Conscious Choice: Spring Cleaning

March 2006 | Body & Mind Health

Spring Cleaning

By Darlene E. Paris

Each spring, I take time out to clean my house — not the home in which I reside — but my physical body, the place where my spirit lives. Practitioners in the field of natural healing call this process detoxification.

My nutritionist says that our bodies are full of toxins, and that toxins are actually poisons that come from the food we eat, medicines we take, and the air we breathe. Toxins also accumulate when we’re under stress.

For the past four years, I’ve participated in detox programs where a group of us have fasted on fruit and vegetable juices, or have taken herbal cleansers to help break up these toxins. I’ve also received a series of colon hydrotherapy sessions, a healing method that uses water to break up accumulated waste in the colon, or daily enemas to move the poisons out.

Detox classes, held at natural healthcare facilities or colon hydrotherapy offices, are extremely effective because professionals teach you how to cleanse your body while you continue to handle the daily responsibilities of your life. But this year I’m going to a place where I’ll be able to detox my body without having to worry about the daily grind. I’ll be going to the Creative Health Institute, a detoxification center located in a rural town called Union City, about 20 miles south of Battle Creek, Mich. I first went to the institute five years ago after suffering from a range of food allergies including candidiasis — a fancy word for yeast infection, a condition marked by an overgrowth of yeast in the gut.

I wasn’t surprised when at age 30 my health began to decline. For several years, I ate at fast food restaurants daily because I didn’t like cooking. I also stayed up late at night even though I had to get up at 5 a.m. for work, and I didn’t drink enough water, so my bowels would only move about two or three times a week.

Once I turned 35, my condition worsened. I couldn’t eat the fast food because either I’d bloat, get gas, or feel extremely sick. My nutritionist told me that the food I was eating contained toxins. So I began buying foods from the grocery store that were easy to prepare.

Then my nutritionist informed me that not only were the fast foods I was eating toxic, but the packaged goods that I was now buying were also full of chemicals and preservatives that were poisonous to my body. The only way for me to get rid of the toxic load was to refrain from eating cooked food. Since I had become so ill that the only thing I could eat was pureed vegetables, she recommended that I spend two weeks at a detoxification center.

When I arrived, my ultimate goal was to resume eating the foods I loved once I returned from the program.

The 10-day program consisted of a three-day fast on an uncooked vegetable dish called Energy Soup, which consisted of buckwheat and sunflower sprouts, celery, cucumber, and apples. For the remaining days, we’d eat other kinds of raw and living foods.

During the fast we would take enemas or get colon hydrotherapy sessions to make sure the toxins exited rapidly out of the body.

Once the three-day fast was over, we learned how to make a variety of raw and living foods entrees. Not only did I learn to make hamburgers, or sunburgers, as they’re called, but I also discovered recipes for desserts made from raisins, dates, figs, cashews and pine nuts. I also learned to sprout legumes, make Rejuvelac, a fermented drink that replenishes the gut with friendly bacteria, and Energy Soup.

But the most fascinating discoveries I made were the many benefits of drinking wheatgrass juice, an elixir extracted from grass grown indoors from sprouted wheatberries.

Wheatgrass is a major component of the institute’s detoxification program. One of its main components is chlorophyll, which protects the body from carcinogens. It’s also a blood purifier. I hated its taste, but I kept hearing stories from people who said this green juice rapidly improved their health. The director said that when she had fasted on wheatgrass, she not only recovered from depression, but she also maintained the energy to work two jobs. Another person said it lowered their cholesterol. Still another used it as an appetite suppressant.

Surprisingly, after drinking the juice three times a day for an entire week, I grew accustomed to its bittersweet taste.

By the end of the program, my disdain had turned into a love affair as I noticed my energy level increase and symptoms of candidiasis disappear.

But the most important thing I took home was something that no amount of money could buy — a marked improvement in my health.

For information about the Creative Health Institute, call 866-426-1213 or check out their website at creativehealthinstitute.us.

Darlene E. Paris is a Chicago-based writer specializing in spiritual and health matters.

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