So I did a detox or cleanse, whichever you prefer. Either way, I experienced some very interesting things.

So the most important part of the cleanse was to have my digestion achieve regularity – because who likes to be full of shit? Not fun. Regular bowel movements are necessary for a healthful life because your colon provides one the most important ways to eliminate wastes. Gotta take out the garbage!

So Part One of my cleanse was to move stuff along, to empty me out. Amazingly replacing lunch with juice released a whole bunch of stuff. It took a couple of days to start. On day three I started to feel lighter. I had no idea that I was feeling full, full of, well you know.

Setting the stage: Lunch was juice mainly of beets and carrots and whatever else I had on hand to make that juice tastier. Beets taste like dirt. Carrots are great but don’t completely make up for dirt taste. Apples and citrus are wonderful top notes to even everything out.
After a couple of days changed the rest of my meals just a little. Breakfast became almost 100% raw: veggies and fruit, sometimes some soaked nuts. In the evening I did eat an animal protein but focused on fish and other easy to digest stuff. There were more raw veggies with dinner as well. Snacks were mostly raw. Raw, raw, mostly raw = detox.

What went down:
For the most part early on, I felt fine, almost invigorated. Then around the end of the first week I started to feel strange.

I believe it was day five and I was sweating partly because it was warm and humid out and partly because of something else – detoxing… nervousness? Instead of sweating just salt, water and sweat smell, I was releasing crazy smells. At one point I smelled like onions, then hotdogs, and bacon. Rick joked that I was making him hungry. It was mortifying. Thank goodness Rick and our friend whom was hanging out with us for that day didn’t care.

Closing in on day 10 I still smelled like onions and sometimes fast food. I was sweating without having to move. Yes it was humid some days, and I do feel hot and misty much sooner than other people, but I was showering more than once in a day because I was damp and oniony a lot.

After about day 10 I also started to feel exhausted. I wasn’t sleeping well. I was overly emotional. Sleep couldn’t touch how weird and crazy I felt.

Powering through week two into week three left me with very regular exits of waste (poop heehee). With that I was happy. Goal one achieved. However, as week three came to a close I felt dead, tired, weepy, strange, out of control, and dead again. I was tired of smelling like onions and other stuff. Over that weekend I eased back into “regular life”. Juice still, paired with solid food for lunch. Then less juice and then no juice at all.

Stay tuned for Part Two to finish it off!

For a synopsis of why I chose to torture myself see the link below.
Detoxing Intro

Since I’m not using Dr. Schultz stuff now, it’s become necessary to adapt to my circumstances and learn how to do my own version. I am reading a lot of what he has on his site. Through this I have learned a few things and want to follow the basic guidelines for his colon and liver cleanse. I’ll be trying to replicate some things, like a detox tea,as well as the colon cleansing blends, and picking up a local echinacea tincture. I’m just in the beginning so it’s all a fuzzy idea and no concrete plans have been made yet. However, I have taken a few steps, as an experiment of course, to see just what it takes to detox my body.

The first thing I did was to replace a solid lunch with a nutrient rich freshly juiced lunch. The basic ingredient has been beets, with carrots until I ran out a couple of days ago. I’ve read and heard that just juicing can send your body into a detoxing or cleansing state. Honestly, I didn’t expect anything to happen. I was pleasantly surprise. But I’ll save the “gory” details for later. Today’s post is just a precursor to the crazy.

Currently, until I figure out my plan – which I am writing up today and over the weekend – I’ll keep lunch as juice. It’s not bad, feels almost indulgent – though it’s a very healthy feeling which doesn’t have the sinful indulgent feelings. But hey, who wants to feel sinful all the time?

Until next time. Feel free to share your own detoxing stories!

~ the B’ham Hippie

     As frugally as possible I am switching our foods to mostly organic. Eventually we will be entirely organic. But as cost is a major factor in any life change, it’s going slowly. By eating organic foods I’m cutting out several toxins that would otherwise add to the crap already stored in my body. I decide what to choose to buy organically by referring to the list provided by The Environmental Working Group. Here they are by rank. Feel free to check out the full list here.

1. Nectarines
2. Apples
3. Sweet Bell Peppers
4. Celery
5. Nectarines
6. Strawberries
7. Cherries
8. Kale
9. Lettuce
10. Grapes – Imported
11. Carrots
12. Pears
     Potatoes make the list at #15. I’ve read that anything that grows in the ground like potatoes or peanuts should be organic because they are sitting in a mire of chemicals and dead dirt – they end up absorbing quite a lot of disgusting bits. I want my potatoes to live in a dark chocolate loam of purity until they get picked up for the co-op or other natural food store.
     I have been following this for a couple of weeks. Lots of organic apples and lettuce can be found in our fridge at the moment. Honestly, what I’ve found in the last couple of years of buying more organic foods – they usually taste better. I’m all about taste. Food should taste yummy – not only a visual picture of yummy.

     Organic foods are important to help eliminate the ways toxins get into your body. Wonderful. How do I get rid of the toxins I already have? That’s a little more complicated. There are a million things out there claiming to help detox. What I do, when researching things is to view everything logically, then pick the things that seem to fit together like a puzzle. Synergy is the idea. The logical things I’ve found, that are helping me shape what I’ll be doing to detox my body, short and long term are:

Eliminate processed foods – There is no way around this!
Cut out ways toxins get in – i.e. in food and personal care products
Drink enough water – you have to pee these nasty things out!
Drink filtered water – same idea behind eating organic foods!
Rest – it’s hard work for your body to clean itself!
Cut out things that aren’t beneficial for detoxing or are harder for your body to process – red meat, dairy, coffee etc.
Get enough vitamins – supplements or fresh fruit and veggie juices, preferably organic
Give your digestive system a break – do a water or juice fast. I’ll be trying a juice fast in the near future.
Exercise – It increases all sorts of good hormones, increases circulation which helps to get the nasty stuff out!
Add a probiotic – Miso, kombucha, keffir or yogurt, though the latter two do break the dairy rule
Colon cleanse – I’ve read something that compared your colon to your sink – if you never cleaned your kitchen sink imagine to horrible possibilities!
Drink some teas that promote detoxing – you can find them boxed, or make some lovely loose leaf blend!
Use milk thistle – a friend of mine mentioned that her mother’s naturopath said if she wanted to do a little detoxing buy a bottle of milk thistle, take double or so of the dose until the bottle is empty. (I’ve tried it, it’s amazing how it can help!)

     I’m a firm believer in finding things that fit your life. It’s a westernized ideal to find the one magic treatment that will detox your body fully. My opinion is that detoxing will start to happen naturally after making certain life changes, i.e. cutting out processed foods or coffee. To further detox it seems that the idea of finding synergistic things to use will help you to cleanse your body the most effectively. It’s like clutter – clutter attracts clutter – the problem are habits and choices. I’ll use myself as an example.
     I’ve cut out processed foods. Almost no coffee – only twice or so monthly. I’m cutting down on sugar – I do make fabulous gluten free baked goods so it’s hard. Switching to organic stuff. Cutting down on dairy. I’m lactose intolerant so I don’t drink milk, but I loooooove cheese and yogurt. However, these still create phlegm in the body – the idea is to not create more phlegm. From what I’ve been reading it’s a better idea to use goats milk products like cheese and yogurt instead. I haven’t tried that yet. I’ve done the milk thistle thing. I drink a decent amount of tea that either supports my immune system or helps to boost detoxing. (There are things that detoxing herbs will do that you might not expect. I’ll explain later.) I’ve started exercising at least twice a week. In the grand scheme of things that isn’t much, but it’s way better than what I was doing. I’ve added some needed vitamins such as B12 (I don’t eat a lot of red meat at the moment), D3 (we live in Washington and I know the lack of sunshine affects me profoundly) and minerals such as calcium and magnesium (necessary for proper muscle and nerve health). I’m doing more research to help me figure out what else is important and may need supplementation. I’ve started drinking Kombucha, which I love. I choose only the stuff at the store that has herbs added, no artificial or “natural” flavors or other additives. (Soon I’ll be making my own!) I drink a ridiculous amount of water in a day. I’ve adopted a system of drinking water 30 minutes before or after a meal. I’ve read many times over that drinking water with a meal will dilute the digestive juices and subsequently not allow food to be broken down properly. Thus improper digestion. I’m also planning on doing a juice fast, either using organic juices from the store or ones I prepare myself. Problem, I don’t have a juicer at the moment so I might just have to buy stuff from the store. I figure that one day, doing a fast won’t hurt me – as long as I use juice and teas. Just water will probably make my blood sugar drop too far. Also, a plan for further future would be the colon cleanse. I’m also thinking about adding a more broad vitamin B complex supplement as well. And I’ll be learning how to make keffir from both milk (cow and goat) and coconut milk (crazy I know!).

     From what I’ve seen so far, each change is beneficial in a different way I didn’t know mattered. Not drinking anything 30 minutes before or after a meal has made a HUGE difference in my indigestion problem – I was getting uncomfortably farty.
I’m also trying to sweat out some of these nasty things through taking hot bathes at home and hopefully soon using the YMCA’s sauna.

     A note on using detoxing herbs. Some herbs are laxatives. Laxatives shouldn’t be used long term as your body can become addicted to them. Stop using them and your body may have the opposite problem – not going enough. However, there are some that have a laxative-like effect, but are not true laxatives. Milk thistle is one of the ones I think falls in the last category, but I can’t find definite literature on that. Just be cautious. Aside from laxatives, sometimes detoxifying herbs will make you sweat, which I have found out the hard way several times. Peppermint, lemon, and ginger induce sweating. Since I’m making my own teas and using fairly fresh items I got the crazy sweats a few times and didn’t know why. Also, please understand that the fresher the herb or whatever, often the stronger the effect. So if you have a box of peppermint tea in the cupboard that has been there for awhile, chances are it won’t have the same effect. My advice, experiment on an day that doesn’t matter or be prepared for some entertaining times.

     Also, remember that if you are taking any sort of prescription consult a trained professional. Though most herbs you’ll find are safe, many prescriptions drugs are not safe with herbs. On a little side note: many of the articles that are written by allopathically focused people tend to phrase their sentences to make it sound like the medicines are safe and the herbs are risky. (This makes me very angry.) Hands down, prescription medicines have more side effects and have a higher chance of having a negative reaction with another prescription, food, or herb. Herbs rarely have side effects. Almost all medications have side effects or things you must consider and/or change in order to “safely” take those medications.

Any suggestions on what to do to help clean myself out are always welcome!