The Detoxification Program – Follow the Detox Meal Rules

The Detox recipes were designed by Jill Pettijohn, a nurse, raw foods chef, and cleansing expert. A valued friend and trusted colleague, Jill is passionate about guiding individuals to higher levels of health and has become famous for her juice cleanses, which she delivers to her clients’ doors in New York City. We have spent countless hours broad­ening our knowledge of cleansing and detoxification and between us we have guided many hundreds of people through detoxification pro­grams. When I asked Jill to create a set of new recipes especially for this website, she more than met the challenge. Her forty-two recipes are not only delicious and simple for anyone to follow but also laser accurate in their supply of the key nutrients needed for detoxification.

Eat and drink only food that is part of the Detox meals.Support your body’s detoxification process through simple meth­ods and practices.

The Strategy

Every day you will have one solid meal and two drinks or “liquid meals,” a smoothie, a juice, or a soup. Plan to have the liquid meals for breakfast and dinner and the solid meal for lunch. Eating the food meal at night will be less effective, because the twelve-hour “fast” that your body will experience overnight will be most effective after a liquid din­ner, as this frees up the most energy and extends the window of time for detoxification. However, if you have a business dinner or a social plan that can’t get rearranged, just have the solid meal for dinner that day, with the two smoothies, juices, or soups as breakfast and lunch. The next day, return to having your solid meal at lunchtime.

Remember the twelve-hour window: the detox signal is given approximately eight hours after your last meal, and requires at least four hours to function well. If you fill up your belly late at night and eat early again the next day, you are denying the body its full detox mode. It is better to go on a little fast each night as you sleep. This is why the ritual called breakfast exists. We are literally “breaking the fast” that occurred since the previous evening. (If you do nothing more in your life than start to eat lighter in the evening and leave twelve hours between dinner one night and breakfast the next day, you will find that you have more energy and improve your overall health.) During Detox you will be required to eat liquid meals for your dinner and then not eat again until breakfast, at least twelve hours later, to let the deep cleaning happen. If dinner is at 7 p.m., breakfast should be at 7 a.m. or later; if dinner is at 11 p.m., the next meal will be at 11 a.m.

You will be making all the liquid meals yourself. You have a total of twenty-one recipes to pick from: seven juices, seven smoothies, and seven blended soups. All these drinks use raw ingredients for maximum nutrition and enzyme content—even the soups, which are blended vegetable drinks that are not cooked (some can be warmed, however). If eating this way is a first for you, do not be nervous. These meals-in-a-cup are custom-designed to do the following:

Provide the body with all the nutrients it needs.Deliver the nutrients in a fuel-injected way. Because they require less energy to break down, the ingredients in liquid meals can be absorbed into the bloodstream easily without much effort.Intelligently combine nutrients in each meal to shift your metabo­lism so that you feel less hungry.

To ensure that you get the right kind of nutrition in your one solid meal of the day, there are also twenty-one simple lunch recipes to choose from, some raw and some cooked: seven fish, seven meat (chicken and lamb), and seven vegetarian recipes.

You will decide which two liquid meals and which one food meal to have each day by mixing and matching the recipes as you like. The only rule is that you always follow the basic formula of two liquid meals and one solid meal per day, with the solid meal eaten at lunchtime.

You may snack in between as needed. Raw vegetables and some tart, fresh fruits such as blueberries and raspberries are best for this purpose because berries are low in sugar. A few raw almonds or brazil nuts are also good. You can even have an extra smoothie or juice if you feel extremely hungry (please read the section called “Dealing with Hunger”). Remember, however, that you want to avoid putting solid or liquid foods in your stomach late at night. If you want a snack after dinner, see if you can do without it and get through the night until the morning meal.

These liquid and solid meal recipes have been designed as a com­plete package. They will give you the full spectrum of nutrients you need for successful detoxification over the three weeks. This means that the more variety of recipes you include each week, the better. Your body will be consistently supplied with a wide array of nutrients, and you’ll be sure to get the benefits of certain recipes that are engi­neered to supercharge you with one or two key nutrients. Variation will also make the program more fun, and it will introduce you to new ingredients and flavors that are important components of a healthy diet over the long term.

No doubt about it, though, the program will have to fit into your busy life, and it is adaptable to your needs. The following suggestions will help you tailor the program to your own lifestyle, and get the most out of Detox.

