Put a Ring on THIS

I am pretty certain that our sisters fighting for the right to parallel park in Saudi Arabia aren’t feeling Beyoncé’s new song, Rule the World.  Chances are that underneath their black veils they don’t feel they “Rule the Mother Fuckin’ World.”  But that’s okay Beyoncé, I know you’re a little out of touch.  Considering you raked in $87 mil last year, you probably DO feel like you rule the world – shit, so would I.  But there is a whole lotta girls out there that is trying to find affordable childcare on minimum wage, and that have to resort to running their goodies up and down a stripper pole to feed the kids.  There are many more girls like that, than there are girls like you, Beyoncé.  Across North America ‘SlutWalks’ are being planned to protest the notion that if women dress like YOU in your videos, they are eligible (and asking) for rape.  That doesn’t sound like we rule ‘da mother effin’ world either.  Mrs. Jay-Z, I can understand that when you are wed to a rapper that pens such romantic lines as,

I got your bitch in my Rover man
I never kiss her, I never hold her hand
In fact I diss her I’m a bolder man
I’mma pimp her, it’s over man
It’s over man, it’s over man

you may be so blinded by all this sweet talk that you wouldn’t understand us little bitches here in the real world.

Oh, and Beyoncé, if we ruled ‘da world do you really think we would spend our days sipping water, lemon, maple syrup and cayenne pepper and nothing else? Just so that we might be pretty enough to be in a movie like YOU, or go to the prom, or get married or any of that stuff we should feel good about doing in our real bodies – bodies that haven’t been starved for days on some bullshit Master Cleanse program that has spread like a plague among women?  That plague is do in no small part to YOU, Mrs. Jay-Z.

Beyoncé, you are the problem.  Women that send a message that we should simultaneously rule the world and starve ourselves to look pretty doing it.  Now you’re going to tell me this has some bullshit to do with DETOX – health.  Because if you’re fat, or bumpy in places that pretty girls shouldn’t bumpy, it’s because you’re TOXIC. What you are engaging here is the notion that ugly is a sort of toxicity that needs to be addressed, and it needs to be addressed with abusive self-denial.

First, let’s review what the Master Cleanse is, for those that haven’t been getting their nutrition and health information from tabloids, People Magazine or watching the E! Network.

After a three day ‘Ease-in’ where the Toxic One moves from raw food only to juice and broth, they move to drinking only a mix of of

• 2 Tablespoons Fresh Lemon Juice
• 2 Tablespoons Rich Maple Syrup
• 1/10 Teaspoon Cayenne Pepper Powder
• 8 ounces purified water

But don’t worry, that’s not it.  As with any good eating disorder, laxatives (only herbal and organic, please!) are highly recommended as well as flooding your stomach with so much salt water (sea salt only!) that you are tempted to gag and vomit.  But don’t, because if you hold on to the briny contents of your stomach you will be rewarded with an entire day in the bathroom out of fear of publicly shitting yourself.  You can’t go out without a diaper, but damn you are starting to look hot already!  Beyoncé can rule the mother effin’ world from her bathroom I guess.  I have a picture of her asking Jay-Z to run to the linen closet for a fresh roll of Cottonelle.

So, tell me, at what point in reading that brief description did you think, ‘hey that sounds healthy.’  You didn’t.  But what you did think is ‘Will that really make me 15 pounds thinner for my class reunion?’  Let me just tell you, I think that mentality is pure garbage.

Well Beyoncé, let me introduce you to the greatest device EVER for detox.  It’s called, wait for it…..

YOUR LIVER

If you’re more comfortable, we can call it “Your Mother Fuckin’ Liver.”  That’s more lyrical, isn’t it?  If you need to wear some sequins to feel sassy while we talk about your organs, go ahead.

Natural detox.  Not pills, starvation, laxatives, saltwater or even kelp wraps. Just an organ that works in conjunction with your friendly kidneys.

The liver is a fantastic freaking organ that performs an amazing number of essential functions in the human body.  Just ask David Crosby, he’s had two of them.  This hefty organ, is busy at work under your ribcage, even if you are immobilized on your couch by a lemonwater diet.  Your liver is busy doing the following:

• Secreting bile to neutralize stomach acid and emulsify fats for digestion
• Bile also contains products that require excretion like, cholesterol, fat, bile pigments like bilirubin that result from the livers natural break down of hemoglobin
• Removing sugar from the blood and storing it as glycogen
• storing fat and vitamins A, D, E, K, B12 and micronutrients like copper and zinc
• Converting nutrients – like amino acids into lipids or glucose, fats into phospholipids and vitamin D to it’s active form
• Making blood protiens like clotting factors and globulins – stuff you are happy to have but the details of which don’t add a lot here

-and last but not least-

• Removing ammonia from cells and converting it to the urea that is eliminated by the kidneys in urine
•  detoxifying other substances and secreting them with bile or sending them on to be excreted in the urine

So, knowing this, let’s talk about a few things.

