Why the Master Cleanse is my favorite, even while being a busy mom

Spring is the season to cleanse, and the Master Cleanse is one of my favorites. 

In this episode, we go through the all the benefits of the Master Cleanse, why you want to cleanse for a minimum of 3 days, why each ingredient in the lemonade is so important, and why I believe this is the simplest and most supportive way to cleanse in our busy modern world.

Cleansing has so many benefits for so many health conditions from chronic headaches, migraines, arthritis, bloating, indigestion, hormone imbalance, holding on to excess weight or water, candida overgrowths, parasites, IBS, chronic pain, thyroid conditions, high blood pressure, liver and gallbladder conditions, and the list goes on! 

That being said, we also talk about the importance of deeply nourishing the body before cleansing and why the winter months are so vital for this. We can't cleanse all the time. And women especially need to be mindful of nourishing more than we are conditioned to think- specifically from a mineral standpoint- which is your deepest level of nourishment.

So let's dive into the Master Cleanse and learn all you need to know before you start! 

Thanks for being here!

xoxo Megan

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello, welcome to another episode of the Modern Sage Podcast. Today we are continuing our conversation about the spring and cleansing, and we're gonna dive into the topic of the master cleanse, which is one of my favorite cleanses to do during this time of year. Um, and again, that goes to really helping to support the liver, which at this time of year needs support, is super ready and available to cleanse, um, and is essentially almost waiting for you to do so. Um, and so this is a really cool way to do it. Um, the reason I love the master cleanse, there's a lot. Um, and one of them is because it's so simple, um, cheap, and easy. So, what I mean by that is it would be a minimum of three days. It's just water, lemon, maple syrup, and cayenne. Um, and it's really simple preparation. You're just squeezing it and putting it all in a glass, so there's no cooking, there's no prepping, there's no special equipment that you need, it's not really expensive like juicing, which I love juice cleanses as well, but that can be kind of pricey, or you have to have a really good quality cold pressed juicer. Um, you know, the master cleanse, anyone can do it. Um, you know, you want to really um invest in quality ingredients if you can invest in good quality water, um, that's spring water, or if it is a filtered like reverse osmosis water, you know, you're adding minerals back in. Um, but then you get organic lemons, organic cayenne, um, and a really good quality maple syrup. You kind of just invest in those, um, but you're saving money because you're not buying other food for the three days. Um, so even though you're like, oh my gosh,$20 of lemons or whatever it is, it's okay because you're not spending money on other things uh for those three days. Um so anyway, I just I love the master cleanse. I want to again do a deep dive on it today and um and talk about all the things. So a little fun fact for me um as I've kind of navigated my way through holistic health. Um one just memory that I have of being a kid um was in the third grade we were doing these uh reports on different organs in the body. So you had to pick an organ and then do a full report on it. And I remember the teacher was, you know, doing some type of like pick a name out of a basket or something like that. And I remember watching um when I was younger, I could see the older classes doing this report, and everyone loved picking the bladder because the bladder was a really easy demonstration where you would get a balloon and you would like I don't know, fill the balloon up and then like let the balloon go, and you're like, that's a bladder, and so every kid wanted the bladder, and I was like so excited, and then I picked the liver, and I was like, Oh, what do I do for that? That's not the bladder. I was very convinced I was gonna get the bladder. How do I demonstrate that? So I started learning about the liver in third grade, which is so funny because it's like the organ that I love talking about the most. Um, I think it definitely chose me. So my demonstration of the liver was to get a pasta strainer, and then I could have easily just put pasta or rice or beans or something like that in it, but instead I decided to chop up like dice of tomato. So I put the tomato in the in the strainer and then ran water through it and was trying to demonstrate that you know the liver is a filter and it filters out stuff, you know, and blah blah blah blah. So that was my third grade demonstration of the liver and what it does for your health. So now fast forward to when I was you know diving into Chinese medicine and you know, food and learning about health and toxicity, and oh my gosh, the liver is so important for all of this, and this is why our modern world gets so over-toxified because the liver is so congested, um, because there's so many toxins in our environment, and then if