The Detoxification Program – Support Your Body’s Detoxification

The detoxification program depends on effective elimination for much of its success. With less energy dedicated to digesting, absorbing, transport­ing and assimilating foods, the body will be redirecting its energy toward “catching up” with inner cleaning. As it shifts into releasing toxins from cells and tissues, your job is to support the channels of elimination so that these waste products can now make their way out. It is simple to do, and it is very important. Without this step, you won’t see all the benefits—and in some cases, if you ignore elimina­tion, you can create discomfort and even health problems. The chan­nels of elimination include the skin, the lungs, the kidneys, the bow­els, and the circulatory system, which connects them all through two subsystems, the blood vessels and the lymphatic system. Here are tools to enhance their function. Use them individually or in combination until you are successful.

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

Many of the toxins and most of the mucus that is pulled out of the tissues and captured from the blood get eliminated through the bow­els, bound up in feces. Facilitating the movement of this waste mate­rial through the intestines is crucial at all times, but especially during a detox program, when it is very common to see this mucus mixed in with, or surrounding, your stools. It is sticky, so naturally, can cause constipation; you must do whatever you can to support daily, gener­ous, bowel movements. Fiber supplements, which help grab the toxins and move everything toward the exit, might not always be sufficient to keep things moving as quickly and as efficiently as you need during this deep-clean program.

This toxic mix has a tendency to stick to the intestinal wall in a layer of plaque that thickens as the hours go by. When it’s not released in healthy feces, this constipated mix lets toxins get reabsorbed and then digested by the pathogenic bacteria in the intestinal walls. They in turn will emit their even stronger toxins and exacerbate the condition of dys­biosis. Avoid constipation even for one day during detoxification. Use your fiber supplements, drink lots of pure water, and take gentle to moderate exer­cise to promote daily, generous bowel movements. If they don’t happen easily, take herbal laxatives every night. Dr. Schulze’s Intestinal Formula #1 is the most potent one available, almost guaranteed to make you eliminate consistently thanks to its mix of wild harvested herbs, includ­ing senna and cascara sagrada (available from www.herbdoc .com). Swiss Kriss is another effective and trusted brand, readily available at health food stores. In both cases, read the instructions and take as many doses as necessary to achieve the goal of consistent elimination. Even if they give you mild diarrhea occasionally, do not be concerned unless it is con­stant and it dehydrates you. In this case, cut back on the amount of laxa­tives you take or leave them out for a day to restore balance.

There is no set number of bowel movements a day that everyone must have, whether in daily life or during a detox program. “Optimal elimination” means as much as is necessary to dispose of the materi­als that will affect the system negatively. With a good, healthy diet, free of toxins, one should eliminate feces after every meal. Most of us eliminate much less often than that—in general we are a constipated population—and it’s now considered normal to have one movement a day, with many people having less than that. In its healthiest states, the stool should have the color and consistency of peanut butter (though some healthy foods like dark green vegetables turn it darker). When your stool is more solid than this consistency, it is an early sign of constipa­tion. A healthy stool shouldn’t smell in a way that urges the evacuation of the bathroom and it shouldn’t take too much effort to eliminate.

If a day goes by without a bowel movement, try taking a dose of castor oil, the oldest trick in the world for encouraging the release of toxicity and mucus. It works as well today as it did a hundred years ago, when family doctors used it as a remedy for practically every situ­ation. Start with half a shot glass of it followed by a glass of water with lemon juice. Wait thirty to forty-five minutes to see if this promotes a bowel movement. If it does not work, repeat. If necessary, repeat again until the bowels begin to move. The release can be intense at times, so you will want to avoid doing this while busy at work or far away from a bathroom.

Colonic hydrotherapy. To effectively boost the removal of the mucoid plaque that gets pulled out during detoxification, use colonic hydrotherapy dur­ing the program. Contrary to what many Western-trained physicians may say, colonics are very safe and beneficial when done with the right therapist. During the treatment, pure water is delivered at low pres­sure into the colon and then drawn out, which irrigates the colon and helps it release waste matter. There are two kinds, the open system and closed system, both of which are hygienic, discreet, and not uncom­fortable. You can research which one you like better. A detoxification program is the time when colonics are most beneficial, especially to those with a history of constipation. You can have as many treatments during detoxification as you like, depending on your budget and schedule. (I’ve even had patients who got them daily during their detox.) Enemas are a self-administered way of irrigating the lower colon; they are helpful too, and may be used during detoxification, though they do not work as deeply as colonics.

When you switch from a poor diet to a better one, better bowel movements are of the earliest benefits you will get. It can be a major part of the relief and improvement that comes from a detoxification program, both physically and mentally. And there is no reason for this benefit to be lost after you finishdetoxification, provided that you continue to eat and drink foods that do not cause irritation and mucus production in your system, keep the intestinal flora in good repair, and maintain the twelve-hour window at night.

