The Fresh Network Blog

Channelling Spring Energy into Positive Lifestyle Changes

by Saskia Fraser

Spring is a time of renewal and rebirth.  What better time of year to renew your positive resolutions and birth a happier and healthier version of yourself?  Embrace spring’s energy and channel it into shedding negative self-perceptions and embodying a new self-identity that’s empowering and positive.

Through my own journey, and coaching my clients, I’ve come to realise that we often get stuck around self-identity.  We’ve been developing and honing our self-identity since we were born.  As we get older, we get stuck in the subconscious belief that our self-identity is unchangeable and inflexible.  ‘I am a stressed person’; ‘I’m undisciplined’; ‘I’m fat’; ‘I’m not clever enough’; ‘I’m not attractive’.  Beliefs like these serve to keep us stuck and unhappy, disconnecting us from our innate potential for joy and from being the best we can be.

The Parent Detox

Karen Ramzi is here to help and explains how to cleanse your body at the minimum effort, whilst looking after a busy household.

If planning a New Year’s detox was impossible, why not pencil a spring-clean into your diary?

Parents, often overwhelmed with exceptionally full lives, ask about ways to stay healthy with abundant energy, especially when feeling their reserves are being depleted.

When digesting heavier fat and protein foods, we put great stress on the liver and kidneys. What are the foods that cause digestive distress and rob us of our energy? Meat, all animal products, processed and refined carbohydrates as well as diets composed mainly of cooked foods. Parents want to learn how to cleanse from their daily stresses and dysfunctional lifestyle habits. Taking part in a juice or smoothie detoxification, or an even deeper water fast, can be helpful, but I’ve seen these people return to the same stressful lifestyle and indigestible foods upon completion of their cleanse until they feel sick and rundown once again.

Our toxic world

Dr Brian Clement considers the pollution of our world and our bodies, and looks at two toxic food additives we should avoid at all costs.

In the last 100 years, much of food production has fallen into the hands of the profiteers leading the food industry. Their objective is to economically gain as much as possible, neuter the foods so they have long shelf life, and advertise the food for social, sensual and sexual reasons rather than for sustenance.

The leader’s cohorts are the chemists. Corporate chemists have led the average person to believe that their field has made our lives better and that without them we would have mass starvation. This group notably created such offspring as DDT, aspartame, MSG and a wide array of other chemicals like pesticides, fungicides and herbicides.

A group that I have been a member of for many years, The Union of Concerned Scientists, has perpetually reported the pervasiveness of these man-made, manipulated elements within our global environment. Even in the North and South Poles, scientists have found man-made chemicals in the bodies of all creatures. When delving deeper, these substances are even found in the frozen ice. Layer by layer, we can determine when the industrial revolution began, since that is the time the man-made chemicals began accumulating.

Detox and the importance of digestive health

Digestive health plays an important part in the process of detox. Lori Lewis shares her experience of juice fasting and encourages colonics as part of everyone’s cleansing regime.

You are not just what you eat. You are what you digest and absorb, as digestive health is the pinnacle of overall health. Going through life with clogged up digestive tracts is common in the western world. The problem is that the undigested food in the colon feeds the intestinal bacteria. You may already be symptomatic which could signify a myriad of serious, sometimes irreparable, health problems. No need to despair, there is plenty you can do to reverse this problem.

I have personally experienced the repercussions of a Standard British Diet causing me to suffer with food intolerances, allergies, severe bloating, diarrhoea, slow weight loss and nausea. What better way to naturally evacuate clogged up colons than with juice feasting? Juice feasting is essential to improving digestive health. Did you know that the average person holds 5-10lbs of old toxic matter in their intestines? For every day of juice feasting you would reverse 120 days of compacted toxins, so you can imagine how many days, months, years are reversed when you embark on a 30, 60 or even 92 day juice feast. This would take you into levels of deep cleansing that are not reached in shorter fasts. The majority of us have been ingesting toxic foods for so long that it would take quite a while to heal.

