Think of your body as a complex machine made up of multiple systems. There is the digestive system, the respiratory system, the nervous system, etc. When you eat a food, that food must go through multiple systems before it can be used by the body. It first goes into the mouth, then the stomach, then the small intestine, then the large intestine, then the colon. The nutrients are absorbed to be used in the body and any remaining waste that can not be used is excreted.
Now, what if only one of the above listed organs was working? What if the stomach could digest the meal but the intestine was not able to function properly? The food would sit in the stomach and begin to cause all sorts of issues for your body. It is much the same with a cleanse program. If you only cleanse the liver or the colon without taking into account how the rest of the organ systems in the body are functioning, you have essentially gathered up the garbage and left it there in the body to start re-circulating and depositing in other areas. The liver has now shared its “garbage” with the kidneys, the skin, the lungs, the brain, etc. You are essentially as toxic as before, everything has just been redistributed. Thus, the net effect is zero and there can also be some negative effects that occur. If your body has been storing toxins for a long period of time and has tucked them away in the body to prevent constant exposure to all of your organs, a large release of these chemicals and no where for them to go can leave you feeling worse than before you started.
Now let’s consider the other alternative. You decide to do a total body cleanse which supports all of the organs of detoxification, including the liver, the kidneys, the skin, the gall bladder, the lungs, the digestive system, and the colon. Now the liver clears out the trash and the other organs help to move it out of the body and excrete it. It is now gone from the body and no longer circulating in the system and depositing in other areas. The net effect is that you have now gathered up the trash and it has been taken away, leaving the body detoxified and cleansed. The side effects that you experience during this process will depend on the speed with which this is done and the amount of support (vitamins, minerals, healthy food, plenty of clean water) you give your body while cleansing. It is possible to have a gentle yet extremely effective cleansing program!