If your time is limited, or you prefer to keep things very simple, selecting a few liquid meals and a few food meals and rotating them throughout the week will still work well.You do not have to always use the Detox recipes for lunch. You can create a lunch from the same simple foods you’ve been eating on the Elimination Diet. This might include premade items from a supermarket or a restaurant meal. Keep in mind that one of the basic principles of Detox is to avoid exposure to chemicals, so be smart about where you buy your food and buy organic for every­thing you can afford. Remember that all lunches should comprise basic foods without sauces, commercial dressings, or toppings. (Use the Elimination Diet list of allowed condiments and spices, as well as olive oil and lemon juice, to flavor store-bought foods.) And look at the Detox recipes to guide your portion sizes. Eating a meal for lunch that is not one of the Detox recipes should not be seen as a free pass to supersize your plate.The fresher the foods you eat, the more potent their nutrients. However, you won’t lose out too much if you make your meals at night in order to take them to work the next day. You can also make a double portion of one liquid meal and use it for both break­fast and dinner. If you do this, keep everything in the fridge and use within two days. Juices should only be kept for one day. Note that all of the food meals can be taken with you wherever you go and eaten cold.As with the Elimination Diet, organic ingredients are preferable whenever possible. Even if you buy nonorganic, the combination of raw ingredients used for Detox will boost your body, especially if you are shifting from a diet that was high in cooked and or pro­cessed foods. Again, just do the best that you and your wallet can and wash everything well.Canned fruits and vegetables usually contain preservatives and sometimes high fructose corn syrup and salt, so avoid them at all costs. Frozen fruits are acceptable for the liquid meals, especially if they are organic.Your personal preferences and your environment will dictate which recipes you choose. Be adaptable. For example, the thicker, blended soups may be more appealing on cold winter mornings than the fruit smoothies, which contain ice. Remember that the thinner the liquid, the more intense the detox. Juices will promote detoxifica­tion slightly more than blended soups.If you don’t feel a hunger for your liquid or food meal when the time for it comes, please still make and consume it, or at the very least have a half-size portion. The nutrients are necessary to keep your detoxification process supported.Keep the Elimination Diet “Include/Exclude List” on your fridge for the days when you are making your own lunch and refer back to it to stay on track in both eating and drinking.

Fluids

In addition to the liquid and food meals, you must drink plenty of pure water each day to enhance the detoxification work by increasing the kid­ney’s elimination of toxins. A good estimate of how much to drink is the amount it takes to cause you to pee hourly. A typical total daily water intake is two quarts. You may add fresh lemon, cucumber, or mint to the water for flavor. During the program, avoid all caffeinated beverages. Do not drink decaffeinated coffee. Herbal teas and hot water with lemon are fine, but have them in addition to the full amount of pure water, not in place of it. Do not drink commercial fruit juices, low-calorie sodas, “natural” sodas, or energy drinks. Carbonated water adds to the acidity in the body so it is wise to exclude this also. If you’re not sure what you can drink, go by the general rule that if it’s not hot or cold water, and if it’s in a bottle with a name on it, it’s probably to be avoided. It’s only for a few days of your life, so for now, keep it simple and pure.

DAY 1

Breakfast: Green Smoothie. Hot water and lemon, or herbal tea

Mid-morning: Snack or herbal tea (optional)

Lunch: Steamed Bass with Fennel, Parsley and Capers

Mid-afternoon: Snack or herbal tea (optional)

Dinner: Chilled Cucumber Soup with Mint

Drink plenty of pure water all day.

DAY 2

Breakfast: Carrot, Beet, Cabbage, and Watercress Juice; hot water with lemon, or herbal tea

Mid-morning: Snack or herbal tea (optional)

Lunch: Stir-Fry Vegetables with Buck­wheat Noodles

Mid-afternoon: Snack or herbal tea (optional)

Dinner: Fennel and Apple Juice Drink plenty of pure water all day.

DAY 3

Breakfast: Energy Smoothie with Almond Butter and Cardamom Mid-morning: Snack or herbal tea (optional)

Lunch: Plain roast chicken and salad from supermarket Mid-afternoon: Snack or herbal tea (optional)

Dinner: Energy Smoothie with Al­mond Butter and Cardamom Drink plenty of pure water all day.

