Clean

Our bodies have an extraordinary ability to keep us healthy.

But, when we tax ourselves with too much stress, terrible food, inadequate rest and other aspects of modern living, we push our detox systems too far and they can’t keep up with the onslaught—leading to breakdowns that show up in the form of everything from headaches and depression to heart disease and diabetes.

This book is all about dealing with those challenges as we get our detox on.

Let’s explore some whys and hows. :)

This is the lead paragraph to a chapter discussing the importance of looking for the CAUSES of our ailments rather than merely treating the SYMPTOMS.

Symptoms vs. root causes.

Modern medicine is nearly exclusively focused on dealing with the SYMPTOMS we experience when we’re not feeling well. Although the technological advances we’ve made are stunning and often life saving, there’s too much REACTION and not enough PROACTIVE prevention.

Here’s how Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn puts it in his GREAT book Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease (see Notes): “I still cherish the naive dream I had when I started this research. We have shown that the number one killer in Western civilization can be abolished, through consumption of a plant- based diet. But we can do much more. If the public adopted this approach to preventing disease, if, by the millions, Americans abandoned their toxic diets and learned a truly healthy approach to eating, we could largely limit all those diseases of nutritional extravagance— strokes, hypertension, obesity, osteoporosis, and adult-onset diabetes. Meanwhile, we would see a marked reduction in cancers of the breast, prostate, colon, rectum, uterus, and ovaries. Medicine could relinquish its primary focus on pills and procedures. Prevention, not desperate intervention, would become the order of the day.

Even I am not optimistic enough to believe that this could happen overnight—that the entire population of the United States would switch to a plant-based diet the moment its benefits are widely known. But we can get there. The first step is to educate the public, teaching the truth about what we know about nutrition and the ravages of the traditional Western diet.”

Here’s to going after the causes of disease via effective preventative measures rather than relaying on desperate intervention that treats the symptoms!!

Milk is poisoning us.

It really is that simple.

In fact, according to Dr. Junger drinking milk is “like putting jet fuel in a motorcycle.”

How’s that? Let’s think about it for a second.

What did Nature create milk to do?

Simply put: Milk is the essential food mommy mammals provide their infants during the early days of their lives. For humans, that milk-nourishment helps us go from a birth weight of around 8 pounds to a weight of around 20 pounds in a year. For a COW, on the other hand, that milk-nourishment helps the calf go from a birth weight of around 80 pounds to a year-old weight of over 1,100 (!) pounds.

* scratching my head and pondering *

Hmmm…

Sure seems like the nutritional makeup of cow’s milk is probably a tad different than human milk, eh?

Indeed it is!

Hence, as Dr. Junger tells us, drinking it is “like putting jet fuel in a motorcycle.” (Last time I checked, that wasn’t a good idea. :)

So…

Let’s cut the milk out of our diet and focus on consuming the foods designed for our bodies!

P.S. Dr. Neal Barnard, author of Dr. Neal Barnard’s Program for Reversing Diabetes (see Notes) believes that eliminating dairy products (and all animal foods, in fact) is critical to optimal health and puts it this way: “Just as a car performs dramatically better when it has the fuel it was designed for, your body performs far better when you give it the food it needs.”

P.P.S. To repeat: Dairy isn’t good fuel for the human body. (Just sayin’. :)

If you’re on Atkins, please get off it. It’s killing you.

Here’s how Colin Campbell, one of the most respected nutrition scientists out there puts it: “Perhaps it is a testament to the power of modern marketing savvy that an obese man with heart disease and high blood pressure became one of the richest snake oil salesman ever to live, selling a diet that promises to help you lose weight, to keep your heart healthy and to normalize your blood pressure.”

Campbell continues by saying: “I have heard one doctor call high-protein, high fat, low-carbohydrate diets “make-yourself-sick” diets, and I think that’s an appropriate moniker. You can also lose weight by undergoing chemotherapy or starting a heroine addiction, but I wouldn’t recommend those, either.”

Seriously.

If you or someone you love is rockin’ Atkins, please stop. :)

Optimism.

