a shake using:
• Pour 1 cup of water in the blender, add 1 heaping tsp. of psyllium (for fiber & bowel scraping) and let this sit for 20 minutes for the psyllium to puff up. If you don’t allow the psyllium to soak up as much water as possible, it will do this in your body, often creating “cement”.
• Fruits of your choice, but apples are a great source of fiber, bananas are filling, any other fruits: berries, melons, oranges pears. Whatever you know you can tolerate & are not allergic to.
• 1 tsp. spirulina or Greens + (or other greens product). The spirulina is detoxifying, but also balances blood sugar
• ¼ of nut – good choices are almonds or walnuts
• yogurt if you tolerate it (no milk)

Sip at this shake until you’ve had the whole thing. After you wait a bit, you can move on to veggies or grains.

If you prefer to eat something heavier in the morning, begin with grains.

Grains:
Rice, couscous, barley. Whatever appeals to you. There are many kinds of rice on the market, it’s a good idea to try several kinds. You can add ginger or veggies to your rice, and Bragg Liquid Aminos is a great choice instead of soy sauce.

Veggies:
If it is winter, eat most of your veggies cooked. Yams, potatoes, winter squash, carrots. Whatever is in season or appeals to you most.
Soups are a great idea in the winter. You can make a large pot of soup with many veggies, and barley or other grain.
A large salad is always a good idea, don’t use bottled dressing, try olive oil, hemp oil, lemon or lime juice.
Cut up raw carrots, put them in a bowl of water to snack on.

The idea here, is to be cutting out junk & processed foods so you are minimizing the toxic materials you are taking in. Eating simple whole foods: fruits, veggies, grains & nuts will fill you, increase fiber to cleanse the body, and is anti-inflammatory (which helps to clear up aches & pains in the joints among other things)

Don’t eat anything from a can or box. No processed foods. No dairy, except yogurt is usually fine (and organic is the best choice). No sugar or any kind!

Stay on your regular supplements, adding acidophilus at this time is a good idea, to reinstate good bacteria in the bowels. Just remember to not let yourself get hungry, eat as much as you need to keep your blood sugar balanced & keep your energy levels up. You are eating whole foods, so this way of eating is naturally low in fat, high in fiber.

Drink plenty of filtered water, carry water with you all day. Drinking a cleansing tea is also useful. I don’t add laxative herbs to my tea. If a client needs to do bowel cleansing, I offer a gently laxative herb separately which tones the bowels so they can work on their own more efficiently. And do the Salt Water Flush below.

Salt Water Flush

This is to cleanse the bowels, it can be used for the first few days of cleansing.
The salt water draws toxins out of the body, and flushes out the bowels. The water is too salty for the kidneys to pick it up, so instead all the liquid moves through the bowels & flushes them out. Do not do a salt water flush if you have health problems, are pregnant or take medications.

After drinking the salt water, it takes around 20 minutes for the liquid to work through the bowels.

The recipe must be made exactly as stated for it to go through the bowels. I find it tastes horrible to drink the salt water, so I add some veggie powder, Bragg Liquid Aminos (or a bit of soy sauce), and it tastes more like a very salty soup broth. The most important thing is that you use the correct amount of water to the correct amount & type of salt.

Heat 1 quart of water in a pot. Add 2 teaspoons of mineral salt (do not use iodized salt, use himalayan salts, celtic salt, or sea salt). Add some veggie powder & Bragg Liquid Aminos if you want. Put it in glass or mug & drink it warm. Drink it all, but don't let you stomach get too full, take a little break if you need to.

Any information presented here is for informational purposes only and not intended to take the place of diagnosis and treatment by a medical practitioner.