DAY 4

Breakfast: Easy Pineapple and Avo­cado Gazpacho

Mid-morning: Snack or herbal tea (optional)

Lunch: A piece of steamed salmon and steamed mixed vegetables made at home

Mid-afternoon: Snack or herbal tea (optional).

Dinner: Green Juice

Drink plenty of pure water all day.

When all this is put into practice, each person’s intake of Detoxmeals is unique to him or her. It may look very different week to week, or you may find a formula with the amount of variety you can handle, and stick to it for the three weeks. A few days of Detox will typically look something like the chart above.

A weekly planning and preparation chart is provided on p. 192 to help you organize what you plan to make and what you need to buy.

Nature provides all the nutrients you need for full-functioning detox. It’s up to you, however, to select them and get them into your body. The Detox recipes include all the nutrients you’ll need over the next few weeks as you switch detox onto “high.” Your snacks and any “off the menu” lunches can also be selected with these nutritional needs in mind. Use the “Detoxification Nutrients” chart (see appendix) during the program and afterward, to ensure that you fund all the needs of your busy liver by including many of these foods every week.

Detox delivers its maximum benefits when a few easy-to-find natu­ral supplements are added into your daily intake. Though they’re not obligatory, I highly recommend them, and they are not expensive. Buy the best brands you can find, asking your local health food store for guidance. (Online vitamin stores often have low prices.) Good supplements should be thought of as health insurance. For a little extra investment up front they save money over the long term on doctor’s visits, prescription drugs, and missed workdays. They’ll add years to your life, especially when used as part of a detoxification pro­gram like Detox—and they’ll add life to your years.

Fiber plays an important role in elimination support because it absorbs water and creates bulk, which triggers the peristaltic movement of your intestines and promotes bowel elimination. Fiber sequesters (pulls out) toxic waste that the intes­tines keep clearing from the blood, making sure that the toxins don’t get reabsorbed. Fiber feeds the good bacteria, promoting a healthy environ­ment in the intestines. It also captures cholesterol and prevents its excess absorption, while giving you a feeling of fullness, thereby limiting overeat­ing. For all these reasons and more, high-fiber diets are associated with a decreased incidence of colon cancer and heart disease. Though the Detox program is filled with fruits and vegetables, it may contain less roughage than you are used to. Most people benefit from adding some form of fiber to the program. Look for natural fiber products containing ingredients like psyllium husks and psyllium seed, prune fiber, guar gum, and flax seeds. Bentonite clay is used in cleansing-detox programs to further bind to toxic chemicals including heavy metals and to reduce gas in the intestines. Fiber should be adjusted to the number and consistency of bowel movements. Most quality products come with dosing instructions.

Probiotics are a very valuable tool in the restoration of the hundreds of different species of good intestinal bacteria. There are lots of good probiotics supplements for sale, some of which need to be refrigerated once opened; make sure yours has at least 15 billion organisms per dose. Read the instructions carefully. One dose a day should be enough dur­ing Detox, but there is no downside that I know of to taking more.

Antimicrobials help kill the pathogenic (bad) bacteria. Many of the foods in the Detox recipes such as garlic, lemon, olive oil, onions, broc­coli, coconut oil, and many of the spices have antimicrobial proper­ties. But sometimes the intestinal flora is in such state of disarray (dys­biosis) that it needs a little heavier artillery to clean the territory so that the good bacteria can take up residence once more. A smart mea­sure is to take one or more of the following during Detox. Concentrated oil of oregano is especially potent against yeast (look for it as a pill or essential oil). A clove of garlic can be eaten daily, raw. (Slice it and place it between thin apple slices if you prefer). This will not only help to eliminate bad bacteria, yeast, and parasites; it will also help regulate blood sugar levels, enhance fat burning, reduce hunger sensations, lower cholesterol, relieve arthritic pain, and reduce bowel gas. If this is unappealing, garlic pills are an inexpensive and easy way to ingest effec­tive amounts of garlic. You may find an herbal antimicrobial that com­bines several different antimicrobial herbs and roots. Berberine, licorice root, rhubarb root, skullcap root, coptis root, ginger root, sage leaf, and thyme oil are some of the ingredients I look for.

