How To Do A Cleanse The CORRECT Way

It’s the New Year and everyone and their mother is trying to kickstart their weight loss journey by doing a cleanse. Cleanses can have health benefits…when they are done safely and correctly. Often, many people will jump right into a cleanse without doing proper research or preparation. Not preparing correctly for a cleanse can result in a pretty awful cleanse experience. It can also do more damage than good, possibly leaving you feeling worse off than when you started. In this post, we will look at different cleanses, the benefits of each of them, and how to do them the right way.

Let’s first bust some myths about cleanses. Here are 5 things cleanses do not do:

Provide lasting weight loss
Break free “sludge” or undigested food from the intestines
Reverse liver damage in any meaningful way
“Fix” or completely heal your pre-existing health conditions

Lasting weight loss comes from lasting dietary and lifestyle changes. Cleanses are not meant to be done for the rest of your life. Any weight you lose during a cleanse will likely come back if you go straight back to your old dietary habits.

A properly functioning digestive system already does a great job of cleaning your body of toxins, undigested food, and whatever the heck “sludge” is. You can also only reverse liver damage if you make lasting dietary and lifestyle changes. We’ll talk more about this below.

Healing your any health condition is a massive undertaking. It will take much longer than the month you spend doing a juice cleanse. I highly recommend working with a doctor and a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner if you are having digestive discomfort or if you have a pre-existing health condition. A cleanse may not be the right move for you.

The Body’s Natural Detoxification System

No matter what type of cleanse you’re doing, you should first look and your digestive system. Your digestive system is your body’s natural detoxification system. The liver in particular takes in your blood and filters through it. It regulates the nutrients in the bloodstream and sends the waste/toxins through your intestines to later be flushed down the toilet. Anything you eat will eventually get filtered through the liver. A healthy liver does a fantastic job at keeping your body toxin free.

All parts of our digestive systems are important to detox our bodies of toxins and preventing them altogether. The brain, mouth, stomach, liver, pancreas, small intestine, large intestine, and kidneys play critical roles filtering and/or breaking down our food so it can be absorbed and filtered.

Cleanses essentially speed up or force the digestive process. If you do a cleanse and your digestive system isn’t functioning properly, you are only speeding up a broken system. Speed on its own can cause error, but if it wasn’t working well to begin with…you’re in for a rough ride. Signs that your digestive system is not ready for a cleanse include:

Undigested food in stool
Frequent stomach pains after eating
Diarrhea
Constipation
Blood or mucus in stool
Frequent nausea after eating
Excessive, foul smelling gas

I’ll talk about what to do if you have these symptoms down below. For those of you who are symptom free, lets look at different cleanses.

Fasting To Cleanse

Fasting has grown in popularity the past few years, but it has been around since biblical times. Fasting is where you restrict your calorie intake for a period of time.

There are differing amounts of time you can do this and you can choose to do an assisted fast or an unassisted fast. An assisted fast means that you are eating/drinking small caloric amounts over the time period you are fasting. An unassisted fast means you are drinking only water during your fasting period.

Intermittent fasting is where you fast part of the day and eat during a smaller eating window. A popular time window length for eating is 8 hours. That means you would be fasting and only drinking water for the other 16 hours of the day. You could also do a 24 hour, 48 hour. or 72 hour fast.

The Benefits of Fasting

Weight loss is a popular reason to fast. When done correctly, it can be a good way to lose weight. Fasting lowers insulin levels which facilitates the loss of adipose tissue (fat) and hormone called norepinephrine is released from your adrenal glands that breaks down fat cells into fatty acids. These fatty acids are then used as energy.

The benefits actually go far beyond weight loss. Letting your digestive system rest increases immune function, causes a sort of “reset” in your microbiome, and improves heart health.

How To Fast Correctly

There are three points I want to drive home as I explain how to fat correctly:

The way you prepare for and break a fast are just as important as the fast itself
Fasts should never be used to starve yourself in a way that damages your metabolism
Listening to your body becomes extremally important while fasting

No matter what type of fast you’re doing you should always be consuming water. Staying hydrated is essential for the detoxification process. You should also be consuming celtic sea salt or pink himalayan salt dissolved in your water for electrolytes. Minerals are also crucial for the detoxification process.

