"Detoxification", Article by Matt Monarch

The following information is for education only and is not meant to diagnose, prescribe, or treat illness. It is valuable to seek the advice of an alternative health care professional before making any changes.

Whenever a person ceases the intake of a substance into their bodies, they will go through detoxification and withdrawals from that substance. For example, if a person eliminates the drinking of coffee, inevitably they detoxify and usually get headaches as they go through withdrawals from the elimination of this coffee. It is the same thing with any substance that you put into your body on a regular basis, then remove, such as alcohol, drugs, air pollution, processed foods and so on. When you eliminate any of these substances from your consistent intake, detoxification inevitably follows. How harsh the individual detoxification process is depends on how much you've been intaking these substances and for how long. For example, my mom drank coffee for decades on end. Five years ago when she improved her diet to include only healthy whole foods, she found that she still wasn't quite yet willing to eliminate the coffee, due to the uncomfortable withdrawals. However, as time went on, she lowered her coffee intake slowly but surely. She has now eliminated coffee completely, though still uses certain teas that contain caffeine, to continue the slow ease through the withdrawals.

The more substances that you remove from your intake, the more harsh the detoxification is going to be. For example, the HARSHEST process of detoxification thatANYONE can experience comes through water fasting, because you are literally eliminating every single substance that you intake other than air and water. If 99.99% of the population switched to a 100% Raw Food Diet, they would be eliminating aMONSTROUS amount of damaging substances, which they currently regularly intake into their body plus have stored up inside of them, from years of other-than-optimal consumption. Fresh raw vegan food is usually comprised of 70% - 90% water and comparatively speaking barely taxes the body in terms of digestion compared to other thongs that people eat. Eating 100% Raw Food is hence like going on a 'Raw Food Water-Based Fast'. This is why you may commonly hear eating 100% raw described as a "Detox Diet". If you choose a 100% Raw Food "Detox Diet", it is literally like going on a life-long fast, and you are going to cleanse and detoxify out older poisons from your body for the rest of your life. If you think that drinking coffee for decades is unhealthy for the body, imagine how many people consume MANY (i.e. more than just one substance; caffeine) processed foods for not only decades themselves, but over many generations. The UP side of the ongoing detoxification process that people experience as they eliminate harmful substances is that the cleaner the body becomes, the morebliss you can automatically experience. As I stated in my article, 'Toxins In Toxins Out' ,we continually detox, no matter which type of diet we are consuming. However, the more foods we leave out of our intake, the more we can detoxify the older, more concentrated, and harsh toxins.

Not only have most of us been eating processed foods for decades on end, but so have our parents, their parents, their parents, and their parents. It's likely in our culture that eating processed, denatured foods has been going on for about 7 - 10 generations.

"Man realizes not how filthy his body is internally until he takes a fast and the body begins to purge itself of accummulated filth."
Hilton Hotema, "Man's Higher Consciousness", page 12.

Many people hear about how "AMAZING" it is to eat 100% Raw. They hear of NUMEROUS people adhering to a 100% Raw Food Diet and successfully healing from various diseases and conditions. They realize that the 100% Raw Food Diet makes common sense and is clearly an ideal way to nourish the body while at the same time aging it minimally. However, many of these people also feel very challenged to stick with a 100% Raw intake and they DON'T seem to understand the real reason why this occurs. The number one reason I feel that people usually struggle with staying raw is due to the ongoing and often intense detoxification process that they experience when they go raw. Just like a heroin addict who eliminates heroin from their intake and experiences truly INTENSE withdrawals, the 100% raw foodist often eliminates so many toxic "Standard American Diet" items overnight, such as transfatty acids, processed starches, refined sugar, commercial animal products, pasteurized dairy, preservatives and much more.

So, people may feel and intellectually know that this can be an ideal diet for the human body, yet if they are feeling low in energy from excess toxins running through their bloodstream and they consistently feel sick when trying to live this way, they might feel very challenged to continue on this path. Since many don't seem to understand this ongoing detoxification process, they try to figure out other means for getting this lifestyle to work for themselves. Some people might assume that fasting will help them, because perhaps they have read books on fasting that state this is how humans and animals in the wild heal themselves when they are ill. It makes logical sense, right? However, when such people fast they just eliminate more substances from their body even faster, they increase the detoxification and withdrawals, and they just add to the detoxification "bonfire"... Sooner or later they usually go back to eating their past food choices to get their FIX, which of course immediately stops the HARSH process of detoxification. In fact, not only does it stop the HARSH detoxification, but it alsoSTIMULATES the person, putting them into an ultimate TEMPORARY state of bliss. They then commonly choose to interpret these circumstances to mean that they weren't getting everything they needed (such as protein) when they ate 100% raw. The actual truth of the matter is that they just used their FIX to stop the uncomfortable detoxification process. As I have said many times, I feel that cleansing the colon is the ideal way to 'keep up' with the elimination of these internal poisons while adhering to a 100% Raw Food "Detox Diet".

If you choose an "intermediate" diet, you are eliminating a lot less food from your intake than if you choose to eat raw. The amount of detoxification and withdrawals that a person will experience when doing a healthy whole food "intermediate" diet is a lot lower compared to choosing a 100% raw lifestyle. Yet, as I always say, you don't need to eat 100% raw to be healthy. The key is to eliminate the processed foods that are so damaging to the body. You can learn more about what a whole food diet involves with the article, 'How to Go Raw'. I personally tell around 90% of the people I meet to do an intermediate diet rather than a 100% raw food lifestyle, because it is a lot easier to handle the detoxification process when eating in an "intermediate" way.

The most concentrated fresh foods with the lowest percentage of water available on a 100% Raw Vegan Diet are nuts and seeds. They are the most "obstructive" and taxing raw vegan foods for the body. However, in my opinion, this is a good thing overall. Fruits and vegetables are often about 90% water. The more water content a food has, the less concentration there is and the easier it is to digest. If a 100% Raw Foodist eliminates nuts and seeds completely and lives on greens and fruit, they are pretty much eating around 90% water. This is closer to that "water fast" way of life and a lot more detoxification will occur if people don't consume the more concentrated foods such as nuts and seeds. The nuts and seeds "hold us back" from detoxifying even faster, while at the same time also helping to make us less sensitive to things like air pollution and other toxins on this planet.

Recently Angela and I moved to a part of Ecuador where the air quality is extremely clean. When you have a really "clean" diet and you are exposed to really clean air at the same time, the body can take advantage of all this and go into rapid deep cellular cleansing. In this context, I felt like I needed to eat more nuts/dense foods in order to slow this detoxification process down and it worked. Many people would think I needed more "protein" and that this is why I felt better after eating more nuts/seeds... This is DEFINITELY not true in my opinion. The added concentrated foods simply slow the detoxification down.

I feel that if people realized how "filthy" the human body has become in general, they would understand this detoxification process much better and enjoy a DEEPERunderstanding of true health. I also feel that cleansing the colon is a key ingredient when eating 100% Raw. If colon cleansing is not something a person is willing to do, I would HIGHLY recommend choosing an intermediate healthy whole foods diet instead, because the rate of release of old concentrated internal poisons into their system will be a lot slower. Even if you choose an intermediate healthy whole food diet, at some point there is a GREAT chance that you will feel "sick" from this improvement, via the detoxification process that will inevitably occur. If you feel "sick" like this from detoxification, keep the concept of cleansing your colon in the back of your mind and be sure to act on this if you are willing. If you do a series of colonics during this time of "sickness", it will make your life so much easier and it will help you to side-step other possible "solutions" for relief, such as taking antibiotics or reverting back to processed foods. Detoxification is inevitable and can feel uncomfortable, yet we can all do our best to work through the process; your body will thank you for it!

For Products and More information: http://jrox.therawfoodworld.com/...