Detoxification program – Preparing Your Body: Eliminating Irritants

When it comes to cleaning, detoxifying, and restoring the body, it’s not ideal to go from zero to sixty overnight. There is some groundwork to be done. A few days of doing the Elimination Diet before you begin Detoxification will ease your body into the program, by clearing out of your body foods and chemicals you may be allergic or sensitive to and free­ing up energy for detoxification.

Reduce your exposure to toxins in your environment and in your diet.

The following are common everyday sources of toxicity: car exhaust, gar­dening and lawn chemicals, dry-cleaning products, heating systems, air-conditioning systems (use HEPA filters), chlorine in swimming pools, mat­tresses containing fire retardants, lead paint, cleaning products and waxes, aluminum-containing deodorant, fluoride-containing toothpaste, cos­metics, pots and pans whose cooking surfaces are coated with aluminum or Teflon, electromagnetic radiation from electronics, and cell phones.

As you set up your kitchen, notice where in your home and work environments you are exposed to unnecessary toxins. The most obvious category will be your household cleaning supplies. Read their labels just as you did with food. When you go grocery shopping for Detoxification, pick up one or two toxin-free home cleaners to try, so that you start the process of lowering your toxic load in addition to cleaning out your diet. Over the coming weeks, begin to notice where and when you are exposed to some of the most common daily toxins. Your kitchen, your bathroom, and your garage as well as your work environment will likely contain a considerable number of toxic products. Avoid what you can, replace the products you can, and consider how to lower your daily exposure. There is a plethora of information online about mak­ing your home and life toxin-free and it can happen in small steps.

This preparation step will minimize withdrawals from caffeine and other chemicals in foods that can be a cause of headaches, nausea, and all kinds of other annoying symptoms during a detox program. It will also help blunt a possible “healing crisis”: sometimes a body that has been dulled with processed foods and deprived of nutrients responds in a dramatic way to eliminating toxins and obtaining adequate nutri­ents. The immune and repair systems can suddenly bounce back into full working mode and unsettle things on the surface, causing skin breakouts, fevers, and an array of symptoms that make you feel as if you are falling ill, when in fact they are signs of the body’s waking up and getting back in the game. Though a healing crisis is ultimately a good thing, it will disrupt your life and can be uncomfortable or even alarming. If you prepare by following the basic Elimination Diet for a few days you will avoid any of these problems.

The foods you eat in this phase are also the main ingredients in your Detoxification food and liquid meals. After this preparation, you will feel lighter in the body, sharper in the mind, and confident that you have the adapt­ability and motivation to accomplish the Detoxification program in full.

Q: I smoke. Do I have to cut this out too?

A: Smokers have different experiences than nonsmokers do during Detoxification. Some use it as a chance to quit cold turkey. Others find that smoking starts to lose its appeal as their palate and sensitivity to toxins opens up. At the very least, many naturally become more mindful of each cigarette, just as they are becoming more mindful of food. Even if you make no changes in your cigarette consumption, go ahead and do the whole program, knowing you are boosting your detoxification ability and creating a “clean canvas” in your body where you may just start to feel the effects of cigarettes in a different way. Smoking affects detoxification by accelerating phase 1 in the liver and it will detract from your achieving the best results.

Q: I am taking prescription medication prescribed by my doc­tor. Should I stop taking it?

A: If you are taking any kind of prescription drug, do not stop tak­ing it during this program. Many prescription drugs can be safely stopped, but some cannot. Certain serious conditions require a con­sistent level of medication in the blood. Any change in diet can cause a change in the medication’s absorption rate, which can result in a higher or lower concentration in the blood. In the case of blood thinners, antiarrhythmic drugs, antiepileptic drugs, and chemother­apy agents, this can be life-threatening.

Eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner at your regular times, choosing only foods and drinks from the “Yes” side and excluding all foods from the “No” side of the “Include/Exclude List” below. Since the “Yes” side of the list almost certainly does not contain some foods that you consume daily, you will need to make substitutions. Start using some of the reci­pes for the Detoxification program now. They are all Elimination Diet recipes, so they do the thinking for you.

Breakfast is the hardest meal to change, because bread, cereal, milk, and eggs are not allowed. Try a liquid breakfast like the Energy Smoothie with Almond Butter and Cardamom. You could also eat fish, chicken, or vegetables from the previous evening’s meal; make a bowl of brown rice or quinoa “cereal” with some fruit and nuts or have some almond butter on fruit.

For lunch, eat salads containing the permitted protein types, soups, or other dishes using beans, lentils, and permitted grains, instead of sandwiches, wraps, and burritos or other typical meals.

For dinner use some of the Detoxification recipes here as guidelines and add green vegetables and quinoa instead of white rice, pasta, or potatoes. Steamed fish, grilled chicken, and baked or roasted vegetables are com­mon meals during this phase.

Note that this is the time to begin decreasing your caffeine use. You may drink green tea if you need it and you can also try yerba mate, which has a stimulating effect similar to that of coffee. The more you can avoid caffeine, however, the better. In general, drink plenty of pure water during this preparation phase. You can add lemon, cucumber, and mint to it to make it more interesting. Herbal teas help substitute for black tea and coffee but need to be taken in addition to plenty of plain water, not instead of it.

