The New Year is almost upon us. That means the socially obligatory sugar and carb feasting is finally over. Most of us have had too many simple carbs and sugarsover the last couple months and ithas played havoc with our metabolisms, even if we are not feeling it. Even if you have been divinely good, this suggestion is for you as well.
Throughout history in northern climates, winter has been a time of food shortages. As the cold of winter kills off vegetation and our stores of saved foods runs low, we end up not eating very often. This is not a bad thing. Our body uses this time to clean out and repair our healing and detoxification systems. Winter is the natural healing time to get our bodies prepared for the energetic appearance of spring. With this understanding, I am suggesting we support this natural order in our bodies by using the first few weeks of the new year to engage in a detoxification of our bodies.
Detoxification is a very different process compared to our normal daily metabolic processes. Normally we center on taking nutrients into our body and converting them into energy sources, repair materials, and storage for later. The chief organ that is the central player in this is the liver. It is the first stop of everything that our digestive tract absorbs. The liver does over 800 different things. It is also the central player in the detoxification process. However it will only engage the detoxification systems if there is no food for it to process.
Typically it takes about 8 hours from our last meal for the liver to finish processing what we ate. At this time the liver is able to start the cleanup processes involved in detoxification. If you snack before bed and have breakfast shortly after arising, your liver never gets to step into detox mode. The simplest way to do some detox is to leave 14 to 16 hours between your last food for the day and your next meal the following
day. This is called intermittent fasting. That would look like not eating breakfast until 10 am and finishing dinner by 6 pm. Eat nothing between 6pm and 10 am.
This would be the easiest New Year’s detoxification once you add in abstaining from further consumption of excess sugars, simple carbs, and processed foods. What does excess mean? It means any at all, basically. Give your body three weeks without breads, grains, potatoes, pasta, sugar, and anything that comes in a package that can sit on a shelf that has multiple ingredients in it. It also means no frying of foods and no use of vegetable oils. All of these items stress your liver and block detoxification of your body. Use fresh foods; real foods.
For those of you that know how important detoxification is and want to take this to a deeper level, we can make some further choices to increase the detox process. One obvious choice would be to eat only once per day to increase the time the liver is in detox mode. Another equally effective choice that is a bit easier is to limit yourself to eating foods that will not shut down the detox process of the liver. Carbs, proteins, and to a small degree fats all keep the liver too busy processing foods to be able to do any detox processing. The one class of foods that does not interfere with the liver is fiber. Soluble fibers provide food for the beneficial bacteria in your gut while the insoluble fibers act as a broom to clean out your intestines – another important part of a detox time.
What does this mean to a detox process? It means we can eat non-starchy vegetables without disturbing the liver’s detox process. Leaves, stems, and low carb roots and bulbs offer us plenty of food to fill our belly that will only support our detox goals. Green smoothies, salads, stir fries, grilled veggies, veggie soups, fermented veggies – all are excellent detox foods. For a more powerful New Year’s detox I suggest eating only one meal a day that has protein, fats, and complex carbs in it and eating fiber foods the rest of the day.
Are there some of you that really want to take this to the ultimate detox? To do that we have to avoid carbs and proteins completely. Our total calorie consumption has to be below 600 calories a day and most of that would be from healthy fats like coconut oil, organic butter or ghee, avocado oil, olive oil, and a little bit of organic, cold pressed, unprocessed omega 6 oils like flax, pumpkin, evening primrose and omega 3 oils, like krill. By getting down to this level of clean foods, the entire body is able to kick into detox mode known as autophagy. This is where the body starts getting rid of junk proteins from all the cells of the body. These junk proteins clog our body up and slow down our energy production and repair processes. For example, most of us have heard that it is the junk proteins called amyloid plaque that causes Alzheimer’s dementia. Autophagy is the only process currently known to remove this junk.
What does this deep detoxification process look like? It looks like eating green smoothies, big salads with a little bit of organic oil and vinegar dressing, stir fry veggies using a bit of coconut oil or avocado oil in the pan, grilled veggies with spices and herbs and a vinaigrette or salsa, fermented veggies – all you want, and lovely home made vegetable soups. When you eat is not as important with these foods as they do not disturb the liver’s detox process. Sticking just to these foods will kick your autophagy genes into high gear and really start a deep cleaning on your body. To fully get the autophagy process going takes about 5 days, so the longer you can stay with just these foods the better.
For those of you that want to mix it up a bit, you could do the easy detox or the moderate detox for most of the three weeks, but throw in a five day autophagy detox somewhere along in the process. I recommend pumping in some really good quality proteins after the autophagy phase as there is a growth hormone rebound that works to rebuild the cellular components that were cleaned out during the
autophagy phase. This rebound is about as close to the fountain of youth as we can get. You literally replace old worn- out damaged cells with brand new young cells.
Are there any supplements that support this process? Eating organic veggies supplies most of the nutrients we need for this detox. The only extra I personally add is acetyl-glutathione, the most important substance your liver needs to detox poisons in your body. Other than that you want really clean sources of water and food. Organic is a must as the whole point is to clean out residues of the pesticides and herbicides that are mucking up our metabolic pathways.
What else is helpful – sweating. Specifically the type of sweating you do in a sauna. The sweat you produce when you exercise does not dump toxins. To stimulate toxin release you have to be in what is known as a parasympathetic dominate state. That means relaxed. A near infrared sauna is the most ideal way to do this. Sitting under red heat lamps is a simple example of this. Any sauna is good, but the near infrared is the
best. A spa or even a hot shower can help the body expel toxins.
Massage, particularly lymphatic drainage type massage is also good for helping to move toxins out of the body. Reflexology and acupuncture both have protocols for supporting the detox pathways. Bitter herbs like Swedish Bitters, dandelion, and beet tops also help the liver dump toxins in the bile. There the fibers you are eating should grab the poisons and carry them out of the body. Some people even add activated charcoal, cilantro, chlorella algae, or bentonite clay to capture heavy metals and carry them out of the body. Detoxification is a big field and a lot of research has gone into ways to stimulate and enhance this natural process for cleaning out and rejuvenating the body.
This is my suggestion for starting a healthy New Year. The parties will be over and the holidays finished. Why not give the New Year a really good start with the ultimate gift to your own body – the gift of health.