Tuesday, August 27, 2013

gag

Every time i see the word "detox" on a blog or facebook, i gag a little bit.

It's usually promoting some kind of product to "flush your liver," and at other times to urge a vegetarian diet.  A lot of sincere and wanna-be-helpful people have fallen for the BS, and encourage it.  It's still BS.

The body is DESIGNED to filter and discard toxins.  What it has trouble dealing with, it sequesters instead.  Your conscious part of the process is primarily to AVOID CONSUMING TOXINS IN THE FIRST PLACE.  Subsequently, when successful dieting may set some free, your power lies in knowing that your nasty symptoms come from the released substance and not that LCing itself is at fault for making you feel bad.

Like candida die-off symptoms, it can happen.  Does this mean we need to increase our sugar intake, so the candida can be fat and happy again?  ...Hardly.

Analogous to "new vegan high," when you change your input, some of the results are not direct cause-and-affect.  Do you REALLY want to make your liver happy?  (...'Cause it's actually pretty easy and pleasant.)  Lay off the omega-6 oils.  Avoid fructose and be careful with the alcohol.  Eat plenty of nice clean saturated fats.  Go for the organic and grassfed end of the "healthy foods" spectrum.

Apparently, traditional cultures have been cognizant of the importance of the liver for a long time -- only the modern world has come to neglect it so horribly.  What i see when i go out in public ... right and left, people with fatty livers hanging out from under their ribcages, pushing their subcutaneous fat stores out even further.  Not a healthy sight, and it's ALL OVER the produce section of Whole Foods and Trader Joe's.

10 comments:

  1. "Every time I see the word detox,
    I seem to gag a little"

    Ella could have sung this to the tune of

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqa5kNNaMlc

    Sláinte

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  2. I think avoiding most medications will contribute to a liver health a lot. There is an amazing amount of people who live on Tylenol, Alive and take daily several other pills. I guess some supplements are not making liver's life easier as well. I remember reading about serious complication caused by Kava, for example.
    During my childhood I was diagnosed with an inflamed gallbladder and my liver was enlarged. When it was in an acute phase , I felt better eating mostly steamed and boiled food. It looks like fried , smoked and charred foods are hard on liver too.

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    1. great points, Galina! the toxicity of OTC pain-killers is astonishing, and that's perfectly okay with the FDA (*headbangondesk*) but cyclamates are banned here....

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  3. "Avoid consuming toxins in the first place." +1.

    "Apparently, traditional cultures have been cognizant of the importance of the liver for a long time..." Indeed, most cultures have a religious tradition of fasting, which reduces inflammation and causes your body to scavenge renegade proteins that can cause problems. That's a true detox. Chugging liquid fructose in the form of fruit juice isn't.

    Re: fried foods, those generally aren't appetizing anytime you're sick.

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    1. yes, water (or fat) fasts i believe to be good practices, too! i used to like juicing carrots ... till i learned how sugar-ful it is! since then, if i want carrot juice, i dilute it heavily with celery. :-)

      when i'm sick (not often since LCHF), i usually don't want ANYTHING, though simple soups are often appealing.

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  4. The terrible thing that people usually rely on juice fasts when they go on those detoxes. Boluses of sugar and concentrated fructose for 3 days. Yum.

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    1. :-) that would make MOST low-carbers feel horrible, from what i hear.

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  5. There is a renown not-controversial procedure of flashing a gall-bladder in Europe, or at least in Russia. It is prescribed to the people who have an inflammation and sand in their gallbladders by regular doctors, not some naturopaths or quacks. It is done early on the morning, in a fasted state. Some warm mineral water/ broth is consumed, you lay on your right side in a fetal position with hot-waterbottle made out of rubber under your liver and briefing by low belly for 45 minutes - 1 hour.

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    Replies
    1. it's always interesting when we get glimpses of medical procedures from outside the US -- how some things completely unheard-of here are common and accepted where the AMA doesn't have its stuck-in-the-mud fingers in the pie....

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