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Have you asked your Dr. if this is a good idea? If you're talking about what I think you're talking about, I've never heard a real doctor say that it's a good idea.
The people selling you the herbs, on the other hand, can't tell you enough how great it is. Funny.
Posts: 3950 | Registered: Mar 2006
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Exactly why I'm asking. I have no idea if its a good idea or not. just curious what other people knew or thought. I want to start a diet and clean the system out. My dad did a colon clean not too long ago and I've had friends talk about doing a detox. My initial thought is that the herbal things sound kind of like a scam but I don't really know. I do plan on talking to my doctor about it but was just curious what you all had to say.
Posts: 1294 | Registered: Oct 2003
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The digestive tract is essentially "outside" your body. If you eat a healthy diet with plenty of roughage, you don't need to induce diarrhea in order to have a "clean" colon.
(I'm assuming that is what is meant by an "herbal cleanse".)
Probably the only real benefit you get is temporary loss of a couple of pounds due to the extra outflow - if you consider weight loss without fat loss a benefit. Nothing that is actually healthy or beneficial in the long run.
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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Your body is designed very well to flush out toxins in the normal course of things. I've never read a study that showed a positive result from herbal cleansing regimes, and there's at least some evidence that it puts an unnecessary strain on your body (machines need proper fuel!). Remember that most, if not all, of the positive anecdotal evidence could simply be a combination of the placebo effect & maybe the way that these regimes tend to help the minor dehydration that many Americans suffer from chronically. (Drinking more water would do the exact same thing, so it's not like the herbal supplements are necessary.)
Posts: 2409 | Registered: Sep 2003
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If you want to feel "cleansed," I suggest fasting for a day and then eating well, lots of fruit and vegetables, and drink lots of water.
I did the master cleanse once. You know, the lemon/cayenne pepper/maple syrup shimmy sham? It was supposed to "flush my toxins."
It gave me a chronic case of thrush, and muffed up my perfectly efficient digestive system. I lost about twelve pounds in one week, but of course I gained most of it back within the next two weeks.
It supposedly does wonderful things for some close friends of mine, but I think fasting for a day or two several times a year and eating well in general is usually enough to keep a body "clean."
Posts: 3936 | Registered: Jul 2000
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My friends do something called the 'master cleanse.' It irritates their colon, makes them sick and feeble for a few days, robs them of excess energy, and is totally bogus, but some doctor somewhere swears by it so they're all big on it.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Yeah, wouldn't a fiber supplement, used according to directions, be just as effective and much more healthy?
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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What everyone else already said. It's not necessarily a scam - they may really believe in it - but it's not likely to do anything good for you and is likely to make you feel pretty miserable for at least a short period of time.
Posts: 3275 | Registered: May 2007
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I've done the lemon/maple syrup/cayenne pepper one, and also without the cayenne pepper. It didn't hurt or help me either way. Though we did another one called the apple juice gall bladder flush where you just have apple juice for three days and then drink 1/4 cup of oil and it's supposed to make your gall bladder go inside out. Well, I messed it up by having apple sauce instead of apple juice the day before so the 1/4 cup of oil didn't go anywhere. It just sat in my tummy and made me feel gross. That pretty much turned me off that cleanse idea, even before I decided diets in general are dumb.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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I am delighted by the collective wisdom of Hatrack.
(And I doubt I could put my thoughts more succinctly and precisely than Jhai in particular, but all of it is so good and pertinant.)
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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I've done the lemon/maple syrup/cayenne one too, also without the cayenne pepper, but also with the maple syrup replaced with plain old sugar. And I diluted the lemon juice with a fair amount of water. And I only had a glass of the resulting mixture, over ice, once or twice a day. It was quite refreshing!
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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Having had to do prep for various digestive track examinations , I am at a loss as to why anyone would voluntarily do that.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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The maple lemon cayenne is a thing you drink. Though there are people who find the more direct method of cleansing refreshing.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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Dayum I wish I was an immoral person. People will fall for anything...
