These days the word detox today is used to sell anything from seaweed baths to fragrant tea.

This broad term has become very diluted and stretched in order for almost anybody to make some money from that concept.

So how are you supposed to know what you’re getting for your money?

The Concept of Detox

Biologically, the word detox is a more complex affair associated with the liver, immune system and eliminative channels of the body, and fasting is probably the most ancient and effective means of working with it.

It is often argued in orthodox medical circles that there is no need to fast or take detox supplements because the body is always detoxing, as it is in all animals. To some extent this is true, but today the human being is doing numerous things that work against the body's ability to detox, which those other animals are not.

Before needing to talk about pollution, heavy metals, or pesticides & fertilisers, we can simply look at the background level of stress in our lives (the biggest immuno-suppressive force in our world) and more importantly the relatively new ways that we are eating – the refining, processing, cooking, and combining of foods, which our biology has evolutionary no reference point for.

The Biology of Detox

Anything that lightens the load on the digestive system, or empowers it with nutrients, could theoretically be aiding the detox process, but the body will dedicte itself to the job entirely during a fast.

When we eat food in our everyday lives the pancreas is producing enzymes which help to dissolve and digestive food. These enzymes are sent into the digestive system to do this work.

When we fast, IE: stop eating, the pancreas continues to produce these enzymes, but they no longer go into the digestive system. They are instead, freed up to work in the blood. The immune system happens to use exactly the same set of corrosive enzymes to do its work of clearing the blood of anything it does not recognise. In this way, the act of fasting massively empowers the immune system to do the job of house keeping.

So, the immune system uses the new-found enzymes to dissolve the junk in the blood, and then the liver in turn clears them out of circulation. They must then be transported down the bile duct into the digestive system to be actually eliminated from the body.

However, when you stop eating, the bowel also stops moving, and nothing is being eliminated from the body. As the bowel’s primary motivation is to move material from the intestines into the blood, we begin to recycle toxins rather than eliminating them.

People have fasted in this way for thousands of years with tremendous health benefits, but we have improved on the situation with materials and products that break the recycling loop and make the whole process much more efficient.

The Technology of Detox

We use a plant seed husk that is wonderful at absorbing junk and keeps the bowel moving, solving both of these problems in one go.

Because it inflates with water, it fills the stomach (eliminating hunger) and keeps the bowel moving. Additionally, it is great at absorbing the toxic bile coming from the liver, so nothing is reclaimed by the bowel later on.

The colonics enable the body to fully eliminate this plant husk, making the entire process much more efficient and effective.

I am not a believer in daily detox supplements, or regular use of colonics – which can be associated with disturbing the bowel – but within the context of a fast, using all the components together, there appears to be no better way of speeding the process of healing along.

The Reality of Detox

However, there is a greater reality that is being exampled by our enzyme and digestive system: If the foods we are generally eating are causing so many digestive enzymes to make their way into the digestive system that the immune system is left massively under-resourced, are we eating the right foods?

No other animal suffers with old cellular debris being allowed to build up in the blood, or the broad symptoms associated with making our blood a perfect soil for illness and lethargy.

While fasting is one of the oldest, safest, and most efficient traditions known to improve health and well-being, it has only been needed since we started to eat foods that require excessive digestive action from us.

The Reality of Sura Detox

And so the greater impact of the detox retreats we run here in the UK is not the fasting, the detox, or the colonics.

It is not the deep restful state that the mind achieves during such a healing downtime, nor the beauty of the surroundings…

It is the deep understanding of how far we have come from nature, and just how terminal our nutritional situation is.

But most of all, it is the great joy of knowing that this is all entirely fixable – starting with oneself.

A plant-based diet, full of the foods we have always eaten – leaves, fruit, nuts, and tiny amounts of animal matter – all the big problems become small problems, and all the small problems disappear.

Follow your tastes for natural foods – eg: Have you ever tasted grains, beans or meat in their natural form (IE: uncooked) ? Clearly they are not natural foods for us ! Even once they’re cooked, there is no attraction to eat them – that is why we cover them in salty, oily or sugary condiments.

In their defense, we have relied upon them for filling us up – so that we can store food through the winter, enabling us to populate countries we could otherwise not exist – but that has nothing to do with nutrition.

We love sweet primarily, because we are apes. Then oily, then salty… Grains, beans and meat give us nothing, and thus taste of nothing… if you leave out the ketchup !

But this of course opens up the whole question of what else would we eat… And that is why people come on retreat with us…

All the answers are right in front of our face… But the the ‘how to’ needs to be relearned.

So, in conclusion, our modern world is we need as much immune help as we can get because of all the unnatural stresses on the system, and deranged nutritional advice. And now fasting is becoming a very popular method of achieving this. These ancient methods of fasting our meeting with modern techniques and understandings to give us the detox routines available today.

But be careful who you sign your health up to. There is a lot of misunderstanding, misguidance, and downright misleading claims out there.

Detoxing in the Modern World