Sabrina & i are currently on day six of The Master Cleanse, drinking a mixture of pure water, maple syrup, lemons & cayenne pepper. No food permitted, just this drink. Around 8 glasses a day for a total of 12 days. Didn't think i would have much energy but in fact i do, so i will endeavour now to tell you the key points behind this cleanse, created by Stanley Burroughs in the 1940s.
Why bother with a cleanse?
I live a relatively healthy lifestyle now that so much of my diet comes from the fruits of my labour in our South of France garden but i also drink beer most nights and i smoke weed with tobacco throughout the day. Plus i love coffee! And i love a good party ;)
Worth noting too that i live in a very windy agricultural region which uses chemical sprays on their fruit trees and that shit gets on everything, including my own plants, so no matter how hard i might try to avoid toxins they are building up inside my intestines over time.
Even just breathing the air these days is likely doing the same thing. Sounds ridiculous i know but they were spraying us intensely last week. I shot this image from our home at a time when the flight scanner showed only three planes in our region. Coz yeah, the geo-engineering flights you can see here are not official, but they are very real.
In addition i still have amalgam fillings and metal teeth in my mouth which need removing so these will also be building up toxins within me.
On top of that i've been drinking more and more coffee recently to the point where i was making four or five strong cups a day and as a certified addict (4 months in rehab) i know that all these bad habits need to be kept in check by sustaining a period of abstinence after which the desire to have these things on such a regular basis fades away.
For the last five years i have been fasting more and more as a way to reset this balance, two or three times a year, up to ten days at a time. Sometimes with water, sometimes without. And while the effects are always very levelling, it's a real test managing my day to day life without energy. The sound of Sabrina's disappointment upon announcing my decision to have another fast is all too familiar now and I understand her perspective because indeed, i am not myself while fasting. Generally speaking i want to be left alone with as little human interaction as possible. In this way great things can bubble through, like the music i composed the last time i fasted for 10 days.
My mother is arriving in a few weeks and i fancied getting a fast in before this, just so i can be operating at my best for her time here. Perhaps, i thought, i might even compose her another piece of music during this fast? So i made my announcement to Sabrina, endured the moody face and mentally prepared myself in the usual manner. However, in this period my friend in Romania who i have been enjoying some great interdimensional connections with recently, sent a podcast video on electroculture at the beginning of which there was a brief discussion on The Master Cleanse. A number of points really resonated with me and at once i knew this was something i wanted to do.
Too excited to watch the electroculture discussion i downloaded and read The Master Cleanser by Stanley Burroughs, a 1940s masterpiece which was re-written in 1976, just as i was being born. Here is a direct link to the book which i have posted in Odysee (where it can be easily downloaded).
In short this cleanse offers us a chance to detox and rest the digestive system while at the same time giving us adequate nutrition to fuel our bodies. The most notable thing is that one does not feel hungry when they drink this mixture all day long and one does in fact, as this post demonstrates, have plenty of energy, both mental and physical.
The Ingredients
2 Tbsp lemon or lime juice (approx. 1/2 lemon)
2 Tbsp genuine maple syrup (not maple flavoured sugar syrup)
1/10 Tsp cayenne pepper (red pepper) or to taste
Water (spring or purified)
The quantity of water isn't too important. Just dilute to taste. Burroughs says around 8oz is good.
The flavour of the drink is fantastic and i highly recommend it at breakfast time, even if you're not cleansing. It will fill you up with energy without that heavy feeling of food in your stomach.
The ingredients could be viewed as superfoods all in their own right.
All three contain countless vitamins & minerals but the cayenne pepper is also useful in breaking up the intestinal mucus which holds a lot of those toxins i mentioned.
When combined they provide everything we need and drunk as a liquid they can work even more efficiently in delivering the nutrition to our bloodstream.
Burroughs explains in his book that dark maple syrup is best. Taken from the trees at the last stage of sap production it is more rich in minerals & vitamins than the lighter coloured syrups taken earlier in the season.
I have been upping the pepper dosage as this feels quite enjoyable.
Here's what it looks like.
I tend to drink it all down quickly and enjoy knowing that for around two hours i will have plenty of energy and not feel hungry.
Laxative teas
There is no starch in this diet so the digestive system effectively shuts down, preventing us from pooping out that which is unwanted. As such, a laxative herbal tea is drunk before bed and upon waking. We have a bunch of different herbs for this purpose but i am mostly drinking senna leaf, an enjoyable flavour and incredibly effective. Am getting 4-5 movements a day despite eating nothing.
It is essential that laxative teas be drunk during this cleanse, otherwise it simply won't work.
Salt water flushes
Despite popular belief, drinking salt water won't kill you. In the right quantity and at the right time of day (first thing in the morning on an empty stomach) it will in fact just flush out the system with a few big juicy bowel movements. I've not tried this yet but i certainly intend to. The salt water flush is said to be harmless but extremely effective as a way of 'hacking' the body to clean out the bowels while they are resting.