If you want to go poop, buy some Metamucil. It's actually pretty good mixed in high pulp OJ. You can pretend the grit is just more pulp.
If something has "Herbal" in the title, it's a scam. If it has claims that are "Not verified by the FDA" it's a scam. If it's to make you poop when you're already regular, it's a scam. If it clears away unspecified "toxins" it's a scam.
Posts: 7085 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
I like metamucil. It is orangy flavored and gritty. I love it. When I drink pure water I can't seem to chug it down. It takes forever to drink.
I can down any other drink in one breath. Before I go to bed I get an extra large glass of water, a heaping teaspoon of metamucil, and I chug chug chug.
Yummie. Plus it forces me to get up early--the water that is.
Posts: 2445 | Registered: Oct 2004
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quote:Originally posted by The Pixiest: If something has "Herbal" in the title, it's a scam.
Unless it's a seasoning. Herbs have proven to be quite effective in adding flavor to food. It's very well documented.
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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Thanks one and all. Your coments have kind of confirmed what I was thinking anyways. I was recently at a conference in Cincinnati and during the ride down and back all I heard on the XM radio in my buddies car was an add for this cleansing supplement and it got me wondering about it. It sounded interesting but, like I said, I really don't know too much about that stuff and it's good to get so many thoughtful responses.
Being a very "regular" person, I think I'll just go with the exercise and diet plan and not kick start it off with anything that sounds that painfully aggressive to the system.
Posts: 1294 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
It is a myth that your colon needs to be cleansed of blockage and waste. I still hear commercials advertising that the average American colon is full of unpassed waste, and this simply is not true.
A cleanse can be a good thing, but I believe it needs to be done with whole foods. Natural, real, whole foods have tremendous amounts of nutrition and health benefits that any drugs or processed vitamins and herbs would be jealous of. Eat whole foods, meaning foods that have not been processed or had anything added to them. It is even better if you can avoid cooking them, since they lose some nutrients when cooked.
Fresh fruits and veggies are not whole foods that are hard to come by, but it can be difficult to come by other whole foods, since the large majority of them have been processed or altered in some way. Still, I think that eating a wide variety of whole foods is far superior to cleansing with a limited supply of liquids such as vinegar, cider, maple syrup, etc. A wide variety of whole foods gives you the variety of nutrients, vitamins, proteins, and antioxidants that you need. Eating these things in variety is what cleanses your body. The idea that our bowels need a natural form of "drain-o" by drinking tons of liquids is just false. If you limit your intake to just a few liquids for an extended period of time, you are missing out on a lot of other important nutrients. Plus, diets and cleanses in which you don't get to eat are just plain not fun. It is nice to be able to just eat whole foods, enjoy your eating, and not worrying about getting fat or unhealthy.
However, I do think whole foods need to be accompanied by plenty of water, in its pure form. Water in the form of teas, fruit drinks, milk, etc. is not recognized as water in your stomach. Your stomach recognizes it as food, and therefore digests it. Pure water, however, is recognized by your stomach and is immediately absorbed into your bloodstream through your stomach. This makes it so that you get more water and are less dehydrated.
Posts: 684 | Registered: Aug 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Marlozhan: Water in the form of teas, fruit drinks, milk, etc. is not recognized as water in your stomach. Your stomach recognizes it as food, and therefore digests it. Pure water, however, is recognized by your stomach and is immediately absorbed into your bloodstream through your stomach.
Given that water is almost exclusively absorbed through the large intestine and your stomach lacks villi, that seems unlikely.
Also, I wonder what you believe the difference is between chyme containing juice and fruit and chyme containing "pure water" and fruit.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Marl: since when is water ever Pure? Are you drinking distilled water? How do you keep it from mixing with saliva and stomach juices on the way down?
Your post makes no sense.
Posts: 7085 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
Now that definitely should go the other way around. Otherwise that's one big parasite. How huge must the host be?