we're not cleansing our liver properly, then we are oversaturated with toxins. Um, so supporting the liver is a really important thing. Um, going back just quickly to my previous episode, and of course, a bunch from the winter, we do want to make sure that we deeply nourish our bodies so we cannot be cleansing all the time. That is too depleting to the body, especially the mineral um elements of your body. We need to deeply nourish, and then when the spring comes, we can cleanse. Um, I also made reference, I did a cleanse in January, so yes, I would say that is not the right time to cleanse. However, it is this like pivotal transition time where everyone, you know, is hopping on the bandwagon of New Year's resolutions. I think there's something to it in a way. There is um, you know, an element of shift and change during that time of year that's really important. Um, but anyway, I did a master cleanse then, and it was much harder. It was like every day I was kind of trying to get through it. I did it even with a group of friends, and it was cool to see everyone's different um uh, I guess, interpretations of it and how it proliferated in their bodies. Everyone had a slightly different experience, and I would say if I were to do it again, I would truly, really try to get them to do it in the springtime because there were a few really good success stories, but others had a harder time, and I think that had everything to do with the energy, like it just isn't the time to cleanse. Um, that being said, you know, even though it was maybe more challenging, people still had good benefits, you know. So uh it was a give and take, but just I'm literally on my fourth day right now as I'm speaking. This is so easy. I usually do three days and I'm just rolling it into a maybe a full fourth day at this point because it's been so simple and my body feels so much lighter and so much clearer, and I've had more energy. Um, so I've I've rolled it into a fourth day. But I just wanted to make that kind of note where spring and summer really are the times of year to eat lighter, and I mean that in the way of like more plants. That's the time if you want to be vegetarian or vegan or something like that, or I don't know, raw vegan or something. This would be the time of year to do it. Don't do it in the fall, don't do it in the winter. This is why I don't think that they're good lifestyle things to do, but I do think that they can be used for healing and a lot of conditions, a lot of conditions of excess, like I've spoken about in other episodes. You know, a hot, congested um, you know, body, you know, congested organs, lack of energy. And I mean that in more of like an energy stagnation kind of way, not in a depleted kind of way, because that depleted energy would be more nourished with bone broths and warm soups and winter uh time foods. But otherwise, I think a lot of our modern conditions that we see, even like joint pain, arthritis, can be relieved with doing a cleanse because it's clearing out the congestion that is literally getting stuck in those areas and causing pain. Um so when we do any type of cleanse, we want to do it for at least three days. The reason it's three days is because it takes a bit of time for the body one to kind of register that it's it's cleansing and it's getting a break. When you first initially start, you might have those cravings for food because your body has a habit and expecting you know food at certain times. So you might go, oh wait, I'm hungry. You know, the nice thing about the master cleanse is that the way that this lemonade that you make is it is actually feeding your body. I'll get into that in a bit. Um, but it takes a little bit of time for your body to kind of register, okay, I am, you know, in this cleansing phase, I am going without, which means that I can start utilizing um the energy that I have stored in the liver and in my fat cells. Um, I can also start releasing. So it gives the liver this time and this space to cleanse because it says, Oh, now I have nothing to do. I don't have to worry about digesting food. Digesting food is a really big time commitment and it has a lot going on. So if you stop digesting food, all of a sudden your body, your whole body, not just your liver, has time to fix things, right? All of a sudden, oh, I have this spare time. Let me go, you know, fix that thing in my house that has been broken that I just keep ignoring because I'm so busy. Wait, now I could actually have the time to go fix it. So it's a very healing thing to do too, because it allows the body to heal and repair because it's not busy digesting food and doing other things. So there's so many things going on at once. So first day, you know, can kind of be like that. Second day, you know, that might be the day where you get the headaches or the um, you know, those detoxification um symptoms that you get. You can kind of get that on the second day. That's very normal. Headaches are very normal during this. I know it can be maybe unpleasant. Um, but just know that that is actually and any other like body aches or anything like that, sometimes it can almost feel like you're