The bowels are by no means the only avenue of elimination that your body uses. All types of elimination need to be supported during detoxification, and afterward.

Kidney Elimination. Make sure you urinate frequently during detoxification. After the liver does its hard work of transforming fat-loving toxic mol­ecules into water-soluble ones, they need to be filtered out of the body by the kidneys and eliminated via your urine. Drink enough water that you pee every hour. If urination happens less than that, you are not drinking enough water. Lemon, cucumbers, coconut, and other ingredients used in the detoxification recipes are natural diuretics that will help this process too.

Lung Elimination. Breathing is a crucial method for releasing tox­ins. When you exhale carbon dioxide, you are getting rid of acidity in the blood. (Remember the carbonic acid made by the little factories of your cells? This becomes carbon dioxide gas.) Make a point of using your lungs fully and deeply; visualize how each inhale is supplying you with the number one most essential nutrient you need to live, oxygen, and each exhale is an essential way of offloading the waste material that must be removed. Automatically, your breaths will become fuller and calmer.

Many people do breathing exercises to eliminate toxins from both the nervous system and the thinking brain. A simple exercise involves putting attention on the breath in a mindful way for a few minutes. Start by breathing in and out through the nose, letting the belly inflate and then the back and chest expand on the inhale; then letting the chest and back contract but keeping the chest lifted, and then let­ting the belly flatten on the exhale. Keep the rhythm as regular and as slow as you can. Most important, keep your attention focused on your breath. Be aware at all times if you are inhaling or exhaling. Notice how the moment you take your attention away from breathing, the auto­pilot kicks in—you will continue to breathe, but your attention will be elsewhere, most likely in thoughts, and soon your breaths get short and shallow. Each time you notice this, gently bring your attention back to your breath. This exercise can be done anywhere, at any time, even in the middle of an important meeting. It will be cleaning out the lungs while quieting and clearing the mind.

Skin Elimination. Sweating is another mechanism for eliminating toxins. In a healthy person, the skin is usually spared the job of elimi­nating heavy-duty toxins and mucus, and mainly releases excess water, minerals, and salts. But if your bowels are not doing their job, the body will recruit the other organs of elimination to compensate. If this hap­pens, your skin pays the price with breakouts and problems that cos­metics and creams applied to the surface don’t fix. During a detox pro­gram, the skin might have to do some extra work at the beginning. Skin rashes or breakouts during the first few days of detoxification are not uncom­mon; they are a sign that accelerated detoxification is happening. (Of course, use your common sense. Nobody knows your body better than you, so if at any point any of the effects of the program seem alarm­ingly abnormal, consult your doctor or preferably a health-care practi­tioner who is familiar with the detoxification process.)

Taking saunas maximizes elimination via the skin during detoxification, especially infrared saunas, a powerful method for boosting sweating. Steam rooms can be helpful as well, although they are less effective than saunas. Skin brushing is another simple, cheap, and effective practice that will help elimination and can easily be done daily during detoxification. Your skin is constantly scaling off dead cells, but you’ll want to speed the process during a detox to prevent the dead skin from blocking your pores. Finally, hot-cold plunges are a detoxification secret weapon.

The most effective sauna is an infrared sauna. This newer technol­ogy heats up the user’s body instead of heating the air with steam like a traditional Finnish sauna. It creates radiant heat from long light waves that are not visible by the eye (like sunlight diffused by clouds). These rays penetrate more deeply below the skin than the heat of a regular sauna, exciting the fat molecules into vibration so that they release tox­ins. It also boosts circulation, which is desirable at all times, but espe­cially during detoxification, as the blood needs to carry toxins efficiently to the liver for processing. Those used to regular saunas will probably find that they sweat more in the infrared version. However, regular saunas will do if you can’t find infrared. In both cases, remember to rehydrate during and after the sauna with lots of pure water.

Skin brushing involves using a soft, natural-bristle brush with a long handle on your dry skin, before a bath or shower. These brushes can be found in health food stores and some drugstores. Use long strokes and circular strokes to gently “scrub” the dry skin, from feet to head, including the front and back of the body, the arms, and neck, always moving inward toward the heart. Do this for several minutes daily if possible. Go gently on thinner-skinned areas and use more pressure in thicker-skinned areas such as your back and the soles of the feet. A loofah works too. In addition to removing dead skin cells, you are stimulating the all-important lymph system, the hormonal sys­tem, and glands. For best results follow this with a hot-cold plunge or shower. If you need to moisturize the skin afterward, try using a small amount of natural oil like sesame or coconut oil instead of a chemical-filled drugstore product.