Buy organic products whenever possible. These few weeks of pre­paring for and doing the Detoxification program are an opportunity to signifi­cantly reduce the toxic load in the body. Reducing exposure to toxins in your food is a no-brainer if you have access to and can afford organic produce. The most important thing to spend money on are organic ani­mal products, because toxins accumulate as they go up the food chain. Look for organic, hormone-free chicken and meat and choose wild fish over farmed fish. When buying plant foods, spend money on organic fruits such as peaches, apples, and berries, and organic vegetables such as celery, spinach, carrots, cucumbers, and beans before worrying about thick-skinned produce like avocadoes and squash. Do the best that you and your wallet can, and always wash your produce very well.

Eating according to the Elimination Diet will achieve the following important detox goals:

Some foods actually contain acids or alkalis (soluble salts) and other foods create acidity or alkalinity in the body when combined with juices and digestive acids (acidic lemons have an alkalinizing influ­ence). As mentioned earlier, a diet rich in alkali-forming foods is a key to on going good health. It helps with detoxification, as the body is already working to eliminate the acidic waste products of metabo­lism—you don’t want to add to the burden. The desired state within the body is slightly more alkaline than neutral. You can easily check your own pH state by using litmus paper strips to test your saliva. They are available at vitamin stores.

A very basic guide to common acidifying and alkalinizing foods can be found on the next page.

The health implications of our acidic lives is currently being seen in the loss of bone density. More and more women are being diagnosed with osteopenia or osteoporosis. Most doctors prescribe supplemen­tal calcium for this and instruct their patients to consume more dairy products to get “bone-building” calcium. What is not understood is that the bone is like an Alka-Seltzer tablet and will fizzle and release its salts in an attempt to alkalinize blood that has become chronically acid. The bones are dissolving because the blood is already acidic—and then dairy, an acid-forming food, is prescribed as a treatment. Moreover, cal­cium is not deposited in the bones without adequate levels of vitamin D, yet a test of vitamin D levels is rarely ordered by primary-care physi­cians. If a diagnosis of toxicity and testing for overly acidic conditions were the first response, a life-building, not life-harming, protocol could be advised, which could help the body reverse its harmful course.

It is not hard to eat outside the home while you are on the Elimination Diet. You will have to make smart choices about where you go—and then spend a moment with the menu before choosing. A pizza and pasta restaurant will make it harder, though not impossible, to avoid the “no” foods.

Some of the common restaurant meals that will not fit the Elimination Diet requirements include sandwiches, hamburgers, pizza, wheat pasta, sushi, tomato-based sauces, tofu dishes, wheat-noodle dishes, anything with Asian soy sauces, baked potatoes, omelettes and egg-based breakfasts, wheat and corn tortillas, burritos, empanadas, lattes, cappuccinos, all coffee drinks, and desserts of all kinds unless they are fruit salad or plain fruit.

There are still plenty of options to choose from when you go out. Pick a meal on the menu that has protein, vegetables, and a permitted grain such as brown rice. (Indian restaurants, with their wide array of vegetarian foods and lentil and bean dishes, are a good bet.) Just ask the waiter to take your wine glass away and not bring the bread basket, naan bread, or corn chips, and you will find this way of eating much easier than you might have imagined.

Marco, a native of Italy, came to see me a few days after he had been diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. His cancer had already spread (metastasized) to other organs. He was coughing, short of breath, tired, and depressed. He looked sick, with a grayish color to his skin. Doctors in Europe had told him that he had a few weeks to live and offered him chemotherapy as a last-ditch treatment. He took a plane and came to New York.

As I listened and responded to Marco I measured my every word carefully. Marco had been a heavy smoker all his life. He ate mostly red meat, pasta, wine, bread, butter, cheese, and rich deserts. He had a sweet tooth. Occasionally he ate vegetables when disguised in heavy creams.

Many cases have been reported of people who beat the odds— patients who outlive the doctor’s predictions that they have days to live, sometimes by decades. “It’s not over till it’s over” is their war cry. But when you look at these miraculous survivors, almost all of them have one thing in common: in order to recover, they made a radi­cal change from what they were doing before. Highly stressed people became serious meditators. Atheists turned into devoted followers of faith. Burger munchers transformed themselves into vegetarians.

Marco frowned when I talked about vegetable juices as a way to deliver nutrients, antioxidants, and blood alkalinizers. He thought it almost impossible to imagine whatever was left of his life without enjoying his daily wine and meat. He said he did not want to give up on life—but what he really didn’t want to give up on were his habits.

This is when I said to him, “There are no incurable diseases, only incurable patients, Marco. Whatever you have been doing until now is not working for your body. So much so that it is threatening you with extinction, should you continue.” This finally got his attention, and there was a sudden shift in his attitude, even in his thinking. He had an “Aha!” moment that resulted in a willingness to try something new, to consume food not as a means of pleasure but as one would consume a medication. Food as chemotherapy. Big dietary shifts offer no guar­antee of curing anything. I certainly did not recommend that he turn his back on all conventional treatments. But what Marco’s story exem­plifies is that the most powerful tool in healing is the willingness—the open-mindedness—to try a new way when what you’ve been doing before is not helping you live as healthily as you could.