perfect health by Wednesday? Thursday? Next week? Obviously, no. Beyond the first week or so of alcohol detoxification and withdrawal, she has plenty of healing to do: recovery of her liver, heart, brain, and gastrointestinal systemâjust about every organ damaged by the toxic effects of excessive, daily alcohol coupled with the nutritional deficiencies of a neglectful diet.
The dramatic lifestyle shift of wheat and grain elimination will take you through similar changes. You may have to endure the emotional and physical uproar of grain-induced opiate withdrawal and start feeling tons better, but health will not be fully restored until additional efforts are undertaken. These efforts are not required because removing grains leaves you lacking something; they are necessary because you need to undo all unhealthy effects caused by grains that can persist even in their absence. But your detox process will proceed faster, be more complete, and bring you closer to ideal health, upping the chances that you will also look the picture of perfect health.
Letâs focus on the issues that emerge front and center in this 10-day detox period that must be managed for you to experience full and enduring success.
MANAGE YOUR GARDEN OF BOWEL FLORA
From consuming grains as well as sugary foods and soft drinks for years, eating meats laced with antibiotic residues, being exposed to genetically modified foods containing built-in pesticides, and taking intermittent prescription antibiotics or acid reflux drugs to drinking chlorinated tap water and aspartame in diet soda and ingesting emulsifying agents in processed foodsâpeople today have managed to utterly discombobulate the composition of microorganisms inhabiting their intestines. These organisms, however, are not only important for bowel health but also critical for overall health. Having a healthy, diverse profile of microorganisms in your intestines helps control weight, improves metabolic factors (reduced triglycerides, blood sugars, and insulin), reduces blood pressure, encourages bowel regularity, prevents colon cancer, and even influences sleep quality and mental health. When you remove grains, a major factor disrupting bowel flora has been removed. This represents a wonderful time to reestablish bowel flora that facilitates health and brings you closer to achieving your goals.
It helps to view bowel flora as being like a backyard garden. In springtime, you prepare the soil and plant seeds. Can you then walk away and come back in 2 months and have a successful garden bursting with zucchini and squash? Of course not. You should have also watered, fertilized, and weeded your garden with some frequency. This is how it works with bowel flora: We need to plant âseedsâ (probiotics that contain organisms you may lack), then âwater and fertilizeâ the garden (prebiotic fibers or resistant starches that nourish the preferred species that yield benefits to the host, i.e., you). Both probiotics and prebiotics are essential components of this process.
We start by âseedingâ your intestines with a high-potency probiotic supplement. We need to ensure that there are adequate numbers of organisms to make a difference. This generally means a âcolony-forming unit,â or CFU, count of at least 30 billion to 50 billion per day, taken in capsule form. It also means providing a wide diversity of species. The best probiotics typically contain a dozen or more species, such as
Lactobacillus plantarum
and
Bifidobacterium infantis.
But, just as you do not need to plant seeds every day of the growing season to have a successful garden, so you do not need to supplement probiotics every day for the rest of your life. You only need to take them for a limited time, e.g., 6 to 8 weeks, long enough to reseed your intestines with healthy speciesâprovided you properly nourish them. This strategy will therefore outlast your initial 10-day detox, but it stacks the
The dramatic lifestyle shift of wheat and grain elimination will take you through similar changes. You may have to endure the emotional and physical uproar of grain-induced opiate withdrawal and start feeling tons better, but health will not be fully restored until additional efforts are undertaken. These efforts are not required because removing grains leaves you lacking something; they are necessary because you need to undo all unhealthy effects caused by grains that can persist even in their absence. But your detox process will proceed faster, be more complete, and bring you closer to ideal health, upping the chances that you will also look the picture of perfect health.
Letâs focus on the issues that emerge front and center in this 10-day detox period that must be managed for you to experience full and enduring success.
MANAGE YOUR GARDEN OF BOWEL FLORA
From consuming grains as well as sugary foods and soft drinks for years, eating meats laced with antibiotic residues, being exposed to genetically modified foods containing built-in pesticides, and taking intermittent prescription antibiotics or acid reflux drugs to drinking chlorinated tap water and aspartame in diet soda and ingesting emulsifying agents in processed foodsâpeople today have managed to utterly discombobulate the composition of microorganisms inhabiting their intestines. These organisms, however, are not only important for bowel health but also critical for overall health. Having a healthy, diverse profile of microorganisms in your intestines helps control weight, improves metabolic factors (reduced triglycerides, blood sugars, and insulin), reduces blood pressure, encourages bowel regularity, prevents colon cancer, and even influences sleep quality and mental health. When you remove grains, a major factor disrupting bowel flora has been removed. This represents a wonderful time to reestablish bowel flora that facilitates health and brings you closer to achieving your goals.
It helps to view bowel flora as being like a backyard garden. In springtime, you prepare the soil and plant seeds. Can you then walk away and come back in 2 months and have a successful garden bursting with zucchini and squash? Of course not. You should have also watered, fertilized, and weeded your garden with some frequency. This is how it works with bowel flora: We need to plant âseedsâ (probiotics that contain organisms you may lack), then âwater and fertilizeâ the garden (prebiotic fibers or resistant starches that nourish the preferred species that yield benefits to the host, i.e., you). Both probiotics and prebiotics are essential components of this process.
We start by âseedingâ your intestines with a high-potency probiotic supplement. We need to ensure that there are adequate numbers of organisms to make a difference. This generally means a âcolony-forming unit,â or CFU, count of at least 30 billion to 50 billion per day, taken in capsule form. It also means providing a wide diversity of species. The best probiotics typically contain a dozen or more species, such as
Lactobacillus plantarum
and
Bifidobacterium infantis.
But, just as you do not need to plant seeds every day of the growing season to have a successful garden, so you do not need to supplement probiotics every day for the rest of your life. You only need to take them for a limited time, e.g., 6 to 8 weeks, long enough to reseed your intestines with healthy speciesâprovided you properly nourish them. This strategy will therefore outlast your initial 10-day detox, but it stacks the
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