coming down with a cold. Um, sometimes if you get in a hot bath, that can help like relieve it because you're also if you put Epsom salts or something like that in the bath, it can also help draw it out of your skin. Um, so but this is really normal, it doesn't always happen. I'm also gonna say that you don't like I didn't have any of that when I was um this week when I was doing it. Um, but if you do, it's very normal, it's okay. I promise you it will pass. And then the third day is you're like, oh day, because the second day everything is coming up to the surface. Like the first day, the body's starting to sweep things out, like, okay, I got this, you know, I'm gonna move this stuff out. Second day, we are clearing all the trash cans out of every single room of this house, and now you have a dumpster full of trash that feels like it might be in your head or in your nose or you know, your your back or your neck, you know, some like stuff might be sore because everything has come up and it's ready to go out. Um, then the third day, like, and I think a lot the second night, your body is really clearing stuff out, and the third day you're like, oh, this is so great. Like, I actually have more energy than I had before. You know, like do I do a fourth day? Do I keep going? And you can, people do master cleanses for a very long time, like you know, 20, 30 days, you know, 12 days, 14 days. Um, I think the longest I've done it is five days or something like that. Um, but I haven't done that in a while. Another thing, just to, you know, like with kids and family and stuff going on, you just really want to be gentle with yourself too. Don't overdo it. But if you're feeling it, you know, that's great because your body is in that. And your body is also technically in ketosis at that point, so it is burning through because that's what the liver has converted to, because it is burning through all of the fats and things that it has stored, which is good because what the the liver will do is because it's so busy and it's oversaturated, is it will encapsulate toxins in fat and put it aside because it won't essentially hurt your body right now, right? Um, but the bit the liver's so busy it needs to get to other things, so it will do that um to pastime and just to get through the day, right? But like that lingering and sitting, then that's going into your body, into your bloodstream, you know, it just like it's not, you know, and then you have the excess fat, which then in itself can start to create its own even hormone cycle, you know, excreting extra estrogen, things like that. It's you know, it's a whole thing. So it just kind of starts to snowball on top of itself. So when we do this, we're allowing the the liver to metabolize that fat and get it out of the body, get the the toxins now have a place to go with that. So let's get into the actual what you are drinking and eating during these three days. Again, like I said, it's lemonade based, so it's mostly water with like, you know, again, depending on, I usually make a liter at a time, so I do three full liters. Um if it's like a glass, like a you know, eight-ounce glass or something, you're doing like six of them a day. Um, so I just kind of double up, so I'm only making it three times a day, uh kind of like a breakfast one, a lunch one, and then like a late evening one, and then at around dinner time, I'm usually making myself some herbal tea to have. But um, so you're doing that, and another aspect of it is the internal salt water bath, which is um just taking sodium salt. Again, we want to be using high quality salt for this, not the table salt with the girl with the umbrella. We want to be using, you know, Redmond's uh ancient sea salt or some you know Celtic sea salt, something that's a really pure version of sea salt, um, ancient or not, and that is the type of salt we want to be using. What you do is you put two teaspoons of it in warm a liter of warm water, and yes, it tastes salty. You sometimes have to imagine that you're drinking like a salty, you know, chicken soup or salty miso soup might be the closest thing to it. Miso soup is almost as salty as this is, so I kind of envision that. Also, the warmer you make it, the easier it is to drink, which is kind of funny. Um, so drink it warm, maybe a little like hot, not like coffee hot, tea hot, but just a little bit less. And you want to drink that. So you start off drinking that uh the first night before you go to bed. And the funny thing is, is you don't really have any bowel movements that first night. So the reason for this is for a bowel movement. So when you have a lot of minerals, minerals you know attract a lot of water because of the electromagnetic property that we talked about in the last podcast, and that all gathers in the intestines, and so it can it serves as an intestinal flush. So you could do it with something like magnesium, but I like the fact that it is sodium, um, like more of a sodium salt, and I'm saying that too, if you know you're getting ancient sea salts and stuff, you have other elements in there too. You have, you know, copper and magnesium and manganese and uh