The Detoxification Diet
In our February 2011 newsletter, we presented
Preparing for Your Spring Cleanse, in which I suggested following a 30-day detoxification diet. Many modern dietary habits drive toxins further into the body, while cleansing diets promote biological processes that optimize the
removal of toxins from the body via the skin, lymphatic system, lungs, colon, and urinary tract.
Now that we are all living with the realities and fears from Japan's (from our world's) triple disaster - earthquake, tsunami, and radiation leaks - perhaps we can more clearly see that following a cleansing diet, a therapeutic diet, a diet that promotes the continuous removal of toxins from the body, is worth considering. And perhaps a cleansing diet is worth contemplating not only as a "spring cleanse," but also as a way of life.
Adopting the
dietary habits of detoxification into your day-to-day eating is easier than you might think. Here are nine habits for you to consider:
1. Drink reverse osmosis water all day long. Ideally, drink one half cup at a minimum every half hour, except at meals. Every one of our cells depends on water for carrying out its life-giving functions. Our kidneys, liver, lungs, and skin rely on these metabolic processes to do their jobs of clearing the body of waste and toxins.
2. Eat breakfast. It is important that your breakfast consists of a piece of fruit followed by non-starchy vegetables and protein. During sleep, your body uses up a rich supply of nutrients to cleanse and repair itself. If you don't replenish those expended nutrients upon waking, the body utilizes its reserve store of nutrients. Don't run your day-to-day activities on your reserves; you want metabolic reserves for cleansing, repairing, and aging gracefully. One example of our body using its reserves is osteoporosis: calcium, an essential mineral for many bodily functions, is stolen from the bones when the body becomes too acidic.
3. Eat a small meal every 2-3 hours. This way you will be eating 5-7 meals per day. 4. Eat organic fruit 5-10 minutes before meals. By eating fruit before a meal, the body is assisted with critical digestive energy in the form of fructose and enzymes, leaving your body well-situated to use these by-products to break down food and extract nutrients from vegetables and protein, with less wasted energy and intestinal stress.
5. Eat organic, non-starchy vegetables 4-6 times daily. Green and non-starchy vegetables contain the vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, chlorophyll, fibers, and carbohydrates that your body needs to cleanse and repair itself.
6. Eat 5-15 grams of protein every 3 hours. Proteins may include (ideally) organic, grass-fed meat like beef and buffalo, fish, chicken, turkey, and eggs. Eating small amounts often is the goal here. The body requires the amino acids l-methionine, l-gluathionine, and l-glutamine to be consumed in therapeutic amounts in order to effectively and continuously cleanse.
7. Eat healthy fats in small amounts throughout the day. Healthy, organic fats include, but are not limited to, meat, fish, fish oils, coconut oil, olive oil, nuts, seeds, and avocados. Every cell in the body is surrounded by a membrane that controls the removal of waste products. Essential fatty acids from healthy fats are needed to keep these cellular membranes permeable.
8. Eat food with high enzyme content including raw dairy, raw or lightly cooked non-commercial meats, and lacto-fermented food and drinks such as yogurt, kefir, raw cultured vegetables, kombucha, and kvass. 
9. Eat soups made with bone broth. To learn more about the detoxification diet, read
Kristina Amelong's Ten Days to Optimal Health. As Sally Fallon, author of
Nourishing Traditions, a cookbook based on health-sustaining traditional diets from around the world, said:
"In the past, we have steered clear of the subject of detoxification through fasting and colon cleansing in these pages, in part because the medical literature provides little research on the subject, but largely because the many books promoting detoxification through enemas and colonics include abysmal fasting diets based on vegetable juices and mostly vegan, low-fat maintenance regimens.
Kristina Amelong's attractive book is different; her dietary principles are right in line with the discoveries of
Weston Price and include healthy, pasture-raised animal foods, animal fats such as raw cream, butter, and egg yolks, bone broths, fermented foods, kombucha, raw milk, and raw meat."
If you need personal support to implement a detoxification diet or any of its supporting principles, please
contact the Optimal Health Center.