In a hot-cold plunge, you alternate between hot and cold water repeatedly to boost circulation and detoxification. Your skin is your largest organ: it contains miles of arterioles and venules that are filled with blood. These vessels relax and dilate with heat and contract with cold. When this relax/contract pattern happens, your skin pumps almost as much blood as your heart. You don’t need to go to a spa or bathhouse to do it. In your shower, turn the water as hot as you can tolerate for one minute and then as cold as you can go for one minute and repeat this 4 or 5 times. Doing this daily is an easy way to support the skin’s detoxification function.

Exercise boosts the effectiveness of all the elimination channels at once. It increases circulation of both blood and lymph. It makes you sweat. It stimulates the bowels to eliminate. It makes you breathe more heavily and deeply. It relaxes your mind and puts you in the present. It burns calories, and, last but not least, it releases endorphins, the feel-good hormones that are nature’s antidote to stress and worry. Use your common sense. Don’t run a marathon during detoxification, especially during the first few days of your first detoxification. Until you get familiar with what your body is doing and how it feels, take exercise slowly and increase the intensity gradually; start by walking more and taking the stairs. Longer periods of exercise will speed up your metabolism and help with weight loss. Scientific data show concretely how exercise helps reverse most chronic diseases. Make sure you include some form of exercise daily, during detoxification and beyond.

Yoga. Some forms of exercise have extra detoxification power. Hatha yoga’s series of twists and bends massage the organs and promote their good functioning. Jumping exercises like jump rope and mini-trampo­line (also called rebounding) are favorites on detox programs because they stimulate blood and lymphatic circulation.

In addition to being relaxing and nurturing, massage helps release toxins by boosting the circulation of lymph, the fluid that carries waste, debris, toxins, and sick cells through the lymph nodes. These “healing stations” act like filters, processing and removing sick cells and fighting viruses and bacteria. Deep-tissue massage works best for detoxification purposes, but any massage technique will help during detoxification.

As long as you support the essentials of elimination—bowel, kid­ney, and basic exercise—you’ll get detoxification no matter how much or little of these support practices you do. There are varying degrees of detoxification— it’s sort of comparable to taking a shower without soap, with soap, or with a salt-scrub, soap, and loofah. Do what feels right to you on your first program, trying a few new measures whenever you can.

Rest and Sleep

One of our biggest health challenges is the lack of enough time for rest­ing and repairing. Americans tend to be sleep-deprived; let detoxification be an opportunity to change this. Energy levels always fluctuate during a detoxification program. Your body may crave sleep at the beginning, making you more tired earlier than usual. Allow yourself to get as much rest as you need and go to bed early because sleep is when much of the important repair work is done. A natural correction of fatigue tends to occur during the program, at which point it is normal to find yourself waking up earlier than usual, without the normal tiredness or desire to stay in bed. Make adequate rest as much of a priority as you can, even if it means cutting out some TV, reading, or socializing.

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.

The Detoxification Program – What is and how it works

Whenever I see a new patient, at our first meeting we spend an hour or more talking about the person’s present state of health. Frequently patients tell me they have been diagnosed with a disease and have been given prescription medications, mostly to alleviate their symptoms. Before I agree with any diagnosis, I tell my patients that their symptoms are the way their bodies and minds are telling them that things are not really working. Whatever they are doing, eating, and thinking has created an imbalance and their body is screaming at them that something needs to change. We are designed by nature to survive and procreate, and we have evolved to do so incredibly suc­cessfully over millennia. So the symptoms they are feeling are part of evolution’s most powerful and sophisticated driving force, survival. To kill the symptoms without changing the conditions that caused them is insulting to the body’s intelligence.

Some symptoms do point to immediate life-and-death situations, in which case emergency measures are needed to preserve life. For acute situations, modern medicine has developed life-saving technol­ogies that are nothing short of miraculous. As a cardiologist I know that chest pain moving into the left arm classically happens when a clot stops blood from flowing through the arteries that feed the heart muscle. In this emergency scenario, catheters can be guided inside the arteries, from the groin up into the heart, to confirm this diagnosis and to allow doctors to break the clot by blowing up balloons that will stretch the arteries open. Science fiction has nothing more impressive than a modern cardiac catheterization lab, where saving lives is the daily routine.

But most patients’ complaints are not indications that something is really “broken” and endangering their lives. The great majority of physical symptoms point to problems that would take much longer to cause death. These are symptoms of the chronic diseases that, accord­ing to statistics, most Americans will present with, sooner or later and to varying degrees, in their lifetime. These are the diseases that cost so many so much suffering and money. For these chronic ailments and their related symptoms, modern medicine has little to offer. The won­der chemicals and surgeries that are so effective in emergencies are the cause of worse suffering or even death when used to silence symptoms long-term.

I believe that whatever health problem is affecting my patients, their incredibly intelligent body will attempt to survive. The mecha­nisms it puts to work in order to do that get confused with the disease. Symptoms are the alarm system that makes us aware and demands we try something different from whatever we’re currently doing—since that was what got us into trouble to begin with. To expect different results from doing the same thing is the definition of madness.