Olive oil taken at night will lubricate your intestines, improve bowel elimination, provide anti-inflammatory fats, kill germs and enhance fat burning, stimulate the gallbladder and liver to move bile clearing the liver system, promote bone formation, inhibit blood clot forma­tion, and promote hormonal balance. Take two tablespoons before bed every night and follow with water and lemon.

Finally, try to include a liver support product during your Detox pro­gram. These can be a single ingredient or a combination of ingredients. The most common available liver support herbs are milk thistle (syli­marin), N acetyl cysteine, dandelion root, and wormwood leaf. Ask the staff at your health food store for advice; many sales people seem to have Ph.D.-level knowledge of liver support preparations!

Q: I work out and train hard physically. Can I still do Detox?

A: Yes. Recreational and competitive athletes alike have successfully done Detox, losing weight while upping their performance. It is not recommended to do Detox during intensive precompetition training, but at any other time you can keep training while on the program. Double or even triple the servings of your liquid meals. Use more of the soups and energy smoothies than juices and make sure your lunchtime meal includes lean protein, healthy fat such as avocado or coconut, and some of the allowed grains from the Elimination Diet.

Q: I drop weight easily and am already slightly underweight. What should I do?

A: You can safely do the program. Weight loss is always greater amongst those who need to lose weight as the body is looking to find its best state of balance. Any pounds you do lose, you can put on strategically when you are done by eating plenty of good fats, clean proteins, and whole grains. However, it will help you to double up on your liquid meals during Detox, and to make sure your daily meals are satisfying in portion size. Include nuts in your snacks.

Detox and Global Toxicity – An Inconvenient truth

Ever since my first consultation with a psychiatrist in New York, I constantly found myself asking, “How and why did my brain cells forget their chemistry?”The low serotonin level in my brain, which I was told explained the problem, was simply a description of what happens when the chemis­try is forgotten by the neurons. I wanted to find out how and why. In medicine, understanding how and why is the real “diagnosis.” This is what doctors do.

Doctors used to pride themselves on diagnosing a problem by observation and deduction: they’d take a good patient history, listen, and observe. Modern doctors, pressed for time and fearful of lawsuits, heavily rely on blood tests, X-rays, sonograms, endoscopy, and many other laboratory evaluations. In India, working out of our bus–turned– mobile-hospital, with no equipment other than a stethoscope, our ears, eyes, and noses, my colleagues and I returned to the simpler methods of observation. Eastern schools of medicine don’t see patients as iso­lated from their environment—including family, village, and spiritual path. Changes in environment or the predominant quality of one’s thoughts are considered equally important as changes in body tem­perature. All aspects of a patient’s life are believed to affect each other significantly and play a role in the maintenance of well-being. The root of disease is also found this way, by looking at both the bigger and the smaller picture together. Physical, mental, emotional, social, and envi­ronmental symptoms are all taken into consideration when making a diagnosis. Finding the common thread that ties them together often reveals the underlying imbalance at the origin of disease.

Back in the United States, chronic diseases were on the rise, often with such difficult and intimidating names that patients and doctors forgot to ask how and why. The name “became” the disease. The mean­ing of the word “diagnosis” changed. It did not mean understanding how and why anymore. It became the title of a list of symptoms and test results that matched most of the ones the patient presented with. It had become a code. A diagnosis could be entered into a computer and a list of medications that were covered by insurance companies for that specific code would appear on the screen. It also showed how many days of hospital stay were approved for that same code. What the doctor thought did not matter as much anymore.

The practice of medicine was looking a lot like the supermarkets that early on had impressed me so much. It was very evident that I wasn’t the only one whose cells were forgetting their chemistry. The growth in the rates of depression was all around me. More and more patients were on antidepressants. Health news was full of reports on the rising epidemic of diseases connected to diet and lifestyle. And the financial news echoed with reports of the meteoric rise in the value of stock in pharmaceutical companies, especially the ones that had patented anti­depressants. My specialty, heart disease, headed the list of problems, followed by cancer. The World Health Organization announced that these diseases occurred at higher rates in industrialized countries than in developing nations.

