Alejandro Junger - Clean: The Revolutionary Program to Restore the Bodys Natural Ability to Heal Itself

The Revolutionary Program to Restore
the Bodys Natural Ability to Heal Itself

Alejandro Junger M.D.

I dedicate this book to my daughter Grace,
my greatest teacher and doctor. She provided the most
profound experience of my life, which is also the
most powerful healing medicine: unconditional love.

Y ou are sitting on a familiar box, begging for pennies to survive, unaware that inside the box is a treasure that will not only fund this survival, but will also give you wealth beyond your wildest dreams.

You are not alone. Millions of Americans, like millions of others worldwide, are doing the same thing. Maybe youre begging for help to solve a small but troubling health problem, like extra weight, ongoing fatigue, allergies, depression, or a digestive disorder. Maybe you need help to avoid developing a bigger problem, like one of the so-called diseases of civilizationcardiovascular disease, cancer, obesity, and autoimmune disorders. Or maybe you want very much to look and feel younger and more radiant, and to slow down the onset of aging.

The pennies you are asking for are the prescription medications and surgeries that you have been taught are essential to remedy your problems. So you leave your hand out and collect what you can, waiting for the help promised to you by doctors, drug companies, and advertising.

But the truth is different. The power to heal lies somewhere much closer. You already have it, and you dont need prescriptions, treatments, or expensive experts to get it. In fact, youre sitting right on top of it.

That familiar box thats supporting you, almost unnoticed, is your own body, run by its incredible natural intelligence. The wealth beyond belief is the vibrant well-being and longevity that are your birthright.

And the treasure inside that will deliver this state of vitality, beauty, and vigor? Its something you probably havent been taught to value. Its a system that is designed by nature to keep you healthy, youthful, and happy, if you only help it carry out its functions. It is the missing part of the health puzzlean untapped source of healing, regeneration, restoration, and even rejuvenation. It is the on-board system that makes you and keeps you Clean, your system of detoxification.

This system, which comprises many organs and physiological processes working together throughout the body, is a wellspring of health. But its value has been forgotten. Modern medicines fascination with molecules and micro-technology has targeted attention obsessively on smaller and smaller aspects of our biology while losing interest in looking at the big-picture systems in the body that keep us surviving and thriving. This is a mistake. Many of the health problems that trouble so many modern humans and cost society so much money can be alleviated wheninstead of getting more detail-oriented in your approach, recruiting more superspecialists, inventing more technology, and adding in more medicationyou take a broader perspective and do something simpler: turn your attention to the treasure that is already there, the detoxification system, and reactivate its potential.

A focused period of detoxifying is a reset for the whole physical and mental body. It delivers an all-access pass to boundless reserves of energy you didnt know you had. You find that every part of your body works better, imbalances are rectified, and irritating symptoms get a chance to melt away on their ownall by your simply switching on a system that you were born with and that has been patiently waiting to serve you.

Imagine your right arm has been taped to the side of your body since birth. You grow up using only your left arm, thinking this is normal, because everyone else was exactly the same. As an adult you take on carpentry, and your business starts doubling each year. Just when you are about to collapse from the intense workload, a stranger rings your doorbell. He untapes your right arm, and to your surprise, without ever having dreamed of it as a possibility, you accelerate from a state of overload, unable to fulfill your orders, to operating up to your unbounded true potential and doing more than ever before.

The stranger arriving at the door is the Clean program contained in this book. Untaping that arm is the act of uncovering and accelerating the detoxification systems full potential. The flourishing productivity that results is your bodys natural ability to maintain steady energy, avoid colds and the flu, heal allergies, age gracefully, and avoid disease.

Who is a candidate for using this program? Everyone who lives a modern life, eats a modern diet, and inhabits the modern world.

For thousands of years, humanity has recognized the existence of toxic influences that cause dysfunction, damage, disease, premature aging, and death. These toxins have the potential to irritate and stress us and ultimately cause the body to suffer in many ways, small and large, from the unmeasurable realm of thought and emotion to the material chemicals generated as the waste by-products of our cells daily life. Ancient cultures also knew that we are equipped with a grand system of detoxification, which is the result of the harmonious collaboration of several smaller systems. This system is continuously working; in fact, it keeps us alive every second of every minute of every day. If the body didnt constantly coordinate its complex symphony of activities, these waste products would build up, we would become sick, and we would eventually die. The baseline detox mode that is occurring at every moment of our lives is part of the basic formula of life. It makes our very existence possible.

What the older traditions of healing understood very well was the crucial importance of harnessing the detoxification system and using it to our advantage in order to achieve our maximum mental, emotional, and physical potential. The sages and healers of many cultures, across borders and eras, all possessed the knowledge that this grand system must periodically be allowed to enter a deeper detox mode than its ordinary day-to-day function in order to handle the accumulation of toxins that can build up so easily in times of excess eating, activity, and stress.

Practitioners of these early healing traditions understood that resting some of the major body systems, especially the digestive system, was integral to life. Fasting, silent retreats, and contemplative times were considered essential to a peaceful, healthy, and fulfilling experience of life. It wasnt just an esoteric concept. Human beings genetic evolutionthe way our bodies work besthas been shaped by the fasting that was imposed on us by the hunter-gatherer way of life. For millennia, humans experienced periods of feasting followed by periods of imposed famine. Long periods of having an empty belly were inescapable, but this proved to be a key to health. The detoxification system could switch on and stay on with plenty of time and energy to do its essential cleanup work, liberating the body of a whole backload of waste products trapped inside, because it wasnt competing with the digestive system for fuel.

Today, life has changed. We are newly waking up to something of an evolutionary paradox. The more the toxicity of modern life increases, bombarding us with unnatural toxins from our diet and the environment, the more the demands to detoxify have increased. Yet our bodys ability to handle the load hasnt accelerated at the same rapid pace. How could it? The world might have changed dramatically in one century, but our bodies take many generations to make one genetic change. The more dangerously toxic life has become, and the more depleted of vital nutrients our diets have become, and the more rushed life has become, the more our grand detoxification system has gotten overwhelmed. It is almost hibernating: it is still there, doing the daily baseline work that allows us to live, but it is faltering under the additional twenty-first-century burden of poor diet, environmental toxins, and stress.