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It’s Detox Time

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A New Year! Perhaps your resolutions include a cleansing detox.

Picture of a cup of herbal detox tea

Detox Cleansing Herbal Tea

I’M WORKING on a comprehensive detox cleanse that I’ll be making available to everyone someday. I hope.

Actually, the cleanse part is well known to me, as I’ve been a regular “cleanser” for over a decade; the part I’m working on is putting it all together in a Program that you can understand and follow.

Step by step.

Until my Program is ready to go, I’m posting this simple cleanse, called the “Chinese Cleanse”, because I know people are anxious to get started in this New Year.  So, if that’s you, consider this Chinese Cleanse.

And for those of you who aren’t quite ready, stay tuned to this station — In about two weeks I’ll have one heck of a Program (free, by the way) for you to try.

I’ve done the Program I’ll be sharing many times.  It’s comprehensive. And it works!

Until then, check this out:

The “Chinese Cleanse”

In this detoxifying cleanse, you drink a home-made brew of herbal tea that you drink in the morning and evening.  In between, you eat fruit till noon, and vegetables till 8:00 PM. The duration is between three and ten days.

Herbal Tea Ingredients:

-Six cups of filtered water

-Two tablespoons of Red Clover

-Two tablespoons of Milk Thistle

-Two tablespoons of Dandelion Tea

-Two tablespoons of Peppermint Leaf

-Three tablespoons of Buckthorn Bark

Herbal Tea Instructions:

Boil the six cups of water in a pot, remove it from the heat, and add the herbs.  Stir and cover the pot.  Steep it for 30 minutes to one hour.  Strain the herbs from the water before drinking, and then discard them.

Drink one cup in the morning and one in the evening. At two cups per day, the amount listed above will last one person three days.

The Tea needs to be refrigerated and will keep fresh for three days.  When taken from the refrigerator, warm it slowly — rapid heating and boiling will destroy the medicinal properties of the herbs.

The tea helps purify the blood, liver, kidneys and colon.  It is also a mild laxative — know where the bathrooms are!

Note: The amount of herbs you buy are, of course, dependent on how many people will be joining you on the cleanse, and how many days you’ll be doing it. Determine this before purchasing the herbs, which hopefully can be found at your local health food store.

(If not available at the health food store, check online, or wait for my Program which will have sources for the hard-to-find stuff.)

The Food Part:

Time frame is three to ten days:

  • Three days helps the body get rid of toxins.
  • Five days starts the healing process.
  • Ten days cleanses and renews the bloodstream, liver, kidneys and colon.

In the morning till noon eat from this list of organic fruit:

Kiwi Orange Lime Grapefruit
Lemon Apple Apple Juice Mango
Banana Papaya Pear Figs

Eat fruit whole, and/or blend the fruit with water or apple juice to make a smoothie. Eat as much as you want.

To strengthen the optic nerves, combine freshly squeezed lemons (if available) with grapefruit, and/or limes with oranges.

Regular herbal tea (other than the “Tea” you make from scratch) can be drunk throughout the morning.

From noon till 8:00 PM eat from this list of organic vegetables:

Asparagus Beets Broccoli Cabbage
Cauliflower Leafy Greens Dark Green Veggies Carrots
Dandelion Leaves Parsnips Potatoes (w/ skins) Garlic
Onion Olive Oil Parsley Sprouts
Red/Green Peppers Spinach Radish Tomato

Eat these foods in solid form, or juice them, or make soup. The vegetables can be raw, steamed, baked or roasted.  A simple dressing can be made from garlic, lemon juice, peppermint, olive oil and parsley. (I often get lazy and just add lemon juice to olive oil.)

Ideally, try to combine cooked and raw food at each meal in order to magnify the enzymes needed for proper digestion; for instance: salad and soup.

Your favorite herbal tea (not the “Tea” described above) can be drunk throughout the afternoon and evening.

Hey, a good idea while cleansing it to take detox baths, which I describe at the bottom of this post: Detoxifying Your Way to Nirvana .

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Published on January 7, 2010

  • Denise
    Hi Joe, thanks for all the answers. I had a great response to the cleanse, losing 8 lbs in 3 days and helping me kick my nightly cocktail routine that really is unhealthy. I then went on a 2 week vacation and splurged a bit. After a month off the detox and still trying to kick some bad eating habits, I have remained only 1 lb from my ending detox weight. I recommended this to my family and friends who are also doing well with it. I am going to do it again this week since I fell off the wagon rather sharply due to vacation. I want to maintain healthy eating after coming off the detox for more long-term health results and then do this quarterly. Is that recommended, doing a detox regularly? Thanks again!! Ps...the cascara sagrada tablets worked great.
  • Denise
    LOL..8 lbs in 7 days not 3! :)
  • Joe
    Yeah, seven days sounds a bit better than four, though in either case, losing eight pounds that quickly on a cleanse may be, in part, attributable to purging the colon of some extra, shall we say, stuff. Glad it worked well for you!
  • I wanna find more info about this, anybody could?
  • cd
    Hi Joe, love the cleanse! I couldn't find Buckthorn Bark so I used 1tbs of Sienna.. any advice for or against that?

    Thanks!
  • Joe
    Cd, from my readings about sienna and buckthorn bark, my impression is that they are similar in that they relieve constipation by stimulating the colon, but buckthorn is said to also assist in "cleaning" the blood, whatever that's supposed to mean. In any event, you should do fine with sienna... but just use less than the amount suggested for buckthorn till you see how your body reacts.
  • Denise
    Hi Joe, I found your blog and this cleanse through another blog on Huffington post by Thomas Goetz (I think he mentioned it). Anyway, I am so glad I found it. My partner, teenage daughter and a few of our friends are trying to cleanse this week for 7 days. We have been trying to be vegan for the past year, since our daughter was diagnosed with Hodgkin Lymphoma and we started educating ourselves with books like The China Study and Anti-cancer. But even in vegan foods, there are "junk" foods so we feel the need to detox and go more into raw eating as well. Looking forward to it. I was wondering if we could eat olives on the detox and also use hemp milk in a smoothie?? Just a few questions to get started. I also had a hard time finding the Buckthorn Bark so I bought Cascara Sagrada Bark tablets. I guess I will take those with water before drinking the tea? Thanks again!
  • Joe
    Sorry this response is so tardy... your email got buried, I guess, cause just saw it now. (Comments are emailed to me.)

    A few olives wouldn't hurt, but keep it light cause they are salty, and salt should not be consumed on a cleanse (and minimized all the time).

    Hemp milk is better than cow's milk on a cleanse, but would limit it too -- don't use it with every smoothie.

    Yeah, buckthorn bark is a pain to get... let me know how the tablets work.

    Have fun!
  • Denise
    By the way, I'm happy to report our daughter is in remission after 2 rounds of chemo that ended last March. We are all trying to keep a healthy lifestyle and build our immune systems, reduce inflammation, stress, etc. It's been a life-changing experience. She is still suffering some after effects of chemo so the detox should be a great help for her on a regular basis.
  • Joe
    Would be a good idea to let her doctor know about the cleansing. Some don't believe in it at all, others, like Dr. Mark Hyman (see blog roll) conducts much of his practice around detoxification.
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