It didn’t make sense. On one hand, science and technology were advancing in giant leaps. We had broken the genetic code, invented nanotechnology, and created robots that perform surgery. There was a false sense of security and hope that, sooner or later, medicine would discover the cure for everything. Yet, when I looked around, I saw that everybody was sick. Everyone was on medications. Judging by the results, our medical system was not working. The more technologically advanced we became, the sicker we got. We had not improved health on the planet or our planet’s health. On the contrary, things were get­ting worse, sooner and faster.

Diseases seemed to affect younger and younger patients all the time. Obesity, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and many other chronic diseases used to be seen primarily in the aging population. Now one in three American kids were overweight or obese, and the trend was grow­ing. These statistics and trends were obtained by analyzing data from hospitals and doctors’ offices, where patients are never asked about the bigger picture, and the small-picture inventory was lacking informa­tion as essential as diet. Apparently, there was no time for that.

At random times during my days of “factory line” medicine, my meditation teacher’s words would ring in my ears, “Don’t worry, don’t hurry,” interrupting the rush from patient to patient and bringing me into the present moment. I would suddenly remember to apply the same observation methodology in the clinic that I used in India. In this way, another picture started to emerge. I noticed a quieter, but even bigger problem, one that existed off the radar, that was not reported by the media, and had no clinical studies and research: a stream of people who did not have major health problems, yet were physically, mentally, and emotionally “off.” Bloated, tired, itchy, moody, sneezy, constipated, foggy, swollen—it seemed as if most of my patients and friends had some type of disorder about to surface.

Curiously, the blood and other tests routinely ordered at a phys­ical examination were absolutely normal. Without an explanation and reassured that nothing was really wrong by the normal test results, these people accepted their complaints as part of ordinary modern life, often justified as the wear and tear on our body parts, the expected result of aging. But left unattended, these conditions were the beginning of a more serious disorder. Looking at the patients’ bigger picture, one would invariably find parallel social, financial, or emotional distress.

I kept searching for an answer, a diagnosis in the “old school” sense. What was making humanity so uncomfortable, unhappy, irritated, and sick? What was the bigger picture?

As above, so below. This universal rule guides the holistic think­ing that is the backbone of most Eastern traditions of healing. To fully understand a cell, one has to understand the organism of which that cell is a part and how it relates to the other cells in it. In the school of meditation in India I learned to look at planet Earth as a living organ­ism. According to this analogy, the rivers are its arteries, the forests its lungs, the mountain chains its ribs, and human beings, circulating by the billions, are one of the many types of cells that inhabit this organ­ism. Humans were getting sick, but what about the planet, the organ­ism they are a part of? That was also in the news, just not in the health section. In those days, it was starting to make headlines: global warm­ing, “an inconvenient truth.” The Earth had a fever.

A fever is a symptom that reveals there is something wrong some­where. It is a nonspecific sign. Many different diseases can cause a fever as one of their symptoms. It is important to find out what exactly is causing it, so we can treat the real cause, not just bring the tempera­ture down. In order to find the cause, doctors ask questions, observe, and order blood tests to see the circulating cells and also to study the chemicals that reveal the inner climate. With all the information gath­ered, a diagnosis can be made. In modern Western cultures, because it’s so common, cancer is on the “suspect” list when a fever persists. It is in everyone’s mind even when getting a routine checkup. Very often, when I sit with patients to go over their tests results, before I get a chance to speak, they ask, “Doc, just tell me. Do I have cancer?” It is probably the most feared diagnosis.

Cancer cells are also cells that forgot how to do their chemistry. But cancer cells forgot how to do their math as well, and their geog­raphy, and their grammar, and even how to behave within a com­munity. When you look at cancer cells under a microscope, you see cells that kill each other and every other cell in the neighborhood; they grow and reproduce unusually fast, disregarding the natural laws of space, population density, and food availability. They also have a tendency to travel to distant places and conquer new territories. When that happens, it’s called metastasis, and it means the cancer has spread. Cancer cells eat different foods than healthy cells. The waste products they eliminate into the circulatory system are often toxic chemicals that affect the whole organism that hosts them. Cancer cells, like most cells, are microscopic, but size doesn’t matter. Such a small organism can initiate an inner revolution that can kill the strongest of men and women.

These thoughts were on my mind as I searched for the answer to my question. Sometimes a diagnosis takes time. Many times, when someone is obsessed with a question, the answer comes at the least expected moment, when one is doing or seeing something seemingly unrelated. A sudden realization closes an inner loop, and an “Aha!” moment occurs, like an inner detonation that sends waves that can be felt all over the body.

