How to Kill Candida and Balance Your Inner Ecosystem

Most people ingest too many refined, processed foods. Even us health nuts have a tendency to do this. In this fast paced world, with the body biologically programmed to desire sweets and other easy carbohydrates that are so much harder to find in nature, it’s common and totally normal to have too much Candida in our body.

If you experience this problem, and again, most people do, here are some ways you can balance your gut flora. Balancing the flora will alleviate many health issues, even little annoying ones you thought you were stuck with for the rest of your life such as itchy ear canals, body odor, and eczema.

Garlic

Most people know that garlic is antifungal, antiparasitic, antibacterial, and antiviral. It also helps with a host of other issues including the removal of toxins in the body. If I could only choose one single item to work with when it comes to healing and treatment modalities, I would choose garlic. Unfortunately, many people don’t know exactly how to use it to reap the benefits.

First and foremost, don’t cook it. It loses all its Candida fighting properties when you do. Secondly, cut it up and give it a minute before ingesting it. Or, if you’ve got a strong stomach and an even stronger mouth, chew it up for a minute with your mouth open, breathing in and out. This is also an incredibly effective treatment for tooth and gum problems, and even bad breath; though swallowing it, of course, can lead to garlic breath for many, but garlic breath is a sign of a toxic body.

Don’t use garlic from China, even if it’s organic. One way to tell, is those smaller, bright white garlic bulbs are almost always grown in China. China’s soil is just too toxic.

Essential oils

Oil of oregano has antifungal, antibacterial, and antiparasitic properties as well. Oil of oregano is exceptionally powerful and can be taken in tablet form.

Some other essential oils that kill candida include lavender, thieves, tea tree, and peppermint, though I don’t recommend taking these oils internally. They are a good solution for Candida skin rashes, though they can be painful to use. In most cases, they will not harm the skin even though you will feel a burning sensation.

Oils

Coconut oil is known for its antibacterial, antifungal, and antiparasitic properties, though it’s efficacy with Candida control is weak compared to other ingestible choices. Neem oil is an oil with similar antiparasitic properties, a bit stronger at parasitic control than coconut oil, but it should only be applied topically.

Other notable items that are known to combat fungus include wormwood, black walnut hull, Spanish black radish, Pau d’Arco, goldenseal, coptis chinensis, ginger, cinnamon, and olive leaf extract. All of these are great to have around, and a few of them are exceptional at killing parasites, viruses, and bacterial infections (coptis chinensis, wormwood, black walnut hull, Spanish black radish) but while they are certainly antifungal, they’re not the strongest solution.

My favorite combination for eliminating excess yeast in my body is undecenoic acid (Thorne SF722) and very high quality probiotics. Combine this with Shillington’s intestinal cleanse and with big salads everyday with lots of different vegetables, and you’ve got yourself a clean colon free of excess Candida in days, often in just one day. What I love about undecenoic acid and probiotics is that they don’t kill off good bacteria. They only eliminate Candida and other fungi. If I want to knock out parasites as well, I use MicroDefense – Pure Encapsulations, which has wormwood and black walnut hulls (and other good stuff that parasites hate).

Whatever approach you take with intestinal maintenance, a diet with a diverse selection of lots of raw vegetables is the most important thing you can do for your colon and your whole body.

Recommended Supplements:

(You can take these altogether)

Further Reading:


7 Horrible Food Ingredients You Should Absolutely Never Eat

(DrFrankLipman – Frank Lipman) Not long ago, a seemingly radical idea arrived at the grocery store – the mandatory nutrition information label. Designed to help consumers get a clearer picture of what exactly was in their food, the idea essentially legislated food processors into being more transparent about their ingredients. Instead however, we got a lot of confusion as Big Food found ways to put questionable substances and suspected carcinogens in plain sight, right there on the nutrition label! Buried in the small print, with abbreviations and chemical chart names only a Stephen Hawking would understand, consumers were left little more enlightened than they were before mandatory labeling. To help unravel the label gibberish, here are the 7 ingredients you should always leave behind on the supermarket shelf:

1. Aspartame

If it says Equal or NutraSweet on the box, don’t put it in your cart. It’s a chemical sweetener that’s loaded with phenylalanine, which in high doses is a neurotoxin which many scientists believe can alter brain function, cause behavioral changes in adults and even mental retardation in growing fetuses when used by mothers-to-be. If that weren’t enough, side effects can also include headaches, seizures, menstrual problems and gastro-intestinal distress.

