Greetings from Me and My House,
A list member asked: “Can this (detoxing) be done during pregnancy?”
Personally, I have no problem detoxing, and even fasting within guidelines, during pregnancy. I believe pregnancy is a most important time to be sure we are not toxic. Baby needs as healthy of an environment as possible to develop in. Ideally, we and our husband would thoroughly detox and build our health up before conceiving, but that just doesn’t always happen.
I know some people are fearful of detoxing and fasting during pregnancy and while nursing. (In fact, in our society, many are fearful of fasting even a meal or two ANYTIME! You wouldn’t believe the stories I could tell from people who have come to my nutrition classes.) Anyhow, some mothers’ concerns are that the baby will be overladen with toxins during the process. I don’t see this as a valid reason, as baby is ALREADY overladen with the toxins in mom’s body and continuing to add more toxins is certainly not going to help the baby.
I’m not in anyway “prescribing” what would be right for anyone else to do, but I will tell you what I do and what my Dr. says. My Dr. believes that moring sickness is the body’s way of trying to purge itself of toxins to create a healthy environment for baby. So he recommends a 3 day fast for it, drinking plenty of pure water with lemon. He says when you are extremely nauseated and throwing up and your body is saying that food/eating sound horrible, why do we force ourselves to eat. Our body is saying DON’T EAT! So from an MD’s perspecitive, not all believe fasting during pregnancy is dangerous.
Anytime you fast or detox you need to be sure to get plenty of pure water, aprox. 1 gallon per day. In fact, lack of pure water ALL the time is a major contributor to health problems for most people. Toxins build up in our bodies even faster because we aren’t flushing them out. The general rule is to take your weight, divide it in half, drink that many ounces of pure water per day. For a 120# woman that comes out to aprox. the “8 glasses a day” we’ve always been told. 120 divided by 2 = 60 oz. Obviously, people over 120#, need more. AND, as I said above, when fasting or detoxing you want to almost double that.
OK, back to detoxing when pregnant. As for the first way I mentioned, just cutting all junk and eating only healthy foods and juicing, this can AND SHOULD be done by all, anytime, pregnant or not. As for fasting, let prayer be your guide, without allowing fear to rule. As I mentioned above, some Drs. believe it is beneficial to short term fast during pregnancy for detoxing purposes. Personally, I’ve never had a problem with it. I do use common-sense too. No extended fasts – I personally wouldn’t go over 3 days. Pray about it – there have been times when our church has called fasts when I was pregnant, that I felt I was NOT to fast at the time, but I don’t let pregnancy (or nursing) be my excuse for NEVER being able to fast. Jesus called us all to fast, and for us “quiver-ful” moms pregnancy or nursing can be all the time. Know your body – don’t try to push a water ONLY fast when pregnant. Utilize Fresh Juices and/or Barley Green whenever you feel you need them. They are loaded with readily available nutrients that will ensure that both you and baby are getting all you need. In fact, Barley Green is the most nutrient dense food known to man and contains all nutrients needed for long-term sustenance. So technically there shouldn’t be a problem “fasting” even longer on Barley Green and Fresh Juices, except perhaps caloric (depending on how much juice you’re drinking). This would be my only concern, if just drinking small amounts of Fresh Juice/ Barley Green and you didn’t have the calories to spare and it was later in your pregnancy or when nursing when baby needs the extra calories.
That “getting enough” to provide the necessary calories is actually a Juice DIET, not “fast”. A Juice Diet is drinking high quantities of fresh juice that provides the calories too. If you drink under 1/2 gal per day, your body will go into “fasting mode” (metabolism) – (I’m sure there’s variance in that amount for different people). If over 1/2 gallon, it won’t, and up to a gallon or more per day may be needed to provide the calories and nutrients needed. Although for a short-term FAST (1-3 days) for detoxing (or spiritual) purposes I don’t drink these amounts.
As I mentioned in the last post, I felt the need to detox to be ready for the labor and birth of our baby expected anyday now. Well, this week I got my involuntary chance, to not just detox, but FAST. God must’ve felt I needed that too before baby comes because I’d allowed toxins to build up AND (according to my husband) I’ve been overdoing it and not getting enough rest, my body was ripe for letting the current “bug” in. And it hit HARD! I did nothing but sleep for 32 hours, and downed honey/lemon water and Fresh Juice and Barley Green everytime I woke up for a few minutes. I was able to sit up Tues., but still felt like I was hit by a truck, and still not up to eating. By Wed. I was able to eat just a few bites of fruit and “good stuff” and by yesterday I was HUNGRY. My dear, sweet husband took my stir-crazy (from being down 4 days) body out to a local restaurant that has several vegetarian selections for lunch. I had a great fresh fruit salad and a tremendous 7 veggie sandwich on 7 grain bread. Even after that, I was back to “grazing” by mid-afternoon.
I know I cetainly wouldn’t have voluntarily gone on a complete fast druing my “due” week, but even though I’m still not *completely* clear of the congestion and coughing, I know that the FAST, the PRAYER, and the extra amounts of BARLEY GREEN have all helped to restore my health and strength before I go into labor, AND will help my body provide healthier milk for my little one when he/she comes.
For more information on Barley Green check our website catalog [if you have trouble with that link, go here and then in the table of contents click on AIM Juice Powders] Or go to the AIM site where you can order it direct to YOU. [Barley Green is now called Barley Life [If you have trouble with the link, go to AIM, then click on Product Store > Shop Product Groups > AIM Barley Life > traditional powder ] There is a lot of information you can get while you are there.
At Jesus’ feet,
Lisa
Me and My House
