Cleansing

A little over a week ago I celebrated my 25th birthday. Birthdays always seem to force me into thinking about my life, where my life has taken me, and where it is headed. In honor of turning 25, I decided to do a week long cleanse to start out the year in an intentional/contemplative way.

Before I get started, I have to share this photo of some mushrooms we found the other day. I was able to go mushroom foraging with my friend, Adam, and he showed me some good mushroom spots. Here's a photo of some chanterelles and black trumpets we found. So good! The best tasting and freshest mushrooms I have had thus far.

For those of who do not know, what is cleansing? What is the purpose of cleansing?

Cleaning Up

In a similar way that you would clean your house or weed your garden, cleansing is simply removing the "clutter" or "weeds" from your diet. Essentially, you are allowing your body to be on vacation, get rest, and take care of some things that have been on the back burner for too long. This is a time where you can decide what you want to eliminate from your diet/lifestyle, along with what you want to emphasize or add more of.

Common Misconceptions

There are many different beliefs behind what a real cleanse should be. Quite often people end up doing crazy pop-diet "cleanses" to lose weight in a very short period of time. It can easily become a pattern of fad yo-yo dieting disguised under the title of cleansing. If you don't know what you are doing upon entering a cleanse, you can really do some harm and make matters worse.

To make cleansing a little bit easier to understand, I have compiled a list of common myths.

Cleansing =  Diarrhea

Having diarrhea and being on the toilet every 2 minutes does not mean you are cleansing. If this is the case, you are not on a healthy cleanse.

Aren't most cleanses available to buy in OTC kits?

Most pre-packaged store bough cleanse kits are often not effective or one size fits all. Whenever entering a cleanse, it is important to have a specific purpose in doing so. The reason why you feel the need to cleanse should guide what type of cleanse you would be best suited for.

Cleansing only means juicing and fasting.

This is a very common misconception about cleansing. Many people think of cleanses being solely drinking fresh juice or fasting. In certain scenarios, fasting may be appropriate for a short period of time, but generally, it can result in your body switching into famine mode. When your body believes enters this state, it will slow your metabolism down in order to hold onto fat to make it through the famine. Our bodies have many specific mechanisms in place to help us survive situations many of us will never experience - true starvation for instance. Understanding what may trigger these mechanisms in times that we do not need them is important. Your body doesn't know the difference between a fad cleanse and a famine.

 Cleansing is a great method for quick weight loss.

While many people do lose some weight during a cleanse, losing excessive amounts of weight in a short period of time is not healthy. Healthy weight loss should be slow and gradual. Cleanses where large amounts of weight are lost in a short period of time are typically due to a sharp decrease in caloric intake which results in lost water or muscle weight.

Doing cleanses is unnecessary. The body already cleanses on its own.

For some reason, we are able to justify giving our cars or bikes regular tune ups, but don't understand the importance of tuning up our own bodies. It is true that our bodies have natural cleansing mechanisms to deal with toxins, but we need to face the reality of the toxic world we now live in. I personally believe that doing cleanses is more important now than it has ever been. Even 50-60 years ago people were not exposed to the high amount that we are today. In our present day and age, we are exposed to toxins from our water, air, body care products, processed food, alcohol, cigarettes, pharmaceutical drugs, so on and so forth. People who lived 100 years ago did not have this level of toxic stress being put on their bodies. With that being said, it is important that we set apart blocks of time where we refrain from harmful substances and allow our body time to recuperate.

Cleanses make you feel exhausted, angry, upset, and overly emotional.

Once again, depending upon why you are cleansing, this may or may not be true. Many people deal with headaches and moodiness the first couple days of a cleanse if they are weening off of sugar and caffeine. When you take away the vices that give you the energy you do not normally have, this will definitely be felt. Additionally, people who eat from a place of emotional strife (typically with sugar, alcohol, and processed carbs) may find themselves being overly sensitive, as their source of comfort is no longer available. Typically after around the third day of cleansing, you should feel more stable and even have more energy than before!

Now that you have an idea about the misconceptions of cleansing, here are some ideas to emphasize and utilize.

Schedule a cleanse the same way you would a vacation. Prepare in advance.

Doing a cleanse can be very challenging. It is important to have time to prepare yourself mentally, physically, and emotionally. Plan ahead what you are going to eat. Have a good portion of your meals preplanned and keep foods available to eat so that you are prepared when you find yourself in tempting situations.

Take time to be quiet.

Try to avoid being overly busy or stressed out during the time of a cleanse. Cleansing should be a time to relax, get massages, take baths, go on walks, be in nature, or anything else that helps you to be at peace. Cleansing is a great time to examine all different facets of life. What would you like to "tune-up" in your life to make yourself healthier, happier, or better functioning?

Focus more on giving your body optimal support.

When entering a cleanse it is easy to simply focus on what you are not eating. To combat this desire, focus on the foods that you can eat. 

The Basic Summary of Cleansing

To put it simply, cleansing is eliminating or greatly reducing your exposure to toxins, and giving your body adequate support to help move toxins out. Obviously, we cannot completely eliminate our exposure to all toxins, as they have become almost impossible to entirely avoid, but, we can at least decrease our exposure to harmful substances.