Many people report great success and weight loss with the MasterCleanse program.  Let me just say that starvation is, handsdown, the most successful method of weight loss – always.  It is not, however, in any way healthy.  It will also completely screw with your metabolism.  Your body is trying to keep you alive, and when you starve, it slows everything down.  Everything.  By the end of your cleanse or fast or whateverthehell you are putting your body through, you have the metabolism of a sloth.  It is holding on to every last sick calorie of your lemon maple syrup water for dear life.  So be assured, that when you hit your fighting weight, and start eating like a normal human (probably when you’re drunk standing over the buffet at the class reunion you starved yourself for)  all that weight is gonna come back for you.

So lets talk about one of the big points that MasterCleanse uses to “prove” it’s effectiveness in cleaning out your pipes.  The claim is that, even though you are eating nothing you’re still pooping brown goo.  Well, that’s a function of the second bullet point.  Even if you are ingesting absolutely nothing, your liver is still functioning to break down hemoglobin.  Some of which is recycled, but some is excreted creating that brown color you know.  It doesn’t have anything to do with you finally pooping out all that undigested beef that urban legend says is lurking and putrefying in your large intestine just like John Wayne.  Also, the headaches and lethargy are not the experience of ‘toxins leaving the body’ but it is the experience of the early stages of starvation.

Fiber.  One would think that it is fiber in your fruits and vegetables is what’s overburdening your natural detox systems. Why else would you suggest that everything be juiced and fiberless on this plan and most every other detox plan?  This makes no damn sense.  Fiber is the good stuff in fruits and veg that bulks up the food, makes you feel full, and helps push things through your gut.  All without flooding your stomach with sea salt water and leaving you on the toilet all day.  Not to mention, foods higher in fiber actually require an input of calories to digest it.  I’ll never understand why all these cleanses seem to be so against anything that requires chewing.  Maybe chewing isn’t pretty either.

The final bullet point gets to the whole toxins business.  It is important to understand that toxins come from more than just our external world.  Lots of external things are toxic to your body; consider, alcohol,  acetaminophen, too much vitamin A.  Acetaminophen (Tylenol and other non-steroidal anti-inflammatories) and the medicines that contain them are quite capable of causing significant liver damage if not taken carefully.  Just because it is sold over the counter doesn’t mean it is safe to use indiscriminately. In fact over 900 drugs have been found to be hepotoxic (that means toxic to your liver) Also toxic to the body are the very by-products of the metabolism you are trying to speed up by starving yourself.  Take, for instance, the ammonia that is generated from the breakdown of proteins.  The liver turns this to urea and sends it on its way.

You need to become comfortable with the idea that by simply existing you are generating all kinds of toxic shit in your body.  It is TRUE that you can ease the toxic burden on your liver.  This is where David Crosby went wrong, really really wrong.   Your liver can multitask all of these functions as long as you don’t overburden it by adding a lot of external toxins.  This is why your acetaminophen carries a warning that you shouldn’t drink while you take it because liver damage can occur.  They aren’t making this up.  To simplify, your liver has to develop a To-Do list of things to detoxify and critical functions, so, the more toxic stuff moves to the top of the list.  That means your body takes on the acetaminophen before the booze and the booze before the metabolic toxins and the metabolic toxins before metabolizing your food.   Make sense?  It’s sorta like, if your house is burning down you are more likely to deal with that before you stop to unload the dishwasher.

Official photo from the liver donor waiting list

So what kind of things overburden the liver?  What if you really are concerned about your toxic life and your liver – and not purely in the interest of weight loss?  Let’s ask the people at the American Liver Foundation.  I am sure there is some underlying politics that should scare me or make me cynical, but for right now I am going to be a Pollyanna and assume they know a thing or two. They have a little list of things you can do to take care of your Portable Self-Contained Detox Device (liver).

Ways You Can Take Care of Your Liver

Health Lifestyle
Eating a healthy diet and exercising regularly help the liver to work well. Eating an unhealthy diet can lead to liver disease. For example, a person who eats a lot of fatty foods is at higher risk of being overweight and having non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

• Eat foods from all the food groups: grains, protein, dairy, fruits, vegetables, and fats
• Eat foods that have a lot of fiber such as fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grain breads, rice and cereals

Limit the Amount of Alcohol You Drink
Alcohol can damage or destroy liver cells. Liver damage can lead to the build up of fat in your liver (fatty liver), inflammation or swelling of your liver (alcoholic hepatitis), and/or scarring of your liver (cirrhosis). For people with liver disease, even a small amount of alcohol can make the disease worse. Talk to your doctor about what amount of alcohol is right for you.

Manage Your Medications
When medicines are taken incorrectly – by taking too much or the wrong type or by mixing – the liver can be harmed.

• Learn about medicines and how they can affect the liver
• Follow dosing instructions
• Talk to a doctor or pharmacist often about the medicines you are taking

Avoid Breathing in or Touching Toxins
Toxins can injure liver cells.

• Limit direct contact with toxins from cleaning and aerosol products, insecticides, chemicals, and additives in cigarettes
• Do not smoke

That’s all pretty reasonable, eh?  And it doesn’t involve you flooding your stomach with saltwater and laxatives.  So I would suggest you undertake this sort of a detox plan.  Oh and if you know David Crosby or Beyoncé, will you forward this on? Thanks.

Tagged: beyonce, detox, dieting, fasting, food, health, life, master cleanse, nonsense, nutrition, starvation

Posted in: Articles, Health