Many people are coming to believe that cleansing the colon is the best way to start upon the path of feeling stronger, healthier, lighter, and clearer. It can help us feel more energetic and promote levels of endurance that aid us in dealing with our often stressful and fast-paced lives, and there is no better way to lose weight.
Use of a medical microscope to observe the maneuverability of white blood cells before and after a deep cleanse indicates that cleansing significantly helps improve immune function. For an example, after cleansing, neutrophils (Primary white blood cells responsible for ingesting microorganisms, dead cells and other foreign substances, including infections) move through the blood approximately 4 times faster. This indicates that the blood has changed very remarkably after cleansing. Something harmful (mucus and toxins) that was in the blood before cleansing was removed by cleansing. Cleansing is the most effective way to rapidly remove toxins, mucus and congestion throughout our bodies. It is nature’s way to clear out the gunk, gunk that leads to most health problems.
Each living thing, from the largest animal down to the smallest single cell amoeba, is dependent upon its environment. Bruce Lipton, Ph.D., author of Biology of Belief stated, “When I put cultures and cells into an unhealthy environment, the cells in the Petri dish, started to get sick, started to die and were doing very poorly. However, when I put them back into a healthy environment, the cells would restore their vigor; they would thrive, grow, reproduce, and do what healthy cells do.”
Early in his graduate training one of his instructors told Bruce, “When cells are not doing right, first look at the conditions of the environment before trying to change the cells.” Dr. Lipton stressed the fact that environment is the key to good health. In modern medicine we find just the opposite; ignore the environment and try and change the cells with drugs and we all know that most of the time it results in further examinations and more and more drugs. They cover up one symptom and the problem breaks out in another.
Most people pollute their bodies with unnatural food with almost every meal. We eat foods that drain our bodies of essential elements, such as electrolytes; we feed our bodies with harmful acids and a wide range of chemicals. Is it any wonder that so many people are sick?
Why are so many people sick? It’s because their internal environment is polluted, unnatural and harmful. We have the good sense to change the oil and filters in our cars; we clean our dishes and homes; why not our bodies? Which is more important?
There are many different types of “cleansing”. There are cleanses for the liver, kidneys, gallbladder, skin, and more, but the most important, the one that should be used prior to all others, is the intestinal cleanse. Did you know that it is more important to cleanse the small intestines than it is to cleanse the colon? A gastrointestinal problem begins first in the small intestines, and later develops in the colon. Read my book Cleanse and Purify Thyself Book One and find out why.
Rich Anderson’s Original Master Cleanse, often called the Clean-Me-Out Program or the Cleanse Thyself Program is the cleanse that was evolved, more or less, by accident when White Medicine Crow and I were living off the land, eating only wild fresh raw herbs that we picked while living off the land in the wilds of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. This is the cleanse that triggered the Colon Cleansing movement, only it was much more than a colon cleanse.
It happen while we were on our 3 month herbal expedition. White Crow was teaching me how to live off the land eating only the wild herbs that we found. We started in the desert mountains of Arizona and after the snows melted a bit, we went into the Sierras and camped for 10 days.
There was a special meadow with an abundance of various herbs, and we would take our empty bowls and walk into that precious meadow and pick our herbs. After filling our wooden bowls we would walk back to the teepee we had made out of large pieces of cedar bark, and season our salad with organic olive oil and organic apple cider vinegar. It was delightful, and we thrived. About the second or third day, I was sitting on a rock reading a book and I heard White Crow yelling to me, “Rich, come quick. Rich come!” My first reaction was that he got hurt and I took off running towards his voice. When I approached him, he was pointing to the ground at a 5 or 6 feet long, narrow, dark grey thing that at first looked like a rattlesnake and I wondered if it had bit him. But when I reached the object, I immediately knew that it was mucoid plaque. Then he said, “Is that one of those pieces of mucoid plaque you’ve been talking about?” And I said, “Yep! It most certainly is, but this came out of the small intestines, not out of the colon. I’ve never heard of this happening before and I have read every book on this subject; mucoid plaque always came out of the colon, never from the small intestines. And Crow, you’re a lot better off now that this is on the outside of you instead of the inside.”
A few hours later it started coming out of me, and for the next month this stuff kept coming out of us. We fed off that meadow for 10 days and then went to the coastal mountains along the California coast, packed in, made camp on the beach, and the mucoid plaque kept coming out. I was able to identify which herbs were responsible for this amazing cleansing, and later, after our expedition ended, I put together this most amazing cleanse that we called The Clean-Me-Out Program.
