Tips for Understanding the Difference Between Detox Symptoms and Sickness
they’re so uniquely different. And when you mentioned if someone goes through a three- week program, that on the fifth day everyone seems to have the detox symptoms, that seems to me that everyone is somewhat similar. Not completely similar, but somewhat similar. One of the biggest question that we got from this call is where do you start with cleansing, what do you do first?
Nomi: I think the most important thing with cleansing is to understand it. On the one hand we could talk about it for three hours and not be done and on the other hand it’s rather divinely simple. So I think the first thing you need to understand is that your body was created, and you can choose how it was created, if god plunked you down in the garden or if you evolved from one cell, it doesn’t matter to me. I mean, I think it’s a combination of everything. However, we are quite divine in that our body is made to be a self-healing and self-cleansing unit.
The thing is, we, in today’s times, live in a very complex–or eat, let’s just say–in a very complex way so that we’re barely giving it a chance to do this healing and cleansing. I wasn’t around at the beginning, but I think that in the beginning food wasn’t that easy to come by. So, we were hunter/gatherers; we often went hungry. And no one was thinking about, “I think I’m going to stop eating for awhile so that my body can rest and cleanse.”
Everything’s changed now. I mean, I’m bombarded with information. There are like these, like news magazine, talking about you know in 1970, you know everybody ate a quarter of a cup of high-fructose corn syrup and now everybody eats 60 pounds of it and that’s why we’re obese. And, I mean, this is a very big… I stumble over my words because it’s such a big subject.
But for more than 99% of human history, the major problem in life was food- deficiency. And you know caloric deficiency has been and continues to be one of the most pressing problems of human life in third world countries. But in this developed society, the opposite is true and we’re eating food with filler, artificial chemicals and really high calories and we’re eating constantly. The typical SAD diet, standard American diet, is non-stop food. I mean, we’ve barely digested the one meal of food and we’re on to the next. Well, the body can’t, in its infinite wisdom, do what it’s supposed to do when we’re giving ourselves so much food.
This is the breakdown of health. And, you know, very significant of what’s been going on the last whatever, 40 or 50 years with the 48 in longevity and health in the world. There’s a reason for that and all you have to do is go to the supermarket.
So now we’ve come up with this rather artificial notion called cleansing. And it’s, in many ways, just a cessation of overeating. And how to cleanse, there’s a gazillion ways to do it. I know some of the questions are, “How should I do it? How long will it take?” Very simply, if you don’t want to think about it a lot, just by eating a very high amount of raw food, your body will gradually, over time, cleanse because it’s counter-intuitive to think about this, but your body digests, assimilates and eliminates raw far more easily, once it gets used to it, than it does all the cooked, process food.
Now, when you first eat a salad… I remember trying to convince my dad many years ago to–I know what it was, I made a soup, it wasn’t even raw, I wasn’t raw yet but it was filled with vegetables, many, many, 20 or 30 different vegetables. And, he said, “I can’t eat that it gives me a stomach ache,” which was his way of saying it gave him diarrhea. And the reason it did is the man never ate anything that resembled a vegetable. And so he thought, it’s making me sick. But what it immediately started to do was cleanse, that’s what that diarrhea was.
And, so, when I say you need to understand cleansing, it’s because it’s so easy to think you’re sick when you alter your diet and start to eat more healthy. But it’s really your body is like, “Oh, wow, she’s letting me eat a salad. Good, I’m going to get rid of some of these toxins.” And it manifests as you know various symptoms.
Kevin: What’s the difference between detox symptoms and sickness?
Nomi: Yeah, well, sometimes they feel, well, they always almost feel identical. And that’s why it’s important to know what you’re getting yourself into. And sometimes it’s not always the smartest thing to jump right into it. Now, say you’re very ill. You know, say you just got a very dire diagnosis. Well, it will probably be a really good idea to go to one of the places, scrape up the money and go to one of the places and be guided and be immersed in the program. And allow yourself to go through this, and some of it will be a little uncomfortable.
Like the people at Hippocrates, a lot of it was