2. BHA and BHT

These two similar chemicals are used to prevent oil-containing foods from going rancid. A seemingly admirable enough use. However, they also come with some serious concerns – they’re known carcinogens, having caused cancer in lab rats, mice, and hamsters. Avoid BHA and BHT at all costs.

3. Food Coloring

Designed to make foods more attractive, food coloring has an ugly side: caramel coloring manufacturing involves the use of industrial solvents and carcinogens. Red dye number 3 is associated with tumor development. Red dye 40 and Yellow 6 are closely associated with aggressive behaviors and impulse control problems in children. I say, stay far away.

4. Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein

Hydrolyzed vegetable protein is a chemically created, flavor-enhancing protein substance that’s similar to MSG, but whitewashed a bit with a healthier sounding name. The problem with HVP is that it contains hidden MSG, so you can still wind up sickening yourself with headaches, migraines, heart irregularities and so on. Two more members of the MSG family to avoid: autolyzed yeast extract and hydrolyzed yeast extract – they too can make sensitive types feel awful.

5. Parabens

Parabens are chemical preservatives most commonly found in cosmetics and beauty products, but oddly enough, they’re also found in many baked goods, like breads, cakes, pies, pastries, cereals and some processed meats. Designed to inhibit mold growth, there’s evidence to suggest that parabens in food may play a contributing role in hormone-related problems in women, such as breast cancer, and reduced testosterone levels in men. My advice? Steer clear.

6. Partially Hydrogenated Oil

Partially hydrogenated oil and trans-fat are essentially one in the same; And most folks don’t realize that a product can claim “0g trans fat” as long as there is less than ½ gram per serving, so if you see it on the label, don’t buy it (even if it says trans fat free). Case closed. Sure the stuff makes your food less likely to spoil, but it clogs your arteries, raises bad cholesterol and lowers the good cholesterol and who needs that?

7. Nitrites

Left unadulterated, meat will start to spoil and look pretty unappetizing quickly. Add some refrigeration and a layer of nitrites, and the shelf life, not to mention the fresh-looking red color, lengthens significantly. But what happens to the nitrates when humans ingest it? Well, not only can nitrites trigger headaches and allergic reactions, research indicates that a daily habit of nitrate-laden cured meats can increase risk of cancerous tumors. While I don’t recommend eating foods with nitrites, if it’s unavoidable, then start you meal with antioxidants Vitamin C and E to protect your body. (Note: Naturally occurring nitrites, like those in some vegetables don’t cause health woes, so feel free to eat your veggies!)

FOOD FOR THOUGHT BONUS:

While carefully reading labels can help you make somewhat better choices, here’s a more radical and much simpler approach: stop buying foods with labels on them and make the switch to whole, natural, organic or local, grower-to-table foods. You’ll get exactly what your body needs and virtually none of the dangerous additives your body is better off without.

For more ideas on how to treat your body to additive-free foods, take a look at my top 9 Superfoods.

Recommended Reading:


Foods that Kill Cancer

In order to defeat cancer and ensure there is no recurrence, the body must be brought into balance and the immune system rebuilt and fine tuned. So how is this feat accomplished? Detox, detox, detox and achieve a slightly alkaline pH, while filling the body with the best, organic, nutritionally dense food available. Your goal is to rebuild a killer immune system as you bathe every non-cancerous cell in your body with nutrition.

For specific foods known to eliminate cancer, check out the following list:

Omega 3

Oily fish, fish oil, flax seed oil, hemp oil, and healthy oil blend supplements provide omega 3 fatty acids (and other beneficial fatty acids), which fight inflammation and make the body less hospitable to cancer cells. Vitamin D is also known to kill cancer, and you can find many fish oils and some vegan oil blends with vitamin D in them.

Cruciferous Vegetables

Cruciferous vegetables include broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, Brussel sprouts, watercress, kale, collard greens, cauliflower, bok choy, turnips, rutabagas, radishes, arugula, and more. These vegetables contain sulforaphane and other helpful compounds, which help fight tumors, breast, prostate, brain, and colorectal cancers, as well as leukemia. Broccoli sprouts and mature broccoli in combination really pack nutritional, cancer fighting punch.

Berries

Black raspberries appear to reign supreme, though all berries contain cancer fighting phytonutrients and high amounts of ellagic acid, which inhibit tumor growth.

