Cleansing and Fasting Can Renew Your Body

Hard to believe but cleansing and fasting work on a very deep cellular level to make you younger! 

by Sandra Cabot

When you fast, your body literally eats away the rubbish, unhealthy tissue and damaged cells inside it. This process is called autophagy. The word autophagy derives from the Greek language – auto (is the self) and phagein (is to eat). So, autophagy means to “eat oneself”. Autophagy is the body’s natural mechanism of eliminating all the broken down and old cell parts (such as organelles, proteins and cell membranes) which do not work properly anymore.  Over time, some of our body’s cells become poorly functioning and accumulate toxins, DNA damage and free radical damage. Natural cell death (or cell suicide) is called apoptosis, where cells are pre-destined to die after a certain amount of time and number of cell divisions. Now it may not be desirable or necessary for the whole cell to die (apoptosis), but rather just be repaired and cleaned out and new parts installed – this is autophagy.

Autophagy is a desirable process when regulated and is a mechanism whereby cells can not only be rejuvenated but also a cancer can eat itself and disappear.

To activate autophagy, we need to reduce our intake of calories.

When we don’t eat our levels of the hormone insulin go down and our levels of the hormone glucagon go up. Fasting raises glucagon levels and provides the greatest known stimulus to autophagy.

Autophagy is a form of detoxification or cleansing of our cells. Fasting not only stimulates autophagy and cancer to shrink, it can help to reverse the aging process, by getting rid of old cellular junk and replacing it with new parts.

The long-term results of accumulating old junky proteins all over your body can be seen in two common health conditions – Cancer and Alzheimer’s Disease.  Alzheimer’s Disease involves the accumulation of abnormal protein – either amyloid beta or Tau protein which clogs up the brain. Autophagy that is stimulated in the body by not eating too much, and also by intermittent fasting, has the ability to clear out old protein and thus could prevent the development of AD.

Eating too much food, especially carbohydrate-rich food, raises blood glucose and insulin levels and decreases glucagon levels and this turns off the self-cleaning process of autophagy and detoxing. And it doesn’t take much food, as even small amounts of amino acids can stop autophagy. So, the process of autophagy is unique to fasting and is not achieved by simple caloric restriction.

Now there is no need to be excessive, as you can feel unwell from too much autophagy. Intermittent fasting from 12 hours to 48 hours is safe and advantageous unless you are diabetic. Diabetics can also stimulate autophagy to a worthwhile degree, just by avoiding carbohydrate-rich foods and eating more vegetables and protein to replace the carbohydrates.

During autophagy produced by caloric restriction, there will be an increase in the breakdown and elimination of toxins from your body. Therefore it is good to combine a cleansing regime at the same time as intermittent fasting. This will help to increase the elimination of toxins.

Does our liver need cleansing?

During my career as a medical doctor I was invited to be the protagonist in The Great Liver Debate titled – Does our liver need cleansing? The antagonist was a professor in liver diseases who was to prove that the liver did NOT need cleansing. The audience consisted of liver specialists (hepatologists) from all over Australia visiting Melbourne for their annual symposium on the liver

I started like this “Ladies and gentlemen I have been asked today to prove to you that the liver needs cleansing. Yes, that’s right, the liver itself, the supreme organ of cleansing in the body, needs cleansing!

Now if you ask the Australian public “Does your liver need a good cleanse?”

The answer will be a resounding YES! as demonstrated by the fact that my little green book titled “The Liver Cleansing Diet” was awarded the Australian People’s choice award in 1997 for the most popular nonfiction Australian book.

This surprised me more than anyone, as I thought that a book with such an austere title would appeal only to health food and health farm junkies – but I was wrong – it became a best seller and sold over 3 million copies and was translated into 11 languages!

I thought to myself “Why do Australians believe so adamantly that their liver needs a good cleanse?” Perhaps it is because we are a nation of party animals? – Australians definitely have a reputation for drinking alcohol!

Anyway, whatever the reason the public says YES!

So, I did not have to convince the public, it only remained to convince the eminent scientists gathered before me, that the liver needs cleansing!

