Chapter 10

Detoxification: The Body Clean Up

A popular phrase is “I am on a detox.” I have many patients who are especially interested in detoxing and we can certainly take part in a detox lasting up to 14 days. However, the most important point is that if you choose wellness, you enhance your detox with your everyday diet; our organs are detoxing every day to keep us alive.

Irradiating, bleaching and heating our foods has stripped it of health giving vitamins, enzymes, fibre and minerals. The processed foods that we overindulge in have clogged up our intestines, making it terribly difficult for the body to efficiently absorb the limited amount of vitamins and minerals that it does get. The primary goal of detoxing is to eliminate toxins from your body. This will improve your energy, give your liver and digestive system a break, clear up your skin, improve your health and help you lose weight. A detox can last anywhere from 3 days to 5 weeks or longer but 10 to 14 days is a good length to aim for. Here are a half dozen ways to ease into your detox program:

• Drink more water. Have a large glass when you wake up, carry a water bottle with you throughout the day and drink water with your meals. Add lemon, lime or blueberries for taste. I love warm water. I feel it helps to improve my digestion and almost soothes the gut with every mouthful
• Have the CLEAN TEA - 2 cups a day
• Incorporate DETOX HERBS - Mixed by me or another naturopath may provide other formulas
• Increase your exercise level. Working up a sweat is a great start to a detox
• Cut back to eating meat every second day
• Cut back on coffee and replace it with chicory root, herbal tea or yerba mate tea
• Add quinoa to your vegetable mix
• Avoid frozen and processed foods
• Avoid alcohol and cigarette smoking

Your Detox Elimination

If you are new to detoxing you may choose to begin with a 1 day cleanse. This will give your body a chance to take a break from all of the pressure that it is under to make sense of the unnatural foods that it is being forced to cope with. You’ll need a juicer so that you can make soups and juices from the foods that you can consume. This is a great opportunity to dip your foot into the detoxing waters. It will be like giving you body a one day tune up.

The first things to eliminate from your diet are alcohol and coffee. Next, cut out all fast foods, junk foods and fried foods. Then get rid of all processed foods; refined flour and refined sugar and flour based foods. After that, get rid of all dairy foods. Eventually I would hope that you never, or rarely, subject your body to the abovementioned foods again.

At this point your diet will consist of things like fruit, vegetables, legumes, quinoa, brown rice, little meat and other non-refined grains.

Here are 10 tips to make your 1 day detox a smashing success:

• Select foods close to nature
• Start the day with a piece of fruit or lemon juice in hot water
• Include fresh fruits and salads
• Include fresh vegetables
• Include hormone free, free range, organic protein
• Celtic salt
• Herbal teas
• Cold pressed oils, olive oil, coconut oil, flaxseed
• Apple cider vinegar can be used for digestive stimulation
• Nuts and seeds (activated is best)

To take your detox to the next level, go to a completely raw detox diet. This consists of raw nuts, raw fruits and vegetables.

A juice fat detox involves only eating fruits and vegetables that have been put through a juicer. A juice detox, however, will not provide much in the way of fibre.

If you would like to detox I recommend that you see a naturopath who can guide you.

I have a detox herb mix in-house that I make up for my clients. I also recommend the clean tea with some amazing herbs that assists your organs to keep clearing toxins.

Understanding DIGESTION

- Nourishment is more than diet, its what our body does with food and how it processes it. Let’s examine the process…

Digestion actually begins in the brain. This is called the cephalic phase of digestion, which is stimulated by the parasympathetic nervous system. When you see and smell food and even start thinking about eating, the brain readies the digestive tract for nourishment. This anticipation stimulates the secretion of saliva in the mouth and gastric juices in the stomach.

Then Digestion in the Mouth…

Once you take a bite of some food, you’ve initiated what’s called mechanical digestion. This chewing reduces the size of the food particles and mixes them with saliva for easier swallowing. Before your food passes from the mouth and down your oesophagus, salivary amylase, an enzyme in saliva, begins to digest the sugars present, if there are any in what you are consuming.

The chewed food is called a bolus. Swallowing is voluntary but the rest of the digestion-absorption process is involuntary. The passage of the bolus through the oesophagus to the stomach occurs by peristalsis, a series of wave-like muscle contractions.

As the bolus approaches the stomach, a ring-like muscle called the lower oesophageal sphincter relaxes, allowing the chewed food to enter. Peristalsis mixes the bolus with gastric secretions containing hydrochloric acid (HCl), hormones and digestive enzymes to produce a thick slurry called chyme.