Maitake and Shiitake Mushrooms

Google maitake mushrooms and cancer and the American Cancer Society pops up at the top of the search list. For one brief moment it seemed they might actually be doing their job, but no. They claim there have been no studies to show that maitake or any other mushroom help fight cancer. Continue your search and study after study reveals they do indeed.

Mushrooms boost immune function and are a great source of antioxidants. They are also rich in vitamins C and B vitamins as well as calcium and other minerals.

Tumeric

Curcumin, found in turmeric, inhibits the spread of cancer (metastases) along with its anti-inflammatory and oxidative effects. Tumeric can be found at farmer’s markets in root form. It can be used liberally to spice your food (great on salads or in salad dressing as well as in cooked dishes) with no side effects.

Tomatoes

The active compounds found in tomatoes, carotenoids and lycopene (especially lycopene), are very helpful, especially in the fight of prostate and pancreatic cancer in men. Seven to ten helpings are week are suggested, both cooked and raw juice. To gain the health benefits of juice, make your own. Store bought tomato juice will be pasteurized. Lycopene is a strong antioxidant.

Folate

Egg yolks, avocadoes, apricots, green leafy vegetables, and pumpkin are among the foods rich in folate. For meat eaters, chicken livers are very high in folate. Studies involving folate or its synthetic form, folic acid, show a significant reduced risk of colorectal cancer. Folate or folic acid ?is essential for the body to correctly replicate DNA.

Garlic

Even the National Cancer Institute admits garlic “…may reduce the risk of developing several types of?cancer, especially cancers of the?gastrointestinal tract”.
Garlic reduces inflammation, fights free radicals, and fights cancer. Eat it raw or chop it up and let it sit for 10-15 minutes before cooking with it or its beneficial compound, allicin, will not be released.

Grapes

The compound found in red grapes, resveratrol, is a powerful antioxidant that also saves cells from oxidant-caused death. Grape seeds have huge benefits. We recommend you don’t eat grapes without seeds.

Conclusion

An alkaline, balanced diet with plenty of nutrition, and as few toxins as possible, makes the body inhospitable to cancer. Sugar feeds cancer. Processed and refined foods feed cancer. Raw, organic vegetables, especially when grown for maximum nutrient content (as opposed to large scale farming) should be the foundation of any healthy diet. We also recommend that anyone with cancer undergo a full body detox with a supplement regimen specifically designed for your current state of health. For more information on what to do for cancer, check out the first three sources. For information on detoxifying, check out Cheap And Easy Detox Diet Plan.

Further Reading:

Resources:



Processed Milk is BAD for Your Bones – We’ve all been ‘White-Washed’

(NaturalNews – S. D. Wells) Most milk does a body BAD, not good, but it’s the biggest lies that are more likely to be believed, and there are myths that refuse to die. So, in the name of good health, let’s try to rid ourselves of them now.

Food that is cooked dead is useless

Did you know that pasteurized milk is dead milk? The nutrients are lost, burned up at high heat, between 145°F and 160°F for about 30 seconds. Yep, that milk’s dead. Did you know that calcium alone does not build bones or bone density? Let’s start this off with those infamous words, pasteurized and homogenized. Homogenized and pasteurized are bad, bad words. Were you taught differently growing up? Did the school books brainwash you? Did the commercials say just the opposite, that milk helps build strong bones? Is your “dead” milk polluted with inflammatory carcinogens, medications, hormones, antibiotics, pus, pathogens, bacteria, viruses and artery-clogging animal fat?

Milk, cigarettes, diet soda and margarine for America!

The United States is in the midst of a public health epidemic due to poor diet. While much of the focus has been on obvious culprits such as sugary soft drinks and fast food, dairy foods often get a pass. The dairy industry, propped up by government, has convinced us of the health benefits of milk and other dairy products. But the context of how people consume dairy matters. …

[P]atterns of consumption [have shifted] away from plain milk toward dairy products laden with sugar, fat, and salt. …

Nearly half of the milk supply goes to make about 9 billion pounds of cheese and 1.5 billion gallons of frozen desserts–two-thirds of which is ice cream;

11 percent of all sugar goes into the production of dairy products.
(http://www.eatdrinkpolitics.com)

A few years ago, David Wolfe, nutritionist, best-selling author and world traveler, speaking via Natural News, said it best:

Okay, well the nations that consume the most calcium, the United States, Canada and the Scandinavian countries, have the worst osteoporosis and that’s because our theory of mineralization or our theory of nutrition is incorrect. The general theory is that a hundred years ago they started looking at people’s bones. They found out that, “oh my god; these bones are made out of calcium”. When people don’t have enough bone density the thought is, “oh they just have to eat more calcium because that’s what builds bones”. Calcium does not build bones and that is one of the biggest misconceptions ever and it actually goes to the real core of our problems with science. …

What increases bone density? Well, it turns out it’s two other minerals and that is silicon and magnesium.
(http://www.naturalnews.com)

Pasteurized milk – this is NOT good

The goal with pasteurization is to kill potentially bad bacteria, but at what cost? It kills all the beneficial bacteria and damages the minerals and vitamins. Plus, pasteurization denatures the proteins. This milk gets heated over 160°F for half a minute to “sterilize” what you’ll probably have trouble digesting. Even “low-temp” pasteurization stops at around 145°F, still killing most of the beneficial enzymes.

Homogenized milk – this is NOT good

Around the turn of the 20th century, homogenization became the “industry standard,” because people liked not having to shake up all the fat globules for consistency. This process rearranges the fat and protein molecules, which ALTERS how they act in the human body. Then you have “fortified” milk with vitamins A and D added back in so that the general population feels better about drinking milk past infancy.

The calcium myth – why millions of Americans are “doing it” wrong

The US is the most dairy-consuming nation in the world, yet we have the highest rate of osteoporosis. No animal on Earth drinks milk past infancy or from another animal, except humans.

Don’t get “white-washed” by the Dairy Industry! Get your calcium from organic leafy greens and raw nuts and seeds. Find organic silicon and magnesium and stay informed. (http://drbenkim.com)

Sources for this article include:
http://drbenkim.com
http://www.naturalnews.com
http://labs.naturalnews.com
http://ajcn.nutrition.org [PDF]
http://draxe.com
http://www.nomeatathlete.com
http://science.naturalnews.com



5 Reasons to Avoid Factory-Farmed Fish

(DrFrankLipman – Frank Lipman) While it may seem like a modern invention, “aquaculture,” has been around for ages – man has been “farming” fish in net enclosures, ponds, vats, urns and even woven baskets for thousands of years. More recently though, say within the last few decades, worldwide demand has exploded and farming fish has grown just as rapidly, evolving into a multi-billion dollar industry. Its mission: to produce more fish quicker, faster, larger and cheaper to meet the insatiable demand for what once seemed a limitless and inexpensive source of protein and good fat.

Not surprisingly, the extraordinary growth of the fish farm business has brought with it a number of industrial farming problems that concern me enough to advise all my patients to avoid factory-farmed fish. While there are some fish farmers producing eco-friendly and healthy fish, they are the exception, not the rule, so unless you’re able to purchase fish from those types of purveyors (usually smaller-scale, artisanal or boutique-style fish farms), just say No Tanks…that is, no to farmed fish – and here are five simple reasons why:

1) There’s no such thing as a free-range, farmed fish

In fact, it’s quite the opposite, with fish farm enclosures packing the creatures in, well, like sardines, leaving little room for the fish to swim freely or to engage in their normal behavioral patterns. The result? Stressed fish, who like us, tend to get sick more easily when their defenses are down. With their immune systems compromised, the fish become more prone to illness, parasitic infections and diseases, which then can spread quickly through their over-populated aquatic quarters.

2) Farmed fish are like really into drugs, dude

Next, the sickened fish have to be made well again, with you guessed it, drugs.  To do this, farmed fish are fed antibiotics, antifungals and/or pesticides – which means so are you, with every fork-full. Hardly an appetizing thought. As if that weren’t enough, farmed fish are often injected with booster shots of sex hormones. Turns out, captive fish populations tend to produce fewer offspring, so fish farms often enhance Mother Nature with fertility treatments (i.e., hormone shots, special feed, etc.) to stimulate offspring production and pump up the yield. With this in mind the question becomes, what are those fish hormones doing to our bodies? And is it worth the risk? I don’t think so.

