Makes enough for 2 people                                                         Preheat to 375, but then broil

Bring 2 C water to a boil. Add rice, stir, cover pot, lower heat and simmer until rice has absorbed water. Brown rice will take longer than white rice…You know how to cook your rice!

Preheat oven to 375. Using a 10-inch oven-safe skillet (cast iron is best), gently warm toasted sesame oil (or coconut oil, or ghee) over a medium flame. Add onions. Sauté 5 minutes. Add spices and garlic. Sauté 2 minutes. Add veggies. Sauté another 2 minutes. Make 2 indentations in veggies about 2 inches apart; crack an egg into each. Sprinkle everything with half the salt and pepper. Put skillet into oven on top shelf about 12 inches from the broiler. Bake for 5 minutes, then turn oven to broil. Broil 3-4 minutes (you can drizzle a little oil on eggs just before broiling). When you remove the skillet from the oven, the yolks will still be slightly soft.

While veggies are sautéing, toss the cucumber with lemon or lime, and remaining salt and pepper. Can you use kimchi instead of the cukes and dressing? Of course.  

To serve, divide rice between two shallow bowls. Top with veggie/egg mixture. Put cucumbers on side. Garnish with black sesame seeds, green onions and sprouts or micro-greens. Voila!

*If using tempeh, marinate in a Tbsp of soy sauce, toasted sesame oil and then brown in a separate skillet. In Korean restaurants, meat is used, and the marinade always includes sugar. The sugar and sweet taste with a wonderful savory dish is a big yuck in my book.

I don’t know whether the original, peasant chestnut bread had either pine nuts or sesame seeds, but I’ve used them both here. Leave them out if you like. This unleavened bread will be divine no matter. I first discovered chestnut bread when I was in college, in the 1960’s. Now it’s a treat I make for company. I love it with a salad of spring greens dressed with lots of garlic and good extra virgin olive oil

  Bake at 175 degrees

Preheat oven to 175 degrees. Mix flour, salt and water in a small bowl with a Tbsp of EVOO. You’ll have a rather thin batter.

Oil a 12-inch pizza pan and pour the batter onto the pan, spreading it out evenly with a spoon. Top with pine nuts and herbs, drizzle with another Tbsp EVOO, and bake for about 20 minutes, or until the bread turns golden brown and the surface is a little crispy.

This is another way to make chestnut flatbread, and it’s the way I like best. Heat a large cast iron skillet (12 inch diameter) over medium heat until a drop of water will dance on it. Add 1 Tbsp EVOO and swirl pan to distribute it. Stir the batter and then add to the skillet all at once. Cover pan and cook for 2 minutes. Spread another 2 Tbsp of EVOO on top and cook, covered, 5 minutes more. When the bread appears dry around the edges, loosen with a spatula and then flip it over. Reduce heat to medium low and cook 5 minutes uncovered. Put bread on a plate and allow everyone to tear off pieces.

*You can make this with garbanzo bean flour instead.

Imagine my horror when the new decade of my 50^thbirthday also marked the onset of mysterious belly aches – mysterious that is, until I realized that my beloved coffee was the cause. I tried all sorts of “low-acid” coffees but they lacked the romance and the luster of “real” coffee.

Giving up my caffeinated brew was unthinkable. Some people set out on a spiritual quest. I set out on a coffee quest. Here’s what I came up with, and for about 5 years I’ve been making my coffee “cold brewed.”

Cold Brewed Coffee: Take one quart size glass bottle. Add ½ cup organic, fresh coarsely- ground coffee. Fill to top with purified water. Shake slightly and cover with cap. Put in the fridge and

within 6 hours you have low-acid, highly caffeinated coffee for about 5 days. Obviously one pours it through a strainer and most people water it down when they serve it. Taken straight, you may be singing “Fly me to the Moon,” but it will be low-acid!

Unfortunately, there’s not a whole lot that can help an otherwise healthy adult (or child): someone without problems, without distractions, without fatigue. In other words, there are herbs and nutrients which can bring us back towards “normal,” but not a whole lot that can make us “better.”

Enter the mineral magnesium.