Instead of blocking the symptoms with medication, I try to answer the question, “What is it that my patient is trying to survive?” Something doesn’t add up. We have split the atom and broken the genetic code, yet our society is sicker that it has ever been. What are we missing?

The human body has an amazing natural ability to defend, repair, heal, and even rejuvenate itself. It is the magic you would see if you were to look at a magnified, high-speed movie of a cut on your skin. You would see that the bleeding stops when corklike bundles of cells, blood plate­lets, stop the bleeding by clumping up and filling up the blood vessels where they are cut, but nowhere else. And then, as if guided by an invis­ible hand, the skin cells on each border of the cut would start dividing and bridging the gap, until the whole surface was covered by skin, and the cut completely vanished, leaving just a reminder—a scar.

I tell my patients that even though they can’t see it, the healing process is the same under the skin, deep inside the body. When dam­age occurs inside a healthy body, a number of mechanisms are triggered that are perfectly designed to stop the insult and then repair the damage, provided the conditions they need to complete the work are available. If they are not, the healing process fails and symptoms persist or worsen.

Two basic problems are responsible for the loss of this ability, result­ing in chronic disease:

Obstacles that block cell functioning and chemical reactionsLack of the ingredients needed for this process to occur

When I look at what is happening with a patient’s health, I ask myself these questions:

What was the original insult that caused irritation or injury? What obstacles are preventing the body from healing?

What is lacking that is needed to repair things?

The answer to the first two questions is often the same: the toxic over­load we are exposed to in our daily lives. The air we breathe, the water we drink and shower with, the buildings we live and work in, the cos­metics we use, and the foods we eat are loaded with chemicals that alone or in combination damage our bodies and every other living creature on this planet. The chemicals we prescribe actually worsen the toxic burden we intend to correct.

Toxicity irritates tissues, damages our own cells, and kills other cells that we host in harmony and need for our health. When our body attempts to defend itself and repair the damage, toxins are often the obstacles that prevent it. The toxins bind to useful chemicals and pre­vent them from doing their work. They irritate cells persistently, forc­ing the inflammatory, allergic, and defense mechanisms to act longer and more intensely.

Minerals, vitamins, and other nutrients in our foods is the answer to the third question. All the chemicals needed for our body chemis­try and architecture would be provided by nature if we respected its ways. Comfort and greed drove us to change nature’s design for grow­ing plants and animals, resulting in a severe depletion of the nutrients that our body needs to function. Mass agriculture in exhausted soils produces plants that are depleted. Then we irradiate them, wax them, and turn them into all kinds of products that are loaded with toxins such as preservatives and additives. Growing cattle, chicken, and fish on an industrial scale has resulted in massive toxicity as well.

For all these reasons food lacks essential nutrients and turns out to be the biggest source of toxic chemicals. When you add the thousands of other chemicals of modern life, as well as the toxic influences invis­ible to the naked eye (thoughts, emotions, radiation), you have the per­fect recipe for chronic diseases.

Whether toxicity is the primary or secondary cause of illness, it seems to be an integral part of the disease equation, since nobody is able to escape it completely. Everything is connected in such an intri­cate way, often with so many points between first cause and ultimate effect, that it is impossible to map every reaction. The time has come when we are waking up to an alarming truth. We are killing ourselves with the same chemicals we invented to make life easier. This concept has never been more relevant than in our modern life, yet so under the radar of our collective awareness. Until now.

Cleansing is turning up the intensity and effectiveness of the detoxifi­cation system. Supporting the process with the right nutrients is safe cleansing. Going beyond this to also promote the repair of the gut sys­tem is the essence of Detox.

Cleansing and detoxification programs may be returning to popu­larity today, but they are certainly not new to humans. Every ancient system of health care had ways of regularly attending to the body’s detoxification systems and making sure the lines of defense in the body were working properly—and this was centuries before industrial chem­icals filled the air. Humans have always instinctually known that a reg­ular period of resting and recharging the body will let it shed the accu­mulated toxins and waste materials that tend to build up in all of us simply from living. It is also a way to boost healing when systems are taxed and are beginning to show signs of stress.

Every creature in nature does this periodically, alternating cycles of growth and activity with cycles of rest, such as hibernation. This keeps things in balance. Animals stop consuming food when they get sick. They rest the digestive system, so that energy can be diverted toward defense and healing.

As I learned during my own time in India, the Sanskrit word “Ayurveda” can be translated as the science of longevity. Its core phi­losophy is that health is a state in which the body is clear of toxins, the mind is settled, emotions are happy, wastes are constantly eliminated, and organs are working efficiently. To achieve this goal, Ayurvedic doc­tors give their patients balancing diets and herbs as part of a treatment plan. But they also prescribe regular periods of deeper detoxification known as panchakarma, during which the patients follow a cleansing program for several weeks and have hands-on treatments to pull toxins out of tissues and quiet the busy mind. This was developed millennia before smokestacks and diesel trucks arrived on the scene. Ayurveda understands that a part of ordinary human experience is the tendency to build up waste and accumulate stress, and if we don’t spend some time alleviating this at a deeper level, our systems and organs get fatigued, making us sick.