3) Their diet is simply revolting

As is the case with industrially farmed, land-based livestock, top quality, 5-star feed isn’t on the menu, so what does the average farmed fish eat? Mostly fishmeal. Sound innocuous enough, that is till you discover that fishmeal is made up mostly of smaller fish mixed with (presumably genetically-modified) soybeans, grains and corn. Possible GMO issues aside, the larger issue is that in order to make all that fishmeal, a tremendous amount of smaller fish are fished out of the sea – anywhere from 3-to-6 pounds of small fish are needed to produce just one pound of farmed fish. In addition to being an enormously wasteful process, it also leaves less food available for wild fish to feed on, which contributes to their population declines. Oh, and what else do farmed fish snack on? The carcasses of deceased neighbors floating in or lying at the bottom of their tanks. It’s not a pretty picture.

4) If you’re looking for nutrition, farmed fish falls short

Even if you could overlook the drugs, hormone shots and less-than-optimal diet, farmed fish still comes up short in terms of nutrition, one of the reasons so many of us turned to fish in the first place. Compared to wild fish, farmed versions can have as much as 20% less protein, twice as much inflammation-boosting omega 6 fatty acid, less usable omega 3’s and fewer nutrients overall. In short, wild is better.

5) Industrial fish farms pollute their surroundings

Numerous studies report that water quality suffers in areas where fish farms operate, creating something akin to the aquatic version of agricultural run-off. Decaying fishmeal, diseased and dying fish and their waste products combine to create conditions that enable bacteria to flourish, polluting not only the fish farm waters but seeping into and damaging neighboring wild fish habitats, marshes and wetlands either by accident, carelessness or poor fish farming methods. Isn’t all this damage and pollution is too high an ecological price to pay for farmed fish-on-demand? I believe it is.

So, with all this in mind, what’s the alternative to farmed fish? The answer is wild fish though the wild stuff is not without its own set of issues, including over-fishing, dwindling populations and mercury concerns. To help you make the best possible choices, when buying fish at the market or dining out, ask questions and find out where your fish is sourced, and if it’s fished sustainably. Before you buy, check your choices with the Blue Ocean Institute’s helpful Guide to Ocean Friendly Seafood or download printable lists of eco-friendly seafood recommendations from Seafoodwatch.org 

For more on how to make informed seafood choices, check out School Yourself the Smart Way to Eat Fish.



The Fascinating Bacteria in our Gut, and How it Affects Our Whole Lives

We are host to somewhere between 300-1000 different species of bacteria, each of which has one goal—to survive and multiply. While they live and thrive in our gut, beneficial bacteria provide many necessary and health-related functions. They help us digest our food. They line our intestinal wall, providing a physical barrier against bad bacteria and fungi that may damage or inflame the tissues. Some produce vitamin K and B vitamins, while others aid in synthesizing vitamins. They produce 95% of our serotonin as well as other neurotransmitters. They make up 80% of our immune system, and more. The by-products of their lifecycle benefit us through a harmonious, symbiotic relationship.

We classify bacteria as bad bacteria when their byproducts or functions can harm our bodies.   For example, most of the E-coli bacteria strains are harmless. In fact, the harmless strains help prevent colonization of pathogenic bacteria and produce vitamin K2, whereas the pathogenic E-coli strains cause a variety of infections and may even cause death.

Related: Candida, Gut Flora, Allergies, and Disease

Aside from illness, researchers are learning that specific species of bacteria exert different influences on their host bodies. One example is our metabolism. The bacterial makeup of a lean person is different than the bacterial makeup in someone who is obese.

One study showed that Enterobacter, an endotoxin-producing bacterium, taken from the gut of a morbidly obese human, induced obesity and insulin resistance in healthy mice. In a volunteer with an initial weight of 385 lbs, Enterobacter made up 35% of the gut bacterium. After 23 weeks of a diet of whole grains, traditional Chinese medicinal foods, and prebiotics, the volunteer lost 113 lbs and all traces of Enterobacter. The conclusion was that this endotoxin-producing bacterium creates inflammation that causes insulin resistance resulting in weight gain.

Another recent study showed a direct correlation between a high or low level of bacterium in the gut and the subjects’ weight. A high level of bacterium, with a high level of diversity, was linked to a healthy weight, whereas a low level of bacterium was linked to overweight individuals.

Related: Gluten, Candida, Leaky Gut Syndrome, and Autoimmune Diseases

The amount of bacteria in the gut relates to more than weight, it is also an indicator of overall health. Our actions affect the amount, the diversity, and the ratio of good to bad bacteria. For example, antibiotic use indiscriminately kills bacteria. Antibiotics do not just target the one pathogen causing an infection in our body; they kill off much of the bacteria in our gut as well. Not only do we need the good bacteria to do its work (including keeping the bad bacteria in check), we need to maintain the delicate balance between bacteria and fungi. Candida is opportunistic. Given a chance, it will quickly mass-produce, wreaking havoc in the digestive tract and, in time, the entire body.