It’s Principle #1 in Optimal Living 101 and we scientifically know that whether we’re a pessimist or an optimist directly affects our health.

Wondering just how toxic our thoughts are?

Here’s how Martin Seligman puts it in his great book, Flourish (see Notes): “We estimate that being in the upper quartile of optimism seems to have a beneficial effect on cardiovascular risk roughly equivalent to not smoking two packs of cigarettes daily.”

Wow.

We focus on dozens of different ways to build our optimism muscles throughout these Notes. Check out the Notes on Learned Optimism and A Guide to Rational Living in particular for some focused goodness to help you detox your mind!!

For now, here’s another wisdom nugget from Dr. Junger: “If some of the biggest obstacles to radiant well-being are the quantum toxins of stress and endless thinking, then one of the most important acts any of us can do to achieve better health is to engage in quantum detoxofication: clearing the debris and toxic waste that fills up the mind on a daily basis, and recapturing some of that lost attention that drains out of our brains in random, repetitive thinking.”

Quantum detoxification.

It’s a key part of creating optimal health.

We need to tame those little drunk monkeys in our minds and escort the ANTs (automatic negative thoughts) our the back door!

How?

Well, one key way that Dr. Junger recommends is a simple meditation practice for as little as five minutes a day. Check out the book for more goodness there and (*fingers crossed*) we’re hoping to work with the good Doctor on a Guided Blissitation where he delivers the goods in a powerful meditation we can plug into on a regular basis! :)

Looking for another way to deal with toxins from stuff other than your food and environment?

STOP COMPLAINING!!

Dr. Junger describes his meeting with a guy named Hugo Cory who told him that a key to Self-Mastery lies in our ability to get ourselves to stop complaining.

It’s powerful stuff.

We cover this in detail in the Note on Will Bowen’s great book, A Complaint Free World, where he challenges us to go twenty-one days without complaining, criticizing or gossiping. Try it. (Warning: It’s harder than you think. :)

Bowen reminds us that “You can best get what you desire by expressing what you want rather than complaining about the way things are.”

And, Bowen tells us this regarding our health and our thoughts: “Doctors estimate that 67 percent of illnesses are a result of “thinking sick.” Our thoughts create our world and our words indicate our thoughts. Complaining about an illness will neither shorten its duration nor lessen its severity.”

P.S. Maya Angelou puts it brilliantly: “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. Don’t complain.”

So, if you’re serious about detoxing, quit complaining. :)

The bad-health statistics are truly shocking.

—> “Half of Americans will have heart disease or cancer in their lives. The other half will likely develop other kinds of conditions and diseases that will continue to make the pharmaceutical industry one of the most profitable industries of all time.”

As Dr. Junger advises us, if we do what most Americans do, we’re going to experience what most Americans experience.

So, let’s choose wisely and pick a healthier course!!

And let’s keep this in mind: “In an era when heart disease, an almost entirely avoidable condition, is the number-one killer in our country; when a staggering portion of the American GNP is used to pay for drugs and treatments for the so-called diseases of civilization; when the percentage of men and women who use prescription drugs daily is sky high and growing, especially among those in midlife and older; one kind of future is laid out before you, one of ever-worsening health and a diminishing sense of well-being. Why not choose a different future, by digging the well now, when you have the strength to dig deep—before you have been further weakened?”

Here’s to digging the well of health BEFORE we get sick!!!

Although we’re conditioned to believe that bacteria and viruses just randomly show up and make us sick, that’s not quite the way it works.

Fact is, those bacteria and viruses need a good host if they’re going to take over and destroy our health—kinda like how mice and roaches like to hang out in a gross trash can. Ew.

Begs the question: Are your insides looking like a dirty trash can and offering a sanctuary for viruses and bacteria to flourish?

If so, get your Clean on, yo! :)

It’s one thing to re-set our detox systems with an awesome cleanse. It’s an entirely separate thing to keep the new house clean! :)

With that in mind, Dr. Junger gives us a plan to rock it. As always, it’s best to avoid the magic bullet solutions as we focus on diligently, patiently, persistently and playfully rockin’ the fundamentals!