It’s impossible to talk to people who have done the “Master Cleanse” without hearing them talk about the effect it has on their energy.
So that is the Mater Cleanse, anyway? It’s a controversial program that was first developed in the 1970s by a man named Stanley Burroughs, whose only claim to eternal fame is that he published a little booklet about it – The Master Cleanser – that is still sold in health food stores everywhere.
Although many conservative dietitians dismiss the Master Cleanse as hogwash, the fact is that it’s been used for decades with great results by many people, including some that I have great respect and regard for, including Elson Haas, M.D. Don’t let its periodic appearance in celebrity magazines as the ‘secret” behind some star’s weight loss and newfound energy blind you to its value for some people some times. I’m including it in this book, not because I recommend it for everyone, but because so many people swear by it that I thought you should at least know what it is and how to do it, should you want to try it.
GROUND ZERO FOR THE MASTER CLEANSE
One of the best-known proponents of the Master Cleanse is a man named Peter Glickman, who has devoted his life to teaching people how to incporate the Master Cleanse into their lives as part of a program of healing and renewal. When I interviewed him, he explained how he developed this passion.
“Around 2002, food had become my enemy”, he explained. “I was feeling exhausted. I had no energy. My wife had gotten into the whole raw vegan diet thing, and for two months I watched as she got skinnier and healthier. Her eyes sparkled. Meanwhile, I just felt more tired. Finally, I decided to give raw vegan eating a try for six months”.
Glickman lost 42 pounds. Not surprisingly, his energy went through the roof. When I asked him what prompted him to try the Master Cleanse, he was refreshingly frank. “I just woke up one morning and felt like I needed a cleanse”. He’s been a convert – and a proponent – ever since.
RECIPE FOR REVIVING ENERGY
Many people use the Master Cleanse as an energy tonic, and more than a few have used it for weight loss, though like all juice fasts, that shouldn’t be the main reason you do it. The Master Cleanse, also known as the Lemonade Diet, is basically a fast in which you take in nothing but the following drink all day long, as wanted, for a period of time ranging from one to ten days.
Here’s the recipe for a single serving:
2 tablespoons (30 ml) organic lemon juice (about ½ lemon)
2 tablespoons (40 g) organic Grade B maple syrup (not the commercial kind use don pancakes)
1/10 teaspoons cayenne pepper
8 to 10 ounces (235 to 285 ml) filtered water, boiled or heated to the temperature at which you’d make a cup of tea.
Combine all the ingredients in a glass and drink.
There’s some good tradition behind the ingredients in the drink. Lemon juice and hot water is a drink of choice for singers, and in Indian (Ayruvedic) and traditional Chinese medicine, lemon is thought to cause the liver to excrete more bile. Because bile salts are one of the ways that the body detoxifiers itself, prompting the secretion of bile is thought to be a good thing. Lemon is also a diuretic, and it contains a number of antioxidants to boot. (My friend, Ann Louise Gittleman, Ph.D., has used the hot water and lemon drink as a component of her very popular “fat flush diet” for years). The cayenne pepper is thought to stimulate metabolism. And Grade B maple syrup is less filtered and processed than the more common Grade A, and therefore believed to contain more minerals and enzymes than the latter.
Whether you can go for a day – or ten – on just that drink is a personal matter. Since the Master Cleanse is really just a slight variation on a water fast (with lemon and maple syrup adding a few nutrients), it’s possible you might not feel really perky during the first day or so as your body starts dumping whatever it’s holding on to in the fat cells. That said, I’d be lying if I told you that it doesn’t work for certain folks. After just a few days on the program, some people report that they feel more energetic than they have in years.
Also, some people find that even drinking it throughout the morning and afternoon and then having one small, “clean” meal in the late afternoon or early evening (not technically a Master Cleanse, since on the Master Cleanse the drink would be all you’d have) can still produce some energy benefits. But this is one detox program where I’d truly recommend checking with a health professional familiar with detoxification diets before starting it. There may be other ways to get the same result hat aren’t as challenging.
Fasting Through the Ages for Energy, Penance, and Clarity
Fasting as a strategy for enhancing health and attaining spiritual enlightenment has been around since the beginning of recorded history. The Greek philosophers Plato and Scorates were said to have fasted for mental clarity and physical discipline. Hippocrates appreciated the therapeutic benefits of fasting.
Throughout both the Old and the New Testaments there are stories of people fasting, including the forty days and forty nights that Christ was said to have abstained from food. It has been used (and is still being used) by many religious sects – including Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists – as penance or for purification. Fasting has been a tool of political prisoners and disciples of civil disobedience. From Mohandas Gandhi to guests at high-end spas, from religious awakening to simple rejuvenation, fasting has served many people and purposes throughout the ages.
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