This “Aha!” moment came for me soon after I started my detox pro­gram at We Care. The effects of eliminating toxins and the dulling mucus from my body lifted a cloud that had prevented me from seeing.

The planet has a fever. Random chemical analysis and laboratory tests of the planets’ fluids and gases show something alarming. There are toxic chemicals everywhere. These chemicals are affecting every­thing and every other cell in this organism. The planet is in critical condition. If nothing changes, the prognosis is fatal in the short term.

One type of cell on the planet, the human cell, is behaving errati­cally, killing its own kind and every other type of cell. This cell has eating habits that are very different from those of all other cells. The human cell manufactures toxic chemicals that are mixed with food and used for many other functions as well as released into the circu­lation, through which they kill other cells even in distant places. The human cell reproduces fast and disregards the natural laws of popula­tion density, space, and food supply. Humans are cutting down all of Earth’s trees and clogging up Earth’s lungs. The balance has tipped: toxins, greenhouse gases among them, are accumulating faster than Earth’s ability to neutralize and eliminate them. Toxicity is killing us and the planet. The planet has cancer, and we are it. This is what I call “another inconvenient truth.”

My question was finally answered at the cellular level. My cells had never forgotten how to do their chemistry. They were actually desper­ately trying to do it. But the toxic chemicals I was consuming in my food and exposed to living in a large urban center such as New York had changed the inner climate. Many of these toxins were obstacles to normal cell functioning, causing irritation and inflammation. Toxins had damaged cells and tissues, and many systems had started to mal­function. My body’s natural ability to heal itself was further weakened because the chemicals needed for cells to do their chemistry, the nutri­ents from foods, were no longer present in sufficient amounts.

Starting with my guts and going all the way to my brain, these changes presented as symptoms that matched two lists from the “diag­nosis” menu, depression and irritable bowel syndrome. More chem­icals were prescribed, which I refused to take. Instead, I had finally found a way to remove these obstacles and provide what was missing, so my cells could do their chemistry. That is what happened in my case, through detoxification and cleansing. I finally connected the dots.

From the way I was feeling and looking, I knew that my cells were getting straight A’s in their chemistry reports. But I also knew that some of them had gone beyond and were not doing chemistry anymore— this was alchemy.

Doctors who are really good at finding the cause of symptoms are called “great diagnosticians.” One such doctor once told me, “We usu­ally end up finding what we are looking for, but we only look for what we already know.”

The toxic attack we are under is so evident to me now. But during my training days in New York hospitals, despite suffering greatly and desperately looking for solutions, I never heard or read about global toxicity as a health hazard. I cannot understand how Western medicine continues to be blind to its existence and its contribution to disease. It was a revelation I stumbled upon outside of the hospital setting, and it allowed me to restore my own well-being beyond what I believed pos­sible after all my study and years of training.

It’s not surprising that I didn’t know about this earlier. Toxicity con­tinues to be a condition that modern medicine barely registers. When the word is used in hospital settings, it describes cases of acute poison­ing (such as when a child accidentally ingests hazardous chemicals or someone takes too much of a certain prescription drug) or getting off alcohol or drugs. And when asked about detox from the Detoxification perspec­tive, many physicians discard it as quackery. Doctors who are skeptical about the value of detox programs such as Detoxification will argue that there is nothing in “the literature” to support it. What they mean is that when you search the medical database, you find no scientific studies or pub­lished research on such detox programs.

Databases only contain what the editors decide to include, mak­ing them biased toward Western medical studies with Western proto­cols. This perpetuates and strengthens the status quo, which too often discards valuable approaches like chelation as anecdotal or quackery. Furthermore, the research game is biased before it begins. The cost of large-scale double-controlled placebo studies makes pharmaceuti­cal companies the only ones that can afford to fund them. If there is no wonder drug with revenue potential in question, there are usually no funds for research. It is not good for business to prove that veg­etables and fruits can be the most powerful medicine. But the new field of Functional Medicine is rapidly filling this void by validating a new database of its own design, taking into consideration the multi­dimensional matrix of influences that play a role in health. Functional Medicine is the perfect blend of Eastern thinking and Western technol­ogy, and the results are great.

