All recipes are taken from my handy dandy copy of the The Detox Book, by Bruce Fife, N.D. (byline: How to Detoxify Your Body to Improve Your Health, Stop Disease, and Reverse Aging). Fife is a nutritionist, naturopath, and co-director of an alternative health center and The Detox Book is essentially a comprehensive handbook of detoxification therapies, including nutrition, fasting, juicing, oxygen and heat therapies, exercise, and kidney and liver cleansing. I don't subscribe to all of these personally, but it is really hard to give an opinion on detoxes/cleanses without doing one yourself. However, I will try almost anything once and the idea of getting rid of a bunch of waste in my body is enticing.
Initially I chose to do the Liver Cleanse because I think that is one of the organs I abuse the most (not counting my knees), and seeing as it is the largest gland in the body (averaging four pounds!) doing the bulk of my body's natural detoxification, it likely needs a wash out. It is the only organ that receives a double blood supply and despite a fairly good diet, I suspect my blood is kind of crappy. Andrew and I both feel like our metabolism is sluggish and since the liver plays a major role there, we are set on it.
The recipe advises to start the cleanse on a Friday and clear your weekend plans! You should have a non-fat breakfast and lunch on Friday and then eat and drink nothing else excepting water past 2pm (Basically, skip happy hour). Fat stimulates the excretion of bile, and therefore when saved up will cause a larger evacuation later on once underway. Avoid taking any medications or vitamins that you can live without.
At 6pm (Friday), mix 1 tbsp. of Epsom salt with 3/4 cup of water and drink. This is not the most pleasant taste, so feel free to doctor it up with some flavoured vitamin C powder or in my case, some Crystal Light (I doubt it would be Fife's first choice, O well.). Make sure to get all the salt, adding more water if necessary. Do this again at 8pm.
Just before 10pm, right before bed, measure 1/2 a cup of extra virgin olive oil and 1 cup of fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice (Thank you, Gourmet Garage!) and mix in a glass with a spoon. With this mixture you want to take 4 L-ornithine capsules which will help you sleep through some of the unpleasantness. Then go immediately to bed! If you follow these directions, you should not feel any pain or discomfort although you may feel things "moving."
You should wake up Saturday after 6am and make a third drink of 1 tbsp. Epsom salt and 3/4 water. Wait literally 2 hours and repeat the Epsom salt and water mixture. After waiting at least another 2 hours, you may go back to eating normally.
So how did it (bed)pan out? Well, Andrew claimed that there really was nothing going on and frankly, seemed bored by the process. The Epsom "salt shakes" wore both of our nerves and gag reflexes. I, on the other liver, had a very quick reaction to the Epsom salt, and was almost to the point of making a little bed in the bathroom well before 8pm on Friday night. I also felt nauseous throughout the night which could have had to do with me cheating a tiny bit with a diet Coke (It will be the death of me!!) around 9pm... I do feel the process cleaned my colon out though.
Fife claims that you will see hundreds of small green (tinted by bile) marble-ish gallstones and liver stones in your movements and that this is natural. I saw none of these and recall avoiding discussing it with Andrew in favor of the couch, a liter of apple Pedialyte, and some Cartoon Network. He also recommends doing his kidney cleanse first (oops), another liver cleanse a week or so later if you feel you still have stones, followed by a colon cleanse in case stones settle there on the way out. Suspect.
Because it would not be a worthy experience without photos and video... ;)
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