How to Decrease Intake of Toxins

• Pay attention to what products you put on your body and that are in your environment. Many cosmetic and cleaning products have high amounts of toxins. Here is a link to a great resource called the Environmental Working Group. They have a large data base of products and their toxicity levels, along with many other helpful resources on how to reduce exposure to harmful products.

• Eat organic non-genetically modified (GMO) foods. Eating an organic diet can be fairly pricey. Do research into what grocery stores offer the best prices. Or even better, go to your local farmers market! The freshest foods will offer the most benefits. If you are unable to buy completely organic, here is a chart of foods to absolutely buy organic and which ones are safer. 

• Avoid sugar, caffeine, and alcohol. Coffee and alcohol require a large amount of work from the liver. One of the main reasons to do a cleanse in the first place is to give your liver a break, as it is responsible for breaking down and neutralizing the toxins you ingest. By removing these substances, you are allowing your liver to have a break and take care of removing other toxins. In regards to sugar, as we established in the previous post, it is something that you just should really greatly reduce or altogether eliminate from your diet.

• Keep processed foods out. A processed food is any type of food that has been greatly modified from its original form. For instance, a granola bar or a bag of chips are considered processed foods. Many processed foods are marketed as healthy, even though they contain an absurd amount of ingredients and are very far-removed from the actual ingredients it claims to be composed of. If a product has a large amount of ingredients and contains ingredients that you don't even know how to pronounce, it is best just to stay away.

• Take out food allergens/possible food allergens. Most cleanses require you to refrain from dairy, soy, corn, wheat, and eggs. This is due to the fact that many people are sensitive to these foods and are unaware of it. Unless you get specific blood tests done, the only way of truly knowing that you are sensitive to particular foods is by eliminating them for a period of time and reintroducing them one at a time to see if you have any reaction.

Move Toxins Out

As we have already established, our body does indeed already have systems in place to eliminate toxins. Our goal in cleansing is to support these systems as much as possible.

Here are a few suggestions on how to support the detoxifying systems in your body.

• Sweat. Sweating is one of the most effective ways to increase circulation and move toxins out of the body. This can be done via exercise, saunas, or baths. Make sure to hydrate before and after sweating!

• Eat 8-10 servings of fruit and vegetables a day. As I mentioned before, focus on what you can eat. Make smoothies, salads, roasted vegetables, or soups. These are all easy ways of getting vegetables. During my cleanse, I started out the morning with a smoothie that incorporated around 3-4 servings of fruits and vegetables. Here are a few meals that I ate on my cleanse:

Breakfast: Smoothie made with 3 leaves of rainbow chard, 1 apple, 1/2 cup of blueberries, coconut milk, and multi-vitamin rice protein based powder

Lunch: Zucchini "pasta." Cut up zucchini, or spaghetti squash, and cook. Cover with marinara sauce like you would pasta. Put garlic, onions, basil, and kale in your tomato sauce. 

Dinner: Cabbage or lettuce taco wraps made with diced and roasted sweet potatoes, sautéed squash and onions, guacamole, pico de gallo, fresh cilantro and lime.

The best foods to support your liver and overall body in cleansing include: onions, garlic, artichokes, cabbage, broccoli, beets, lemons, carrots, and turmeric. Try to incorporate these foods into your diet as much as possible, particularly during a cleanse.

Here are a couple of foods I got to pick myself and eat during my cleanse. Straight from the homestead!

• Stay hydrated. As your body releases toxins, it is important to have appropriate hydration to keep fluids moving through and out the body. If you want to be extra careful about reducing toxin exposure, buy filtered water. Herbal teas (no caffeine), fresh vegetable juices, and lemon water are all great for cleanses.

• Reduce consumption of meat. Depending upon the quality of the meat you consume (conventional vs. grass-fed), meat can be detrimental towards cleansing, as pork and beef have some inflammatory properties. If you do consume meat during a cleanse, stick to free-range chicken or wild-caught fish.

• Get enough sleep. Your body naturally detoxes while you sleep. Typically around 2-3 a.m. your liver reaches its peak detox time and your pineal gland excretes hormones which help to clean up harmful bacteria. Cleansing can be an important time for you to emphasize giving yourself the rest you don't normally make time for. If you are the type of person who has a hard time slowing down, make an appointment to rest as you would any other event.

Supplementation

Taking supplements can also help your body in the cleansing process. Below is a list of supplements commonly suggested for cleansing.

• Milk Thistle (for the liver)
• Activated Charcoal (binds to toxins and carries out of the body)
• Multi-Strain Probiotics (improves digestion)
• Turmeric (reduces inflammation)
• Omega-3's (reduces inflammation)
• Dandelion Root (for the liver and kidneys)

I hope that you have found this helpful in understanding how cleansing works and why it is important. If you are new to cleansing, make sure to be under the care of a medical and health professional. As I mentioned before, cleanses can greatly vary based (length, method, supplements) upon what your particular needs are and the intent is to improve your health and to not cause harm.