The Master Cleanse

Dan and I did the Master Cleanse and we feel great!  It's actually been over a month ago that we did it and I'm just now making the time to tell you about it (spring gardening took priority).

There's lots of info available about the Master Cleanse.  We have the book "The Master Cleanse" and apparently there's a new version called "The Complete Master Cleanse" and a Peter Glickman book called "Lose Weight, Have More Energy & Be Happier in 10 Days".  There are plenty of people blogging about their master cleanse experience, and there's even a Master Cleanse Facebook group for peer support.

If you're interested in doing a general cleanse for your body, losing weight somewhat quickly, stopping addictions (like foods, caffeine, alcohol, tobacco, or other drugs), or just trying it out, here are our notes on how it worked for us and our tips to make it go easily.  I'm not going to list the full instructions on how to make the special "lemonade" for the master cleanse - please get one of the books to get the full details on how to do the cleanse.

I should mention that this is really a stage 3 of my body cleansing experiments.  As Stage 1 I've been consuming Chocolate Bliss and other raw superfoods regularly for the last year and a half.  Because of that stage 1 transition I've been able to stop caffeine entirely, stop eating meat, dramatically reduce my intake of processed foods (I still have good quality potato chips now and then), eat more vegetables, and let go of quite a bit of excess fat on my body.  In Stage 2 I got interested in cleansing my body even further, so I did a series of Liver & Gallbladder Cleanses.  I'm glad that I did the liver cleanse 2nd because I had started doing an MMS Cleanse that was too extreme for my liver.

The Master Cleanse was stage 3 for me simply because that's when it came into my awareness and my body intelligence said "yes, let's do this now".  I think the Master Cleanse is easy enough to do as a stage 1 on a cleansing journey, though you may find you have more detox reactions than I did simply because I've been cleaning up my diet for the last year and a half.  Nevertheless, since the cleanse is letting your body do its own cleaning (rather than forcing cleansing with supplements), it seems a safe way to start cleaning house.

Here are our tips on how to make it even more easy:

• Ease into the cleanse with more raw foods and less animal products.  If even the day before you eat mostly or all raw fruits and veggies, I think you'll have a better experience.  We did this pretty naturally since we eat a lot of raw foods and I focused on eating up the produce that was in the refrigerator.

From Dan: I had a little bit of friend Indian food at a potluck the night before our cleanse that was a bit heavy and spicy. It didn't feel that great at the time and the next day, the first day of our cleanse, my tummy was a bit upset and I didn't have near the amount of energy that Melissa had. Sticking to raw foods or lighter fare the night before might have helped.

• Drink a Laxative Tea every night.  We didn't read the fine print that said to do this every night. Darn.  I did a laxative tea on the 2nd night and that helped a lot, although I did end up pooing at 1am and 5am. ugh. That's not always going to happen like that, and I did feel lots better afterwards.  The laxative tea I used is called Smooth Move from Traditional Medicinals brand of teas.  I think you can find it at a Whole Foods or similar type of organic-minded health food store.

• Although the Master Cleanse is designed to provide you enough energy to go about your daily tasks while you're cleansing, it was really nice to allow some time, especially for the first couple days, to just relax and lie around the house.  I took some epsom salt baths, we watched movies, I slept a little more, and really paid attention to what thoughts and feelings were moving through me so I could detox that way too.  Give your body the support it needs by getting plenty of sleep and doing whatever else you crave to nurture your self.
  

• How you come off the cleanse is just as important as being on the cleanse in the first place.  Your body has gone through 10 days of resting your digestion, so you want to ease back into that process slowly. The cleanse book advises to start with fresh squeezed orange juice which will be the best tasting juice you've ever had (simply because you're ready for a new flavor in your mouth).  We then moved on to fresh pressed apple-carrot juice and then a medley of apple-celery-kale-lemon.  Do your best to drink only fresh juices the first day.
  

