Clean: The Revolutionary Program to Restore the Body's Natural Ability to Heal Itself (14 page)

When intestinal integrity is lost, the GALT is exposed to visitors that it would have never met under natural conditions. Foods that never posed a problem before may turn, under the conditions of toxicity, into potential allergens. The allergic-response army goes into red alert and sends signals to other parts of the body.

When you allow the body to repair the intestinal wall, replant good bacteria, and soothe the immune-inflammatory armies with specific nutrients, you could return to the times where reading a restaurant menu didn’t feel like walking on a landmine field. You never know what step will detonate the blast.

LIVING IN A STATE OF RED ALERT

The good flora on the intestinal lining lives in harmony with the GALT. It keeps the immune-system tissue stimulated just enough to keep it ready for action at all times, without making it jump into defense mode. This is why healthy intestinal flora is key to healthy immunity, including ordinary defense against all kinds of colds and bugs. When your intestinal flora is ravaged, one of the first things you will notice is an increase in common colds and longer battles with sore throats and the flu, something that many people consider a “normal” part of what is now known as “cold season” (primarily because medication marketing has called it that). But it’s not normal. A person with a highly functioning immune system, supported by healthy intestinal flora, will rarely get these illnesses. On the other hand, those whose intestines are colonized by bad bacteria are in a state of constant warfare, because the GALT can sense the pathogens living just above it. These people are much more likely to have allergies and inflammation throughout the body.

Our Second Brain

“Go with your guts,” our wise advisers tell us. Our instant “gut instinct” is usually right about situations and people. It’s our mind that messes things up and causes us to end up doing the things that our guts so clearly told us not to. “I should have listened to my guts,” we lament later. Perhaps this function is what helped early men and women survive.

Around the intestines and GALT there is a well-kept secret—millions of nerve cells, almost as many as in the brain. This means an ability to process information about what’s going on and put a response into action separate from the brain and central nervous system. The intestines can control their functions independent of the brain if necessary. And when it comes to the most important decisions in life, especially life and death, it’s the intelligence of the intestines that we want to depend on, not the insecure, indecisive thinking brain.

The intestines can also take emergency action on their own: everyone knows how fear can cause an explosive contraction of the peristaltic machinery, sometimes causing diarrhea. This reflex is likely designed to prioritize energy in emergency situations. If confronted with a lion, you don’t want to be spending your body’s energy digesting. You’d want to instantly gather energy to fight or flee. So the body just dumps whatever food was keeping it busy in the name of survival.

SPECIAL GUESTS: PARASITES

Eric, a successful movie actor, came to see me with two problems that don’t go down well in Hollywood. He had eczema, or irritated, scaly skin, on the side of his face that no creams or medications could help. He was also “puffed up” with a few extra pounds. During his cleanse, Eric dropped about twelve pounds and he began to feel much better. His eczema calmed down until the end of his cleanse, when it returned in full force. Mystified, I suggested we get a stool test done to look for clues. Experience has shown me that when an otherwise healthy person continues to have mysterious symptoms after the Clean program is completed—whether they are skin issues, ongoing nausea, tiredness, constant bloating, or a general weakened state—there is an important next step. I look for the bug.

Parasites are organisms that live in the intestines and actively degrade your well-being by stealing nutrients. They mainly get in through food and water, often in restaurants, where there are more avenues for contamination, and they are common in many people who eat out a lot. (They are not just picked up on foreign trips, as most people think.) The clue that parasites are in residence is high inflammation, because the immune system is aggravated by their presence and initiates a fight. Eric’s blood test showed a high CRP, one of the inflammation markers, so I asked him to visit a parasite expert for a consultation. The expert used rectal swabs to confirm the presence of parasites.

There are natural remedies for parasites that can be made at home and used during and after the basic three-week Clean program. Some of these are effective, such as eating ground-up papaya seeds daily, but Eric decided he wanted to take an aggressive approach. In this case, antibiotics and antiparasitics are the most effective treatment. We talked about the fact that this medication would damage his healthy intestinal flora, and he would need to work hard to replenish it afterwards with probiotics and good diet. Eric found that over the ten days of this program his skin symptoms finally disappeared for good. With the elimination of the parasites, his inflammation level went down, and the irritated skin, which was his body’s way of showing him something was wrong, went away. With the invaders removed, balance was restored in his intestinal ecosystem and he could bloom again. Parasites are not addressed directly by the Clean program, but it may become relevant to your own search for balance if specific problems persist.

The nerve cells in the intestines communicate with each other in the same way that brain neurons do, through chemicals called neurotransmitters. There are many kinds of neurotransmitters. Some are involved in excitation responses, others inhibitory responses. One of the most well known is serotonin, thought to be the responsible for the feeling of happiness and well-being. The popular theory is that it gets made in the brain, because it determines our moods and emotions. Not surprisingly, I discovered that an estimated 80 to 90 percent of the total amount of serotonin in our bodies is manufactured by the nerve cells of our gut. The gut system performs four functions: getting information from the outside world, engulfing components to be used in building of our organs and tissues, sensing the signals in the realm of intuition, and border patrol.

When toxicity damages the gut system, the entire economy of the body changes. Attention is directed toward fighting the pathogens and bacteria and generating immune and inflammatory responses. Meanwhile, the bad bacteria and yeast are actually competing for many of the nutrients needed for the manufacture of neurotransmitters and other substances essential for the proper functioning of our bodies, including serotonin. It’s a battle for resources. When raw materials are scarce, your serotonin levels go down. Other neurotransmitters, like the ones that cause stress responses (adrenalin, noradrenalin), can then take center stage. As you will read, serotonin doesn’t just affect psychological moods. It affects the “mood” of your bowels, which is why disrupted serotonin production contributes to both irritable bowels and depression.

Dig the Well Before You Are Thirsty

Chinese medicine sees the human being as part of the one unbroken wholeness called the Tao. It strives to protect the balance of our internal ecosystem through diet, herbs, and modalities such as acupuncture, so that order is maintained and sickness doesn’t get a chance to set in. A famous text written in the second century BCE says, “To cure disease after it has appeared is like digging a well when one is already thirsty or forging weapons after the war has already begun.” Our current modus operandi in the West involves digging a lot of wells when we are already thirsty. And it’s not working to keep us truly “well.”

Outside of medicine, there is a shift in the markets. The natural-foods industry has exploded. The spread of the organic lifestyle beyond food has resulted in innovative products for every room of a greener, cleaner home. You can get water filters for your home and air filters for your car. You can stock your cupboards with supplements, herbal remedies, and put green cleaning products under the sink.

These measures are important. Reducing exposure today is the first step to building health for tomorrow. But unfortunately these innovations alone aren’t enough. Even those making good lifestyle choices still shower with city water, eat food prepared by restaurants, and go into buildings that have been cleaned and fumigated with toxic chemicals. They may do the best they can, but they are susceptible to toxins from many areas that are outside of their control.

Preventive measures and well-designed eco-products improve the present and future, but they can’t undo the past. Because of the stubbornness of certain humanmade toxins, which tend to linger inside the body for years, the damage on the inside is already done or is in progress.

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?

That well is Clean, a tool for cleaning up the polluted inner environment, slowing down the rate of aging, and releasing the toxic overload that blocks optimal body functioning—now and in the future. Detoxification programs are not the panacea for every ill, but they help create a better state of health and give you back the power over your own well-being.

Are Your Genes Your “Destiny”?

Our genes contain all the information we need for life. Like the software in your computer, your genetic blueprint has the step-by-step instructions to manufacture your proteins, hormones, and everything else that your body needs to build itself as well as to repair itself and adapt to the changing environment and circumstances. The general public’s current understanding is that there is little you can do if you inherit “bad genes.”

Some genes are fixed in their effect, like the genes that determine the color of your eyes, but many more can be turned on or off. “Expression” is the key word here. Genes can be expressed or not expressed. The mechanics are something like this. We know now that far more information is contained in our genes than whatever is being used at any given moment. Like the software in your computer, some of the programs are running all the time, while other programs are dormant and run only when needed, when we click on them and open them for a specific purpose. Some genes contain the exact opposite of the information possessed by the gene right next to it. Our cells have developed a way to keep some of these genes dormant, inactive, unexpressed, while putting others to use. When the circumstances require it, some of the genes that are active can be turned off and the inactive ones turned on, or “expressed.” The functions that they govern may be needed only at certain times, so when they are not needed they are in standby mode.

Expression of Genes

What determines whether and when a gene is expressed? The condition of your inner environment, your inner climate, is thought to be a major influence on triggering or suppressing genes that can cause disease. Genes are located in the nuclei of cells. The cytoplasm of the cell surrounds the nucleus, from where genes direct the symphony of life. The microclimate in the cytoplasm affects the genes. And what influences the cytoplasm of the cell? The blood surrounding the cell. What influences the composition of the blood? The food you eat, the emotions you’re having, the thoughts you are thinking, and the toxins you are accumulating. All these different influences have the potential to turn genes on and off. Mental or emotional states, environmental influences such as heat, humidity, light, sound, and others, radiation, even the perception of a loving nurturing environment as opposed to a threatening one have been shown to influence which genes get activated, resulting in different molecular processes. Of all the influences, the impact of food on our inner chemical environment is the most intimate one. After all, we are introducing it into our blood. The science that studies how our food affects the way our genes express themselves is called nutrigenomics.

Using what we know about our genes, we can make diet and lifestyle choices that will maximize the expression of our full potential and minimize the expression of genes that make us vulnerable or sick. For example, researchers at Johns Hopkins University recently discovered that sulforaphane, a sulfur-containing compound found in the seeds of broccoli, toned down the expression of certain cancer genes. They extracted this compound from broccoli seeds and turned it into a supplement that shows great promise in preventing cancers.

What nutrigenomics shows is that food not only “becomes what you are” by providing the building blocks for your bodily architecture, but also very closely directs which products of your metabolism will be increased and which will be decreased or stopped altogether. It can affect genetic expression for the better or the worse. In addition to saying, “We are what we eat,” it seems as though we have to add, “Our cells behave the way our foods direct them to behave.” Food brings information about our surroundings to the doors of our Pentagon, the GALT. If our surroundings are inflamed, then maybe food informs the intestines to prepare for the aggressor.

Nutrigenomics gives hope to people with the “genes equals destiny” perception. We have known for a long time that if people live healthy lives, they can neutralize the effects of certain genes that they inherited from their ancestors. Greater genetic predisposition for disease does not have to mean a guarantee of actually suffering from the disease. Nutrigenomics gives us a more powerful way to change our own future.

Doctors can identify certain genetic tendencies through some simple information gathering; for example, if one of your parents had a heart attack before age fifty, you are far more likely to have one yourself. With educated lifestyle choices you can minimize the chances that this will occur. Gene activation and deactivation may take too long to save your life if you are having a heart attack already. In this case, more immediate results may be needed. Medications, procedures, and tests will keep you alive in the short term. Eventually, if you want a long-term solution, you will need to turn genes off. A sound detox program is a great way to initiate this process.