If you’d asked me about magnesium even six months ago, I would’ve said “not for memory – no way!” There simply wasn’t any evidence (that I knew of, at least). And besides, I sell magnesium to people every day. I figure, if anyone was getting any smarter, I would’ve heard about it.  

Turns out, there has been some research. Brain cells cultured in a lab grow and evolve better in the presence of magnesium. More importantly, they form new connections more readily, which is at the heart of how we learn. If that happened in real life, it would be a pretty big deal.  

Unfortunately, research in a petri dish doesn’t always translate to real life.

The problem here – the disconnect between the petri dish and real life – has to do with absorption. Sure, there are some forms of magnesium which get into the bloodstream better than others. But absorbing something into the blood is one thing; getting from the blood into the brain is another. And most forms of magnesium are very, very poor at raising magnesium in the brain. In one study with rats, blood magnesium levels were tripled, but this led to absolutely no increase in brain magnesium. Another study, this time with people, increased blood magnesium levels up to fourfold, but saw an only 10% increase in magnesium in the cerebrospinal fluid. And in both these studies, magnesium was given intravenously. Oral magnesium is highly unlikely to come close to the 10% levels, even with the best-absorbing pills.

Now a group of researchers have developed a new magnesium compound, magnesium threonate, which increases both blood and brain magnesium significantly, taken orally, at reasonable doses. And the research has already gone beyond simple measurements in a lab. In the real world – at least in rats – this magnesium compound has created dramatic improvements in learning and memory.

Normally, a single rat study wouldn’t impress me too much. But this is remarkably solid research, from an international group of researchers, published in the highly prestigious journal Neuron. It’s worth a look. The rats showed significant improvements in both spatial and associative memory.

Spatial memory is remembering where things are in relation to each other. It’s what helps us drive around without getting lost. Associative memory is about associating one thing with another. Remembering what you did last Tuesday, as opposed to last Wednesday. Attaching a name to a face.

Long-Term Memory: Have you ever learned something, and then forgotten it a few days later? This is a failure of long-term memory. In rats, you can test long-term memory with something called a Morris water maze. This is simply a maze filled with water, with a small elevated platform somewhere, which is dry. Rats don’t like water, so they’re pretty motivated to find the platform. So you put them in the maze a few times, and they eventually start to learn the way out. Soon, they’re running the maze quicker and quicker, relying on their memories. (Mazes work so well for testing memory in rats, because they can’t look down at it, and see the whole thing, and think their way through. Learning a maze from the inside requires memory more than anything else – the ability to learn).  

In this study, both old and young rats were run through a Morris maze 8 times (all in one day for the young rats, and over two days for the aged rats, so they’d have time to rest). Then they were all given a day off before being reintroduced to the same mazes. The control rats, who weren’t getting any magnesium threonate, appeared to have completely forgotten their ways to the platform. But both the young and aged magnesium threonate rats still held on to strong memories of where the platform was, spending more than twice as much time around the platform as the rest of the maze.  

Memory and Pattern Completion: Enhancement with Cues and Hints: Of course a maze is a highly artificial environment, where all the walls and passages look the same. If a maze models anything for us, it’s a parking garage. And there’s a reason we get lost in parking garages! Navigating a town, on the other hand, seems easy, because we can orient ourselves by the big tree near the farm, or the store on the corner. We do this all the time, subconsciously. And not just when we’re trying to find our way someplace. Cues are absolutely central to memory. For example, when I’m asked for the last four digits of my social security number, I can not ever remember them unless I recite in my head the starting five first (the starting five are my cue, my cognitive landmark). And when I cannot for the life of me dredge up someone’s first name from memory, it almost always comes to my mind if they give me their last name. This is associative memory – connecting something in front of us with something in storage – and it’s all about filling in the blanks.   

This ability to find our way, and dredge up memories based on hints and cues, declines significantly with age, especially when the cues and clues are incomplete. The research team explored this, by having young and old rats learn a maze with patterns and designs on the walls to act as landmarks. Then, given two days to forget what they’d learned, they were reintroduced to the same maze, with about half of the landmarks removed.  

