Other Cleanses
Cleanses that we recommend other than our own Alchemist Lab detoxification protocol include liver and gallstone cleanses, intestinal cleanses, heavy metals cleanses, and dietary cleanses such as juice fasts, the Master Cleanse or Ayurvedic kichari diets. Read more about these cleanses below. We also highly recommend infra-red saunas as a powerful and enjoyable way to detoxify.
Gallstone Cleanses
There are many variants of gallstone cleanses that are most suitable when a patient experiences difficulty with digestion, the inability to digest fats, and/or feeling lousy or gaseous after eating.
Such gallbladder cleanses consist primarily of eating lightly for a week or so while drinking lots of apple juice. Apple juice has malic acid, which softens gallstones.
If you are sugar sensitive, you can simply take malic acid in capsule form.
After a week or so of light eating and ingesting malic acid by drinking apple juice and or in capsule form, you flush your gallbladder stones out with various concoctions including olive oil, epsom salts, magnesium citrate etc.
The supplements that Alchemist Lab carries that makes this kind of fast more effective are:
L-ornithine-L-Aspartate
and
Chanca Piedra (which translates as “break stone.”)
Andreas Moritz has authored an entire book on this type of gallbladder / gallstone cleanse titled “The Amazing Liver and Gallbladder Flush.” CLICK HERE to learn more and to buy his book.
Intestinal Cleansing
There are many approaches to cleansing the intestines.
The one we recommend at Alchemist Lab is called “Arise & Shine.” This is a great cleanse to help get rid of unwanted weight – especially to take fat off the waist and hips. It also makes your skin very soft.
In a nutshell the “Arise and Shine” intestinal cleanse consists of eating a very restricted diet, while drinking shakes made of of psyllium and bentonite clay. Psyllium is a non-irritating bulking agent, while bentonite helps pull old fecal matter off the intestinal walls.
In addition to the “Arise and Shine” cleanse, taking a variety of herbs that are both laxative and nutritive is also helpful. Probiotics can be taken to re-establish intestinal flora, which is valuable as an anti-viral for the Hepatitis C Virus (HCV).
You can learn more about and purchase the “Arise and Shine” natural intestinal cleanse and the recommended “Flora Grow” probiotics by calling Steven Finkbine, L.Ac. at Alchemist Lab: 877 – 454 – 4372.
Heavy Metals Cleanse
Heavy metals have a strong pro-inflammatory effect on the liver and liver enzymes, just like excess iron does.
There are a variety of compounds that chelate heavy metals.
At Alchemist Lab, we recommend:
Raw dairy, if it is well tolerated
Chlorella
and
Acetyl-Glutathione.
Certain chelation treatment protocols tend to make people feel poorly, because they move metals around in the body. These include DMSA (Dimercaptosuccinic acid) chelation, and EDTA (ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid), which is also a popular chelating agent. EDTA very effectively lowers iron as well as heavy metals, although we at Alchemist Lab don’t favor it for use by hepatitis patients as it can drop platelet levels.
Chlorella and Acetyl-Glutathione tends to be slow and gradual, and also bolster energy levels. We prescribe them because they represent a “tortoise” approach to treatment that patiently lessens the toxic load.
Chelating heavy metals will drop liver enzymes if there is a significant body burden. The most accurate test is a DMSA push, where you take a strong dose of DMSA and then measure how much comes out in your urine.
Before entering into this (or any heavy metals treatment protocol), we recommend that patients start with a hair analysis as it is inexpensive (around $46) and covers a lot of ground in its results and reporting, including mineral scores as well as heavy metals. Call us at Alchemist Lab (877-454-4372) to request a hair analysis.
Ayurvedic Detoxification
Panchakarma is the ayurvedic cleansing program, which is an extremely complete and well-constructed regimen that encompasses many systems.
One aspect of panchakarma is called “kichari,” which is a cleansing diet that has some advantages over fasting, especially if you need to function in the world or tend to be weak, cold, or hypoglycemic.
Kichari is the best weight reduction program that we at Alchemist Lab have ever seen. You don’t tend to drop weight and then binge up again like some other more radical diets.
There are many different recipes for kichari. One variation that we recommend is:
2 cups of yellow split mung dahl (Indian lentil)
2 large leeks and 5 slices of fresh ginger
2 quarts water
1 large winter squash baked in the oven
1 12-oz can of coconut milk
1/2 teaspoon each of turmeric & cumin
1/4 teaspoon of cayenne
4 ounces of Natto Miso
Wash and strain the mung dahl after soaking. Slowly cook the mung dahl and the leeks and ginger together in a large covered pot, using 2 quarts of water for about 2 hours of cooking on a low temperature. Check the dahl as it cooks and add more water if it simmers out during cooking.
Cut the winter squash in half and scoop out the seeds, then bake in a shallow pan with a little water at 400 degrees for 45 to 60 minutes. Scoop the squash from the skin.
Blend the dahl and the squash with the coconut milk and miso. This is delicious!
Traditional kichari uses basmati rice instead of squash, and ghee (clarified butter) or no oil at all in the place of coconut milk.
The Natto Miso helps make this mixture strongly anti-inflammatory.
Master Cleanser
The Master Cleanser – or “hot lemonade” as we call it at Alchemist Lab – can be a juice diet that is energizing. Many fasts leave people weakened, but not this one. We’ve seen patients up at 3 o’clock in the morning cleaning out the clutter in their houses while on this particular cleansing program.
There are a few variations of the Master Cleanse, but the basics are:
Fresh lemon juice, squeezed from fresh lemons
Pure water
Cayenne pepper
Grade B organic maple syrup, which is more nutritious. The darker the better.
People vary in how spicy, sour, or sweet they prefer the mixture. A rough guide to dosage is:
1 small lemon
12 ounces of water
1 tablespoon of maple syrup
1/5 of a teaspoon of cayenne