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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(Although, come to think of it, I probably did that last night-- I ate a cheeseburger for my little parasite, she'd been asking for one all day.)
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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KQ: The other way around wouldn't fit the song. It's artistic license. Like that stupid "You hear the thunder and turn around before the lightning strikes" song.
Posts: 7085 | Registered: Apr 2001
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Oh, that song would just make me angry. I've never heard it and now you must tell me the title so I make sure I never will.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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First, I will admit to being wrong about the stomach absorbing water. Rivka is correct that the large intestine does absorb water. The stomach absorbing water was incorrect information that I obtained (I forget from where, it was a while ago). That's what I get for posting it before double-checking it.
Second, when I said pure water, I didn't mean literally pure water. I suppose a better term than pure would have been 'plain.' I just meant water that wasn't mixed in drinks such as coffee, soda, juices, hot chocolate, etc. I am not suggesting that we all go and try to find literally pure water in the nearest spring, since, as MightyCow said, there are other dangerous things to be found. My main point was that many people don't drink enough plain water, because they think they are getting enough drinking soda or other such things all day.
One of the reasons I support drinking enough plain water is found in a study from Loma Linda University, whose research was reported in the American Journal of Epidemiology (Vol. 155, No.9):
quote:"Basically, not drinking enough water can be as harmful to your heart as smoking," warns Jacqueline Chan, DrPH, principle investigator and lead author of the article. Dr. Chan and Synnove Knutson, MD , PhD , second author, chair of epidemiology department, found that California Seventh-day Adventists who drink five or more glasses of plain water a day have a much lower risk of fatal coronary heart disease compared to those who drink less than two glasses per day.
The results from this study show that by drinking more plain water, healthy people without any history of heart disease, stroke, or diabetes-- reduced their risk of dying from a heart attack by half or more . This is as much or more than if they had adopted any other well-known preventive measure, including stopping smoking and lowering cholesterol levels, increasing exercise or maintaining ideal weight.
Because drinking more plain water is a simple lifestyle change that anybody can do, this simple practice has the potential of saving tens of thousands of lives each year with minimal cost . Neither total fluid intake, nor intake of other fluids combined showed this reduced risk. Instead, for women, high intake (5 or more glasses a day) of other fluids showed a greatly increased risk of coronary heart disease.
"People need to be made aware that there is a difference, at least for heart health, whether they get their fluids from plain water or from sodas," says Dr. Chan.
Here is a link to an article that references this study.
As this study points out, drinking the same amounts of liquids in forms other than plain water did not yield the same results. Though I was wrong about the stomach absorbing water, there are a few other reasons that drinking plain water can help. If your water comes in the form of a caffeinated soda, the caffeine acts as a diuretic and stimulates the adrenal glands. Soda also contains sodium. A lot of fruit juices contain too much processed sugar, overworking the pancreas. Some other types of beverages can also contain dehydrating agents.
I am not suggesting that we all drink only plain water. I just think it is wise to make sure you are drinking enough of it. My response was also referencing a "cleanse", which generally implies a more strict diet than normal day-to-day eating. While I don't drink just plain water every day, if I was going to do a cleanse, I would be sure to drink a lot of plain water, or other drinks I know to be completely healthy for me.
In regards to the cooking of food, again that was in response to the cleanse. I agree that we should not eat raw food all of the time, and that some foods are better cooked. However, there are still many nutrients that are lost during cooking, so simply be sensitive to that if you are doing a cleanse. I also agree that you need to be careful where your food came from. When I suggested not cooking food, I did not mean that should apply to all foods, or that you should not be careful to the risks of this. There are plenty of places to eat raw food and stay safe, if you know what you are doing. And I don't know if any of you were implying this, but I certainly wasn't suggesting that you eat meat without cooking it. I was referring to foods such as whole grains, nuts, legumes, vegetables, and fruits.
Posts: 684 | Registered: Aug 2001
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, I am at a loss as to why anyone would voluntarily do that.
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