When this was done to young rats, the magnesium threonate didn’t matter. With or without it, they showed almost no drop-off in memory. They were able to fill in the blanks. But older rats were a different story. When the landmarks were partially removed, the ones who hadn’t been given any magnesium threonate got confused. It took them more than twice as long to complete the maze. The ones who had been given magnesium threonate, on the other hand, saw almost no drop-off in running time. They were able to “fill in the blanks” as well as the young rats, and ended up running the maze more than twice as fast as their fellow seniors.

Once again, if this translates to people, this would be huge.

So what does this mean for me ? I’m not a rat! Good question. I’ve had two coworkers take it. One feels that she benefitted; the other, not so much.

I understand that not all magnesium absorbs so well, but I take a very well-absorbing magnesium – won’t that be enough? Probably not. One of the things which makes this research so special is that the research team compared the new magnesium threonate not just to placebo, or a cheap, poorly-absorbing form of magnesium, but to some of the better-absorbing forms of magnesium

already out there. Magnesium chloride (poor-absorbing) and magnesium citrate (well-absorbing) were both researched, and the magnesium threonate surpassed both of these others handily.

How much should I take? The minimum effective dose for the rats in this study was 50 mg/kg magnesium threonate. Translate that to people, and you’d need one 660 mg capsule for every 29

pounds you weigh. (660 mg magnesium threonate yields 48 mg elemental magnesium). Obviously, individual needs may vary. And of course we’re not rats… The manufacturer is suggesting three capsules a day. That’s just about the dose the rats were getting, if you weigh 87 pounds.

How long do I have to take it before I notice results? Somewhere between a week and a month.

How long will the results last? Will they go away as soon as I stop taking it? Again, it’s tricky to extrapolate from rats to people, but in young rats, improvements lasted up to a month after they were taken off magnesium threonate. In aged rats, results dropped off after two weeks without the magnesium. In both groups, however, two weeks of magnesium brought them back to top form.

So what exactly does magnesium threonate to? How does it work? The simplest answer may be to say that it helps brains cells make new connections, and that those connections appear to function more efficiently. The paper’s authors state that magnesium threonate “induced reconfiguration of synaptic networks from a small number of synapses with a high release probability to a larger number of synapses with low release probability.”  It’s sort of like the difference between driving a crappy car with a weak motor, and always ramming down on the gas; versus having a sleek new car with a powerful motor that responds to your slightest touch. Sort of.

There’s a lot more detail involved, and if you really want to know about NMDAR-dependant signaling, the density of synaptophysin-positive puncta, and Schaffer collaterals, you can find the paper in Neuron, available free on-line at http://download.cell.com/neuron/pdf/PIIS0896627309010447.pdf.

Is it safe? As far as I can see, yes. Very large doses of magnesium can cause loose stools. And there are certain very rare heart and kidney conditions where supplemental magnesium should be approached cautiously. But these are issues with any magnesium supplement, or any multivitamin containing therapeutic doses of magnesium.

… Adam Stark

When used during a heart attack, angioplasty can quickly open a blocked artery and save lives. However, oftentimes heart disease patients receive angioplasties and stents when there is no heart attack, even though a new analysis of eight clinical trials involving over 7,000 people found that “Initial stent implantation for stable CAD (coronary artery disease) shows no evidence of benefit compared with initial medical therapy for prevention of death, nonfatal MI, unplanned revascularization, or angina.”

With stable heart disease, initial treatment should usually be lifestyle changes (diet, exercise, stress management and supplements).

Angioplasty comes with risks such as blood clots, coronary damage, stroke, heart attack, bleeding, abnormal heart rhythms, kidney damage, re-narrowing of your artery and death. It costs our health care system $$$.

The alternative treatment to angioplasty noted in the study above included drugs such as statin drugs, in addition to lifestyle changes. However, statins, taken by millions of Americans, can be avoided. (Statins have been linked to decreased heart muscle function and increased risk of stroke. They have been linked to other serious side effects as well.)

Statin drugs are prescribed and taken to lower cholesterol even though higher cholesterol levels may actually help prevent heart disease (high cholesterol is not actually linked to heart disease). A study in Clinical Cardiology found that heart muscle function was significantly better in a control group that did not receive statins than in those taking statin drugs!