Toxicity is not a disease or one specific symptom. It is a condi­tion that exists right now, one we are responsible for and one that is threatening the planet and all life. I use the word toxicity to describe the wider, low-grade state that, to one degree or another, everyone who breathes today’s air, eats today’s food, and lives in today’s cities, sub­urbs, or rural areas is experiencing inside.

Toxicity can manifest as many different symptoms. It can also show no symptoms at all. Regardless of whether you notice it or not, there is no escaping its reach. And to different degrees, everyone is pay­ing the price.

Toxicity, as I present it to you in Detoxification, is a problem that reveals an evolutionary glitch. Evolution is what happens as organisms adapt and overcome obstacles and threats. Driven by the instinct for survival, organisms grow wings, develop ridiculously long necks, or learn how to transform certain chemicals into others. The human body has developed a very effective and incredibly sophisticated system of organs and func­tions that complement each other in the effort to achieve one sole pur­pose—to detoxify. Somehow our physical body has evolved just right. But that evolutionary state must be helped by our thinking and behavior.

The evolutionary glitch I am referring to stems from the fact that, despite an exponential increase in the exposure to and damage by tox­ins in modern life, our modern “lifestyle” has slowed down the single most important evolutionary tool that was so intelligently designed for our bodies. Our thinking and habits need to evolve or our bodies will die of dust while we hold a state-of-the-art vacuum cleaner in our hands. To help you understand how to plug in and use that vacuum cleaner effectively is the purpose of Detoxification.

Toxins that cannot be eliminated in a timely manner remain in circulation, causing irritation and damage. Cells and tissues trap these toxins and coat them with mucus in an attempt to buffer the irritation. This survival mechanism, like inflammation, is life-saving for a while, but can turn fatal when turned on continuously for a prolonged time.

In Eastern traditions, one of the first things practitioners check is the ability of the body to eliminate toxins. Indian Ayurvedic doctors or Chinese medicine practitioners immediately hunt for clues to toxic-waste retention or accumulation. They look for signs like dullness in the skin, white coating on the tongue, or gray, yellow, or pink tones in the whites of the eyes. They want to know if you have regular bowel movements, urinate a lot or a little, and when and how much you sweat. Their tradi­tions, thousands of years old, consider the ability to detoxify—to elimi­nate toxic waste and toxic thought and emotion—as the “root” source of your physical and mental health. The loss of this ability helps explain why you might have allergies, headaches, constipation, nightmares, fer­tility problems, and unidentifiable pain among a host of other ailments.

Toxicity is not a new problem. Long before we added the burden of human-made chemicals to our bodies, toxic buildup could occur from eating too much, especially too many heavy or hard to digest foods, and eating under stress. In Europe and America, there were early pro­ponents of cleansing who taught that damage to the intestinal tract from overeating and ingesting refined foods was the main cause of dis­ease affecting civilized, affluent society. They called the condition that resulted “autointoxication.” Some of them, like the famous turn-of­the-century naturopath Arnold Ehret, put his patients on a “mucus-less” diet to promote health and longevity, which was his form of the Elimination Diet, which you will experience as part of Detoxification. These pioneers and all those after them who taught natural healing methods understood that the digestive and detoxification systems are well engi­neered to keep us healthy, but they must be kept in balance. As you will discover, even basic foods, when not well digested and eliminated, can create a polluted inner state. This can then harm the whole balance of health—even before human-made chemicals enter the picture.

Western medicine had this understanding in the past. Many older people will tell you how their family doctor would dose them with cas­tor oil when they were sick in bed, because a big expulsion of toxins could be enough to alleviate the sickness and start recovery. Colonic rooms used to be standard in hospitals at the turn of the century. In the rush to make medical care more “advanced” and more profitable, basic wisdom—and low-cost, drug-free protocols—got dropped. But they’re needed now more than ever. If you live in today’s environment but never pay attention to good detoxification, you end up like a tree that has been growing by a busy highway for years, absorbing smog, dirty water, and the stress of loud cars going by. You end up polluted and wilted, with dull, spindly leaves.

No matter how you look at it, understanding what toxins are, where they are, how they affect your health, and what to do about them in a safe way may save your life, and if things don’t change dramatically soon, this understanding may be needed to save life on Earth, and ulti­mately Earth’s life.