Fasting, Cleansing, Detoxing

[ellaminnowpea]

Hi, Can anyone direct me to research, threads, or personal insight related to fasting, cleansing, or detoxing?
I remember seeing a thread on vf about fasting, but can't seem to find it through a search. :confused:

Has anyone read any literature on versions of "detoxing"? I am not necessarily interested in water fasting, as I know it would not be beneficial to me personally. However, I am interested in doing some form of detox this summer.

Any help is really appreciated!! :D

[RubyDuby]

Here are a few:

http://www.veganforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17980&highlight=lemonade+diet

http://www.veganforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16543&highlight=lemonade+diet

http://www.veganforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16551&highlight=lemonade+diet

http://www.veganforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19077&highlight=detox

I hope one of those is what you were looking for!

[RubyDuby]

wow theres more!

http://www.veganforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10558&highlight=fruit+juice+cleanse

http://www.veganforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4955&highlight=fruit+juice+cleanse

[ellaminnowpea]

Thanks Ruby,
wow, those look extreme! none of them really worked out for them, either... :confused:
maybe the raw thing is best? :o

[ellaminnowpea]

Hey, I'm thinking about juice fasting/ feasting... I seem to remember a member on here doing one..... maybe Noogle?

[RubyDuby]

I searched for 'noogle fast' and this thread came up.
maybe it's in there somewhere?

http://www.veganforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16589&highlight=noogle+fast

[The Bean]

There is a good book on raw foods recipe book... ill try and rememer the name of it ! Its quiet special foods so it doesnt really look like your eating raw foods, but you get the benefits form it!:D

[ellaminnowpea]

Haha thanks Ruby, I'm an idiot looking for threads.

Hmmm, The Bean, do you remember the book?

I think I'm doing raw but it seems like itll take a good couple weeks to get my supplies together. I'm planning on getting Dr. Graham's book along with some wheatgrass, various mixed sprouting seeds, and a sprouting jar.

[treehugga]

I regularly detox for health. I use a number of d/t sources and combine them to form what suites me.
Some of these are:
Raw recipes and advice via www.fredericpatenaude.com
Joshi's holistic detox
'You are what you eat' Gillian McKeith
'The Liver Cleansing Diet' Dr Sandra Cabot
'Enlightened Eating' Caroline Marie Dupont
And books by Deepak Chopra

[Roxy]

Happy's been doing a detox too, so it might be worth checking with her as well.

[ellaminnowpea]

Thanks Roxy!

Treehugga, can you tell me more about "The Liver Cleansing Diet"?
Oh and I think I'll be getting the "Enlightened Eating" as well. I've heard a bit about it and it seemed pretty good :)

[treehugga]

The Liver Cleansing Diet focuses on cleansing the liver so that we are working at our optimum health levels and getting rid of 'fatty liver'. Livers are filters that clog, so you start off with a stricter detox diet for up to 6 weeks to cleanse the liver, then follow a healthy eating schedule for as long as you want. It's really a healthy eating plan. Things like the thyroid gland, hormones are also consider with the eating plan. Dr Sandra Cabot is a specialist in women's health and body functioning and diet. She also discusses herbs to support this process. I take liver cleansing herbs regularly and have really noticed a difference. I also do the 6 weeks cleanse a couple of times a year to keep at optimal health. It's also quite easy to do as you are not restricted in amounts of food and there is a good variety - unlike liquid or very restricted cleanses which have always left me with intense migraines and dizzy spells and lethargy.
Type in Liver cleanse on the net to see examples or check out www.liverdoctor.com for more info.
Good luck.

[Risker]

This is a good web page on it - http://skeptoid.com/episode.php?id=4083

[snivelingchild]

Please don't lump together all kinds of cleansing. Yes there are wackos out there, but that does not debunk everything related to them. Detoxing and cleaning are real things that your body does everyday. That is one of the big jobs of the liver. Not everyone's liver functions very well, especially if you have a liver disease like hepititis. If you take the herb milk thistle, it help the liver's job my helping to clean the blood, and things that may get built up in the liver when it does not work properly. You can do a milk thistle cleanse to achieve this.

If you have gout, you have a build up of excess uric acid in your body, and it stores in all tissues. The places it stores the most, like toes, etc. can be very painful. Alfalfa is an herb that helps to rid the body of uric acid, and doing an alfalfa cleanse (usually taking 3000mg a day for 3-5 days) can help gout, and prevent kidney stone problems that may result.