Not to beat a dead horse to death, but statins and other common heart disease medications, like high blood pressure drugs and even aspirin, do little to address the underlying cause of the condition, and instead will leave you with a few more problems….

If you have stable heart disease, lifestyle changes should be your Go-To-Treatment.

Proper food choices – focus on whole, unprocessed, organic foods (vegetables, meats, raw dairy, nuts and so forth). Eat some of your food raw, and include fermented foods which contain probiotics and vitamin K2, important for preventing arterial plaque buildup.

Exercise program – exercise several days a week; include some high intensity exercise

Stress Reduction – learn coping mechanisms to reduce the inflammation caused by the disease

Proper Sun Exposure to Optimize Vitamin D – vitamin D is essential for your heart and cardiovascular system. Low vitamin D results in stiffer arteries and elevated blood pressure.

High Quality Animal-Based Omega-3 Fats- fish oil or krill oil – improves endothelial function, has beneficial effects on your heart’s electrical system, and can prevent potentially life-threatening heart rhythms disorders.

Remember, if you have type II diabetes, you are automatically at risk. Implement the above recommendations because the only side effects are improved health. Add hawthorn, COQ10, folic acid and B6, a little beetroot juice and some pomegranate (to prevent plaque from forming).

If you’re on our mailing list, you’ve received a copy of our newsletter via U.S. mail. We’re sending it out quarterly. Bring your newsletter into the store in April, mailing label affixed, and we’ll treat you to a free package of Spry xylitol gum (good for teeth) when you shop. So smile and come in!

Mary Jane’s Gardening Handout & Rescue Remedy for Seedlings

Growing veggies? Pick up one of Mary Jane’s handouts on gardening hints. We’ve run it in our newsletter in the past, and I re-read it each year before I plant. It’s great! Concord citizen, Debbie Bier, said she waters her seedlings with water made magic (my words) with a few drops of Rescue Remedy. Her pictures of the seedlings that got the Rescue Remedy enriched water and the control group that did not were astounding. Rescue Remedy is, of course, one of the Bach Flower Essences.

Cordyceps is a rare, high-altitude fungus, and one of the most bizarre entries in the Materia Medica. In the wild, Cordyceps spores float, dormant, until one is lucky enough to land on something fertile, usually a caterpillar. The spore infiltrates and parasitizes the caterpillar, transforming the host tissue to fungal tissue, and eventually killing it. Then the fruiting body (the “above-ground” part of the mushroom) sprouts out of the head like antlers. Hence the names “Caterpillar Fungus” and “Summer Plant, Winter Worm.” 

Cordyceps spores don’t land on caterpillars often, so Cordyceps is extremely rare in the wild. So rare in fact, that for a while, in China, it was a crime for anyone outside the Emperor’s palace to use it.

In the last few decades, however, we’ve figured out how to cultivate Cordyceps. Today, we can leave the insects out of the equation, and grow Cordyceps on sawdust, rice bran, soybeans, etc. It’s gotten a lot cheaper, too. Not cheap-cheap, perhaps, but a lot cheaper than the $3,000-$15,000 per pound you’d pay for the wild stuff.

So what makes Cordyceps so special?

Cordyceps is first and foremost an energizer and invigorator. Within 30 minutes on an empty stomach, Cordyceps begins to work on the lungs, increasing oxygen uptake. And oxygen is the breath of life. With a surplus of oxygen, energy-intensive metabolic processes simply run more efficiently. There’s no caffeine jolt, no caffeine buzzzzzzzzzz – just pure calm energy. You don’t feel different, you just feel… awake? Alive? Better? It’s hard to put into words. You can go longer, climb higher, run farther, stay awake later. Competitive athletes who take it say they don’t feel any different; it just takes longer before they run out of gas.

This is of real value when you’re pushing yourself aerobically, but it’s also pretty amazing when you’re burning the midnight lamp. Think about it: we yawn when we’re tired – we’re trying to oxygenate.

Me, I did my school full-time nights while working full-time days at the store. I’d get up for work at 6 in the morning, and need to stay awake and alert through classes that lasted until maybe 10 in the evening. Cordyceps was an absolute lifesaver. It gave me the energy I needed, but still let me get to sleep afterwards. And it didn’t leave me drained the next day like coffee. (Please note: I am not dissing the java. I love the java). Cordyceps helped me climb a few (small- to medium-sized) mountains, and stay on the basketball court with teenagers.

