The Colon Cleansing Diet--How the Colon Cleanse Diet Can Help Optimize Your Health

It's important to understand that the colon cleansing diet is not a "diet" in a traditional sense.  This is not a diet specifically for weight loss, but a diet to help cleanse the impurities out of your system.  However, losing or maintaining a healthy weight is one of the benefits of natural colon cleansing.  Naturally cleansing the colon also promotes cleansing of the liver and supports the body's homeostasis (natural balance).  A colon cleanse diet is unique in that it can be followed continually; it does not have to be limited to a specific period of time.  In fact, you can choose to make the diet into a way of life.

In order to maintain good health, your body needs to eliminate bodily wastes and toxins.  The colon does just that, as it functions to absorb water and minerals and eliminate waste.  The colon, consisting of the large intestine, rectum, and and anus, is the end of the gastrointestinal tract.  The gastrointestinal tract begins in the mouth, and ends in the anus.

The colon begins on the right side of the lower abdomen.  This is where the small intestine dumps the previously digested food into the cecum.  The digested substance then travels up from the cecum to the ascending colon, makes a left into the transverse colon, then travels down to the descending colon.  The last area of the colon is the sigmoid, in which the waste by-product empties into the rectum and ultimately expelled from the body.  The colon is also home to nearly 60 different varieties of microflora, or "friendly bacteria", which aids in digestion, maintain pH balance, and counteract the harmful bacteria.

It is quite evident how important the colon is to our overall well-being, and how a colon cleanse diet can work to our benefit.

You may have heard the maxim, "life and death begins in the colon". We've already established that a clean colon is essential to body's health and its efficiency decreases if it becomes polluted. In fact, a colon that isn't operating properly effectively becomes the body's toxic waste dump. A bowel cleansing diet gives the colon the push it needs to get rid of any fecal matter it may be holding on to.

The colon cleansing diet can last 7-30 days, or you may choose to continue to eat colon cleansing foods indefinitely. With this diet, you are starting over with a new slate, eliminating any bad eating habits. When your colon is operating properly, you will be in tune with what your body needs, instead of artificial cravings.

Now, there are many colon cleansing products on the market, but a colon cleaning diet is the easiest and most effective out of any other method. The first step is to eliminate all foods that is not healthy for the colon. These foods include:

• Coffee and Black Tea

• Carbonated soft drinks, including diet soda

• "Junk" foods such as chips, cookies, and other high sodium/refined sugar food
  

• Any fast food
  

• Boxed and processed foods
  

• Pasteurized Dairy products
  

• Alcoholic beverages
• Processed Meat
• Flour Products including bread and pasta
• Artificial flavoring and dyes
• High Fructose Corn Syrup
• Hydrogenated/partially hydrogenated oils and fats

Once you've eliminated the bad foods, you will need to increase good foods that are high in fiber. Fiber can be ingested through fruits and vegetables. Fiber is important because it act like a broom that cleans out the system. Anyone following a whole body cleansing diet should aim to ingest 35-50 grams of dietary fiber a day.

Obviously, a cleansing diet would consist of mostly fresh, raw fruits and vegetables. You can further increase your intake of plant foods by juicing with a low speed masticating juicer. This type of juicer doesn't overheat, preserving the nutrients and the enzymes that promote proper digestion. For best results eat 50-100 percent of raw fruits and vegetables while you're following the colon cleanse diet. Eat as much organically and locally grown produce as possible. Conventionally grown foods tend to contain chemicals that will impede the colon cleansing progress.

Staying hydrated and drinking plenty of water is a must. You should drink half of your body weight in ounces every day.

To kick it up a notch, add fermented foods such as yogurt and kefir into your diet. Fermented foods contain probiotics, which are the good bacteria that live in colon. Other fermented foods include sauerkraut, tempeh, and miso.


Finally, when on a colon cleanse diet you will need to eat a lot of fresh, raw vegetables and fruits. These contain enzymes which promote and aid proper digestion. They also have a higher amount of fiber in their natural state than when they are cooked. If you are relatively healthy, you should be able to eat 60 percent to 100 percent of raw vegetables and fruits while you are on the optimum colon cleanse diet.

An added change to your diet which will make the colon cleansing results even better is to include fermented foods such as sauerkraut, miso, and yogurt in your colon cleanse diet. The good bacteria in these foods live in the colon and assist in protecting you from disease.

You can also try an herb colon cleanse diet. While those results are faster than the optimum diet, you will find that the slower results from doing it this way will be longer lasting. The reason for this is that the optimum colon cleanse diet forces you to make healthy changes that will continue for a lifetime.

You will find that after doing a colon cleansing diet, you will have increased energy, less sickness, and an improved external appearance. Just remember, you are indeed what you eat.

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