• When you're ready to move on to more whole foods and cooked foods, I highly recommend making "The Hippocrates Soup".  This recipe comes from The Gerson Therapy and is really yummy and good for you.  Essentially fill a soup pot full of tomatoes, potatoes, onions, celery, parsley and some garlic cloves.  Fill the pot with water (or vegetable stock) until all the ingredients are covered.  Bring to a boil and simmer until the potatoes are cooked.  For our first dish of this soup we blended the ingredients in our Vitamix so it was even easier on our digestion.  The next dish we ate with the whole bits of potato, etc. (it's so nice to chew!). Then for the next dish we added in some spices to the soup (salt, pepper, cumin, etc).  Once you've had several bowls of soup you should be ready for regular foods again, though still go gently on your tummy (in other words, not too much spicy food right off).

We did a couple more things out-of-the-ordinary from the traditional Master Cleanse that you might also be interested in.

• Coffee Enemas every other day.  This idea also came from The Gerson Therapy and is a relaxing, gentle way of helping the toxins move out of your lower intestine, your liver, and out of your blood.  Basically the coffee helps to dilate the blood vessels, opens bile ducts for greater bile flow and flushing, enables peristalsis (bowel movement), and enhances GST (glutathione S-Transferase) production a catalytic enzyme that helps remove toxic radicals from the blood.  All of the body's blood passes through the liver every three minutes, so when you hold the coffee in your lower intestine for 12-15 minutes you are getting 3-4 cleansing flushes of your blood.
  
  There's plenty more to say about coffee enemas, but for now I'll just give you the recipe of how to do it.  If you want more details. get the book The Gerson Therapy and read chapter 12.

Coffee Enema Procedure:    1. Add 3 rounded Tbsp of drip-grind organic, caffeinated coffee to a quart of boiling filtered/distilled water.    2. Let boil uncovered for 3 minutes. Simmer covered for an additional 15 minutes.     3. Strain the coffee solution through a coffee filter or a coarse strainer with a cotton cloth or cheese cloth to catch all the coffee grounds.   4. Add enough hot water to the filtered coffee to refill a glass container up to the 1 quart level (some of the original quart may be lost in boiling and straining).   5. When the coffee has cooled to body temperature, pour it into the enema bag.    6. Put plastic sheeting and a towel down on the floor where you'll be doing the enema. You may also desire a pillow. Hang the enema bag about 18 inches above the tube's end.   7. Lie on your right side with your legs pulled up in a relaxed position (it's also OK to lie on your back with your legs pulled up). Insert the tube end into your rectum and let the coffee solution flow with the gentle force of gravity.    8. Once the bag is empty hold the liquid in your colon for 12-15 minutes. This is a good time to visualize all the cleansing occurring in your colon and liver and blood. If for any reason you can't hold the liquid for the full 12 minutes, release the liquid early (you'll likely be able to hold it longer the next time).   9. Release the liquid into the toilet. You may find other elements such as gallstones, biofilm, and excrement in your release, however the smell of coffee will dominate.

• Digestive Enzymes at night.  Half-way through the cleanse we started talking digestive enzymes at night to help remove any biofilms that were on our digestive tract lining.  The protease in our Digestive Enzymes in particular helps to break down any excess protein and specifically parasitic colonies attached to the colon walls.  Wish we'd started that at the onset of the cleanse too as I had quite a few biofilm bits come out later in the cleanse.
  
  
• Probiotics coming off the cleanse.  We added more probiotics, like Salivarius and Acidophilus, to our diet once we started eating regular food again.  Since the good bacteria weren't given much to eat either, we figured they could use a little extra support.

• Drink more laxative tea after 2 days of chew food if things aren't moving.  For both of us, adding regular cooked and raw chew foods stopped up our systems again.  Probably because our digestive tract was out of practice and the peristalsis movement needed to be re-engaged.  Maybe we wouldn't have needed this if we'd done the laxative tea throughout the cleanse, but it sure came in handy after a couple of days of regular food.  Just don't rely on laxative teas in the long term - use it as a jump start only.