While MOST people do not need to do colon cleanses, some people really do get matter trapped in the colon, usually in the form of fatty deposits that form mucus-like stuff in the sides. This helps to form polyps. This usually results when someone has a diet high in saturated fats, and low in fiber, so their colon does not evacuate these fats regularly, they it is very thick because they have hard, not watery stools. There's a lot of fake stuff out there, but fibers are pretty much the only thing that cleans out the colon. If you have an abnormal build up in your colon, the amount of fiber you can get from food usually is not enough to help. That's why you have to take a variety of different fibers. Some fibers help clean out fats (pectins) some help clean out proteins, and some help clean out carbs/bulk (psyllium). The only thing herbs can do is evacuate the colon with a laxative effect, or sooth the colon (usually ginger and the like to counteract the effects of the laxatives).

Drinking lots of water and sweating it out is a cleanse. Taking a hot bath with salts is a cleanse. If you get heavy metal toxicity, you need to take pectin since it binds to fats in the body, and takes them with it when it is evacuated, and heavy metals bind to fatty deposits in the body, usually leading to fybric symptoms. And yes, there are still plenty of ways to be exposed to heavy metals. All I had to do was drink from my pipes. Alternative medicine is unlike traditional medicine in that the responsibility is largely in the people to know what they are doing. Some people are just stupid, and some people are just greedy, so these people combine to do stupid things that discredit alternative medicine as a whole.

[treehugga]

I think some things work and some don't - like anything else there are people out their wanting to make huge sums of money on a whim so you need to be careful and use common sense.

If something claims to be a miracle - I'm skeptical of it. If it was everyone would be using it and we wouldn't have any disease.

I bought the footpads once that claim to draw toxins from the body. Yes, they did turn black the next morning but they also contained mushroom and crystals. Crystals draw moisture from the body and what happens to mushrooms when they get wet? They turn black!!

Sometimes I think if something sounds probable - give it a go. If their are no positive results - give it miss from then on.

I don't think you can go wrong with a healthy diet nurturing your body with the nutrients it needs- ongoing. Lots of evidence supports this.

D/t things also work for d/t people. I may have a great result with acupuncture but someone else may find it has no effect at all.

Research the d/t detox methods and make your own mind up.

[Risker]

Please don't lump together all kinds of cleansing. Yes there are wackos out there, but that does not debunk everything related to them. Detoxing and cleaning are real things that your body does everyday. That is one of the big jobs of the liver. Not everyone's liver functions very well, especially if you have a liver disease like hepititis.

Of course there are medically diagnosed reasons for fasting or avoiding certain food products, for instance not eating for 24 hours before a general anaesthetic.

I don't feel however that I can sit by and let people encourage a 'treatment' to a self-diagnosed or non-existant health issue when it may well actually be harmful to their health and has very little supporting evidence in scientific studies.

[Sarah_]

Not sure about juice fasting and whatnot, but I read an article about fasting that said it was terrible for the body and can make you unhealthy because all the vitamins and nutrients you get from food each day is what allows your body to kill off all the bad stuff that gets in it-thus making you sick. Like depriving a car of gas. After a while, it's not gonna go.
Then again, that was just one argument-though I don't think I'll be fasting any time soon.

[ellaminnowpea]

Well, I really appreciate the responses to my post. I understand the whole detox/ cleanse thing is really a big fad right now, like people just do them to do them. I actually decided to a detox/ cleanse/ fast because of liver and digestive problems I've been suffering from for over ten years. I am tired of being on meds that seem to barely work and really aren't healing anything. They keep things manageable, but why shouldn't my body be able to digest proteins and detox (through liver) by itself? Especially at age 21!

I'm going raw instead of doing a fast due to other health reasons. I have a lot of digestive problems and wanted to get of my meds for my body to "relearn" to digest food without meds. Along with my liver detoxing my body better. I think I'll do raw and stay away from inflammatory foods, soy, wheat, and overly cooked foods. Then I'll slowly wean off the meds and see how my body handles that.

Thanks for all the input! I will be trying a lower protein raw vegan diet for a while.

[ellaminnowpea]

Well, I didn't last on the raw thing very long, got very weak and lethargic. I kept blacking out :(


I do have a question for those of you who "believe" in detoxing. Is it normal to get pains in your sides and stomach? I'm getting them mostly on the left side below my ribcage in the back.

[harpy]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7520756.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7521137.stm

I know "detoxing" doesn't necessarily involve drinking vast amounts of water but I thought this was worth posting in case anyone was unaware of the danger.

