It has since been copied on the many thousands of websites offering advice on the Master Cleanse. However, that information never made it into this book. So I made a promise to myself that I would do a third edition.
The number of webpages discussing the Master Cleanse since the first edition is now almost half a million! This has led some people to accuse me of just copying whatever information I found on the Internet. I find this accusation funny considering there were less than a handful of websites devoted to the Master Cleanse when I wrote the first edition and put up the first Internet Bulletin Board (or forum, as they are called these days) at the end of 2003 and personally posted more than 600 answers to people’s questions.
In the first and second edition I answered the 70 most frequently asked questions. Since then, the most frequently asked questions have changed a bit and answering those new questions was another reason I wanted to write this third edition.
I also wanted to publish at least a few of the many scientific studies that validate the Master Cleanse as I am frequently asked for that information by those who would like to spread the word.
My final reason for writing this third edition is the information on anti-aging, which I personally find fascinating and is directly related to the Master Cleanse and fasting. Fasting from time to time (intemittent fasting) and a permanent, restricted-calorie diet with optimum nutrition are the only two methods that have ever been scientifically proven to extend life and reduce the diseases of aging! (See the section “Anti-Aging”.)
Being overweight has become far too common in America. According to a Business Week article, (“Those Heavy Americans,” Gene Koretz, Business Week, Nov. 10, 2003) two-thirds of Americans are overweight. The market for weight loss products (low carbohydrate foods, diet programs, reducing supplements, etc.) was projected to surpass $150 billion by 2007.1
Still worse, obesity or being overweight was the third leading cause of preventable death in the United States from 2003-2006.2 Those people it does not kill, it punishes, especially dating singles who want to be attractive to the opposite sex.
A look at our current culture might provide an explanation. Super Size Me is a very entertaining, feature-length color documentary film that shows what happens when the central character actually goes on a 30-day McDonald’s-only diet. For 30 days, he eats breakfast, lunch and dinner at McDonald’s. Nothing passes his lips that cannot be purchased at McDonald’s. And whenever they ask him if he wants it super-sized, he must answer yes and eat it all.
At the beginning of the movie, we see him getting the results of various examinations by health care professionals. His results are all normal and he is given a clean bill of health. After three weeks, one doctor is shocked at how much worse his liver is and encourages him to go off the diet. Our “dieter” refuses. So, the doctor hands him a number for the hospital emergency room and insists he call if he experiences any symptoms of a heart attack! The doctor is shown in the film saying something along the lines of, “I would never have imagined that your diet could reduce your health this fast.”
Not only does he gain more weight than expected, but we watch the deterioration in his complexion and mental attitude as well as learn about it from the results of his later blood tests. There are segments where he talks about his worsened mental attitude. His girlfriend, a vegan chef, also talks about his diminished sexual capability. (So, do not show the entire movie to your six year old without seeing it first. His girlfriend’s description is not graphic, but you may have to answer questions you would rather not, if you show that part to your six year old.)
Another scene shows how children with learning and attitude problems change for the better when they are not fed processed food in their school cafeteria.
Toward the end of the movie, McDonald’s French fries, a hamburger and a sandwich are put in separate glass domes along with a fresh-ground hamburger and hand-cut French fries from a local restaurant. The fresh-ground hamburger and hand-cut French fries decomposed as you would expect because they are not refrigerated. However, even without refrigeration, the McDonald’s fries have no visible decomposition even after six weeks!
If they do not decompose like “nutritional” food, what does your body do with them? Your body uses the food you eat to nourish your body & blood, and build new cells. When you eat something that contains artificial preservatives, colors or flavors, your body has to neutralize it before it is eliminated. This is one of the jobs of the liver. When the liver receives too much to process at the time, it stores those toxins in fat cells in the liver to process later. When the liver runs out of room to store these, it releases them into the body and the body creates fat cells and stores the toxins in the body’s fat cells until the toxins can be processed.
What keeps your liver strong and healthy? Blood from the colon is fed directly to the liver to nourish it. However, the body accumulates uneliminated toxins especially in the large intestine (colon), where blood has to filter through these toxins and poisons to get to the liver. At this point, the whole body is being fed “dirty blood.” This is like trying to wash your hands in paint to get them clean. This is also what medicine refers to as “autointoxication”: not “intoxication” as in happily relaxed, but as in self-poisoned.3
Symptoms of autointoxication include headaches, nausea, mental depression, irritability, stress, tension, tiredness, sluggishness, mental fogginess, indecision, insomnia, and susceptibility to other illnesses.
It is the toxins that Americans are eating and drinking that ares causing the epidemic of overweight. Our bodies cannot handle the volume of toxins we consume on a daily basis.
Think processed food does not have toxins? In the article “Why McDonald’s Fries Taste So Good,”4 the author, Eric Schlosser, says “About 90 percent of the money that Americans now spend on food goes to buy processed food.” He goes on to say that the flavor is replaced with chemicals to add flavor. For example, there are approximately 350 different chemicals in high-quality artificial strawberry flavor.
Further in his article, he says, “One of the most widely used color additives …, cochineal [pronounced koash-a-neil] extract ... is made from the [dried] bodies of [a small] female ... insect harvested mainly in Peru and the Canary Islands. The bug feeds on red cactus berries, and color from the berries accumulates in the females and their unhatched [young]. The insects are collected, dried, and ground into a pigment. It takes about 70,000 of them to produce a pound of carmine, which is used to make processed foods look pink, red, or purple. Dannon strawberry yogurt gets its color from carmine, and so do many frozen fruit bars, candies, and fruit fillings, and Ocean Spray pink-grapefruit juice drink.”5
The artificial sweetener Aspartame, also sold as NutraSweet, Equal, Equal Measure, and Spoonful, is another good example. The Food and Drug Administration has a system that permits people to report bad health reactions to food and drugs. According to David Rietz’s website (www.dorway.com), in February of 1994, Aspartame accounted for more than 75 percent of all bad reactions reported!
A Plane and Pilot magazine article from January 1990 on food additives explained that diet soft drinks are sweetened artificially by Aspartame (NutraSweet and Equal). Aspartame contains ten percent methanol, a poison, that is released at temperatures above 86º or if left on the shelf for a long time.
The article goes on to say that methanol destroys the brain a little at a time. Immediate effects can either be severe (epileptic seizures, blindness, or chest palpitations) or less noticeable (blurred vision, bright flashes, tunnel vision, ringing or buzzing in ears, migraine headaches, dizziness, loss of equilibrium, or lip and mouth reactions). It reports on an Air Force pilot who directly traced the patterns of tremors and seizures he suffered for two years to his consuming NutraSweet in