This was in the mid 80’s and there were only four “colon cleanses” on the market. The next year, while camped in the backcountry of Mt. Shasta, I wrote my book on the subject, which by word of mouth went around the world and so did the Clean-Me-Out Program. After that, colon cleanses began springing up all over the country. People created their own version of a colon cleanse and some companies offered their versions of cleansing the liver, or kidneys, similar to what I had developed. Cleansing became known all over the world, and it all happened because cleansing the internal terrain of our bodies significantly improves health. In fact, we have never known anything that improves health as does deep, not mild, but deep intestinal cleansing.
In terms of improving health, our intestines are, most of the time, the most important organs in our bodies and they are also the most abused and most ignored. Is it any wonder that the general public has so much trouble retrieving good health? Most doctors ignore this most important fact. Why? What causes such a universal problem with our intestines and health? It’s our emotions and our diet.
The Standard American Diet (SAD) is possibly the most destructive diet in the world. Without exception, health plummets in every country that adopts the SAD diet. It is a statistical fact that America competes with Germany as the sickest nation in the world. We eat the worst and most unnatural food and treat ourselves with unnatural chemicals called drugs. We allow ourselves to eat food poisoned by unnatural chemicals (pesticides, herbicides and unnatural fertilizers) and drink unnatural liquids that either have been poisoned (chlorine and fluoride in public water supplies) and soft drinks and pasteurized milk, which create a poison-like effect and drain us of vital nutrients. We have moved so far away from nature that some people think that disease is a vaccine deficiency. (That’s supposed to be funny.) Truly, Americans have turned away from nature, and we pay the price. However, if we stop ingesting unnatural food and eat more natural food, and remove from our bodies and minds, everything that interferes with normal healthy function, we quickly move towards better health and happiness.
Have you ever stopped to think just how important our intestines really are? The digestive tract is the hub of our body, upon which every cell and organ depends. To be healthy, our intestines must be able to completely digest all of our food and must be able to absorb food and take it into our blood stream. According to numerous clinical studies, mucoid plaque inhibits these processes. Furthermore, if our intestines remain acidic, our digestive enzymes from the pancreas and the other 22 digestive enzymes secreted by the small intestines cannot function, and our digestion is ruined. Indeed, one of the most important keys to health exists within our intestines.
Toni Toney, author of Get Clean Go Green, EcoDiet, gives a dynamic example of how acids can destroy our health. After decades of traveling the world to discover why the human body becomes sick and prematurely dies, Toni came to realize that the master key to health is the condition of the body’s internal environment. In her book, she suggests that what we call disease is nothing more than a series of “ecological breakdowns” caused by an internal acid rain. Spurred by Toni Toney, Lorne Label, M.D. and Doctor of Neurology, endorsed her findings. After conducting his own research, he concluded, “After contemplating Toni Toney’s internal acid rain theory, I performed a number of spinal taps on Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis patients, as the cerebral spinal fluid is, in effect, the brain’s water supply and should have a pH value of approximately 7.4. When I tested the cerebrospinal fluid’s pH, to my amazement, she was right: it was approximately 5.5—the pH of environmental acid rain. Further dietary research is justified to see if shifting the pH of the brain terrain will provide clues in turning these devastating diseases around. From the evidence I now see I am optimistic.” I think that is what is called a given that everyone with those diseases has been eating the SAD diet, which is to say, a very acid-forming diet, and the acid-forming diet drains us of life and health-essential electrolytes.
Toni calls herself a Body Ecologist, one who studies the environment of the human body and invites others to do the same. She believes that if we would cleanse the body and eat a more eco-friendly diet, both our inner and outer environmental crises would come to an end. I am in full agreement with her concepts.
When an environment changes, the life forms of that environment change; this is a biological fact. The SAD diet changes our internal environment causing it to become acid and toxic, and then and only then, do we attract unnatural, (to healthy humans) microbes (bacteria, fungus, yeast, and mold) and sometimes parasites. In the words of P.L. Clark, MD, “Just as maggots and flies require the filth of the manure pile in which they grow and propagate, so the human organism must become broken down and filthy through bad habits of living before the tissues and juices of the body will permit the harboring and growth of any noxious bacteria. Acidosis and Toxicosis are the primary causes of all disease. Rid the body of these poisons and correct the habits of living and good health will be regained and maintained.” Truly, when we cleanse our intestines and bring them back to normal, we can remove the unwanted parasites and re-establish health.
Just how serious is American foul bowel? Do I mean toxic intestines? Yes! That’s exactly what I mean. At the beginning of the 21st century, diverticulitis was unheard of. Today, bowel problems are so frequent that, according to the Merck Manual (the medical doctor’s bible), diverticulitis is developing in 100% of the population and that anyone who reaches age 90 would likely have developed diverticulitis. Of course this is not true for those who refuse to follow the SAD diet, but it is true with about 90% of the Western World!