a bunch of other uh minerals in there as well. So it's nice too because it is helping you at some level remineralize, um, but it's also primarily trying to encourage bowel movements. Because you're only drinking water, essentially there won't be bowel movements naturally on its own. However, the liver filters fat-soluble um toxins, whereas the kidneys and bladder are water soluble. So, yes, you are totally flushing the kidneys and bladder, that's great. But how then is the intestines really getting flushed properly? And so that's why the salt water bath is so important. So, again, you do it um the night before, um, and then you go to bed, you wake up the next morning, you do it that morning. At that point, within the hour, I would say no more than two hours. I would like an hour is a good ballpark, you're gonna have to go use the restroom. And um, at first, you know, it'll be moving things through. Second day, it's gonna be much looser or even more clear. The third day, it should be clear, it should also be yellow in color, which is like, oh, is that you know urine? No, that's not. That's actually bile, and this is the whole point. The whole point is to release, allow bile to release out of the body because it's your oil change. So, this is the oil change happening. The bile is released, and then that frees up more space in the body, in the gallbladder. The liver does have to create more bile, new bile, but it has more time and space to do that. Whereas before, when it's busy all day long, it doesn't. So the gallbladder would concentrate it, it gets really sludgy, that creates potential bile stones that get clogged in the bile ducts, and then sluggish digestion results from that. So, this is a way that you cleanse completely through, and it makes the process so much easier for digestion and everything after that. So, um, yeah, so you do that in the morning, um, and then you start drinking your lemonades. Um, again, like I said, I do a full liter like mason jar and I make a double uh batch, so it would be two lemons in one liter. Um, with I do like six or seven shakes of cayenne in there. I usually do about, again, this is all eyeballed. I have um a whole outline of what the recipe could be or what it is, but I I just eyeball a lot of this. So whatever amount of lemon juice I put into my cup, I do equal parts lemon juice and maple syrup. I find that to be a good ratio. Some people like it more sweet, some people like it less. I try to make it on the lesser side. I try to do just enough where it's like totally palatable to palatable to drink. Um, sometimes I make it a little too tart and I'm like, oof, okay, you know, and I add a little bit more syrup, but I would try to stay away from making it like super sweet, or when you fill it up and it's like kind of a brownish yellow, it's like okay, maybe there's too much maple syrup in there, right? It should really have that good lemonade look to it. So you have the lemon, uh, good quality water, and the cayenne, and then the maple syrup, and that's it. And so I'll put it in a mason jar, put a top on it, and then I'm just drinking it, you know, throughout my morning. Um, then I make another one at noon or for lunchtime, and then one more, like three o'clock or so. I'm drinking my three or four o'clock, I'm drinking my last one. Um, so that would be, gosh, I'm not good at math, but eight ounces times six. Uh how many ounces there are. And you can drink more than that. I find that to be just a good baseline to do every day because that means you're drinking enough, you're getting um fluids flushing through constantly, and things are moving because you want movement during a cleanse, you don't want stagnation, so you don't want to like avoid and just like stop, you know. That would also create probably a lot of more hunger signals if you do something like that. The hunger obviously is there because the brain is like used to getting the body to eat at certain times, but you just tell yourself it's okay. I have this. Another thing when you stay on top of drinking uh the lemonade, like three, you know, a big liter of it, so you're drinking it, like you're not going longer than two hours without drinking uh the lemonade. The maple syrup is in there to support the cells in your body, and it gives that quick glucose to the cells in your body to function. So, like it's that's why I like it so much, especially when you're like a working person or a parent or full-time, you know, in stuff, and you can't just like it'd be great to be on a retreat and do this, and you could just meditate and like not have anything going on. That would be lovely, uh, definitely ideal. But if not, that's why this is really good, I think, for the modern world, because it is giving you some level of energy, it's giving you obviously tons of hydration, it has the lemon. So in Chinese medicine, the liver loves sour. Sour is its favorite flavor because sour, you know how it like puckers your lips and your mouth, and it almost like wicks away all the moisture in your mouth because it's like, oh my gosh, that's what it's doing to the liver. It's like squeezing a sponge, the liver is