As research continues to reveal that diversity in gut bacterium is essential to good health and can influence bodily functions such as serotonin production (a huge factor in depression) or metabolism (a factor in weight control), researchers are learning more about which particular bacteria are beneficial and which bacteria have an unhealthy effect on the body. The day may soon come when we choose our probiotics to manage our weight, to maintain our mental health, or to treat a variety of diseases. Until that day arrives, our diet choices can and will alter this internal balance.

We do have a basic knowledge of which foods promote beneficial bacteria and which foods and medications promote bad bacteria, and we know how to increase the beneficial organisms to crowd out those that do not serve our health.

Related: Hypothyroidism – Natural Remedies, Causes, and How To Heal the Thyroid

The first and most important step to increase health inducing bacterium in the gut, is to eat a diet rich in prebiotics—in other words, lots of raw vegetables and fruit. A large salad each day, filled with a wide variety of vegetables, provides the healthy bacterium in our gut with the food it needs to thrive. Insoluble fiber also houses good bacteria, giving it a structure upon which to multiply. Raw, whole, organic vegetables and fruits (more vegetables than fruit) should always comprise 80% of our diet.

We not only know what to feed good bacteria, we know what feeds or promotes bad bacteria: processed dead foods, acidic foods (factory raised meat and dairy), pasteurized foods, irradiated foods, sugar, antibiotics, antacids, and anti-inflammatory drugs. Choose only organic grass fed beef, organic free-range chicken, and raw dairy. Never eat farm raised fish. Avoid all GMOs, including second generation GMOs from animals raised on GMO feed.

If we were to believe the advertisements, one or two servings of sugar filled, pasteurized, yogurt (often with other ingredients added to thicken, stabilize, preserve, and/or add artificial flavor)  would provide all the beneficial bacteria we need. If any beneficial bacteria from this yogurt survived our stomach acid and made it to our intestines, the dairy and sugar content alone would negate its benefits (pasteurized dairy and sugar feed Candida and “bad” bacteria). There are better ways to include probiotics in our diet.

Related: How to Kill Candida and Balance Your Inner Ecosystem

Probiotic foods such as coconut kefir, kombucha, sauerkraut, kimchi, and raw, organic apple cider vinegar all increase healthy bacterium in the gut.  There are also excellent probiotic supplements formulated with very strong bacteria strains that have the ability to make it past the stomach acid before releasing the bacteria into the intestines. These probiotics are rare; most on the market are useless. But the good ones are powerful and can help reset your ecosystem. Remember, while probiotics can be very helpful, more benefit is gained from prebiotics, vegetables in particular. Conversely, if your appendix has been removed, you may need a daily probiotic supplement for the rest of your life. FloraMend Prime by Thorne Research is a very strong and stable probiotic that we highly recommend.

Every choice we make to detox, cleanse, and properly feed our bodies will affect the microbes in our gut. Though we were born with a particular balance of bacteria, it has been influenced throughout our lives by toxins, antibiotics, vaccines, and the foods we have eaten. But we do have the power to change it. We can increase the amount and the type of bacteria in our bodies primarily by the foods we choose to eat and the foods we choose to avoid.

If you want to reduce Candida and harmful bacteria in your gut be sure to check out Gluten, Candida, Leaky Gut Syndrome, and Autoimmune Diseases, and we recommend the following:

Recommended Supplements:

Further Reading:

 Sources: 

  • Na Feiand Liping Zhao, An Opportunistic Pathogen Isolated from the Gut of an Obese Human Causes Obesity in Germfree Mice; The ISME Journal (2013) 7, 880–884
  • Q. Aziz, J. Dore´,A. Emmanuel, F. Guarner, & E. M. M. Quigley; Gut Microbiota and Gastrointestinal Health: Current Concepts and Future Directions, Neurogastroenterol & Motility (2013) 25, 4–15


Inexpensive, Easy Detox – The One Gallon Challenge

You’ve heard of the ice bucket challenge, and maybe even the Ferguson Challenge. Here’s a new challenge: the one gallon challenge. Drink a gallon of cranberry lemonade a day, sweetened with stevia, and spiced with cayenne. This is one of the best ways to detoxify and clean out your system.

