Liver Cleaning

When a fluorescent bulb breaks in your home, enough mercury vapor is released that the place should be considered a hazardous waste site to be decontaminated by experts. Obviously, that never happens. In fact, most people aren’t even aware that breathing the released vapors or coming into contact with the broken bulb are dangerous. The EPA is.

Not only did the EPA provide a special exemption to even sell mercury-containing fluorescent lamps to the public, they also have very specific guidelines for cleaning up a broken bulb. Until I researched the subject, I had no idea of just how dangerous a broken bulb could be. I doubt many people do.

According to the EPA, there are very specific guidelines you should follow to clean up a broken fluorescent light bulb:

• Open a window if there is one, and leave the room for at least 15 minutes (and restrict access to others).
• Remove all you can without using a vacuum:
  
  • Wearing disposable rubber gloves, scoop up everything you can, including the powder, using stiff paper or cardboard.
  • Use sticky tape such as duct tape to pick up the remaining small pieces and powder.
  • Wipe the area clean with a damp paper towel or disposable wet wipe.
  • Place all cleanup materials into a plastic bag and seal it. If your area allows it, dispose of the bag in an outdoor trash receptacle. (They don’t give any suggestions for final disposal if your local government doesn’t allow you to put CFLs in the trash.)
• Vacuum the area where the bulb was broken, then remove the collector bag or wipe out the canister. Put the debris in a plastic bag, seal it, then put it in a second bag. Dispose as above.

Given the EPA’s inconsistent track record, at this point it’s hard to tell whether they’re being alarmist or conservative. Regardless, a broken bulb is something you need to take seriously.

For more information on how to detoxify the body, eliminating body toxins, or liver detoxification, visit Dr. Williams’ Web site.

When it comes to skin problems, most people don’t think of detoxification, but they should. In fact, one of the best ways to clear up a variety of skin conditions involves easing the load on your liver in every way possible.

To help you do a liver cleanse naturally, follow these three easy steps.

Liver Detoxification: Step 1
You must make sure your bowels are moving regularly, at least once daily. Food wastes that remain in the body over 24 hours become toxic. Your intestines continue to absorb this waste and it places an enormous burden on the liver to detoxify it.

Liver Detoxification: Step 2
You must drink at least eight, 8-ounce glasses of water per day. This helps both the bowels and the kidneys and lightens the load on the liver. If you drink other liquids, make sure they are sugar-free, but don’t count them as part of the eight glasses of water.

Liver Detoxification: Step 3
Foods high in sugar (natural or otherwise) and high starch foods must be eliminated initially. Some products where sugar has been added are obvious, like soft drinks, candy, ice cream, cakes, pies, etc. The list below contains foods which have a high natural sugar content or an abundance of starch that can be quickly converted to sugars by the body. Eliminate or at least reduce these foods until the psoriasis patches have disappeared.

• Potatoes
• Rice
• Grapes
• Raisins
• Plums
• Figs
• Dates
• Bananas
• Spaghetti
• Macaroni
• Noodles
• Pizza
• Jams
• Jellies
• Corn
• Beans
• Rice
• Peas
• Artichokes
• Breakfast cereal

After reading this list, you may be wondering just what you can eat. Remember, the foods may later be reintroduced into the diet, but in the beginning you will get faster and better results if you stick rigidly to the program. You can eat any vegetable not listed above. You can have any meat except pork. Eggs and dairy products are allowed. But only a few kinds of fruit are allowed such as: strawberries, cantaloupe, watermelon, honeydew melon, peaches and all citrus fruit, which may be eaten if fresh or packed in water. Coffee and tea should be limited to a couple of times a day.

For more information on how to detoxify the body, eliminating body toxins, or liver detoxification, visit Dr. Williams’ Web site. While there, you can also sign up for Dr. Williams’ FREE eLetter or monthly newsletter.

To realize the full benefits of a liver detoxification routine, you need to begin with the gallbladder, which is often overlooked.

Your gallbladder can become clogged with small stones or thick gelatinous bile. This bile contains body toxins that have come out of the liver, and a flush is an important tool for helping restore normal gallbladder function so the toxins can keep flowing out properly. While the flush is easy to do, I would never recommend doing so without the approval and guidance of your doctor. I have supervised hundreds of flushes and never had any problems, but each patient should be screened to rule out the possibility of large gallstones that might not be able to pass through the bile duct during the flush.

