Are Cleanses and Colonics a Good Idea?
One of my regular blog readers emailed me with a comment about yesterday’s post, which I felt summed up everything quite succinctly.
“I think a public anesthetized on sugar and junk is a passive public”.
This is one subject I really have a hard time with getting off the soapbox about.
Every day I see things that horrify me, and that’s no exaggeration, in terms of things people are eating in lieu of food, their rationale for doing so and a host of other strange procedures or unnatural rituals that people subject themselves to, all in the hopes of righting some wrong, then going back to whatever it was they were doing in the first place that created the less than ideal situation all over again.
Like penance.
For example, just today I had lunch with a friend, a fellow fitness professional with whom I trained side by side at an upscale gym in Santa Monica years ago, and I were discussing ‘cleanses’, ‘colonics’ and how ridiculous the concepts are.
Think about it. The idea that some companies promote is that one needs to ‘do a cleanse in order to give the body/the gut/ or the whole GI tract a break’.
Does your heart need a break? Does your brain get a day off?
Exactly.
So why on Earth would you feel your gut needs to stop working and stop processing food and rendering nourishment to your body once in a while?
Granted, if you’re someone who’s allowed your body to become toxic after years of a diet rich in hydrogenated oil, refined sugar and everything in a box or can, there is likely to be a bit of ‘build-up’ in your body.
However, rather than using the ‘hose me out’ approach and then continuing along your with your fast food/fast track to illness path, how about not having someone (and very often, cleanses and colonics are offered by people who are not properly trained to be poking around) roto-root around inside but instead, begin to supply your body with real nutrients (as in from copious fresh veggies, fruits and some wild proteins), and let your body heal itself?
Eat some broccoli! It’s nature’s broom! It’ll help ‘sweep’ out all the gunk in your guts. Not kidding.
Identify the behavior (eating pretend food), stop doing it, replace with good behavior (eat fresh, real food) and then your body won’t need to be mechanically cleaned in the first place.
By the way, colonics and cleanses are not Paleo. Historical evidence shows the first colonics were performed in ancient Egypt, long after cavemen were walking around!
