I guess this thread could be about the most DRAMATIC detox effects ever? :O I've read other stories. I remember one guy who said his wife woke up in the middle of the night to puke and asked, "How could eating healthy make me so sick!?" But I always thought of these as extreme examples. And they probably are--but extreme things happen sometimes...

I feel compelled to share what happened to me this morning. And while, yes, I have to warn you that it's gross--I hit a milestone. I smashed through some previously unbreakable wall. Something awesome happened!

The only thing I can think that triggered this was my switch to 90-95% organic food about two weeks ago. Previously, I had been eating maybe 5-10% organic, just the sprouts I grow in my kitchen. I'm still eating non-organic mangos regularly, but mangos are one of the lowest-risk fruits for pesticides. (Note also that this may have happened a month from now anyway with all conventional--I just think organic pushed this phase of my journey over the edge.)

So, for this past week, my energy levels were in the gutter. I've been oversleeping because it feels great, I have been grouchy, irritable, and getting constant headaches. I've also been craving greens. Before, I'd have a few days where this happens, then it would pass and I'd be back to feeling super happy and fantastic. I've been lacking my general zeal and poise for life this week.

I have to stress there has been literally nothing else in my life out of the ordinary--organic was the only change in my diet/lifestyle. (And my roommate is vacationing, so I can have all the rest and silence I want!)

Yesterday morning, I woke up to have an unusually large bowel movement. Okay, it happens sometimes... And then it happened again mid-afternoon. Then, I had to go to work for the evening and started feeling *really* bad. I felt like I was having horrible period cramps, a kidney infection--something nasty just happening in my lower abdomen. I had to run to the bathroom for a third time, and by now, I knew something was up. I had to pep talk myself through the rest of my shift (it was only an hour or so), but I felt SO yucky and flu-like.

I got home, dry brushed, had a soothing shower, made some tea and relaxed. (My boyfriend came over for a surprise visit--wow, he picked a great night! ) I went promptly to sleep, my stomach still feeling very odd, and woke up once during the night to go to the bathroom again.

I woke up when my boyfriend got up for work at 5 in the morning. And... yep, I had to go. AGAIN. (I was actually dreaming of delicious oranges at the time, grr!) This was when it really happened--I just kept GOING, things kept eliminating--it defied the laws of conservation of energy, at least by any observable standard. There was NO WAY *ANY* of this could have been regular food hanging around my body (it usually takes a little less than 24 hours for me to complete the cycle of digestion). Not even the worst morning of my Master Cleanses compared to this. There was literally SO MUCH--I had to stop and flush--twice!! WTF!! WHERE can something like this even COME from?!

I wish I had a scale. It was supernatural. The funny thing is, my stomach just looks normal today. Not too flat, not bloated, just normal.

I got out of bed around 10 AM, then, today. I'm a little tired--my sleep was interrupted and I just finished some supernatural feats--but I feel SO much better. Everything is back to normal. I feel calm, no headaches, I have patience, I'm happy, just completely back to a wonderful baseline. And I do feel lighter somehow. Something--I don't know what--toxins, demons--truly left my body.

I had a terrible kidney infection a few years back, and have had some reproductive system issues as well--from the pain I was having last night, I have to wonder if I was healing old wounds. I never got the invoice from my body so I don't know what exactly happened--all I know is that it passed, and I really, really, really feel a WHOLE lot better.

I think a healing crisis can happen that removes obstacles to health and afterward a person can move up to the next level on their journey to better health. On one of my water only fasts I woke up in the middle of the night with very bad abdominal area pain and had to urgently rush to the bathroom where I had a large diarrhea type elimination that fortunately came out easily because I had been doing colonics and the path out of me was clear. After the movement I still felt very bad and I went back to bed and fell asleep. The next morning I woke up and felt better. I continued to feel better and better for a couple of days until I felt the best I had felt during the entire fast. When the fast was concluded and the juice refeeding was done I felt really great and it was the best result I got from any of the fasts I have done. I now view healing experiences as necessary to move forward to better health and I do not fear them. I welcome bona fide detox and healing as a stepping stone on my journey to a healthier me.

phantom, that's awesome! (only a bunch of raw foodists would get excited by your big dump, by the way, just goes to show what a limited audience you have for these stories hahahaha..)

here's to getting rid of all the $h*% that no longer serves us. on every level!

Detox?

When we are ingesting things that are bad for us, our body probably trys to reject those bad things but probably can't always keep up.

Sometimes people are doing so many bad things all at one time that the body realizes it would kill you if it tried to keep up with keeping you clean. I'm not talking about just food. Not getting enough rest is a factor. Your body uses the time when you sleep to rebuilt itself.

To deal with the assult, what does your body do?
It turns down your immune system (or sometimes it cranks up the immune system so high that it can't figure out what's good and what's bad. It attacks everything, even itself = autoimmune disease).

It focuses life support only where it thinks it can afford to.
The stuff it doesn't have the time or energy to deal with it allows to be stashed away like in a "junk drawer". What is the usual "junk drawer"? The lipids in adipose tissue.

When someone looses fat the contents of the adipose cells get recirculated through the body.
If you've been cleaning up your act, if your body thinks you're healthy enough to deal with it now, it cranks back up your immune system to try to deal with the stuff.

For some people, yeah, that feels like they have the flu.

Besides getting good nutrition and adequate rest when you're going through what commonly gets called a "healing crisis" there's one more very important thing you can do.

Your lymphatic system is a very important part of your immune system. The only way lymph moves through your body back into your cadriopulmonary system so it can eventually get filtered out your kidneys and liver is either through massaging it through the lymphatic system's vessels with exercise or physical manipulation (if you can't get up an walk around).

What am I saying?
If you want to shorten the time spent living through a healing crisis, in addition to good food and adequate rest, get some gentle exercise.

Don't push your self too hard at first or your body might think its under attack again and retreat back into its struggle to maintain homeostasis at all costs.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/02/2008 10:09PM by hyldemoer.

That is too funny. Just the way you wrote it. I'm sure you probably didn't find it funny at the time though.

Congrats on releasing your "demons".

rwillow76 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> That is too funny. Just the way you wrote it. I'm
> sure you probably didn't find it funny at the time
> though.
>
> Congrats on releasing your "demons".

Thank you. My constitution tends to predispose me to fit somewhere on the Asperger's Syndrome spectrum. When I was going through student clinics at various schools my teachers were always concerned that I would be talk too technical or be too blunt with the clients.
Funny works, especially if there's some truth in it.

But back to the subject of "detox"; ever know someone who lived a rough life of trashy food, little sleep, and morbidly overweight but never seem to become "ill" with colds or the flu?

Their immune system was probably sooooo turned down that it refused to respond to any pathogen. What usually happens to them is eventually (far sooner than it does for the rest of us) their body breaks down. Things break and don't repair; liver failure, massive heart attack, what ever and they seem to drop dead "out of the blue" (as they say).

People who get sick periodically learn to take care of themselves. That's why its good to understand what the process of what gets called a "healing crisis" or "detox". If the process gets too rough, step back a bit. That it easy.

In some Chinese medicines they sometimes suggest a month of treatment for every year of creating the cause for the necessity of that treatment. That's just to say, we spent a lot of time getting ourselves into trouble and now its going to take a bit to get back into a healthy balance again.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/03/2008 04:51PM by hyldemoer.