These accumulating toxins, poisons and free radicals gradually seep into the bloodstream and lymph, settling in the weaker areas of the body. As these weak areas give way to the toxic overloads, dis-ease develops. As one doctor put it, the name of a disease depends upon where the poisons settle. Thus, from the same cause, various names of disease are given. Even if one succeeds in strengthening the weak area or suppressing the symptom without removing the toxins, the toxins move to another area and weaken the tissues there. Truly, disease can only permanently be overcome when the cause is remedied.
Dr. Bernard Jensen spent 50 years running a sanitarium where he personally treated his patients, most of which had either given up on their doctor or their doctor had given up on them. In other words, hard-core cases and most of them, thanks to Dr. Jensen’s cleansing, nutritional and dietary program, re-established their health. Dr. Jensen wrote, “Every tissue is fed by the blood, which is supplied by the bowel. When the bowel is dirty, the blood is dirty, and so on to the organs and tissues....it is the bowel that invariably has to be cared for first before any effective healing can take place.” Dr. Jensen publicly stated that over 90% of disease in America can be traced to unhealthy conditions in the bowel. Privately, he told me that it's closer to 100%. My experience confirms his.
Dr. Harvey Kellogg maintained that 90% of the diseases of civilization are due to improper functioning of the colon. What he didn’t realize is this: The small intestine is more important than the colon and it too is highly toxic and covered with mucoid plaque.
Sir Arbuthnot-Lane, surgeon for the King of England, made the following statement: “There is but one disease and that is deficient drainage.”
Dr. John Tilden wrote in his book, Toxemia Explained, “The most deadly thing to a germ is a healthy human body.” During the phenomenal flu epidemic at the turn of the 20th century, he was the only doctor in the US that did not lose a single patient. This was a time when most doctors were losing hundred of patients. What he did that was different than the other doctors was that he gave his patients colonics; he cleansed the colon. For whatever reason, most doctors could not see what he saw; they could not see that our intestines are the key to health. Cleanse the intestines and we can cleanse the whole body. Most health problems begin in the intestines, and restoration of most health problems arises after we’ve cleansed the intestines and strengthened them.
Let it be clear, I am not saying that cleansing is the cure of all diseases. I am saying that cleansing removes toxins and congestion. Then we feed the body with vital nutrients and then the body heals itself. Only the body and mind heal. There are no drugs, no herbs, and no medicines that heal; only the body and mind heal.
What happens to our intestines? Years of poor diets (acid-forming) and unnatural beverages (acid-forming), processed foods (acid-forming), and too much protein (acid-forming) mean that we drain our bodies of acid buffering minerals (electrolytes) and acidify our bodies to such a degree that we lose the ability to maintain acid/alkaline balance. Acids win out and our body has to defend itself against these acids. The stomach, gall bladder and intestines are the first areas that are attacked by an unnatural abundance of acids. In defending these acids, the goblet cells in our intestines secret a glycoprotein substance called mucin, which can line the entire intestinal tract, including the stomach, small intestines and colon. There are numerous types of mucins, but we categorize them under one term; mucoid plaque, which implies a layer or layered film (plaque) that covers most, if not all, of the intestines, small and large. As we continue to eat toxic and acid-producing substances, layer upon layer of mucoid plaque builds in the entire alimentary canal and contributes to greater toxicity, causing gradual weakening of the body.
The digestive system - is the hub of our entire body. Every single cell depends upon the digestion of our food. The bowel feeds every organ, every tissue, and every cell in our bodies. When the bowel environment has become contaminated or inefficient, the cells and organs in the rest of the body will reflect that contamination and dysfunction. A toxic and acid bowel means toxic blood and lymph, toxic liver and other organs and cells, and poor health.
Mucoid plaque and toxicity are common. Over 90% of the people who have used our Master Phase have found mucoid plaque coming out of them.
Mucoid plaque is easy to identify. It looks like shiny rubber rope or shining dark leather with the exact shape of the intestines it had been clinging to. It is usually dark green, almost black, and sometimes other colors, but always shiny. It may be only a few inches long or several feet. It is not uncommon to see pieces two feet or longer. A six-footer would not cause surprise. One lady reported passing a 15 footer and another reported one over 20 feet. It may be soft or firm, and in some cases, so hard that you can’t cut it with a knife without sawing it. It is usually less than ¼ of an inch thick, but some have reported over an inch in thickness.
How much Mucoid Plaque can we remove? The average person, who does the full Master Phase Program and carefully follows the directions, removes between 25 to 50 feet of mucoid plaque during the Cleanse; this seems to be a key in obtaining a new level of health. Many people who use the lower Phases of our program may see some Mucoid Plaque removed, but nothing like the Master Phases.