The liver cleanses the body in 2 ways –

1. It is a mechanical filter which removes the debris (unhealthy cells, immune complexes, micro-organisms etc.) from the blood stream
2. The phase one and two detox pathways inside the liver cells which breakdown toxins in the blood

 So, if the liver can cleanse the blood stream, the liver should be able to cleanse itself and is in no need of extra help – right? Or is the liver filter like the air and oil filters of an engine which needs regular cleansing and maintenance? If these filters become dirty, blocked and over worked, they malfunction and eventually the engine breaks down.

Well this is what happens in the body and eventually an overloaded or “dirty liver filter” can cause wide ranging symptoms of poor health in your whole body.

What can overload or impair the liver’s ability to detoxify –

1. High exposures to environmental toxins– such as alcohol, dyes, solvents, pesticides, plastics, heavy metals, and/or certain medications
2. Fatty infiltration of the liver, which has become an epidemic with one in three people being diagnosed with fatty liver
3. Nutritional deficiencies of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants that are required for the liver’s detox pathways
4. Genetic faults causing enzyme polymorphisms that reduce the ability of the liver to detoxify
5. Leaky gut syndrome – causing an excess return of bacterial endo-toxins from the gut back to the liver
6. Medications which overload detox enzymes in the liver
7. Ageing – causes slower detox pathways
8. Acidity – if the body becomes more acidic or dehydrated, the liver cells function less efficiently

In such cases, the liver filter and liver detox pathways can become easily overloaded and toxins build up in the liver and then we get a build-up of toxins in the fatty areas of the body.

Thus, the dirty liver becomes in need of a good cleanse!

It’s all very well to prove that the liver needs cleansing, but if it’s impossible to “cleanse the liver” then there is no point to this debate!

Some doctors believe that it’s impossible to “cleanse the liver” thinking that this is unscientific simplistic terminology.

 It would be great if you could unzip your right upper abdomen and take out your liver and give it a good scrub in the shower– but it’s not that simplistic!

So, let’s look at how we can scientifically “cleanse the liver”

1. Reduce the workload of the liver by reducing the number of toxins we put into our body
2. Improve the health of the liver filter and detox pathways with superfoods and herbs that reduce damage to liver cells
3. Reduce leaky gut syndrome – improve the types of bacteria in the gut, avoid excess sugar and use things like slippery elm, aloe vera, pectin, and glutamine to heal the gut. Avoid constipation and have a good bowel action every day
4. Make the body more alkaline which encourages healthy cell function

At the end of the Great Liver Debate our moderator, herself a liver specialist, told the audience that those who voted for Dr Cabot should clap louder with their right hand and those in favour of the professor should clap louder with their left hand. Obviously, I never knew who won the debate, but I was encouraged by the large number of liver specialists who congratulated me and asked to see my extensive scientific references.

I am so convinced that the liver and gut detoxification abilities need to be supported that I have developed the DR CABOT CLEANSE, which consists of 3 powders designed to achieve a total body cleanse over 15 days. I have been using this for 3 years and have found it to be very helpful for those wanting to use a detoxification program to improve their health and stimulate fat burning.

The DR CABOT CLEANSE consists of –

1. The Ultimate Liver Cleanse Powder which is 60% vegan golden pea protein combined with high-quality superfoods, herbs, greens, vitamins and minerals. It contains over 40 key ingredients to support liver and immune health and increase energy. It is taken in the morning in water, juice or a smoothie
2. The Ultimate Body Cleanse Powder which contains alkalinizing greens and minerals to reduce body acidity. It is taken in water or juice around lunch time
3. The  . This is best taken around one hour after dinner or before retiring to bed

The 15 day-course of powders is combined with a delicious healthy cleansing diet designed to cleanse the liver and gut and increase the elimination of toxins from the body. The recipes are found in a lovely booklet that comes with the 3 powders. The recipes are designed by myself and my nutritionist Louise Bell. The food is known as “goo-free food” as it does not contain any additives or artificial substances. It is a good idea to do some intermittent fasting during the 15-day Cleanse. If you are significantly overweight, miss breakfast and lunch, and only eat dinner during the 15 day Cleanse. For those with less weight to lose, try just missing breakfast and drinking water instead.

Cleaner, leaner and younger in just 15 days – it’s worth it!

For more information call our naturopaths on 0246558855 or go to www.drcabotcleanse.com.

Dr Sandra Cabot from Cabot Health will be at the Conscious Living Expo and is giving 2 seminars Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 October. Read more click here