Springtime Is Cleanse Time

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In the naturopathic view, disease is caused by uneliminated wastes. Many practitioners feel that we are all hard-pressed these days — what with junk food, coffee, alcohol, nicotine and chemicals to contend with — to be at our most healthy. They use the word “detox,” which originally applied to those who were trying to withdraw from drug use, to describe what we should do for optimum health: Avoid the things that make us ill.

The typical diet includes too much fat, salt, sugar, alcohol, chemicals, pollutants and food allergens. But “detox” implies cleansing and a fresh start, a fresh approach to diet and exercise. We can, once we give the body a break, rely on its inherent ability to cleanse itself. How? It’s easy: Initiate the process with a diet that avoids the intake of toxins, encourages elimination, and includes lots of water and exercise.

There are a lot of crazy diets out there, as well as people advocating fasting and colonics. “Forget detox diets,” says Andrew Weil, M.D. “The best thing you can do is to stop putting toxins into your system. Eat organic foods, drink water that is purified, don’t be around secondhand smoke — the obvious things.”

By the third day of my cleanse, I felt alert and energized.

I like Weil’s gentle approach to detox. Instead of fasting altogether, I am happy to give up a few things for a while. I really want to detox, but can I live without coffee, butter, chocolate, wine, milk, eggs, meat, food additives and preservatives — for a week?

Elson M. Haas, M.D. (www.ElsonHaas.com), author of The New Detox Diet (Celestial Arts, 2004), advocates fasting with the aid of a “master cleanser,” a tall drink of water with a pinch of cayenne, two tablespoons of lemon juice and a tablespoon of maple syrup. I am not one bit tempted to go there, because I’m really averse to the idea of giving up solid food. So I was interested to see that Haas also recommends a “detox diet” that actually includes eating.

Sometimes, we need a little help getting back on track — or in my case, a little help finding the track! I’d been feeling that I needed to jumpstart my New Year’s resolution to eat more vegetables, drink less wine and cut down on sweets. Haas’ mainly-vegetable diet (see Page 33) appealed to me.

My Detox Experience

I warned my husband that I was going to be caffeine-less for the next few days, bit the bullet and began my three-day detox. Upon arising, I followed Haas’ directives rigorously. Instead of my usual slug of coffee, I drank two glasses of water with half a lemon squeezed in. Half an hour later, just as Haas prescribed, I had cooked cereal. For lunch, I ate one to two medium bowls of steamed veggies. Ditto for dinner. There were absolutely no chocolate-chip macadamia nut cookies for snacks at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. The menu said to drink a bowl of the water I’d steamed the veggies in instead. Following Haas’ strictures to the letter helped me to feel in control. The instructions, as you see above, were not complicated, a feature that I found quite welcome.

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