contracting and it's allowing um toxins to release, and it's allowing the liver to just start to almost purge itself in a really good way. So, liver, like whenever you eat sour food, it's supporting your liver. So, do this all the time. And and in Chinese um traditional cultures too, they um are really into the five flavors. So, you know, you have sour, bitter, sweet, pungent, spicy. I think those are the five, and you want to incorporate all five of those in every plate of food that you have, which is kind of like goes to when you think of like Japanese bento boxes, you know, you you see that style of eating where it's got something savory and something pickled and sour, and you know, something like a grain that would be more sweet, and you know, um some onions or something like that that's more pungent, and you know, so you're eating all of these things at once, and the reason is is because every single organ responds to flavor. In a different way. For the liver, it is sour. So this is why lemon is so good. It's also the color yellow. So looking at Ayurveda, the yellow uh color of the chakra is the solar plexus, which is right around your all of your organs, the core of your body, around your tummy. And so that yellow color has the frequency and the vibration of the solar plexus. So what that means is that it would allow it to function optimally, to clear, to be in that like vibrant state, just through that color of the yellow. So yes, you could do it with oranges or let or limes, but it's just it's a little bit different. I really think lemon is a good one. Then with the cayenne, the reason the cayenne is in there is for the warmth. And you'll notice when you go without food, and you might be craving it or thinking about it or needing the comfort, or you start to learn a lot about yourself with food. Um, and again, it's only three days, so it's not that bad, but you you recognize oh, I eat food to calm my nervous system, or I eat food to when I'm stressed, I eat food because it's six o'clock, and you eat dinner at this time. And if I'm not eating dinner, I'm kind of twiddling my thumbs like what do I do? It's six o'clock. Okay, and maybe I go to bed, and so yeah, go to bed earlier, that's a good idea. Um, but the cayenne is a warming, of course, it's a warming spice, and when you drink it and it creates this kind of warming sensation and goes into your tummy, you feel that you feel the warmth in your stomach, and you're like, oh, and there's this like relief and this satisfaction, and you realize, oh, when I eat food, digestion is warming, and actually eating food is a warm, calming, like that's what satiation almost is, is this like warmth in the belly, and so you get that from the cayenne, you get the warmth in the belly, and it kind of is signaling to your body of like you're okay, you're calm, it's fine, everything's taken care of, you're you're you're okay. That's what the cayenne is doing. Cayenne um is like I said, the heat. Heat, like chilies, peppers, anything like that, is also really clearing to the heart in a very good way, so that's good to be clearing any like heart stagnation. Again, remember how closely the heart and the liver work together. The liver filters the blood. The heart is we'll call it a pump, it's more of a vortex, but um, you know, it's helping to circulate the blood, the liver is filtering the blood, so um, and then also from the emotional standpoint, you know, the heart holds a lot of you know potential grief and things like that. So to be able to clear is really cleansing as well. So that is really helpful from the cayenne. Um, and the last part about the cayenne is when you're bringing that warmth into your stomach, you're really helping to bring the energy into the stomach, which is going to be increasing hydrochloric acid. The salt that you're drinking increases hydrochloric acid too. Sodium salt increases hydrochloric acid in the stomach, which might be contrary to what a lot of people think, but um, but anyway, it really is. So this whole cleanse is not only clearing the liver to help your digestion, but it is stimulating your stomach and other digestive enzymes and fluids to start flowing much better than they used to and increase your stomach acid. Hydrochloric acid is, I think an acids are the number one over-the-counter uh drug that is bought in the United States because everyone thinks they have too much stomach acid. That is not true. If you had too much, like stomach acid helps you digest food. So if you're having digestive issues, it's not because you have too much of it, it's because you don't have enough. Because you don't have enough, it's coming up and you're getting it in your esophagus and you're burping it up, and you have indigestion and you have a lot of that movement. That is because there's actually not enough in there. So instead of suppressing it and making less, you want to increase it completely opposite of what you're being told. I know it's hard. Um, but that is the beauty of this cleanse, too, is that it's clearing everything and then it's also increasing digestive fluids like hydrochloric acid in your stomach to digest. So