And finally, here are some of the things we noticed in our experience of the Master Cleanse:

• We didn't drink much of the lemonade mixture.  The book said to drink 6-12 glasses a day, whenever you are hungry.  We ended up drinking between 4 and 6 a day.  I guess we just weren't that hungry.  Maybe if we'd been busier with activities we would have desired more?
  
  
• I had LOTS of energy the first day ... I cleaned the fridge top to bottom and the kitchen and felt great.  I also had plenty of mental energy throughout the cleanse - enough to continue my life coaching practice with ease.  On day 8 I went to my favorite Korean Spa with a friend and did fine moving between hot rooms and hot pools and sipping on water and lemonade.  That's also the only place I weigh myself and I'd lost 10 pounds.  I'm now still quite comfortably at 120 pounds - the size I prefer to be.
  
  
• There were a few times, especially early on, that I had headaches and/or achy joints.  The book says this is a sign of detoxification as the toxins stored in your joints are pulled out and released.  Epsom salt baths and coffee enemas solved these aches and pains.  The laxative tea every night probably would have stopped them from starting.  Oh well, next time.
  
  
• Even though I wasn't eating anything solid, and I wasn't doing the laxative tea, I still had some bowel movements where I found biofilms and some small gallstones come out.  This seemed like good proof that my body was taking advantage of the cleansing time to clean house.
  
  
• The cleanse offers a nice opportunity to take an objective perspective on food.  I never craved food while on the cleanse, but I did take a walk down memory lane of all the many foods I've eaten in my life.  I think I may have been clearing some cellular memory of foods because I was remembering things like childhood tv dinners, twinkies, hot dogs and other stuff I've not eaten in over 25 years.  Go figure.
  
  I also had a couple of occasions of watching people eat at a restaurant while I sat and drank water or the lemonade.  I enjoyed the smells of the food (my senses were heightened), but I never once wanted a bit of what they were eating. I did envy the chewing process though. :)
  
  Being off of regular food really made me notice how much of our society, our social activities, and our daily moments tend to focus on food.  There are so many restaurants when you drive down the street! And some people who are not familiar with the Master Cleanse can have quick negative judgments about fasting.  I heard a lot of concern from people that "you're not eating?" or "you're losing too much weight!".  Truthfully, I was still eating and I was losing the perfect amount of weight in toxins and fats my body no longer required.
  
  
• I didn't have any addictions to get off of, but I was curious to find out if I'd miss my daily Chocolate Bliss.  The good news is, I didn't.  I never had a bad reaction of not being on it and I didn't crave it immediately when I came off the cleanse.  I'm still drinking Chocolate Bliss every day now, and I know I don't have to have it in order to be healthy.  It's a great healthy choice I like adding to my diet.

From Dan (who also lost weight on the Master Cleanse): I think stepping back from the whole "food creation" was the neatest part of the cleanse.  Just being able to see how most of the world is caught up in so much around food.  It was interesting to watch how well-meaning people are so concerned and worried about you not eating.  They want to offer you some of their food like there's something wrong with you, like it's not OK to not be hungry or not want to eat food. 

Once off the cleanse, what I wanted to eat, I still ate, but I think there's a subtle difference.  I have more awareness now of how dependent we are on food, how much we get manipulated around food and all the social activities that are tied to food.  I'm more aware now of what food I'm putting into my body - even more aware than I was with the superfoods.  I read labels more.  I cleaned stuff out so I want to be more careful about what I put back in.

All in all, I liked the Master Cleanse.  I'd do it again, like when my body craves it. I would do it over a water fast which doesn't give your body quite enough energy to go about daily activities and I'd do it over a juice fast which requires just a bit more digestive activity than what the body can handle to also do some good over-haul cleansing.

If you decide to do the Master Cleanse, I highly suggest you get one of the Master Cleanse books for detailed additional information to guide you and join a support group (especially if you've got other people in your house eating food while you're on the cleanse).

Enjoy your cleansing journey!