Doing a juice feast is an intense personal challenge. I embarked on a 30 day juice feast and lost 20lbs, regained a flat stomach and dropped a dress size. Throughout the 30 days I feasted on unlimited quantities of juiced fruit and vegetables daily, some days totalling 4-6 litres. It is important to consume as much pure GREEN juice as possible. The basis of my juices were celery, cucumber and carrot, with the addition of other vegetables or fruit (apple, fresh herbs, beetroot, dark leafy greens, sweet potato). Green juices are stuffed full of essential vitamins and minerals, without the fibre, so they are readily absorbed straight into the body. These juices provide great alkalisation for the body, the best state to support the internal pH level and aid healing from the inside out. As well as the juices I also had MSM powder (for healing scar tissue), bee pollen, kelp granules (for iodine, potassium and iron), virgin coconut oil (antibacterial), flax oil (omega 3), spirulina powder and probiotics, these are recommended to support you during an extended feast.

During the 30 day juice feast I had my first professional colonic which was a better experience than I had envisaged. Years of clogged up debris were evacuated as I quite comfortably lay there having a nice chat with the colonic hydrotherapist. How did I feel after the colonic? Lighter, happier and clear-minded. I usually I do weekly enemas myself at home using an enema kit, bought for a small price. To filtered water I added different superfood/herbal powders such as maca (hormone balancing), camu camu (vitamin C), muira puama (aphrodisiac), himalayan crystal salt, and coffee – individually of course. The assimilation of superfood powders is excellent through the colonic walls. 

Not ready for a colonic? There are many other options you can choose to improve your digestive health.  Chewing your food thoroughly will advance the breakdown process in the mouth as the carbohydrate enzyme amylase is present in saliva. Increasing your intake of digestive enzymes will help to improve not only digestion but the absorption of nutrients. Digestive enzymes are naturally present in pineapple (bromelain) and papaya (papain) which intensify the breakdown of fats and proteins respectively. Naturally occurring enzymes are abundant in raw foods, especially amylase and the protein enzyme protease. Slowly increasing your raw percentage is a great way to increase your fibre, expel toxins and help you feel better.  If you are not ready to go raw yet you could try a few things.

• Conscious food combining can help your digestion, such as eating fruits alone or 30 minutes before other food.
• Start your day with a smoothie, drink plenty of filtered water and pure fruit juices.
• Some herbal teas (nettle, dandelion, fenugreek) contain magnesium that is essential for regular bowel movements and liver function.
• Moderate exercise is a brilliant way to get your bowel moving as it stimulates peristalsis.

If you would like to ease yourself into colonics, doing enemas at home is easy with a home enema kit. I feel much relief when the gush of fluid filling my colon is expelled with unclogged debris. Bye-bye toxins!

As I am now exclusively breastfeeding, I am avoiding juice feasting as my toxins would leach into the breast milk. I confess that I miss the complete freedom from digestive imbalance that comes with juice feasting. Instead I stay raw vegan and drink GREEN smoothies daily, which are essentially frozen fruits, a few large handfuls of kale, spinach or spring greens with a few tablespoons of spirulina. From this I get a great amount of vitamins and minerals essential for breastfeeding mothers. YUM!

If you are constipated have a colonic or embark on an extended juice feast it may just change your life!

Lori Lewis (BSc, MSc) had a natural progression into naturopathic nutrition following 7 years as a scientist in biomedicine, microbiology and advanced biochemistry. She is currently studying for a Diploma in Naturopathic Nutrition and developing a nutritional therapy business called Health Conscious UK.

Note from The Fresh Network: Click here to view enema aids available in our store, amongst other detox aids: http://www.fresh-network.com/acatalog/cleansing-and-detoxification-aids.html

Why we all need to detox

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

30 days of zeolite

Zeolite is said to help the body detoxify and has become popular among health seekers. Simon Brett tested it out for a month and here he reports on this experiences.

Liquid Activated Zeolite (LAZ) is a substance that can remove heavy metals from the body. Zeolite is a class of “super clay” produced when lava flow meets sea water and cools quickly.