In preparation for 24, 48, or 72 hour fasts, you should consume only fresh, whole fruits and vegetables for two days leading up to your fast. This will naturally lower your calorie intake and make the fast easier on your body. When you break your fast, you should follow the same veggie/fruit diet for two days after your fast. The first meal you eat after your fast should be small. A large meal right after your fast is not good for your stomach which will not be producing as much stomach acid. A large meal will cause stomach pain. I would also recommend taking a mineral supplement during your preparation, fast, and your two day recovery form your fast. Minerals quickly deplete when we are not eating food. A mineral supplement that has water-soluble minerals like potassium, magnesium, calcium, zinc, phosphorus, sodium, and selenium will not break your fast. Instead it will prevent things like muscle twitching, dizziness, brain fog, and heart palpitations. Stress will also deplete minerals, so try to stay fairly relaxed during your fast.

Intermittent fasting doesn’t really require preparation before hand, but how you break your fast is still important. Eating a huge meal right out of your fast can create esophagus and stomach acid production issues down the road. Eating large amounts of food at once is not a good plan for digestive health. This is the main reason I do not recommend limiting your eating window to only 1 or 2 hours. 6 to 8 hour windows are best. This allows your intestinal housekeeper (your migrating motor complex that sweeps all the food particles through your digestive system) time to do it’s job well.

For those of you on a weight loss journey right now, know that your calorie restriction does NOT have to be drastic. In fact, it should definitely not be drastic. Not only have studies shown that really low calorie diets don’t work because they are almost impossible to stick to, they also damage your metabolism. I would only recommend lowering your calorie intake to 200 below what your burning each day. Fast weight loss is very rarely healthy or sustainable weight loss. Let me know in the comments below if you would like a full post on this.

You will be hungry during your fast. However you should not be feeling dizzy, horribly sick, or passing out. You should always be gentle with your body. Listening to what it’s trying to tell you during your fast is a must. You should not try to push through no matter what your feeling. Dizziness or passing out is often a sign of mineral deficiency as we discussed above. If you are taking a mineral supplement and it’s not helping, break your fast and consult your healthcare provider. You may feel some nausea during your fast. This is normal. Throwing up and explosive diarrhea are not. You may notice some changes in your stool and that’s normal. But if it becomes concerning to you, break your fast and consult your healthcare provider.

Juice Cleanse

There are many types of juice cleanses. Some involve only drinking juice and fasting. Others have you follow a strict diet along side it. My approach to juice cleanses is very gentle. It is the only juice cleanse I currently recommend to my clients.

The Benefits Of Juice Cleanses

There is a lack of evidence that juice cleanses flush toxins from your body. However, we do know that supporting the digestive system is the best thing you can do for detoxification. When you are focusing on giving your body everything it needs to thrive, it will thrive.

Now, a note here: Every body is bio-individual. What works for my body won’t work exactly the same in your body or your neighbors body. There are some creative freedoms in this cleanse. It will be up to you to hone in on what exactly works for your body.

I did this cleanse a last year for the first time and I absolutely loved it. I have Ulcerative Colitis. It’s in remission, but I’m still very cautious when it comes to cleanses. This one is gentle enough that it did not cause me any issues.

I felt great after this cleanse. I had a ton of energy and my brain fog went away completely. You read about how important plant foods (like vegetables, fruits, nuts, etc.) are to keep your body healthy all the time. This cleanse has been really eye opening for a lot of people to just how important having plant foods in their diet actually is.

How To Do A Juice Cleanse Correctly

This juice cleanse lasts 2-3 weeks. It just depends on how long you would like to do it. Every day, I made juice using ingredients that supported my kidneys, liver, and lymphatic system. I would use ingredients like beets, carrots, turmeric, ginger, celery, spinach, apple, cucumber, and fresh cilantro. Although a juicer is preferred, I actually don’t own a juicer. I used a blender and blended all my veggies and fruit together with water and then strained it through a nut milk bag.

My diet was very veggie heavy. No sugar except the natural sugar from the veggies and the occasional piece of fruit. No dairy…although I definitely had some of my homemade probiotic yogurt once or twice a week (a personalization I made for my body because it helped keep my bowel movements regular). I ate some meat because protein is important for detoxification, I also ate some healthy fats (mainly olive oil or avocado oil) but my main focus was always vegetables. Salads, soups, and roasted veggie medleys were my friends for the duration of the cleanse.

Moving is very important to implement during this cleanse. Our lymphatic systems are responsible for taking transporting toxins and things that do not belong in our bodies to the liver and from the liver to be disposed of. The lymphatic system does not have a pump like our blood does. The way lymph moves from place to place is through our movement. You might also consider getting a lymphatic massage (or doing one yourself) during this juice cleanse. I personally did yoga (I’m a huge fan of Yoga With Adriene’s videos on YouTube) and/or walked everyday, but any movement is good.