this is, I feel like I'm just rattling it off right now. Um that is the full outline of the master cleanse. Um, I had written a huge blog post on it years ago. I think it was back in 2015, and for the longest time it was like the third or fifth um Google search. So somehow my SEO is really good, and it was like one of the top posts for Master Cleanse whenever you googled it, and so I got so many comments, hundreds of them, uh, of questions and people using my recipe, and it was so much fun, and it was just like a really big hit. I guess it was the the one post that I had that went really viral. So that's really fun. I just I really love talking about the master cleanse. I really think it's an amazing, very approachable way of getting started. Again, you don't need anything fancy, you don't need a really expensive juicer, which I love, I do have, um, and I do love using, but we don't want to have a lot of barriers to entry when it comes to just doing something that's a simple reset for your body. Um, this is really good to do in the spring. Like I said, do it other times a year, um, especially in the winter, it's gonna be harder. And it was the last time I did this. This time, again, I'm on day four because it's just it's so simple. I'm like, I'll just keep going, it's fine. And yes, I'm cooking for my kids, I'm running around doing all the things, and and I'm doing fine, and that can be the same for you. Um, you'll realize most of this is a mental game. Um, it's not so much physical as it is mental and playing mental games on yourself. Um, if you have a partner, it's really good to do it with them so that they're doing it with you. It is hard when someone is, you know, sitting down to a nice dinner and a beautiful glass of wine, and you're like, what? That happens sometimes in our house, and it's hard. But I've been doing this long enough that it's okay, I can handle it, but it's just not enjoyable. Um, so if someone can do it with you, that makes it a lot easier too. Or a friend, and you guys just kind of go back and forth, and then with my clients, I usually do it along with them so that like I can just almost like feel what they're feeling, and we're just constantly texting back and forth about what they're going through, and and I help them out. But I hope this was a really informative episode about cleansing, specifically with the master cleanse. Um, we will see if we talk a little bit more about other cleansing styles in the next episode. Um, but this one really is just such a good go-to. So, and I love it so much. And also, citrus is in the season of winter and spring, so it is a very seasonal, not only because it's a cleanse, but because of the actual ingredients in it, which is really lovely. And then at the end of the cleanse to transition out, it is nice to start out. Usually the next morning, I have a grapefruit. Grapefruit is bitter and sour, so it has an affinity for the liver and for the gallbladder, and so it's um, you know, really helping with that. Oh gosh, gallbladder. I think that'll be the next one. Um, is speaking more about a gallbladder flush. Um, and this one is even more simple, I guess, than the master cleanse because it's only half a day and a night long. Um, but what it's really good at is it helps to specifically clear out the gallstones. Um that gets stuck, so it's all the bile, like bile stones, um, that again are concentrated. Usually it has toxins that they the liver wraps in bile to protect you, and it doesn't have time to get rid of it, so then it will store it, and then sometimes it gets stuck in all the bile ducts, right? As gall gallstones, um, they're kind of greenish. Uh, anyway, so you're able to do a gallbladder flush, um, and it's really gentle, and you can actually, it's really crazy, but you release all these gallstones and you think, oh my gosh, the first time I did it, I think I released three-quarters of a cup, maybe a full cup of gallstones over the course of this. I know that's kind of intense and gnarly, but um, it's amazing. Again, think about your body as um, you know, getting an oil change, like it's clearing it out, and it's like, whoa, oh my gosh, I had these pounding headaches, I don't have headaches anymore. You know, you realize how you know my digestion, oh my gosh, is so much smoother. I'm not holding on to water weight like I used to, or weight in general. It's like I can eat and like it's processing so much better. So these are all the benefits of cleansing. So I think that'll probably be the one that I'll do it on next time is the gallbladder flush, uh, which pairs really well with this one. But this is a good one just to kind of get started uh doing three days. So thank you for joining me on the Modern Sage podcast, and I really hope you enjoyed it. If you liked it, please feel free to share it with your friends and family. Um, give it a review, and if you'd like to leave a comment, please do. If you've done a cleanse before, I'd love to hear about it. If you've done the master cleanse, I'd love to hear about it. Uh, let's talk about it. So leave me a comment, and I will catch you next time on the Modern Sage podcast.