There’s more.

Exercise. Sweat. Get your heart rate going. Deep, heavy breathing helps detoxify the body. Exercise vigorously for 20 minutes a day. If you have access to a sauna, especially one of a non-toxic variety, use it! A steam room is great, too, as long as the water is purified, with the fluoride and other chemicals removed.

Rebounding

There is one specific exercise that can help this detox in an unusual way—bouncing. Rebounding on a trampoline, jumping rope, or jogging while ensuring that you’re running with good form (not heel striking) all help circulate your lymph. Do one of these activities for at least 20 minutes a day. Of course, if done vigorously enough to induce heavy breathing and to work up a sweat, the bouncing activities count as the exercise for the day.

Eat. This isn’t a fast. You can detoxify without fasting. You are welcome to fast if you want to and you know your body can handle it, but it’s not necessary in order to receive amazing benefits. Eat produce, salads and fruits. A serious detox is a good time to avoid pretty much anything else and just focus on produce. If the body is very toxic or so sick that it cannot get nutrition out of food, it is a good time to juice. Otherwise, we recommend eating whole, unadulterated vegetables and fruits in order to get the fiber and many other benefits that are lost when juicing.

If the gut is out of balance, i.e. Candida overgrowth and/or an abundance of bad bacteria, eat lots of garlic with those salads, and take a high quality probiotic and some undecylenic acid or oil of oregano. (When taking oil of oregano, do not take it with probiotics as it will kill the beneficial bacteria}.

Cranberry Lemonade Recipe

  • Glass gallon jar
  • Safe, clean, spring water or distilled water
  • 1 cup of organic cranberry juice, not from concentrate
  • 3 organic fresh lemons
  • A citrus juicer
  • Liquid stevia
  • Liquid cayenne

Fill the jar to about 85% capacity with spring water (or distilled water). Squeeze the lemons and pour the juice into the water. Add cranberry juice. Add stevia to taste and then add cayenne to taste. The amount of cayenne used is up to you, but the more the better.

If you don’t have access to a good spring water source, use other clean drinking water that does not have fluoride. If you don’t have access to organic lemons, use conventional. If there are no fresh lemons, use bottle lemon juice. If you can’t get cranberry juice that is not from concentrate, get the reconstituted kind (just don’t get any kind of cranberry juice that has any other ingredients like sweeteners or other juices). If you can’t stand cayenne, don’t use it. No glass jar? Use plastic. No excuses.

If you have powdered cayenne and/or powdered stevia, I recommend using a blender to mix some of the liquid with the powders so they don’t settle later.

Drinking a gallon of water a day makes an amazing difference to your health and your appearance (google gallon a day water before and after). Drinking this much fluid flushes the organs and the lymph nodes, hydrates the skin, and helps the body to rebuild cells and regenerate in ways that most people do not get to experience. The cranberry and the lemon help flush the liver and the kidneys even more, and in my experience it’s a lot easier to drink a gallon of cranberry lemonade than it is to drink a gallon of plain water. And cayenne has a ton of amazing health benefits. For more, check out, Cayenne – Natures Miracle Medicine.

How long should you do this for? I challenge you to ten days. But do it as long as you like. While produce should always be the staple of any healthy diet, no matter what you’re eating, your body will always benefit from this gallon of hydration a day.

Please use common sense with this. If you do not follow a healthy diet with lots of produce, the amount of liquid consumed on this regimen can deplete the body of much needed minerals. Do not attempt to drink a gallon of anything in one sitting. This has been known to kill people, even with just water. If you have kidney problems, this may be the best thing for you. On the other hand, depending on your health issues, it may overload the kidneys. I find that smaller people who weigh less than 120 pounds can see the benefits at 1/2 to 1/3 of a gallon. Your health is in your hands. Again, please use good judgment.

If you’ve got a bit of money and you’re willing to take this detox program to a whole other level, consider detoxifying the blood, killing parasites, and balancing the body’s ecosystem. Shillington’s Blood Detox, MicroDefense – Pure Encapsulations, and will detoxify the blood and kill parasites. SF722 will kill Candida (yeast). Shillington’s Intestinal Cleanse will clean out the colon, and FloraMend will restore beneficial bacteria.

If Candida is an issue for you, as it is for most, check out How to Cure Candida.

Recommended Supplements:
Further Reading: