More people than ever embark on detox diets in the first quarter of the year. We will be writing a little bit more about it in the next few editions of Fresh Network’s blog, bringing you some tips on how to make it effective and safe.
Although those of you who have kept a healthy and high-raw lifestyle for several years may question whether following additional periodical cleanses is still necessary, Fiona Robertson explains why the best health results come from a life-long commitment to cleansing.
If you have been following a healthy, high-raw lifestyle for several years and have done a herbal cleanse or two you may well assume you are now fully “detoxed”. I’m here to tell you that you are almost certainly not! How do I know that? Because I’m willing to bet you grew up on the standard, “socially accepted” fare and ate this diet throughout your teens, most probably your 20s too, and quite probably even longer.
If this is you, make no mistake: you could benefit from at least two “hard-core” detoxes a year, and a colonic every week for the rest of your life. Why? Because those years of toxic eating caused a massive accumulation of waste to be stored deep in your tissues, and that waste can only be released very gradually – as and when the colon is clear enough to take out more of it.
So no matter how long you’ve been on your junk-free diet, nor how many cleansing programmes you’ve done, there is much to gain from committing to at least two week-long detoxes a year. I guarantee you will still be releasing deep stores of old toxins from your tissues. That is why when we cleanse we can feel so uplifted.
We start life with a clean internal system. It is interesting to note that babies, birds and animals evacuate within 15 to 18 hours of every meal. This, however, is not the case for most of us, for numerous reasons. The colon is designed to eliminate yesterday’s waste – not that from years or decades ago.
Even if you eliminate several times a day, every day of your life, and think your bowels are working efficiently, I doubt that you are getting out anywhere near as much as you have put in. Don’t agree with me? Here is a simple test you can do to find out. First thing in the morning, while still lying in bed, suck in your stomach as much as you can. If your mid section – the area from under your rib cage to your hip bones – goes concave, then you are empty. This is the area that houses your intestines and colon, and chances are you have enough old waste matter lurking there that your stomach will look more convex than concave.
Accumulated waste in the colon can affect any of our organs at any time. Organ tissues are only as healthy as the blood that feeds them and the blood is only as clean as the bowel from which our nutrients are supplied. So when we routinely take in more than the body has the capacity to process (and/or substances the body can’t easily process) this excess will start to build up not only on the walls of the colon, but eventually in cells and tissues throughout the body.
Most of our aches, pains, sicknesses and infections can be traced back to the health of our body’s “waste disposal unit”. The colon health expert Dr. Bernard Jensen identified and mapped the colon into 72 reflex areas that each correspond to specific organs and body parts – for example, the kidneys, liver or spleen and the neck, arms or legs. He theorized that old waste that has become toxic in the colon will affect the tissue of the corresponding organ or body part, with symptoms including inflammation, headaches, backache, mental fog and depression. This is why cleansing your colon can have such profound and far-reaching health effects.
What’s the matter?
What you ingested over the last four to five days that has not yet managed to leave you is known as normal waste matter. The matter that goes back a month or three, and which will have begun to embed itself in the intestines, is called putrefactive matter. This matter is still moist and it is really stinky stuff, as you can imagine. Slow cooking at 98.6 degrees for weeks on end will do that.
Then there is the even older waste, which has been polluting your insides for years. This is post-putrefactive matter. It is completely dry and tends to be black, dark brown, grey or white, hard like plastic or rubber, and it normally comes out in long strips. Juice fasting can eventually remove some of this, but more effective is a regime of psyllium and bentonite clay mixed with herbs and enzymes. This combination softens this old matter and sweeps it out of its hiding places.
Psyllium is the seed from the plantago plant. It can absorb ten times its weight in water, and as it expands in the body, it brushes and sweeps along the intestinal walls, taking old impacted matter with it. Bentonite is a volcanic clay that will draw toxins to it in huge quantities.
For optimal health, I recommend a week-long colon cleanse using psyllium and bentonite twice a year - preferably in the spring and autumn, when you will ideally be changing your diet to the new foods that grow in your locality. You will achieve the best results on a detox like this when you have been cleansing, eating raw and enjoying a daily vegetable juice for a while.
Commit to this lifestyle and I predict you’ll be astonished by the results. As just one personal example, my eyes have changed colour since I started to regularly detox. I used to have dark brown eyes and they have gradually turned three-quarters green as I have released huge volumes of toxicity from my tissues and cells. This has taken years and will continue to change, I am sure, as I keep to a pure diet and a deep tissue detox twice a year. I still see old post–putrefactive matter leave me each time I cleanse, which is remarkable.
Or is it – remembering I only started to cleanse in my late 30s?
This article is from the Summer 2010 issue of Get Fresh! magazine.
Fiona Robertson
Fiona runs a detox retreat in Biarritz, South West France, where she guides clients through a week of purification and relaxation. Fiona is also the brains behind “The Home Detox Box”, a seven-day total body detox you can do in the comfort of your own home.
For more information visit: www.homedetoxbox.com and www.retreatbiarritz.com
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