For something so treasured and precious, there isn’t a whole lot of research on Cordyceps, and only two trials on anything that looked like energy and vitality. (Concepts as nebulous as “energy” and “vitality” are rarely the subject of formal, funded research trials).  In one of the studies, 12 weeks of cordyceps improved exercise capacity in adults 50-75 years old. It didn’t improve how far they could push themselves through pain and fatigue, necessarily, but it did improve by 10% how far they could push themselves before they started feeling pain or fatigue. These people were healthy, but not athletes. And they didn’t have to exercise as part of the trial.

In the other trial, however, five weeks of cordyceps supplementation did not improve exercise performance in young training cyclists. Why the discrepancy? It could be anything – dumb luck or random chance – but I think there’s actually a very good reason it worked for sedentary older adults, but not young training cyclists.

Bear in mind, training works – exercise works – because it’s hard. But cordyceps makes exercise easier. (It makes sense when you think about it!)

None of which is to say you shouldn’t take Cordyceps if you’re exercising, especially if it’s going to help get you out the door or up the mountain, or keep you on the tennis court longer. But if you’re already a highly-trained athlete, you might want to save Cordyceps for the actual competitions.

What else? Like almost all the medicinal mushrooms, Cordyceps is strengthening to the immune system and the liver. There’s evidence that Cordyceps can mitigate bone marrow suppression during chemo and radiation. There are few trials showing that it protects and restores kidney function around toxic drug exposure and dialysis. There have been mixed results in terms of using cordyceps to treat and control asthma. (I still like Cordyceps in lung ailments, but it ought to be combined with other herbs to round it out.) Cordyceps has been shown to increase libido and sexual function in older folks. But I, for one, do not consider Cordyceps “sexual.” I just think that, the older we get, the more that a feeling of “energy” makes everything run better.

QUALITY: There are those who insist that the wild stuff is worth the $3,000-$15,000 per pound. Maybe they’re right. Certainly, the ancient Chinese and Tibetan medical texts talk about Cordyceps doing things that sound almost magical, real deep strengthening that modern cultivated Cordyceps doesn’t seem to match.

I don’t have personal experience with wild Cordyceps. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were better. No matter how much the parasitic fungus transforms its original host, there are still going to be insect compounds left. In Traditional Chinese medicine, some insects are used as medicines, and are considered profoundly strengthening… ants, male silk moths… Once again, I have no experience here.

When it comes to the cultivated stuff, when we’re talking about energy specifically, I’m going to do something I do very rarely and endorse a specific brand: Paul Stamets’ Fungi Perfecti. Fungi Perfecti makes a liquid Cordyceps which is phenomenal, best I’ve ever used.

FORMULAS: Cordyceps can be combined with any other herbs that make sense. For allergic asthma, Cordyceps combines well with a bronchial antispasmodic/antihistamine like Butterbur. For general lung weakness as part of larger constitutional fatigue, “Cordyceps-9″ from the Seven Forests company is a wonderful formula. For deeper, more chronic lung weakness, equal parts Cordyceps and Reishi mushroom work together nicely.

For energy and endurance, Cordyceps combines well with adaptogens (what I call the “ginseng-class herbs.”) Adaptogens are generally about stress response. They don’t make you stronger, but they keep stress from grinding you down as much. “Cordyceps Tablets” from the Pine Mountain company is a simple three-herb formula along these lines.  Also look for the Majijuan Championship Formula in little vials. It’s supposedly what the Chinese women’s track team was using.

For increasing oxygenation, combine Cordyceps with organic germanium (Ge-132). Cordyceps increases oxygen uptake from the lungs; germanium increases the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood. It’s a nice 1-2 punch.

SAFETY: There are exceptions to every rule, but so far I haven’t encountered any to the following: Cordyceps is absolutely safe.

