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By
Dr. Joseph Mercola
with Rachael Droege
You may have instinctively noticed that your body, as with nature,
follows a natural rhythm or cyclical cycle. On the outside, you
routinely wake in the morning and sleep at night, following your
sleep-wake cycle, or circadian rhythm, you become hungry and you
eat, you breathe air in and then exhale it out, and so on.
On the inside, your body follows similar cycles. Your food is broken
down and transported to your cells for energy, oxygen you breath
is pumped throughout your body by your heart, women have monthly
menstrual cycles and your body goes through regular cycles of cleaning,
repairing and rebuilding--provided you give it the proper help.
Spring is a perfect time to give your body a boost and really take
advantage of the change in season to help rejuvenate, refresh and
revive your body as you come out of winter ‘hibernation.’
Following is a basic guideline to get you started.
Start Juicing
Juicing vegetables is
a superb way to fortify your body with nutrients giving you a radiant,
energetic life and truly optimal health. It also happens to be an
excellent way to cleanse your body, specifically your intestine.
The health of your body is largely dependent on your intestinal
tract, but most Americans have compromised intestines. Why? Because
most of us have been eating less than optimally for many years,
and it’s starting to catch up with us.
A compromised intestine limits your ability to digest and properly
absorb nutrients from food.
Juicing helps to "predigest" the vegetables so you can
get the most nutrition from them, and adding green juice to your
diet will give you plenty of chlorophyll, which is known to help
detoxify and heal the body and build and purify the blood, as it
contains a unique structure similar to hemoglobin, the substance
that transports oxygen through the blood.
Note: Be sure to use metabolically appropriate
vegetables for your juice. If you are a protein type you may
only need about 8 ounces of juice a day. If you are a carb type
a quart of vegetable juice a day maybe more appropriate.
Increase Raw Food in Your Diet
Raw food, including vegetable juice, is generally much easier to
digest than cooked food. In fact, raw food is digested in one-half
to one-third of the time as cooked food.
So while you are cleaning out your body this spring, eating a lot
of raw food will give your digestive system a much needed break,
allowing it to clear out waste that has built up over time.
Raw food can include not only plant foods, but also animal foods
like raw eggs and raw
dairy. For an in-depth look at the benefits of raw food, I encourage
you to read Nancy
Lee Bentley’s discussion of raw
food versus cooked food.
Drink Only Water
One of the best things you can do while cleansing your body, and
always for that matter, is to drink only water. Eliminate all other
beverages including:
Make sure that your water is clean, however. I recommend avoiding
distilled water and
also fluoridated water
and instead using a good filter for your water supply. It’s
a good idea to have your
water tested to identify the contaminants that are there and
determine what type of filter you need.
Eliminate Processed Food
When you eat processed food you are inevitably eating a variety
of synthetic food coloring, flavoring and preservatives. There are
over 6,000 synthetic chemicals used in the processed-food industry,
some of which are known to have carcinogenic properties. Your body
recognizes these additives as toxic and works to eliminate them,
however this puts your immune system under constant stress.
It is easy to understand, then, when many Americans eat a diet
of 90 percent processed food, how your immune system can eventually
crash, leaving you vulnerable to a variety of illnesses.
In order to cleanse your body you need to focus on fresh, whole,
pure foods. Not concoctions that have been artificially created
and are sold in fancy packaging, and certainly not grains
and sugars. Check out my nutrition
plan to learn how to focus your diet on healthy whole foods.
Even if you are planning to give up processed food only for a cleansing
period, I suspect you won’t want to stop after you notice how
great you will feel.
Include Fermented Foods
Finally, Fermented foods
are a great source of good bacteria, amino acids, vitamins, and
minerals. The fermentation process even increases the amounts of
some vitamins and enzymes in the food.
The good bacteria
in fermented foods make the food more digestible and balance your
gut microflora, which will help your body to heal from a variety
of ailments.
Related Articles:
America's Processed
Food Diet Influences Immigrants' Eating
Gall Bladder Flushes
and Cleanses
Spring Allergies
a Problem? Here’s What can Help
Eco-Friendly Spring
Cleaning
Want to Slim Down for
Spring? Here are Five Principles to Live By
Nutritional Supplementation
For Cancer, Part 1
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