Burroughs tells us in his book this is a "much superior method of cleansing the colonic tract without the harmful effects of customary colonics and enemas. This method will cleanse the entire digestive tract while the colonics and enemas will only reach the colon or a small part of it. Colonics can be expensive while our salt water method is not."
Thank goodness for that! I have never stuck a pipe up my bum for this purpose and had no intentions to do so. Instead i will do a salt water flush towards the end of the 12 day period, just to make sure there is nothing left in there.
Easing in and easing out
Just as it is with fasting a period of three days is required both before and after the cleanse to facilitate a better overall experience. Simple raw food and fruit juices are best.
Old cravings
Interestingly i have not been craving anything at all except my next 'lemonade'! I realise a lot of it is mental but this is the easiest detox i've ever done without any desire for the usual things. I don't even have a desire for the children's food when i can smell it cooking. During my old style of fasting it would not be unusual to catch me in the fruit bowl gently caressing the oranges and enjoying the scent of their skin as a way to satisfy my deprived senses, but with the lemonade diet it isn't like that at all. I simply don't want it and any time spent caressing & smelling oranges is viewed as a total waste of time.
Weed/tobacco
As for the weed/tobacco smoke i am still puffing a bit but way less than normal because i have felt my desire for it fading with each passing day. Burroughs tells us in his book that ALL addictions will disappear in this manner on the lemonade diet, which to me sounds groundbreaking! Will let you know if the desire for smoke fades away completely.
As a side note here i do want to mention that tobacco smoke is less dangerous and more useful than most people realise but we must of course be growing our own organic plants for it to reach its full potential. One only has to look at the Native American Indians who were able to smoke it regularly without damaging themselves. Tobacco in its modern form, industrially produced, chemically augmented, grown without love, is quite obviously having a negative effect on humans. Believe it or not there is a clinic in Indonesia where they cure cancer and other illnesses with organic tobacco smoke. That's right, they sit there all day puffing on tobacco, blowing the smoke of "God's cigarette" onto the affected area. And it works! Dr. Gretha Zahar, founder of the clinic, says that over the past decade 60,000 patients have been treated with tobacco therapy. So while the world would have us believe tobacco smoke causes cancer it is very likely that as usual, the opposite is the truth.
"We'll know our disinformation progrm is complete when everything the American public believes is false." --- Wiliam Casey, CIA Director 1981
Chemicals cause the malfunction of cells which in turn causes cancer. Tobacco & cannabis (amongst other things) cure it.
Other nuggets of wisdom from the book
It was great to see Burroughs familiar even in the 1940s with the idea that viruses are not contagious. He would no doubt be having quite a giggle at the covid pantomime if he were alive today.
His opening chapter 'The Blessing' was so very poignant, seen here in full.
Asking God to bless the food before a meal has been an accepted ritual handed down from generation to generation. It has been thought by some to promote better nutrition and healing by raising the vibration of the food. Better that we ask God to bless our proper selection of more complete foods as we go shopping for that which will advance our physical and our spiritual needs. Ask Him to bless the preparation of the food, and for temperance in eating, so as to enable our bodies to receive the utmost of value from what God has so abundantly supplied for our daily use. Ask Him to bless the animal, fish, or fowl we did NOT kill that we may better sustain our lives with the finer qualities of live fresh fruit, vegetables, and seeds. Better to ask God to give us KNOWLEDGE to keep our bodies strong and healthy so we have no need to ask Him to heal a sick and ailing body that we produced ourselves by not originally obeying His simple laws. Blame not God for the many illnesses and diseases you have created (they are not "Acts of God"!). Better that you ask God for His blessings and forgiveness β and to give strength and wisdom to properly apply the knowledge of His simple laws.
I have been eating less and less meat over the last few years and now i am down to almost nothing, but the above words resonate with me so deeply i may just never eat meat again. Rather, i will take a moment before all meals to say some words of my own, encouraging God to bless our food.
Another interesting nugget is the small chapter on honey in which he states the following:
Honey must not be used at any time internally. It is manufactured from the nectar picked up from the flowers by the bees β good enough in itself, perhaps β then predigested, vomited and stored for their own future use with a preservative added. It is deficient in calcium and has many detrimental effects for the human being.
This is the first time i have heard such claims and was most surprised, having viewed honey in high esteem prior to this moment.
Just as with alcohol, honey, being predigested, enters the blood directly, raising the sugar content very rapidly above normal. To correct this, the pancreas must produce insulin immediately or possible death can occur. More insulin than necessary is likely to be produced, and the blood sugar level then drops below normal. This can produce blackout spells and even death if it goes too low. When blood sugar is below normal, a person will feel depressed. The regular use of honey can create constant imbalances which in turn will adversely affect the normal func- tion of the liver, pancreas and spleen. Hypoglycemia and hyperglycemia are the results of the use of unbalanced sugars. The balanced sugar in maple syrup and sugar cane juice causes no dangerous side effects. All natural fruits and vegetables have balanced sugars in them. Artificial, synthetic, and refined sugars have no place in a natural diet.