DOSING: I use Cordyceps differently than most herbalists. Most will use 20-40 drops of the standard low-alcohol tincture, or a standard capsule, 2-3 times a day. Me, I save it for when I really need it, then I dose it high – two droppersful, maybe three, sometimes four. As something that works within an hour of using it, you’ll find dosing that works for you.

Yellow split peas, a member of the legume family that have lots of protein (and fiber), are a variety of field peas that split when dried. They don’t need to be soaked and are mostly used in soups and stews. I think you’ll like them this way too!

Serves 6-8     

Put yellow split peas in medium sized pot with water and bring water to a boil. Turn down heat, mostly cover pot and simmer peas 45 minutes. In the meantime, gently warm ghee or EVOO and sauté onion until golden and just beginning to brown, about 5 minutes. Add carrots, celery, garlic and black pepper and sauté another 5 minutes. Add currants or raisins, pine nuts, salt and spices. Turn off heat under this pot and let stand. Remove cover from pot with peas and stir in either the bulgur or soy granules. Either will absorb any remaining water in the pot. Let this mixture cool slightly and then add onion mixture. Mix again. Shape split pea mixture into longish patties. Dip those into chopped parsley or cilantro. Serve with a garlicky salad. Alternatively, instead of dipping keofta into chopped greens, stir those into pattie mixture together with onions. Can you stir in more ghee or EVOO at the end for a richer flavor? Roll patties in more pine nuts? Can you eliminate pine nuts entirely? Sure.

Goat cheese is easy on the digestive system (unless, of course, you can’t do dairy), and it’s delish to boot. Use the Beldi oil-cured olives here, and you’ll be addicted. Yes, they’re pitted, which makes life easier.

Serves 6-8     

Scrub potatoes, but don’t peel because you’ve used organic! Cut into bite-sized pieces and place in a pot with water about 2 inches above. (Buttercream potatoes are typically small, like fingerlings, except that they’re round, so all may have to do is halve or quarter.) Simmer over medium heat until tender, about 5-10 minutes. Pour into a colander to drain and then into a large mixing bowl.

While potatoes are cooking, prepare kale and place into a large mixing bowl. Toss with onion, salt, pepper, EVOO and lemon juice. Drain potatoes and add to kale mixture. Toss gently with a rubber spatula. When the potatoes have reached room temperature, add arugula, goat cheese and olives. Toss again and serve to cries of rapture.

Note: Olive oil that’s heated loses most of its flavor, but here it’s “raw.” So this is a great opportunity to try a really rich, fragrant oil. We’ve finally gotten bulk olive oil back, now from a Greek estate that also supplies the kitchens of Boston luminary chefs Ana Sortun and Barbara Lynch. We’ve also got our first shipment in almost a year of pine-smoked olive oil from Spain.

Internal cleansing is one of the most time-honored concepts in traditional medicine. Periods of cleansing are central to Ayurvedic (Indian) medicine, Native American medicine, traditional European and South American herbalism, and to most religious faiths too (all those ritual fasts and sweat lodges). Yet cleansing is a concept we’ve mostly discarded in this age of quick-cure pharmaceuticals.

The benefits of a cleanse can range from the barely noticeable to the downright profound. You may experience increased energy, a feeling of “lightness,” clearer skin, and increased mental clarity. Chronic conditions like constipation, indigestion, acne, high cholesterol, PMS or menopausal symptoms, asthma and allergies may improve or even disappear. You may come out craving healthier foods, refreshed in your commitment to exercise and go to sleep earlier. Or you may not. The benefits are often surprising. A former coworker of mine had a tiny, wart-like growth on his forearm for seven years. No big deal, I guess. But it went away during his first cleanse.

So what is a “cleanse, anyways? A cleanse is something to lighten the body’s load of toxins, and decongest the organs of detoxification. There are thousands of ways to approach this. (This article won’t even try and cover them all).

Spring is a great time for a cleanse. Most of us emerge from winter carrying a few extra pounds. We’ve been eating heavier, fattier foods. We’ve been breathing stale, indoor air. We’ve been sedentary. And then there’s that first exhalation of Spring! The snow melts, and the sun shines, and those cleansing green leafy vegetables poke their heads out of the soil and unfurl their leaves. For our ancestors, the spring thaw marked the transition from meat and potatoes and stale wrinkled turnips to cleansing, live foods. Springtime is the time of rebirth and renewal, nutritionally, biologically, psychologically, and spiritually.