To aid digestion, hydrochloric acid then denatures or unfolds proteins, making them more available to attack by digestive enzymes.

The digestive enzyme pepsin begins to break down the protein in your food. Gastric lipase begins to digest the fats present in the food.

Digestion of the sugars in your food does not occur in the stomach because the salivary amylase that began the chemical digestion in your mouth became inactive in the presence of stomach acid.

The Small Intestine

Little by little, the chyme drops into the small intestine via the pyloric sphincter. The small intestine is the first site for digestion.

Large absorptive areas allow us to take in the nutrients from our foods.

Because chyme was mixed with HCl in the stomach, it has a very low pH. The mucosa of the small intestine does not have as much protective mucus as the stomach but it does have something else to shield it from the acid - pancreatic juices. The presence of chyme in the upper portion of the small intestine triggers the pancreas to secrete bicarbonate to neutralise the acid, lipase to digest fats, amylase to digest starches and proteases to digest proteins. The cells of the small intestine secrete additional enzymes to complete digestion.

The gallbladder will assist here as well. When fat is present in the chyme from the food consumed, the gallbladder contracts and secretes bile into the small intestine. Bile acts like a detergent and emulsifies the fat, breaking it into small globules and aiding fat absorption.

In the small intestine, the folds are covered with tiny fingerlike projections called villi which, in turn, are covered by microscopic projections called microvilli. This combination of folds and projections increases the absorptive area of the small intestine 600-fold to the size of a tennis court! This allows for the absorption of far more nourishment than most of us would want to eat!!!

Once carbohydrates and sugars have been digested into monosaccharides (glucose, galactose or fructose) they are ready for absorption. They pass through the lining of the small intestine, into the bloodstream via the portal vein and to the liver. Proteins are broken down primarily to single amino acids. They follow a similar path to the liver, as do the monosaccharides. Because of their lack of water-solubility, the majority of the fats take a very different path. Most of the dietary fat comes in the form of triglycerides and is digested into two free fatty acids and monoglycerides. In the intestinal cells however, these components are resynthesised into triglycerides. They do not go through the portal vein. Instead, they are packaged with cholesterol and coated with proteins to form particles called chylomicrons. The lymphatic vessels transport the chylomicrons to the junction of the lymphatic and circulatory systems where they enter the bloodstream. Only a small portion of fats is absorbed into the portal vein. These are the smaller fatty acids that are more water-soluble than the long-chain fatty acids.

Vitamins, minerals, water and many drugs are also absorbed through the intestinal mucosa.

It Ends in the Colon

Peristalsis pushes food waste, fibre and any foreign materials through the small and large intestines. More water and salts are absorbed from the large intestine. As the contents move downwards, the faeces (consisting of water, fibre, intestinal secretions and dead bacteria) are formed and eventually pushed through the anus.

TIP:	If you want to check how long it takes for this process to complete, have a small tin of corn and count the hours it takes for it to appear in the toilet.

The GI tract is complex but so amazing. Any inflammation or nervous system problems will stop the breakdown of food and the absorption of nutrients.

Nutrition to our cells is more than making good food choices. When I assist in treating the gut I also look at the nervous system and the spinal column.

How we feel will affect this process. Our emotions, like anxiety or grief, will no doubt affect our gut.

Spinal issues will also affect digestion and these need to be addressed by a chiropractor or osteopath.

A LOOK AT FOOD SENSITIVITIES

Did you know that maintaining a healthy body involves more then just a healthy diet? There are foods that can trigger immune system responses which can strain our bodies. If we continue to eat these and expose our body, over time they can potentially cause many illnesses.

As a naturopath, we always consider these sensitivities when treating a patient for different kind of ailments.

So Who Has Sensitivities?

Symptoms of allergy, including wheezing, runny nose, irritable bowel, migraine headaches, skin rashes or a host of other common uncomfortable and often debilitating problems can indicate food sensitivities. Food sensitivities are also linked to many autoimmune disorders.

Removing the foods that aggravate will quickly resolve many of the symptoms without the need for harmful medications that have many side effects.

What Can I Do?

A simple blood test to identify elevated antibodies to foods and inhalant allergens, which is done using the ELISA method. These allergies may be contributing to undue inflammation in your body.

The ELISA method is a precise and accurate method to identify your food and inhalant allergies.

We can test you in-house at the clinic or you can contact your healthcare provider.

The 96 General Foods Tested: