Crazy Sexy Diet: Eat Your Veggies, Ignite Your Spark, and Live Like You Mean It! (27 page)

When I was a kid
, I used to love to watch a show called
The Love Boat
with my grandma. We both adored cruise director Julie McCoy, and I dreamed of having a job like hers when I grew up. Grandma would join me and off we’d sail to Fantasy Island to dine with Mr. Roarke and Tattoo. Little did I know that the tour I’d be giving would be very different from a high-seas expedition. So indulge my childhood dreams, and allow me to be the Julie McCoy of digestion.

Digestion is the process of extracting nutrients from food and preparing the leftover waste for elimination from the body. It starts in your mouth and finishes, or so you hope, with a soft-serve plop in your royal commode. The whole system is basically one long twisting, turning tube of biochemical fun.

Your mouth is the first stop on the cruise. As you chew, enzymes in your saliva begin to break down your food. Next, the chunks of chow voyage to your tummy (après swallowing), where they churn and mix with hydrochloric acid and other gastric juices until all is transformed into a substance called chyme.

Once the food (chyme) leaves your tummy, it enters your small intestine, where additional enzymes and digestive juices break it down further. Your small intestine is also the sweet spot where the nutrients are absorbed into your body. Next stop, your large intestine, also known as your colon. What’s left after absorption is mostly fiber, undigested food bits, dead bacteria, digestive juices, and water. Your large intestine’s job is to reabsorb most of the remaining water and turn the leftover chyme into poop.

Be honest
, do you poop on a regular basis? Like after each meal or at least once per day? If you aren’t having abundant bowel movements on a daily basis, then you’re full of shit, lady. There may be days’, even weeks’ worth of debris just hanging out and backing you up. No matter how healthy our diets, if our inner sewer system is clogged, our bodies break down. Many of us have impacted and encrusted colons from years of eating excess meat, dairy, processed foods, breads, candies, cookies, bad
oils, and other tasty (but toxic) treats.

Did you know that the average person might be hauling around between 7 and 10 extra pounds just in the colon? Gross! Medical autopsy lore has it that Elvis was carrying about 60 pounds of poo and fried peanut butter/banana sandwiches up his ass when he expired. While I doubt that’s true, extra pounds are possible, and here’s why. Your intestines are about 26 feet long. If you were to spread them out, their surface—including all the nooks, crannies and intestinal villi—would cover a tennis court. With that in mind, you can imagine countless hiding places for waste to get trapped.

Lining the walls of the small intestine are millions of tiny, finger-like protrusions called villi. They expand the total surface of the small intestine so that you can absorb more nutrients. When food passes over the villi, they draw in nutrients. But if they’re damaged, the nutrients just cruise on by.

If waste doesn’t move steadily through the colon, it stagnates, rots, and hardens, causing myriad problems, such as constipation, upset stomach and cramping, a weakened immune system, weight gain, and even depression.

It stands to reason, then, that if our inner sewer system is clogged, our bodies break down. Your immune system relies greatly on your intestines. In fact, 60 to 70 percent of your immune power is in your digestive tract, starting with lymphatic tissue in your tonsils and ending in your rectum. Like a warrior princess, your immune system kills off any bad germs and parasites that you lick up in your food.

You carry around literally trillions of bacteria in your intestines. Generally speaking, they’re friendly little guys who busily help you digest your food and even make some vitamins, like vitamin K. You also carry around plenty of not-so-friendly bacteria, such as one called
Clostridium difficile
that can even kill people with weakened immune systems. Usually the good guys crowd out the bad, but if the bad guys get enough of a foothold to multiply then they can cause real problems.

That’s the theory, anyway. In fact, lots of things can mess up your intestinal bacteria and the friendly bacteria you depend on for good health. Top of the list? Poor diet—especially too much sugar, too much animal protein, and too little fiber. Also on the list are drugs, especially antibiotics and alcohol.

Some doctors, nutritionists, and now advertisers suggest yogurt as a means of getting some extra good bacteria, also known as probiotics, into your
system (I’ll explain a lot more about this in
chapter 9
). But given what we’ve learned about dairy products (and pasteurization), this advice is far from sound. Remember, milk creates mucus, and mucus creates inflammation, stagnation, and a whole lotta disorder in your gut. In addition, most yogurts are loaded with added sugar. Bad bacteria love to feed and multiply on sugar. And don’t be fooled into buying a vat of ice cream called yogurt. As you’ve learned, most health claims have been manufactured in boardrooms. What you’re really getting is a ton of empty calories, lots of fat, sugar, and mucus.