A good first step on a cleanse is to bring those fresh leafy vegetables into your diet. Look for sprouts, dandelion and beet greens, baby lettuces, sorrel, wheat grass, endive, cress, fresh parsley and cilantro. Bring the bitter taste to the center of the plate.

Green drinks (“salad in a bottle”) make a great addition. Radishes are excellent, as are beets and artichokes, onions and garlic. Cultured veggies like traditional sauerkraut and kimchee are especially valuable, with probiotics & their metabolites, and plenty of digestive enzymes. Try a spoonful with meals.

Don’t forget to buy organic.

Avoid foods which are hard to digest. Bologna and potato chips — even the natural ones — are out, as well as large amounts of nuts, dairy, and soyfoods. Fermented dairy, like yogurt, kefir, and lassi; and fermented soy like miso and tempeh, should be fine for most people. Nuts that are soaked and sprouted are more digestible. Eat as much of your food raw as you can. Cut back on or eliminate coffee and alcohol.

Lean meat and poultry are fine on a cleanse. Fish is good. Sushi is excellent as a highly digestible simple protein. Eggs are good, too. The lecithin in the yolks supports a cleanse by emulsifying fatty wastes for elimination.

Dairy is a little trickier, since so many people have a problem with dairy and don’t realize it. That being said, a little cultured dairy or raw milk should be helpful. Undenatured whey protein can also help, as

there’s research where it increases the liver’s detoxification potential. Ask us for our newsletter article on whey with the smoothie recipe.

Whole grains should be strongly prioritized over refined ones. Here, “whole” doesn’t just mean “unrefined,” but also “intact” — not ground into flour. Also, it would be wise to minimize all grains that contain gluten for the time being. If you soak your grains overnight before cooking, even better. Dress them simply with raw, unrefined oil, and fresh lemon juice, cider vinegar, or raw plum vinegar.

Get a bit of seaweed in, for its ability to bind heavy metals. A pinch here and there adds a pleasant briny, savory flavor to dishes.

Plenty of liquids are an absolute must. Look to mineral water (as opposed to “pure” water), and broths. Non-stimulant herbal teas are wonderful, too (although a little green tea with caffeine won’t wreck your cleanse). Unpasteurized vegetable and fruit juices may also be used, but you should watch the sugar content. For example, while fresh beet juice is an excellent cleanser, it might exacerbate an underlying candida overgrowth or blood sugar imbalance.

Does All This Seem Like Too Much Work? Perhaps the simplest way to cleanse is to keep on eating what you normally do, and use one of the cleanse kits we sell. These kits contain herbs and nutrients which assist the binding of toxins, and stimulate the organs of detoxification.

The most important organ in detoxification is the liver. The liver filters toxins out of the blood, neutralizes them, and excretes them. It balances hormones and manages cholesterol. It has a hand in processing just about everything that comes through the body. Good cleanse kits stimulate the liver, not just to detoxify the blood, but to detoxify itself.

The liver dumps its toxins out with the bile, into the small intestine. As we all know, the small intestine leads to the large intestine (colon), which in turn leads to the outside world. The problem is, the intestines are also where we absorb our nutrients from, and toxins that don’t make it out efficiently can get reabsorbed right back into the blood. Then they have to make a pass through the liver again… and again. This put a strain on the liver, and worsen any side effects of the detox.

Most cleanse kits add “colon cleansers” to help. Usually, this is a polite euphemism for “laxatives.” Don’t worry: we’re not talking violent cathartics here. You won’t need to chain yourself to the toilet if you keep the dosing sane. (Although if you’re looking for an herbal cleanse free of laxatives, the Spring & Fall Tonic from Avena Botanicals fits the bill nicely).

Fiber is crucial here. It helps move things along, and sequesters toxins while escorting them out of the body. A diet rich in vegetables and whole grains should provide plenty of fiber, but if you’re looking to supplement, use a mix of soluble and insoluble fiber. Soluble fiber absorbs toxins (like a sponge), and insoluble fiber scrubs things through (like a brush).

