Nutrition Experiment Day Four

It was still dark the first time I woke up, and my head was pounding. I went back to sleep and woke again with the sun. I felt miserable, exhausted, my back ached and my head hurt, so I went back to sleep until ten o’clock. My headache continued and I had to force myself to get out of bed.

These are all symptoms of detoxification. If you’ve ever dieted, you know what detoxification feels like. When your body is relieved of the work of digestion, it has energy to break down toxins and put them in the bloodstream for elimination. The same thing occurs when you do not consume enough and your body has to rely on internal tissues for energy. These toxins can cause headache, fatigue, rashes, cold sores, muscle aches, any number of unpleasant effects.

Since I was heavily in detox, I wasn’t very hungry. My body was using all energy to clean house and didn’t have a lot of energy to digest food, thus the lack of hunger. I went with it and didn’t eat any solid food until four o’clock.

Day Four’s Consumption

10:15 2 cups tea
14:10 5 carrots, 6 celery stalks, 1 large beet juiced
16:00 bowl of red grapes
17:29 2 plums
20:10 large salad with romaine and red leaf lettuce, 1/2 cucumber, 1 tomato, flax oil, lemon juice and cilantro
20:35 4 small carrots with homemade raw hummus
21:15 big bowl of popcorn with salt and butter (not exactly the top ten on the nutrition chart, but I had a hankerin’)
00:03 to bed

Here’s the fruit at the beginning of the day. I had to throw out one of the peaches because it never ripened. Looks like I better juice those oranges and eat those pears. The small tomatoes have tough skins that I don’t care for, and they’re starting to go bad. I’ll throw them out. I’m not a big tomatoe fan anyway. The garlic needs to be moved. I guess it’s time to go shopping again. This is really expensive, because all this food is certified organic.

 

No Such Thing as a Quick Fix

I subscribe to some health newsletters, and one I received this morning offered me a product that would do all this work for me. For just $89.85 I can buy a three-month supply of some pills that’ll cleanse my liver and kidneys! And I get an extra bottle free (valued at $29.95), plus a special report on how to spot hidden health problems (valued at $19.95. If it’s free, how can it be valued at $19.95?) and free shipping (valued at $6.95)!

So you can continue to eat crap and load your liver with toxins, and these pills will “aid the liver” in detoxifying them. I’m really moved by one of the testimonials:

I don’t feel nearly as guilty about my burgers and beer when I know I have Liver & Kidney Cleanse™ to help forgive my sins.

The product ad showcases a list of herbs that magically

• help process toxins
• help my liver replace dead or damaged cells
• protect liver cells from hardening
• remove fat accumulation and excess cholesterol
• enhance bile secretion
• remove dangerous toxins from liver
• help production of bile
• help reduce liver inflammation
• purge poisons to purify blood

Whoa! I’m not even halfway through the list. Sounds good, doesn’t it? You can continue to eat pizza and ice cream, Kraft macaroni and cheese, hamburgers, french fries, frozen dinners, canned soups, donuts, coffee, steaks and potatoes. Just take these pills and all your troubles will go away.

What they’re really saying is, “Your liver is supposed to perform all these functions, but you’ve screwed it up by unhealthy living. For $89.95 our product will act as another liver. Kind of a liver buddy system.” Now there’s no doubt that improved nutrition can help all cells of your body function better, but doesn’t it make more sense to help the liver by helping the entire body through healthy life style choices instead of “targeted” supplementation? This pill for this organ, this pill other for that organ, this cream for younger skin, this oil for silkier hair, this pill for brighter eyes.

This is the promise of the medicine and supplement industries. If you buy their product, you can continue to live in ignorance of laws of health and nutrition, breaking them daily. Do you really think you can continue pernicious habits and undo the effects by taking a pill? (Maybe it’s that free report that does the trick.)

The Only Cure is to Remove Cause

Back when I was a word processor I damaged my fingers by overworking them causing tendonitis. I was on a workmen’s comp claim for almost a year, received chiropractic treatment and wore wrist splints. I immersed my hands in hot and cold baths, which helped relieve the pain but did nothing for the damage.

I also researched various herbs and nutritional products aimed at reducing inflammation and joint pain. I believed the “cure” paradigm, that I could take something that would correct the problem. I spent over a hundred dollars every month on supplements. None of it worked.

To this day I still have mild tendonitis in my fingers. How did I do it? I changed careers. All I need to do to cause a flare up is do a lot of straight typing. The only “cure” for the inflammation is to stop the irritation that caused it, which means stop using my fingers for typing. I still type, but I pace myself.

I shake my head at TV commercials for problems like elbow pain. You’ll see a man gripping his joint, squeezing his face in pain, with little graphic lightning bolts producing a halo effect around his elbow. Ouch. You can just feel it. Then the product is offered that’ll help relieve the pain. “Take our pain relief pill and you’ll be back playing tennis in no time!” “Rub your joint with our special cream to reduce inflammation.” The next shot shows him in his fancy tennis clothes swinging a racket, joy beaming from his face. Nothin’ can stop this fella from his entertainments.

Okay, so you overworked the joint, damaged the tissues, and the irritation has caused inflammation, which the body instituted to repair the damage. The body signals you with pain that there’s a problem and you need to stop using the joint until it can be repaired. The pain acts to set your boundaries.

So to fix this you want to add a toxic drug to your liver’s workload so you can go out and do it again? That’s like saying, “I’ve been scratching my arm so much that I’ve opened the skin, and now I want a drug to stop the pain so I can keep scratching it.” This is why we have so many chronic conditions. Instead of addressing cause we treat the symptoms and continue hurting ourselves. There’s no money in telling you to stop scratching. But my pain relief cream costs only $24.95 (free shipping included)!

I just heard a couple of days ago that the drug industry is now targeting children for cholesterol lowering drugs. Feed your children crap and poison them with drugs. I’m sickened by it. How did we become so damned braindead?! Why are we trusting an industry that kills more people than any other industry?

Half of the American population is on pharmaceutical drugs. I don’t even know how many are consuming supplements, but it’s a billion dollary industry. But it’s obviously not working well. We are one sick nation. No amount of symptom management and suppression will address cause. Please don’t buy into it. Health is only achieved through healthy living. Begin making better choices today, one step at a time.