Chinese health care is similarly wise. Frequently Chinese doctors put their patients on a program of teas, tonics, and treatments to help them throw off the toxins and mental fatigue they accumulate just by eating, breathing, and meeting everyday demands. Native Americans and members of other indigenous cultures around the world have used fasting and sweat lodges to purify body, mind, and spirit. Done periodi­cally, the sweat-lodge experience returns participants to a path of clar­ity on every level, or is used strategically to heal disease.

All these traditions know that the simple experience of being human brings with it the need to periodically focus on cleansing and detoxifying. When we consider the weight of our modern toxic load and its taxing effects on our inner environments, a period of detoxify­ing practically becomes obligatory.

It’s important to distinguish between a detox program (a cleanse) and the more generalized practice of slowly “cleaning up our act” by making gradual diet or lifestyle changes over several months. A cleanse is a distinct program, done for a concentrated period of time, that puts the body in a more intense detox mode. It has a start and an end date and a specific purpose.

These kinds of detoxification programs have also long been valued as a chance for the mind to come back to a peaceful center. In ancient times, cleansing through fasting was used as a tool to gain spiritual clar­ity. Cleaning out the amma wasn’t just about diet; it was a process of cleansing the spirit of the toxic feelings and thoughts that cause suffer­ing in the heart and soul. Jesus fasted for forty days and forty nights; Muhammad, Gandhi, and Buddha all fasted. Fasting for ultimate clar­ity about the nature of life is a part of many spiritual traditions and has been ingrained in humans for thousands of years.

For most people living busy lives today, the primary motivation to cleanse and detoxify is to remove the heaviness, fog, or lack of energy that is a consequence of contemporary lifestyles and stress. But dig a little deeper and there’s often an underlying eagerness to simplify and strip away excess for a period of time, make some space, and get a new start by taking leave of some old, stuck patterns. There is an inevitable awakening in the mind and emotions, even if the stated goal of the cleanse is more physical, such as to enhance beauty, encourage weight loss, or look younger.

Health care in the twenty-first century is in the process of being radically reinvented. Ancient methods of protecting and preserving body and mind are being integrated with new discoveries in biochem­istry and quantum physics. A new era of detox programs is being born. Detox sets the standard, for its design intentionally addresses both ingredients of good cleansing practices: the elimination of toxins and the repair of the gut.

Everywhere I look today, there is growing curiosity about cleansing. As information is exchanged between individuals and as articles and tips are posted online about the many methods for detoxifying, there’s more confusion than ever. It can be overwhelming. Descriptions of extreme programs can deter people from starting. Also people often get disillu­sioned a few days in, when the program they’ve selected turns out to be incompatible with their needs or simply uncomfortable. Sometimes the program they’ve picked can even be dangerous.

When we understand that a cleanse is a way of harnessing the body’s natural intelligence, we learn that we can drive it in specific ways. Picking one type of cleanse-detox program over another is really about adjusting the intensity and speed of detoxification to best suit our bodies and lifestyles while we do it. Detoxification is a comprehensive pro­gram designed for the daily requirements of the busy lives we lead. There are benefits that happen quickly and I urge you to do the best you can. If for any reason one week of the program is the limit you can accomplish on the first try, you will still see and feel a difference. Perhaps next time one week can turn into two weeks or even the com­plete program.

Assessing the different methods of cleansing is a complex chal­lenge. It becomes easier when you consider three pivotal factors:

How intensely does the detox program switch the body into detox mode?How much nutritional support does it offer while the detox process is taking place?Does the program create the conditions for repair of the gut?

Though you don’t need an advanced degree in medicine to pro­ceed, it’s helpful to understand what happens during the Detoxification pro­gram. For this, it’s important to look at the mechanics of detoxifica­tion and how we harness this natural mechanism and boost it during a detox program.

The detoxification function is a joint venture of many organs and systems that work in harmony to neutralize and eliminate toxins, both “inner,” the by-products of normal metabolism, and “outer,” toxins we eat, breathe, or absorb through our skin and intestines. The function involves the liver, the intestines, the kidneys, the lungs, the skin, and the blood and lymphatic circulatory systems. It’s an extraordinary sys­tem of great complexity and brilliant design.

Though you probably never give it much thought, at every moment of every day your cells are breathing, working, and generating waste. It is part of the basic formula of life: your body is constantly perform­ing an unimaginable number of functions every single instant of your living existence.