Mucus
. It sounds pretty disgusting, but this slippery goo serves a very necessary protective function in the body. Mucus membranes are located throughout your body, not just in the booger factory. In fact, humans produce about a liter of it a day. Mucus guards your stomach lining from hydrochloric acid, helps prevent infection in your cervix, and protects you from what your body senses as foreign invaders. A small amount of mucus in your intestines lubes the tubes in order to move waste through smoothly. However, a daily onslaught of bad eating habits creates excess mucus and problems like constipation. We all know what it’s like to have a congested, dripping nose. Well, imagine your nose is your colon (gross, I know, just go with it). Try pushing a poop through all the goo.

As you’ve already learned, mucus is also acidic. Too much of it lowers our pH and reduces our oxygen levels. Next step, inflammation, which does what? Creates more mucus! It becomes a vicious
cycle of inner snot. Yuck. After years of poor dietary habits, antibiotics, drugs, and stimulants, many people are surprised at the endless amount of mucus that pours from their bodies. In
The Mucusless Diet Healing System
, Arnold Ehret writes, “All disease is a result of constitutional constipation. The entire human pipe system is chronically constipated through the wrong foods of civilization.”

In order to cleanse properly, you need a break from the bad food and toxins that go in your body, as well as help moving the old crud out. This is why I combine an optional one-day green juice fast and colon hydrotherapy as part of my 21-Day Cleanse (see
chapter 10
). During the detox process, even more trash than usual is dumped into the colon and bloodstream, so it’s extra important to keep moving the waste out. Once you’ve given your terrain a spring cleaning and upgraded your diet Crazy Sexy style, you’ll only need to cleanse occasionally. Until then, read on.

Imagine an old house
that’s been locked up for decades, inhabited by reclusive socialite wackadoos like the Beales in
Grey Gardens
. When you start sweeping, you awaken a dust storm. If you don’t open the windows, the dirt just relocates. The same holds true for your God pod. One of the best ways to keep the dust from settling in your inner house is with an internal bath that moves the junk out the back door: an enema or colonic.

Lots of folks get squirmy or prudish at the mention of poop—especially when it also involves putting something up their butt. “That’s unnatural! Stuff goes out, you don’t stick it in!” Well, get over it. PowerBars are unnatural, cleansing is not. Colon cleansing is a healing method that has been used since the ancient Egyptians. Well into the 1900s, enemas were widely administered by community doctors. In fact, they have long been considered one of the best remedies for a headache! When your system stalls and sputters from the Standard American Diet, colon hydrotherapy may well be in order. It’s much more effective and gentle than harsh, habit-forming chemical laxatives such as Ex-Lax or even herbal laxatives containing senna. Laxatives also irritate and further weaken the colon and can cause dehydration. If you’re not evacuating on a regular basis or if you’re about to embark on a cleanse, you should definitely consider the power of the hose.

Enemas help get the lower part of the colon, called the descending colon, moving and grooving. They are easy to administer at home and can provide much relief for those who suffer from constipation. Step one for using an enema: Make peace with the fact that you’re gonna put a helpful hose up your ass. Step two: Deck out your bathroom like a detox ashram. Just because said hose is up your ass doesn’t mean you have to be in an antiseptic environment. Surround yourself with style and beauty.
I like to roll out my yoga mat and then place a big comfy towel on top. Turn down the lights, play some music, light a candle, and relax.

Most enema bags come in 1- or 2-quart sizes and require you to fasten the tube to the bag. No problemo—when filling the bag, make sure the clamp on the tube is in the closed position, otherwise the water will flood your ashram, not your ass. Fill the enema bag with lukewarm filtered or distilled water. (Chlorine in tap water kills the good flora in your colon.) Before inserting the tube in your tush, let a little water out of the enema into the sink—this removes air bubbles. Next, hang the enema bag on a towel rack or doorknob, making sure that the bag is higher than you (gravity rocks!). Lie on your left side with your right knee bent close to your chest, left leg straight. Lubricate the tube tip with a bit of coconut oil and then gently insert the tube into your rectum. Woo hoo! Ya don’t need to go far, Rambo—2 to 3 inches will do.

Release the clamp and let the water begin to fill you slowly. If you let too much water in too fast, you may get an urge to evacuate prematurely. For the best results, you’ll want to fill for a bit, then clamp off and relax, allowing the water to create a soaking cycle. When you feel ready, let more water in. If you’re feeling adventurous, roll slowly onto your back with your knees bent and begin to massage your belly, moving clockwise. This is best done during a soaking cycle.