Note: Since I wrote my book in 1987, there have been over 100 clinical studies done on the primary essence of mucoid plaque; mucin.
Cleansing the intestines, along with eating good natural foods, are the two most important things we can do for ourselves. When mucoid plaque reaches certain proportions it seems to inhibit normal digestion, assimilation and elimination. As it accumulates, layer after layer, it may hold various food substances, which tend to ferment and then feed unwanted microbes and even parasites.
About removing Emotions: Since recorded history, people on a serious spiritual path fasted, having only water. Why? There are several reasons, which includes physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.
1. Physically: When the body is deprived of all nutrients, it seeks within itself and consumes undigested proteins, mucus, sugars, fats, cholesterol and any other debris that are not cellular. These accumulated substances are the primary causes of physical dis-ease. They tend to accumulate and cause poor circulation, congestion, fermentation, free radicals, and an environment that can create or attract unfriendly microorganisms. While on water, with the exception of healthy tissue, the body dissolves or removes what it cannot consume. In this manner it removes toxins and unnatural chemicals. Thus, food deprivation cleanses the body deeper and faster than any known method. As our bodies remove the mucus and other garbage from our body, our immune system can function much faster and more efficiently.
2. Mentally: water fasting clears and helps the mind, increases mental abilities and improving eyesight.
3. Emotional: Science has now proven that emotions somehow cling to proteins. Interestingly, we now know that certain areas of the body hold certain types of emotions. Anger, for an example, is usually associated with the liver. When we cleanse with only water, herbs and shakes, forgotten memories arise and are quickly removed. This is when we see amazing recoveries of health.
A word of caution concerning psyllium and bentonite cleansing shakes. Never use non-hydrated bentonite. Powdered bentonite can cause severe constipation and blockage. Even when used with psyllium, the bentonite will absorb anything of nutritional value, such as herbs, bacteria, and vitamins, as well as toxins, pathogenic bacteria, and parasites. It will also absorb acids, such as hydrochloric acid in the stomach. So be sure to wait one hour after drinking a psyllium-bentonite shake before consuming anything nutritious.
A small percentage of people have difficulty taking the psyllium shakes. Some people have trouble taking Psyllium Shakes because the psyllium becomes gooey and sometimes become difficult to swallow. Here is what you can do:
1. Use cool water not warm water. Cooler water slows the coagulation of the psyllium.
2. Drink it quickly before it coagulates.
3. Add about 2 to 4 ounces of fruit juice to add some pleasant taste. I like orange grapefruit juice and grape juice. Fresh apple juice is also very good. Fresh juice is always best of course, but sometimes that is inconvenient so then you can use high quality bottled fruit juice. Apricot/Mango is one of my favorites.
4. Try using Gourmet Psyllium, it tastes better, if you like licorice and has a slightly different texture.
5. Decrease the amount of psyllium and bentonite.
6. If none of the above works, then don’t take it. The herbs will still do the job, but cleansing reactions may occur.
About Cleansing Reactions:
Cleansing reactions can occur any time the body is releasing toxins faster than it is able to eliminate them. For instance, toxins may be released into the intestine when a piece of mucoid plaque, which may have been stockpiling toxins, breaks loose. Some of these toxins may be absorbed back into the portal veins, which go directly to the liver. The liver is the primary organ to filter out toxins. If the liver is unable to process the toxins quickly, a cleansing reaction will occur. Any unusual discomfort during a cleanse generally described as a cleansing reaction. Common symptoms of a cleansing reaction are: body odors, bad breath, mild headaches, sleepiness and fatigue. More severe symptoms may be unusual sweating, temporary rashes as toxins are being released through the skin, more severe headaches, aching muscles or joints, and exhaustion. Very rare symptoms have included: Tongue turning black as metals are being release through the intestines and tongue, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, which may be a sign of extreme toxins, pathogenic bacteria, yeast, parasites or acids are ousted from their normal habitat.
Cleansing reactions prove beyond doubt that one has been accumulating dis-ease causing substances to harmful levels. These symptoms indicate that one’s diet and or lifestyle has been dis-ease producing, resulting in less effective digestion, poor bowel function and liver weakness. It also indicates that it is time to clean house. With few exceptions, the above cleansing reactions are telling us that we must keep cleansing or we will be moving toward more serious states.
How to stop or reduce cleansing reactions: The fastest way to stop cleansing reactions is to take a colonic, first choice, enema, and if necessary, an enema and then a coffee enema. When it comes to pain nothing works better than an enema. Cayenne pepper is also effective in reducing pain by increasing one’s ability to deal with pain.