By Paula Connelly
Click here to read the Spring 09 Feast article, Get juiced: Fresh, healthy alternatives to the Master Cleanse.
I asked Carolynn Kraskouskas, owner and operator of Be Whole Again! bodywork and nutritional therapy (Be Whole Again!, 3150 18th Street Mlbx 511, Suite 536, SF; www.bewholeagain.net) to help lay out the basics of planning a detox:
It is important to remember that each person is unique and each cleanse should be designed to work towards your personal goals. Your first step should be to set a goal and figure out the organs you’d like to target in your cleanse. Specifically, what you want to move, slow down or remove. Most people cleanse for weight loss and greater regularity, when they feel like their system has become sluggish, generating a feeling of a lack of health. They are interested in digestive cleanses, which allows their organs to rest and cleanse themselves. However, it is crucial to remember that if you cleanse anything you often take the good with the bad. That is why one of your primary goals in cleansing should be rebuilding. Cleanses need to be sandwiched with a program that rebuilds the organs as well as cleanses them. Rainbow grocery sells popular cleanses in a box that also rebuild.
Keep in mind that our eliminative channels for waste and toxins function in a hierarchy: bowels, kidneys, lungs, skin, and, for women, menstruation. Spending some time cleaning out your bowels before you detox can help to lessen the stress on your other channels during detox, and considerably lessen adverse detox symptoms during your fast, like headaches, rashes and diarrhea. Then you can tackle your targeted organs. It’s good to do some gentle exercise like walking or yoga and a sauna or steam room can help you to sweat out some of those stubborn toxins. Also, you should be aware that you might have to deal with surfacing emotions. This is also a mental cleanse. Food, and the habit of eating food, provides a comfort zone that distracts us from fully experiencing some emotions. Most of the time this is a good thing because we need to function productively and not dwell on negative things. However, every once in a while it’s good to “clear our cache” to lighten the accumulated mental load of every day life. Expect to go through highs and lows and don’t attempt any cleanse for less than two weeks because you’ll likely experience more negative effects than positive.