To flush the gallbladder, follow these directions precisely:

1. Monday through Saturday noon, in addition to your normal diet and supplement regimen, drink as much apple juice or cider as you can. The apple juice or cider should not be from concentrate or contain sugar or additives.
2. At noon on Saturday, eat a normal lunch.
3. Three hours later, take 2 teaspoons of disodium phosphate, dissolved in about one ounce of hot water. (Disodium phosphate is available from The Vitamin Shoppe at 800-223-1216, or from Mountain Home Nutritionals at 800-888-1415.) The taste may be objectionable—it’s okay to follow it with a little fresh-squeezed lemon or grapefruit juice.
4. Two hours later, repeat step 3.
5. For the evening meal, you may have grapefruit or other citrus fruits or juices.
6. At bedtime, drink a half cup of unrefined virgin olive oil either followed by a small glass of grapefruit juice or blended with a half cup of lemon juice.
7. Go to bed immediately and lie on your right side with your right knee pulled up close to your chest for 30 minutes.
8. The next morning, one hour before breakfast, take two teaspoons of disodium phosphate dissolved in two ounces of hot water.
9. Continue your normal diet and any nutritional program that may have been prescribed.

The olive oil/citrus juice may cause slight to moderate nausea, which will slowly disappear by the time you go to sleep. In the rare instance where the olive oil causes vomiting, the procedure should not be repeated at this time.

Once you have finished this process you'll be ready to start on your liver cleanse & detox program. All the environmental toxins that are moving out of your liver will now have an escape route. You won’t notice the toxins as they’re being flushed out, but be assured they are leaving.

As a bonus, you should see an improvement in bowel regularity, because the gallbladder will become more efficient at releasing bile into your small intestine.
 

Many natural detox programs you see out there address liver detoxification. In this post I'll let you know why a natural liver cleanse is so important.

Your liver uses two process to detoxify and remove toxins from the body. In Phase 1, biological and environmental toxins are broken down into molecular fragments, a process called glucuronidation. This is where a group of enzymes known as P450 do their work, and the stage at which many drug interactions occur.

In Phase 2, the toxins are bound to other molecules, a process called conjugation. The toxins are then dumped out through the bile into the bowel for elimination. This is why cleansing the liver isn't enough on its own. The longer material sits in your gut, the more opportunity bacteria and enzymes in your gut have to break the bonds, known as deconjugation. This allows those toxins to be reabsorbed into your body, doubling (or more) the workload on your poor liver.

A thorough liver cleaning helps repair any damaged areas in your liver, as well as clearing out the toxins that have built up over time.

Considering the world we live in, it's almost a given that you need to perform some kind of a body cleansing & detoxification regimen once a year or more. Readers have asked me how to know when it's time to begin. The answer almost certainly is, "Now." Environmental toxins accumulate daily, and every elimination route is constantly under pressure. Here are some of the signs that it's time to remove toxins from your body:

• Sluggish thinking, and/or depression
• Dull hair and skin
• Feelings of fatigue
• Joint aches and pains
• Constant bad breath
• Chronic indigestion

All these symptoms relate to either the routes your body uses to remove toxins, or the places that toxins tend to accumulate.

It's possible to detoxify the body naturally, to get rid of some or all of these symptoms. A thorough liver cleaning is a good early step in body cleansing. Detoxification involves more than that, certainly, but it is a necessary component. A liver cleanse is another necessary component of any detox program. I've provided full guidance and resources for a natural detox program on my Web site, detox.drdavidwilliams.com.

One of the most basic steps you can take in a full body cleansing and detoxification program is a colon cleansing. You'll notice that nearly every natural detox program focuses on bowel regularity. There's a reason for this: Your gut receives all manner of body toxins as they're cleaned from the blood in the liver, then dumped into the gut through the bile. Any measures you can take to help remove toxins from your intestines lessens the risk that they'll be reabsorbed before they've had a chance to be eliminated.

A thorough digestive cleansing also requires a little maintenance afterward so you can keep up the benefits. Even so, an effective program is remarkably simple.

• Add more fiber (of course). No matter how healthy your gut is, if it doesn't have something to push against, you're headed for bowel irregularity. Don't bother counting fiber grams; just add more fruits and vegetables to your diet, and replace any "white" foods (bread, pasta, etc.) with whole-grain versions.
• Try a natural laxative. If you find that adding fiber isn't enough to produce the bowel changes you want, then add a laxative to your regimen for up to two weeks. Avoid the chemical-based products (which tend to be hard on your digestive tract) and look for ones that contain herbs such as senna or cascara sagrada.
• Heal your gut with glutamine. The amino acid glutamine is a basic food for the cells that line your gut wall. Glutamine is found in most high-protein foods such as meat and beans, but for focused gut healing take an additional 5 grams a day.
• Take a daily probiotic. Benefits of probiotic supplementation come from normalizing the bacterial balance in your gut. Healthy gut flora promote a healthy gut wall, which means that you're not reabsorbing all the environmental toxins that have just been cleaned by the liver.

That's the basics. You should begin to see the benefits of a colon cleanse almost immediately, as you just feel lighter and more refreshed. The benefits will continue long after, as other organs have their loads lightened (because they're not trying to get rid of everything that wasn't leaving through your colon.)

• Your skin will be clearer.
• You'll breathe more easily.
• You'll think more clearly.

All in all, a regular colon cleansing is well worth the effort.