Each of the trillions of cells that make up your body is like a min­iature factory that manufactures a product, from hormones to carti­lage, hair, enzymes, protein, serotonin, and many more. Sugar from food and oxygen from air are what each cell factory uses for power. Sugar is burned to release energy. It also generates waste that must get thrown out. The waste is released into the circulatory system and then captured downstream by other cells whose function is to neutralize it. This process of neutralization makes these waste molecules nontoxic; now they can be safely filtered out of the body by the skin (as sweat), the lungs (as carbon dioxide), the kidneys (as urine), the liver (which mixes them with bile and releases them into the intestines), and the intestines directly (as fecal matter). Getting rid of waste is as critical to life as producing energy. Without it, waste products would accumu­late and become so toxic that life would be terminated. Detoxification, therefore, is an ongoing activity that the body is brilliantly designed to accomplish.

Inner waste is constantly being eliminated to ensure your survival. You probably know that:

If you don’t get rid of carbon dioxide, you asphyxiate.

If you don’t get rid of uric acid, you can develop gout and heart disease.

If you don’t get rid of homocysteine, from the breakdown of cer­tain amino acids, you can develop Alzheimer’s and heart disease.

If toxins in general are not handled in a timely manner, your inflammatory system goes into overdrive.

If you don’t get rid of food debris, you can develop bowel disease– or at the very least, constipation.

On a subtler but still powerful level, if you don’t get rid of anger or anxiety, it can manifest as heart disease, cancer, and many other kinds of bodily injury.

Detoxification in a healthy human is an intricate web of activities, guided by natural intelligence.

To understand detoxification, you have to become familiar with the body’s energy economy. Energy is as precious a resource for your body as it is for the planet. The sum total of the energy expense of every cell is called metabolism. Each cell consumes fuel to make energy and then uses up that energy fulfilling its function. Thus, metabolism is the energy cost of maintaining life.

Some cells have functions that are more “expensive” than others— they cost more energy to run. Like a city with a financial budget to distribute on many city services, the body has an energy budget to spend. Energy reserves are limited, so the body must prioritize second to second how the energy capital gets distributed. If it spends too much energy in one area, it simultaneously has to cut back somewhere else to compensate. The body can’t take out energy loans; when the energy reserves start running low, it has to stop activity. It might make you tired and sleepy, because when you rest and stop moving your muscles, you stop one of the costliest activities as far as energy goes.

Sometimes there are so many energy demands at once that split-second adjustments have to be made in what is basically an intricate balancing of the budget. The body’s intelligence will shut down certain func­tions temporarily, slow down others, and allow the most crucial ones to continue spending their full energy “cash flow,” since their function is deemed to be most vital. Neurons in the brain get top priority. As systems get shut down one by one, from least important to most, the brain is always the last. Without the brain, survival is over.

The body’s detoxification processes lie somewhere in the middle of this list of priorities. It’s very common for the body to put detox on hold, then catch up with cleaning later. For example, during hard exer­cise detox is put on hold. When muscles contract, they burn sugar in combustion with oxygen, and the waste product is carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide dissolves in the blood as carbonic acid, circulates in the bloodstream, and when it enters the lungs, it is turned into a gas and exhaled. If the carbonic acid were not eliminated as carbon dioxide gas, it would accumulate in the blood, becoming so toxic that it would kill you faster than you can imagine.

But when you push into the harder exercise realm of anaerobic exer­cise—meaning you’re burning sugar faster than oxygen can be taken in—you make a different waste product, lactic acid. Anaerobic exercise has an abnormally high energy expense, because the muscle is work­ing so hard, and the body has to shift its energy distribution quickly to fund it. So it puts detoxification on hold, which is why lactic acid accu­mulates in the muscles. Knowing that the exercise won’t go on for too long, the body lets it sit for a while and saves the expense of detoxifying it. (The side benefit is that, should that muscle go crazy for some reason and want to continue working at that level without stopping, the same lactic acid will irritate it so much that pain will eventually make the muscle stop. Muscle pain, in this case, is another survival mechanism.) Once the exercise stops, detoxification is immediately resumed, and the lactic acid is processed and transformed for elimination.

This pausing of detoxification to deal with other needs happens quite naturally in healthy bodies. Now add in the impact of the toxic overload of modern life, with its exotoxins, and it becomes clear why we all have a detox debt to varying degrees.

The energy expense of eliminating the toxins of daily life plus the added expense imposed by modern toxins causes a recalibration of the energy economy. If nothing else were going on, then cutting back on a little muscle movement and a couple of other not so vital expenses would probably compensate. But the demands are too big. We are drawing on our energy reserves to fund crazy work schedules, mental and emotional stress, and many more “extra” expenses that modern life imposes. The largest one of all is the digestion of food. Contrary to the assumption that food is where we get our energy from, modern life has turned the processing of foods by the body into a business that exacts the biggest energy drain. We are constantly eating and munch­ing. Anything that we throw in must be processed when it arrives in the stomach—we can’t put that off. But most of what we throw in today has minimal nutritional value, so all the energy we invest in its chewing, swallowing, digesting, and absorbing gives minimal return on investment. We are making less than we spend.