Liver Cleanse

The purpose of a liver cleanse (also called a liver flush) is to help prevent gallstone attacks. A liver cleanse is supposed to force your liver/gallbladder to flush out gallstones.

The Benefits Of Liver Cleanses

One of my instructors at the NTA was very excited about liver cleanses. He did one at least once a year. Personally, I have not done one. While I may eventually, I don’t think they’re necessary. Taking proper care of your digestive system with diet should be perfectly sufficient to keep your liver and gallbladder happy and healthy.

There have been reports of liver cleanses relieving pain associated with the liver and/or gallbladder. However, there is no definitive evidence at this time that liver cleanse/flushes actually do anything to prevent gallstones.

How To Do A Liver Cleanse

A whole foods approach to a liver flush involves eating apples and apple juice in preparation for the flush. The purpose of this is so that you have enough malic acid in your body to execute the flush. You could also take a malic acid supplement for a couple days prior to your flush and just eat fruits and vegetables for the two days leading up to your liver flush.

On day three, you will continue eating your apples and apple juice (or malic acid supplement and fruits and veggies) until 2:00pm. At 2:00pm you will stop consuming calories and only drink water. At this point you should make a Epsom salt and water mixture. Mix 4 tablespoons of Epsom salt into 4 cups of warm water until it dissolves. Then put the Epsom salt water in the fridge to cool. At 6:00pm, you will start drinking the Epsom salt water incrementally until 10:00pm. At 10:00pm, drink a mixture of 1/2 cup cold pressed olive oil and the juice of one grapefruit (which should end up being about 1/2 to 3/4 cup of grapefruit juice). Fair waring: Neither the Epsom salt water or the grapefruit/olive oil mixture will be tasty.

After you drink the grapefruit/olive oil mixture, lay on your right side with your right knee pulled in towards your chest. Stay on your right side for the rest of the night and try to go to sleep. In the morning (day 4), you can do a coffee enema. The coffee should be room temperature (NOT burning hot). This should be where you see gallstones come out.

For the rest of the day 4 drink only liquid calories. On days 4 and 5, stick to fruit and vegetables. Treat it like coming out of a fast. Introduce foods in small amounts at first. On day 6 you can start to re-introduce fat in small amounts and work up from there. Too much at once can cause stomach aches.

Do NOT do a liver cleanse if your liver is not digesting fat correctly. This means if you have light colored, fatty stool, this one is not for you.

How To Support Your Liver Every Day

Supporting your liver with your diet and lifestyle is the most gentle cleanse you can do. Even if you are having symptoms that make harsher cleanses not the best idea for you, you can still eat to support your liver.

There have been studies that suggest that plant foods can provide nutritional and medicinal support for the liver. Eating a diet low in alcohol, sugar, saturated fat, and trans fat and high in veggies is what is generally recommended for reversing fatty liver disease. Even if you aren’t currently having symptoms, preventive care is just as important as trying to manage disease. This type of diet is almost always a good idea.

Summary

The goal of weight loss can blind us to the dangers of what we’re doing to our bodies. My challenge to all of you is to try and make this year your year to discover how you can support your body with your diet. Weight loss isn’t necessarily a bad goal, but you should consider how the actions your taking effect other parts and processes of the body. I would also strongly recommend that you think critically about the measures your taking for weight loss. A cleanse does not promise lasting weight loss.

If I recommend any cleanse to a client in my practice, it is very gentle. I do not personally recommend liver flushes or fasting for more than 3 days. At this time, the literature doesn’t really support anything that intense. I also do not currently recommend any detox, cleanse, or flush product on the market. I only recommend using high quality, organic foods. I have recommended adding juice into peoples diets as a more bio-available way to get nutrients, but never without food.

If you have any of the symptoms I listed in the beginning, consult with a healthcare provider and/or a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner. A cleanse likely isn’t the way to go for you, but there may be dietary changes that you can make that help alleviate your symptoms and even address the cause of your symptoms.

The bottom line is this: Eating a nutrient dense, minimally processed, whole food diet will do wonders for maintaining a healthy body. A cleanse is only helpful if it gets you closer to that goal.

Let me know if your thoughts and questions in the comments!

I’m wishing you all an incredible, healthful year!