The structure of zeolite is honeycomb-like, and it has a natural affinity for toxic heavy metals such as uranium, cadmium, lead, mercury and aluminium. In its natural state, zeolite contains numerous heavy metals, so it is heated to extremely high temperatures in order to remove them (anathema though this may be to raw foodists, zeolite is not metabolized, so the question of whether it is “raw” is irrelevant!).

Once clean, the zeolite is suspended in water and can be taken in droplet form. It is easy to mix with food or drink, or can be dripped directly onto the tongue (after some experimentation, I settled upon taking mine in a glass of water).

The zeolite enters the body “hungry” and attracts heavy metals and other toxic debris on its journey. Approximately five to seven hours after being ingested, the zeolite (plus whatever it has picked up) is excreted. Simple.

Defending detox

Following on from Sarah Best's recent article on the subject of detoxing and the scientists who claim it's impossible, we bring you two great resources to check out.

If you haven't yet heard Shazzie's verbal fisticuffs in the BBC Radio Five studio with one of the scientists in question, head here to listen to the highlights. Hats off to Shazzie, who did a great job of debunking the crazy claims these scientists are making!

The Alliance for Natural Health reacted to the craziness with a lengthy feature entitled 'Debunking Sense About Science's Stand on Detox'. Penned by the ANH's medical director and its scientific director (in consultation with other scientists on the ANH's expert committee), it contains a wealth of clever-clogs information on the body's natural detoxification systems, why those systems may be struggling and why there is no doubt that there are natural steps we can take that make a huge difference.

Debunking detox

By Sarah Best.

The organization Sense About Science has put considerable effort into convincing us that detoxing is just a big old waste of time and money. This year's offering was entitled “Debunking Detox”.

SAS's message on the subject of detox is essentially (to paraphrase the gist of their comments over the last three years): "Detox" products don’t work, our bodies are quite capable of handling anything we ingest, there’s nothing we can do to help them, and the notion that we can "go on a detox" to do so has no scientific validity.

And they are far from alone in claiming all of this; these are the views of many scientists, doctors and dieticians. For example, Ben Goldacre, an NHS doctor writing in the January 18 edition of The Sunday Times, chimed in with the following: “The notion of detox is medically meaningless […] That burgers and beer can have negative effects on your body is certainly true, for any number of fascinating reasons; but the notion that they leave a specific residue – toxins – that can be extruded by a specific physiological mechanism is nothing more than a marketing invention.”

Now, we can certainly agree with these folks in white coats on some of the points they make. Yes, the majority of the “detox” products on the market really are a waste of money. Especially those that are made of synthetic, manmade ingredients, as many of the detox products Sense About Science covered in their recently published “Detox Dossier” were. 

They are also quite right when they point out that the “quick fix” that allows you to eat and drink rubbish 360 days of the year and undo the effects of that in the other 5 truly does not exist.

But the anti-detox lobby takes it much further than this. They rubbish the entire notion that we can detox and worse still, inherent in their statements are some very questionable assumptions about health and nutrition.

Now, I’m no scientist myself and I have nothing but the greatest of respect for sound and sensible scientific endeavours. But science can be and often is anything but sound or sensible. The scientific mindset can allow very clever people to overlook the obvious, the likely and the logical in favour of the improbable or even the ridiculous. Here are some detox-related examples, all of them from Sense About Science's first press release on the subject:

1. “Our bodies are very good at eliminating all the nasties that we might ingest over the festive season.” Dr John Emsley, Chemical Scientist, Popular Science Writer

Really? Really? Get in your car now, drive to any public place, get out and look around you at the faces and physiques you see. What do you think about how good our bodies are at eliminating all the nasties we ingest over the festive season, or any season for that matter? Are we to believe there is no link between the nasties we ingest and the nasty distended stomachs, puffy faces, bags under the eyes (and so on) that we see everywhere?

And those are just the outside manifestations of the much bigger problems going on inside (more about those below...) If we consider all of the evidence, it is pretty clear that our bodies can’t keep up with the quantities of nasties many of us are ingesting and that they really could use our help.