The 4-Week Ultimate Body Detox Plan, a program for Greater Energy, Health, and Vitality. / Michelle Schoffro Cook. 2004. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 343 p. Includes Index and Bibliography. Black and white illustrations.
The 4-Week Ultimate Body Detox Plan is your kit detox: it contains all kinds of advice on the subject, from information on environmental toxins, to dietary plans, recipes and supplements, herbs, energy medicine, and more. Her approach is helpful on many levels, with lots of data about the many substances we use daily that are known or under suspicion for being toxic. Did you know for example that the reason charred barbequed foods are considered carcinogenic is due to the smoke created on a barbeque grill? When cooking oils melt and fall into burning coals, they are completely burnt yet their vapor (smoke) is conveyed back up to the meat or veggies being grilled above the flames. Vaporizing (smoking) oils is considered bad form in the kitchen, too. Like the burning oil smell coming from your car’s tailpipe, by overheating oils, we stretch them beyond their capacity to remain viable as food. Instead they turn into poisons.
First, Dr. Cook wants you to know what toxins are and what they can do to a person and their good health. She includes a survey in the first few pages covering your sleep and energy, skin, digestive system, ear, nose and throat, and emotions. Checking off seemingly innocuous “minor” complaints and tallying up the results will tell you instantly just how much and how often you are exposed to toxins.
Although the body is adept at controlling unwanted substances and getting rid of them, toxins of any origin are insidious. They hide in fat tissue, disguised and silent. People don’t realize they’re hosting villainous substances, yet believe their health complaints will eventually “go away” until chronic pain, insomnia, constipation and many other issues finally present as disease. The result of years’ accumulation, toxins finally make their presence known in no uncertain terms.
Cook admonishes readers to be aware of toxins lurking under the guise of natural-like products, and in our environments. “If you’re like most people…” Cook states, you may not even realize the extent of the toxicity in our current modern lives.
But there is hope of full recovery. The body can and does regularly unload toxins, just not the heavy load we may have and expect will disappear automatically. Once suspected of doing damage, and then approached with a solid plan, even heavy toxins can be removed, the body can heal and therefore recover from disease. A favorite line about the miraculous body occurs on page 10: it says, “Trillions of cells work at lightening speed to remove barriers to health, overcome infection, and heal whatever is affecting the body.” This states in reader-friendly terms our bodies’ amazing renewal capabilities. In other words the body has the capacity for the performance, we may simply need to clear the stage.
But where do toxins come from? We live in a rather clean world, compared to many places.
Locating and identifying toxins is not that difficult, but the message is incendiary—that there is little regulation, for example by government agencies to control their use! That should inspire a reader to action. With the mountain of evidence detailed in studies and pointed out in books like this one, we should avoid or discontinue the use of toxins where there’s a choice in cleaning products, in our homes, in beauty products, and of course in the food we eat and the drinks we consume.
This book was written and published over twelve years ago, and things have changed, right? Well not exactly. Because there are even more choices for consumers today, that can only mean there are more bad-for-you products as well as more good-for-you ones.
Cook includes herbs especially useful in detox, by function of the body they are best suited to help. If you know dandelion for its bitter taste when cooked as a vegetable, you might like to know that a tea made from its leaves is one of the most useful for kidney health. Another surprising one is celery seed—it gives Southern herb mixes that signature taste, right? Yet in concentrated form, it too has anti-inflammatory properties for the urinary tract.
And another tool in your kit detox plan is balance. You’ve agreed to take foods out of your dietary plan for 4 weeks, make herbal teas, try energy medicine and methods to emotionally detox. Your body is now especially set up to discharge the toxins, but you need to add one more thing: supplements. Enzymes, probiotics, minerals, vitamins, and other food supplements enhance and support the body’s ability and provide the means to detoxify.
Eliminating toxins may also be accomplished by addressing personal or emotional issues, those long-held beliefs that thwart chances of long-term success in any diet system.
Energy medicine, the practice of moving the body’s energy while a person is standing or lying still, is introduced in The 4-Week Ultimate Body Detox Plan. A reader can practice on themselves to gain relief using postures and breathing exercises that augment your detox schedule. Rather than being exclusively focused on what you put into your body, trying to understand how the energy works inside you greatly influences your success in detoxifying. A simple 5-minute practice for relaxation is performed in a standing posture by breathing in slowly and allowing the breath to go out slowly, allowing clean energy from the earth to seep in and cleansing to occur with each out-breath.
Michelle Schoffro Cook has written other books that promote health through dietary means. See her website at http://www.drmichellecook.com/michellesbooks
A word of caution—any herb or supplement will generously give what it has for the body, and yet we may not be as knowledgeable as all that. Taking one herb or several supplements to satisfy what may be a complex state of ill-health may not be the answer, and you are cautioned to seek professional help once you are sick or have toxicity that must be addressed in order to regain your health.
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