Food and the processes connected with it consume a big portion of our daily energy reserves. Digestion, absorption, the transportation of nutri – ents through the blood, and assimilation into the cells are highly expensive processes for the body. Not to mention growing, picking, and preparing the food—or working at a job to make money to buy it. In fact, some of the most energy-intensive functions of the body involve turning food into fuel and into the building blocks of the body’s architecture. Sometimes we spend more energy processing food than we actually get from the food itself.

The whole process of digestion from start to finish has one of the highest energy costs in the body. Producing saliva costs energy. The pro – duction of enzymes consumes large amounts of energy. (During the Detoxification program you will increase the intake of enzymes by eating plenty of raw foods, thus conserving that energy and supporting digestion.) Muscles need energy to contract and push food to the stomach, which must then secrete digestive juices and push the mix through to the intestines. The pancreas and gallbladder meanwhile produce their signature sub- stances—insulin and glucagon in the former case and bile in the latter.

Once the food has been broken down into small enough pieces, the molecules must be absorbed through the intestinal wall into the blood­stream. Now there’s the work of transporting these building blocks to dif­ferent sites in the body where they can be assimilated by the cells and, used to build your architecture, fund chemical reactions and so on. This , explains why the simple act of eating carries such a high energy cost.

Since modern habit is to eat frequently throughout the day, the con­stant energy requirement never stops. Often there is no energy left for anything else. Think of Thanksgiving dinners: the only activity possible after consuming all that food is to take a nap. Though everyone has a dif­ferent theory explaining this dramatic drop in energy—from the trypto­phan in turkey meat causing drowsiness to the alkaline blood currents that are generated as a result of producing excess acids in the stomach— the fact is that any big feast will put you to sleep because digesting food, takes a lot of energy. Every species of animal has this experience. Lions sleep for a few days after a big kill.

Confronted with this huge load of demands, the body has to prioritize, redistribute, and reorganize. As long as digestion is using up so much of the energy budget, detoxification is partly on hold. All the extra modern toxins we’re exposed to, having made their way into circulation and into the different tissues, will be retained where they are, just as lactic acid is retained in the muscles while the intense muscle work is going on. Since these extra toxins are irritants, the cells coat them with mucus to tone the irritation down while they anxiously wait for the signal from the body’s central bank that energy is available for detoxification and it is okay to release these toxins back into the circulatory system.

In the case of lactic acid that has accumulated during intense anaer­obic activity, the signal to start detox is sent when the muscle stops working. In the case of toxins that accumulate in the tissues, the detox signal is sent when digestion, absorption, and assimilation are com­pleted. It is the green light for the body to enter detox mode.

A detoxification program is designed to trigger this signal more intensely than normal, principally by reducing the workload of the digestive tract. If digestion is stopped long enough and frequently enough, the signal to detox gets switched on more often and turned to “high.” This initiates the release of accumulated toxins and the mucus that coats them. But it’s only the beginning. Once the toxins are set free from the tissues they’ve lodged in, they are free to circu­late in the blood. The “buffering” mucus coat falls off and circulates too. Both the toxins and the mucus must be rapidly neutralized and expelled, or they will cause damage to the body at large. Though tox­ins are harmful sitting in your tissues, coated with mucus, they can cause even more harm if released en masse and not treated. It’s like liberating hundreds of prisoners into the city streets with no program of rehabilitation for them.

Cleansing and detox programs accelerate and enhance the removal of toxins. But the acceleration of the first action (toxin release) does not mean that the second action (neutralization) speeds up automatically to match it. The two processes occur through different mechanisms.

That’s why a successful and safe detox program requires that the two processes take place in a balanced way. Knowledge and experience are needed to equalize them, to avoid discomfort and even damage. This balancing of release and neutralization is what distinguishes the dif­ferent styles of detox programs from each other as well as the speed at which intestinal-system damage is repaired.

You finish the work of processing your food about eight hours after your last meal. Only then can the body turn its attention to “cleaning up” not only the day’s mess, but also all the accumulated garbage that you have not had the energy or detox time to get to for weeks, months, or years (if not decades). Once digestion is done, the signal to release accumulated toxins from tissues into circulation (bloodstream and lymphatic system) can get triggered. Not every meal is created equal: quantity and quality of food may cause the signal to go on sooner, six hours after eating, or later, up to ten hours after the meal. As a general rule, the more you eat, the longer it takes to process your meal and for the signal to start intense detoxification. Solid foods must first be liq­uefied for digestion; this takes energy and time. Liquid meals are prac­tically ready for absorption, bypassing the need and energy expense of being broken down.

