Master Cleanse Interview with Peter Glickman

From LoveToKnow Diet

LoveToKnow Diet thanks Peter Glickman for the opportunity to sit down and talk about his expertise with the Master Cleanse Diet

The Master Cleanse, also known as The Lemonade Diet, is the subject of Peter Glickman's book, Lose Weight, Have More Energy & Be Happier in 10 Days, which has been in The NY Times, The London Times, The NY Daily News, Us Weekly, Chica (German), Flair (Canadian), Geraldo's web blog, CBS News, Fox TV's Good Morning Show and on the NBC's Today Show! The book was written after he coached 100 people on the Master Cleanse in January 2004, when he saw how many questions new people had about the cleanse. He also produced The Lemonade Diet: a Master Cleanse Audio CD. His website and bulletin board is one of the largest Master Cleanse bulletin boards on the Internet and routinely visited by more than 5000 people each day.

LTK: To start, Peter, please explain the basics of the Master Cleanse Diet for our readers.

PG: The Master Cleanse Diet is a modified juice fast. It gains its power because it is a kind of fasting. The main elements are [water] lemon juice, maple syrup and cayenne pepper throughout the day, and in addition to that, a cup of laxative tea in evening and quart of salt water in the morning. These work as the agitator and rinse cycle.

Fasting has been used for thousands of years to rejuvenate the body like pressing the reset button. It gives the body and digestive system time to take a break. Most people think of detoxification as a one step process. But actually it is a two step process. The agitator and the rinse cycle.

What happens is when the body has too many toxins, the liver is supposed to neutralize these toxins and when it can't handle it anymore, it stores them in fat cells. When it can no longer stuff them into fat cells, the body starts to store it.

When a person fasts, the body has all kinds of energy freed and will do the second step and take the toxins from where they're stored, mobilize them and neutralize them. Stanley Burroughs was able to take the power of fasting and combined it with two things that helped eliminate toxins more quickly: the laxative tea in the evening and the salt water flush in the morning.

LTK: The role of a cleanse is to eliminate toxins from the body. Can you explain some of these toxins and the effects people might feel as their body goes through the cleansing process?

PG: I want to give you a little bit of a different view on it. If you go to rawfoodsite.com bulletin board you will see several boards. Go to the one that says Master Cleanse bulletin board and the topic: answering critics. You'll see a number of scientific papers and things that have been published. There is a link that talks about two doctors in 1917, Drs. Satterlee and Eldridge, who presented 518 cases to an AMA conference that had mental symptoms cured by removing intestinal toxemia. Symptoms included such things as mental sluggishness, loss of concentration, poor memory, irritability, lack of confidence, excessive worry, hypochondria, depression, obsession, suicidal tendencies, and senility.

In Russia, which is much closer to Asia than we are, they are much more embracive of natural ways and fasting. There was a famous doctor, Yuri Nikolayev, of the Moscow Research Institute of Psychiatry. He used juice fasts and reported successful treatment of over 7,000 patients suffering from various psychic disorders such as schizophrenia and neurosis.

There are hundreds of thousands of things that will improve health, but there's only one thing that’s been routinely proven to extend life; it's been proven across a large range of species. That one thing is severely restricted calorie diets. CBS News reported in Dec. 2007 that people who skipped meals once a month were about 40 percent less likely to be diagnosed with clogged arteries than those who did not regularly fast. This was the result of a study partly funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and presented to a recent American Heart Association conference.

LTK: Many of our readers ask about the role of grade B maple syrup and whether or not it can be replaced by grade A or honey.

PG: The darker the grade the more minerals. That's why grade B is used instead of grade A. Use the darkest organic maple syrup you can find. Why organic? At one time people were using formaldehyde to harvest maple syrup. It's not as wide spread any more.

Burroughs says not to use honey; it is predigested. I have found that Burroughs is a genius and take the master cleanse and do not alter it. Master Cleanse has gone on for so long without any advertising money behind it, if it has lasted for 50 years this way, it is best not to change it. So Burroughs says don't use it, so I say don't use it on the Master Cleanse.

Some people who are eating raw and want to stay raw want to use agave. I've seen an article by someone who compared the mineral content between maple syrup and agave that said it could work for a short 10 day fast.

LTK: Is it wise to exercise while following the Master Cleanse Diet?

PG: There are two kinds of exercise: Aerobic to build the heart and body building to build muscle. I tell people not to do body building because they aren't taking in protein. While on the Master Cleanse Diet most people feel more energy than they ever did before. Aerobic exercise is an easy thing to do.

LTK: While the primary role of the Master Cleanse Diet is not weight loss, do people who follow this diet lose weight?

PG: In Jan of 2005 I did an informal survey of 141 people who had done the Master Cleanse Diet, and I discovered that women generally lost 12 pounds, men generally 16, and both tended to put back on 6 pounds. I met one person who said they didn't lose weight. It could have been someone who was really skinny. You can't fail but to lose weight if you are overweight or average. Of those 141 almost everyone had an inclination to eat a healthier diet after Master Cleanse. On Master Cleanse I lost 23 more pounds and went down to 173. I do the Master Cleanse every three months and try to eat 80 percent raw. By-in-large I tend to be vegetarian. Keeping the weight off really depends what you do with your body after you get it reset.

LTK: How often do you recommend cleansing the body?

PG: I encourage people to listen to their bodies. Some people need to do it more often than others. The Master Cleanse is only one of three pillars to vibrant good health. The second is proper nutrition. You have to eat good food. I'm a proponent of Norman Walker. You cannot just clean out the toxins. The third thing is the lack of suppressive stress. Suppressive stress is the only form of stress that can prohibit any recovery.

The toxins we want to get rid of are acidic. In order to eliminate acid toxins the body must neutralize it. The body will take alkalizing minerals from wherever they are. The main ones are calcium and magnesium. Because people don't have enough mineral reserves the body takes it from the bones and teeth.

I recommend no more that once every 3 or 4 months. Just listen to your body.

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