[pkmnx]

ellaminnowpea,

I usually do a yearly fast of some sort, lasting about a month. I've been doing this for about 5 years now. I think the key is give your digestive system a break, pretty much from whatever you are doing. there are a number of books out there and I suggest that you read them and read what others have to say, but in the end, your body, I think, is going to be a bit different from everyone else's body.

as of late, I have been doing sort of "fresh fruit and vegetable" fasts with generally lots of water, as much as 3 liters. I love to sweat, as well and will go to the sauna like every day.

cooking food really does destroy a lot of nutrients as well as almost seems to mask out many of our senses and I'll find that in many ways I'm more irritable than before, I smell more, I feel more, my moods are heightened more, and I'll discover all this stuff thats wrong with me or right, as the case might be. the key, again, I think is to take that time period to slow things down and change things around a bit so that you can put your body in a place where its more likely that you can listen to it.

with your example, you may have found that you have a series of "issues" that need further investigation. its possible that you've caused these problems with your diet, but that seems as of yet unknown. I believe that our body is trying to talk to us but that we often don't know how to communicate effectively with it. slowing things down, meditating, chilling out, etc, I think, go a long way in getting your mind in a condition for you to hear what it is saying ...

after a month I go about my standard days which includes eating out vegan food with friends and going out and having drinks and stuff, but for that month, I put a stop to all of that. It felt so good this past year (april) that I'm thinking of doing it again in august.

-ml
pth

[ellaminnowpea]

Thanks pkmnx, that's so cool that fasting works for you. Do you do straight water fasts? Or fruit fasts?

I wasnt sure if it was dangerous (as in kidneys) or if it's just "detox" and normal. I havent heard of it happeneing to other fasters or raw foodists, so I was a bit worried. I decided to end the detox. I may do a water fast the week in between classes, depending on my work schedule (no more than 12 hours/ day of working... that would be bad...).

But yeah, cool to see someone doing this successfully. Do you have any specific materials you read about it? That you follow? And how is that transition back to cooked/ restaurant foods?

[pkmnx]

hey lmnop ...

I'm not convinced that "diets" work - in the sense of them being short-termed. I honestly think that you should, if you do anything at all, try to construct a food system that is sustainable and one that you think you could continue on forever. if you are in pain and this and that, then I would say to end it.

going back to cooked food is kinda like being slowly drugged asleep in the sense that its good and makes you feel happy, and then I think sure enough, your sense of smell and other things that were heightened through your fast become dulled out again.

but, again, I think that to the degree you can, you should come up w/ a system that works for you - once you've spent time listening to your body. and your body changes every day, every month, every year, so you're continually in the conversation with your body.

so, to be in a bit more detail, I'm not even so sure if I would call it a "fast" anymore, as opposed to a food shift. just because we're all vegan doesn't mean that we're getting the appropriate nutrients and such. You need proteins and minerals, fats and calories and all that when you eat. having only water is definitely going to throw that system out of "balance" for a while. if you have an appropriate mix of waters, uncooked fruits, nuts and vegetables, and you are getting everything you need, I think you should be fine and it ought to be a "diet" you can sustain for the rest of your life, should you choose. for me, personally, I don't think I'm going to do anything else in my life in terms of a "fast" or "diet" or somesuch that I am not prepared to shift my life in terms of eating to.

in terms of the transition, I'm a fairly big waste watcher and I usually notice that I produce much more crap than before, where it seemed that more of what I eat was getting burned up in the digestion process. I always think its cool to have a few pieces of hard crap that is all waste materials rather than a bunch of mushy stuff that looks really gooey. I would transition slowly and, to a certain degree, to what your body is telling you. not that kid part of your body that's like asking for chocolate and shakes and cookies and craps, but the part thats telling you: hey, I need some of those greens or a banana or somesuch.

good luck.

[danaeonyx]

I'm going on a quick fast. I'm gonna go a few days on just water, fruit juice, and green tea, then move onto fruit, then veg, then move back to a normal diet. Should only last about 1-2 weeks.

The problem I'm having is cravings. I haven't eaten since last night and I feel fantastic, better than I normally do (I've been eating a lot of junk food recently), but I still can't beat these cravings. I'm finding the best thing to do is keep busy

[JuicyGirl]

I like to do green smoothies in the mornings and afternoons and then a small lighter meal at night (sometimes raw, sometimes not). It gives you energy all day!

Green for Life is a really good book about how just adding a nice green smoothie to your diet everyday can have tremendous health benefits. Just adding the one quart of green smoothie a day (and not changing anything else in their diets) also reduces cravings for junk food and sweets.

The best book to read about a juice detox is called "7 Lbs in 7 Days" by Jason Vale. He is well-known as the JuiceMaster in the UK. The book is not a fad diet either like it sounds... but you will lose weight. But overall you feel really great and have more energy. The smoothies are all well balanced (some are made with avacado for more protein and fibre) and planned out so you get all the nutrients you need.