Cooked foods delay the detox signal further, because heating any food above 118° Fahrenheit destroys the enzymes contained in it. Enzymes are of paramount importance for digestion. Manufacturing them take so much energy that nature provides them already made. Raw vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds contain the enzymes necessary for their own digestion. When those foods get cooked, we lose that important resource. We have to manufacture all our own enzymes from scratch, which adds to the energy cost of eating and delays the funding for detoxification.

There are other factors influencing when, if, and how efficiently we enter detox mode. If we ingest a food that triggers an allergic response, a host of processes are put in motion that consume even more energy and time. When the GALT, the immune cells that live close to the intestinal wall, get irritated, they start manufacturing substances— histamines and immunoglobulins—to mediate allergy, which in turn activate a series of responses, including the activation of the inflam­matory system. Thus, foods that cause allergies end up activating three bodywide systems: the digestive, immune, and allergic systems, all high energy consumers. When they’re switched on, a snowball effect starts: one reaction triggers the next in a chain of reactions that recruit other cells and cause specific effects such as sneezing, itching, vomit­ing, vasodilatation, and more. By using up so much of the energy bud­get, they cause detoxification to get delayed even longer. And simul­taneously, they cause disruption all over the body—draining resources further. The chaos and confusion caused by irritating foods can drain the body, the patient, and the doctors, who typically don’t connect the problem to irritating foods or the eroded state of the intestines to the presenting symptoms. Pulling this picture into focus makes very clear how every one of us, over time, can end up with a backlog of toxins in our tissues.

The news is not all bad, though. Some foods delay the signal to start dumping toxins, but other foods accelerate it by supporting and enhancing the many steps in digestion and absorption. Magnesium-rich foods promote intestinal motility and accelerate intestinal transit. Olive oil facilitates transit by lubricating the walls as well as triggering the release of bile from the gallbladder. Bile is crucial for effective diges­tion. Enzyme-rich foods speed up the process by supplying the body with many of the enzymes needed. Nature actually provides much of what we need to get toxins out of our bodies, if we just follow its rules.

This understanding is the basis of an “Elimination Diet.” Avoiding the foods that are difficult to digest and that are known to cause food allergies and sensitivities will allow the body to enter detox mode reliably and consistently. When you combine meals that follow the Elimination Diet guidelines with liquid meals, as you will do during the Detoxification program, you reduce the workload of digestion even further. Naturally, this helps the detox mode to start sooner, last longer, and consequently clean deeper.

The toxins and mucus that are released into circulation once detox mode has been switched on must get neutralized and eliminated. Why? Because these toxins contain free radicals, electrically charged mole­cules that corrode tissues and damage cells on contact. In addition, dif­ferent toxins interfere with different functions such as cell division and reproduction, hormone assembling and release, and receptor sensitiv­ity. And as described earlier, they even affect gene expression, altering the way our genes govern the inner workings of the body and literally changing the course of our life expression at the origin of command. Furthermore, since toxins, particularly the human-made ones, are by and large fat lovers (lipophillic), if they circulate long enough without being neutralized, they will find fatty tissue to lodge within. The brain, with its high percentage of fat, is a prime target. Neurological distur­bances are, not surprisingly, a consequence of accumulated toxicity.

Because fat is hard to offload (as everyone knows), the newly freed toxins must get transformed from fat-soluble molecules into water-soluble molecules, which can be more easily excreted. The central player in this part of the story is the liver. Its cells contain a group of enzymes called the cytochrome P450 system, which are designed to cause the chemical reactions for this crucial process of neutralization. The reac­tions are performed in two steps, phase 1 and phase 2 liver detoxifica­tion. During phase 1, the structure of the toxin being neutralized is actually altered and it is turned into an “intermediate metabolite.” In some cases, this intermediate product is more toxic than the toxin it came from. The rush is now on to push it through to the second phase of liver detoxification, which will neutralize the toxic property and transform it into a water-soluble product that can then be thrown back into blood circulation and passed through to the blood vessels inside the kidneys. The kidney cells will recognize it, capture it out of the blood, and finally release it into the urethra as urine. You pee it out and with this act of elimination, the detoxification journey is completed.

This essential liver work has some important requirements. It requires energy, a steady supply of antioxidants (to neutralize the free radicals), and an array of other minerals, vitamins, and nutrients (to feed the chemical reactions of phases 1 and 2). If all these things are available, detoxification occurs safely. The transition between phase 1 and phase 2 happens so quickly that the intermediate compounds don’t spill out. If the liver doesn’t get this support, however, phase 2 is compromised. The partly transformed toxins spill out of the liver, return to circulation in the blood and lymph, and travel back to the tissues and cells, where they cause damage. The other organs of detoxi­fication might try to compensate, but none can do what the liver can do. A cascade of stresses on different systems can set in, which strains the body more. Knowing this, you can begin to see why fasting on its own, even though it helps accelerate the release of toxins from tissues, might be harmful to health. There are no nutrients coming in to help with the processing and neutralizing stage that must occur next.