All this also has a direct effect on the intestines themselves. The intestinal tract is a winding, convoluted passageway, packed with crevices and pockets which can trap putrefying debris. Cleansing here helps us absorb our nutrients better, stay regular, and possibly reduces the risk of serious disease.

Most cleanse kits also throw in a few herbs that stir up the lymph and stimulate the kidneys. That’s another big topic. But let’s not. Let me just say it again: the beauty of the kits is you don’t have to put too much thought into it. Just buy the kit, do what it says.

Probiotics play an important rule during, and after, a cleanse. These healthy gut bacteria are crucial to detox and elimination, as well as immunity and digestion. A detox diet fosters the growth of probiotic  bacteria, while fermented foods introduce new probiotics into the gut. Beyond that, probiotic supplements are a good idea. If you use strong colon cleansers or supplements to kill parasites, you should definitely supplement with probiotics during and for two weeks afterwards.

Fasting Cleanses aren’t always the best idea, since the liver needs nutrients, the probiotics need to be fed, and the gut needs fiber to keep everything moving. That being said, fasting is okay for otherwise healthy people. It doesn’t make the most sense, medically, but it can resonate spiritually.

Modified fasts are worth considering. A little protein, some steamed veggies, a multivitamin, plenty of water and broths, a fiber supplement — you can fully support detoxification on a few 100 calories a day.

It might be tempting to break a fast with a full-out binge. Don’t! It can leave your digestion cramped and unhappy. Try to ease back with nourishing, easy-to-digest foods. Here, nothing beats a little sushi. The traditional stuff: just fish, rice, and seaweed.

Physical detox methods wax and wane in popularity. The current fad seems to be detox foot pads, which are supposed to pull toxins out through the soles of the feet. I’m highly skeptical of these. On the other hand, a deep massage can release toxins. There’s also a lot to be said for saunas. The skin is a major detox organ if we sweat. A cup or two of sarsaparilla pushes the sweat. Stay hydrated if you’re sweating a lot.

Sometimes, cleansing makes you feel worse… until you start feeling better. Toxins that were just “sitting there” get released into the circulation, and overload the body’s ability to comfortably deal with them. So you end up with are the same symptoms a cleanse is supposed to address. For example, when I’ve done a cleanse, I’ve gotten forehead pimples (nothing serious) for a few days. Others may feel achy or tired. If this gets to be a problem, it usually means the cleanse is working, but you can ease off the herbs a bit.

Other than these vague “feeling bad” symptoms, are there any other side effects/dangers of a cleanse? A “food cleanse” with leafy greens and the whole grains is pretty safe, obviously. A mainstream cleanse kit is also unlikely to create problems. You of course want to be careful around laxatives. You might want to be cautious with herbs that push hepatic detox if you’re on a medication with a narrow therapeutic window, and around diuretics if you have issues with kidney function.

What if I want to go into more depth? Optimal Wellness by Ralph Golan is an excellent resource for the chapters on “The Toxic Bowel,” “The Sluggish Liver,” and “Fasting, Cleansing, Rejuvenation.” It’s out of print, but we’ve got a copy you can leaf through in the store.

What about other ways of cleansing? Cleansing means different things to different people. There are many valid approaches besides what I’m talking about here. A former coworker would eat only brown rice, and drink unpasteurized fruit and vegetable juices. Jonathan Glass, the acupuncturist who works above the store, leads people through nine-week programs, with foods, herbs, and semi-customized protocols for each client. Some cleanses start each day with a vitamin- and mineral-enriched protein powder (brand names include UltraClear and RevitalX); others insist on only steamed vegetables before noon. I knew someone who swore by 2,000 mg of vitamin C and a tablespoon of aloe vera juice every waking hour for a week.

However you approach it, cleansing can be a wonderful experience — especially when you’re done! It may be tempting, however, to keep on cleansing and cleansing, to feel better and better. Cleansing is not something to do non-stop for the rest of your life. A food-based cleanse is one thing, but if you’re bringing the herbs into it, give your body a rest. Ultimately, there has to be a balance between building and cleansing, anabolic and catabolic, contraction and expansion, yin and yang.