Do you recommend any cleansing diets? My 26 year old daughter is asking me for advice on the matter, so I thought of you. Thanks for any help you can be.
I was afraid someone would ask that question sooner or later
Well, actually I'm glad you asked.
My answer is going to be controversial though
The whole idea of "cleansing diets" is based on the belief that we're somehow "poisoned" by either our food or some infection such as Candida. That idea holds some truth. I'll assume that she wants to have some advice pertaining the latter.
The short answer: I do not believe in cleansing diets. In my opinion, there is no such thing as a cleansing diet. There are only good diets and bad diets. A bad diet is a diet that promotes disease and unhealthiness and obesity and Diabetes and lack of essential nutrients. A good diet is a diet that strengthens the immune system and supplies all essential nutrients and limits the intake of "empty" carbohydrates.
In essence, a "good" diet is automatically a "cleansing" diet, if you want to call it that. I think that everyone should always be on a good diet, so everyone should always be on a "cleansing diet".
Candida toxins are eliminated by any living body just as fast with an ordinary healthy diet as with all those "cleaning supplements" they try to sell you.
And if she is worried about heavy metals, let her read my article about Mercury and Candida. Another Mercury and Candida article I wrote. Basically, get rid of "silver" fillings (Mercury amalgam) and your body will eliminate the Mercury without the aid of chelative agents. Those substances do more harm than good - they remove important minerals and trace elements as well - and they're essential for a healthy immune system.
The whole idea of taking all kinds of "cleansing supplements" is a commercial one. There exists thousands of such alleged supplements, each with their own semi-scientific justification. The truth is that if you eat properly, you do not need any supplements, and your body will cleanse itself. Our good Lord in Heaven / Evolution, however you want to look at it, has provided us with the most amazing system for doing that. It is called homeostasis.
In order to eat properly, you need to focus on one thing only:
Eat as natural as possible. With that I don't necessarily mean raw. I mean that a person should eat what humans have been eating before humanity invented agriculture, relatively very recently, namely at most 14 thousand years ago. Before agriculture, people were hunters-gatherers and ate mainly herbs, fruits, roots, nuts, fish and game. No bread. No diary. Nothing with gluten, in fact.
I recently received an email from a very religious man. He said that he trusted the Bible, when it mentioned wheat as a recommended food. I believe in God as the creator of the Universe and I believe all life was intentionally designed in the way that God designed quantum mechanics and God already knew that that would lead to the stars, the planets and the sea and the sky and all creatures. But I do not believe the Bible is the full and reliable word of God. The Old Testament has been written by people, all kinds of people over the ages. So whatever the Bible says about nutrition, I'd take it with a pinch of salt, with all due respect. The Old Testament has been written well after the Agricultural Revolution, and agriculture is the worst thing that ever happened to our diet. Agriculture - directly or indirectly - is singlehandedly responsible, directly or indirectly, for just about every problem with our diet today. Before the invention of agriculture, our diet was balanced and healthy fror millions of years. Humans haven't changed significantly in the last 200 000 years. (Again, religious people who believe the world is 6000 years old - I'm sorry but my dietary advice is based on current scientific doctrine as well as common sense - science hasn't all the answers yet and science is often misinterpreted, misrepresented or censored anyway).
Eating naturally also means you should avoid bio-industry in all its forms. Farmland is poor in nutrients nowadays. Half a century ago, potatoes, apples and other vegetable food contained up to 60% more vitamins and minerals. Soil depletion has changed that. Fertilizer is no full replacement. It's nearly impossible to cheaply get food from non-depleted soils, so it's a good idea to take a miltivitamin supplement with levels much higher than the RDA.
Eating naturally also means that you should eat several small meals throughout the day. Hunters-gatherers would collect nuts, roots and berries and constantly nibble on them. Don't over-eat, try to be a bit hungry when you take a meal and still a bit hungry when you stop eating. Don't believe in the advice of drinking so-and-so many glasses of water a day. Listen to your own body.
Don't eat processed food at all. High fructose corn syrup is taboo. Anything that spikes the blood sugar level is taboo. It's OK to eat chocolate or other high-GI food such as potatoes now and then, but eat small portions such as not to cause large rises in blood sugar. Large meals of food with a big GI (glycemic index) are very unhealthy and a cause of all kinds of chronic health problems and premature aging.
Do not believe anything the government or doctors tell you. Eat eggs with the yoke. Eat saturated fat such as real butter and fat meat. Don't overdo it of course - maintain a healthy weight. But saturated fats are an important part of a healthy diet, and we have been told the opposite.
Avoid trans fats (such as in cookies) like the plague. They kill slowly but surely. Try to limit your intake of Acrylamide because it is a strong carcinogen. Acrylamide is in all food that is heated significantly above the boiling point of water. Bread, potato chips, grilled meat, roasted nuts, coffee - it's all mildly carcinogenic. Healthy people won't develop cancer unless they're exposed to huge risk factors though and some occasional grilled meat is not it.
Avoid anything from tin cans that have a white coating inside. Such coatings leech female sex hormone analogues and this is unhealthy for both sexes.
Again, "cleansing diets" do not exist, in my opinion. It is a way for "experts" to show that they "know the secret" about hundreds of exotic (and often expensive, commercial) supplements. It's all nonsense, in my opinion. There is only one good diet and it is good for every human being on the planet, sick or healthy. It's hard enough to get that right, do yourself and your wallet a favor and forget about the magic supplements.
The big problem is that there is too much conflicting opinion on what constitutes a good diet, and that ordinary people have no way of finding out what is the truth. Being nervous about health problems, they read all kinds of recommendations on supplements X, Y & Z and spend money that they should have spent on a good diet instead. Mainly due to soil depletion, a really healthy diet can be expensive nowadays. It's hard to get the optimal amounts of nutrients without overeating on calories if you just eat supermarket veggies, meat, fruit, rice and potatoes. You should include "superfoods" too, food with a lot of nutrients-per-calorie.
Eat an avocado with pepper and salt. Eat sardines in olive oil straight from the can. Make a huge leafy salad now and then. Cook wholesome thick soups with lots of fresh seasonal ingredients. Snack on cashew nuts, pistachio's or almonds. Remember that cows have strong bones and plants is all they eat. Unless you're a vegetarian, don't be afraid of fat meat as long as you don't over-eat. In spite of what they claim, saturated fats are an important part of a healthy diet. Stir-fry half a dozen different vegetables in a wok and eat them with marinated meat and brown rice. Avoid pasta, bread and diary products as well as anything that has been adulterated by a factory. The Middle Eastern kitchen has incredibly delicious and nutricious food. Learn to make Tahina, Hummus and Baba-Ganoush. Make lentil soup with onions. There is more to food than bread, hamburgers, potatoes and steak.
I can only recommend a few supplements to strengthen the immune system: Reishi, vitamin D, beta glucan and fish oil.
I can write a lot more on what I think constitutes a healthy diet (and why..) but this has to suffice for now, as it's 01:00 here now and I have to go to bed
I see you recommended eating rice and beans. Do you have an opinion about the danger of the lectins those foods contain? I've read a bit about lectins and supposedly they're in all grains, legumes, and the nightshade vegetables. Like gluten grains, these are all foods that weren't eaten until relatively recently.
Thank you for mentioning it - I admit that I hadn't worried too much about lectins, but it's an interesting idea to write something about them soon :-)
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