Does anyone have further thoughts on the use of honey in our diet?
Why 'The Master Cleanse' is better than fasting
In a nutshell it's about the energy. One can go about their day as usual. Even heavy physical work can be done without any need to make exceptions because one is fasting.
During the first day of the cleanse i was busy removing around 200 small trees from this space where my family & i now play badminton and there is no way i would have been able to do that with my stomach tight in knots, begging me for food all day.
On the contrary i felt light and full of energy, excited to get it done.
This morning i was up at 5am picking apricots and tonight i am making jam. Again, would i have the energy to do this if i were on day 6 of a water fast? No way.
Then we have the laxatives and salt water flush which provide a more effective cleansing process than any fast can possibly do. Because i am taking the laxative teas before bed and upon waking, my movements happen at night and in the morning, leaving the afternoon for poop-free garden time. My experience with fasting is that i have no control of when the movements come. And when it's the moment you really don't want to be in the wrong place.
Beyond this we have the issue of deficient people becoming even more deficient while fasting. Burroughs puts it simply like this:
Many people are already deficient as well as toxic. The longer they do without food, the greater becomes the deficiency. The lemonade diet can more than match all the possible good obtained from fasting and at the same time will rebuild any possible deficiency.
Sounds logical to me and so too does the following statement:
After one has attained a clean, healthy body, and then desires to fast for purely spiritual reasons, thirty or even forty days can cause no harm. First we must build our physical bodies to their highest condition.
So it's not to say that The Master Cleanse is better than fasting, it's just that one needs to have a peak condition body in order to do the fast and The Master Cleanse seems the best way to get this done.
Finally i just wanted to point out that Sabrina has never done a fast in her life and yet here she is on day 6 of The Master Cleanse without any problems at all and will i hope continue all the way to day 12 with me. Before we started she told me she would probably last only a few days, yet she is finding it much easier than she expected. What this means is that people are more likely to succeed with the Master Cleanse than they are with a classic fast, which let's face it, is really tough the first time you do it. Especially for 12 days!
Downsides
The main one is the expense. Dark organic maple syrup isn't cheap.
That 1litre bottle you can see in the main image cost β¬30 and between Sabrina & i we polished it off in three days.
Another downside for me personally is that i am going to lose weight. Don't really need this but i am happy to learn at least that if i dollop in some extra syrup i won't lose too much.
For those who are overweight, less maple syrup may be taken. For those underweight, more maple syrup may be taken. For those who are underweight and worried about losing more weight, REMEMBER, the only things you can possibly lose are mucus, waste, and disease. Healthy tissue will not be eliminated. Many people who need to gain weight actually do so near the end of the diet period.
There's also the little problem that one needs to prepare the 'lemonade' fresh each time before drinking (the enzymes start to die the moment the lemon is squeezed) so one must keep the ingredients near them throughout the day. For those with jobs this may be a challenge but not impossible.
Finally i should probably mention that the night time pooping can be disturbing. Last night i was up three times. But i do at least know there will be no pooping this afternoon!
Menu Recommendations
Towards the end of his book Burroughs includes a chapter on suggested diet once the cleanse is done and what i found interesting about his suggested menu for a day's worth of food was that it was extremely small compared to what i am accustomed to.
Here is the page in question, all of it worth reading.
It would seem that once we finish the cleanse, less food is required to keep us from going hungry. Which again is great news!
Love the sound of this one.
Will also be making my own coconut & almond milk from now on.
Protein
Lastly he brings up the protein question saying that a healthy functioning body eating the correct vegan food (with no supplements) should be able to produce its own.
Often the question is asked about the need for amino acids, and animal protein foods. The need is highly exaggerated as only 16% of our body is protein. The answer to the question is very simple. We first need to understand that pure protein is primarily nitrogen, with oxygen, hydrogen and some carbon. We all know we get a large share of our oxygen and hydrogen needs from the air along with some carbon. There is four times the amount of nitrogen in the same air as there is oxygen, hydrogen and carbon combined. Since we are able to utilize and assimilate a large amount of our needs of these elements into our bodies we are able to assimilate and build the nitrogen also into our bodies as protein. This is done by natural bacteria action which is capable of converting it to our use.
As an almost vegan this question has come up a lot over the years so it is refreshing to hear his unique yet inarguable perspective.
From the combination of the best of foods and clean air we are able to create our own amino acids, just as well as the animals do. We never try to feed amino acids to the animals. Thus we are able to eliminate the need for toxic dead animal flesh and have no further need to worry about our constant source of protein. Eat only the best variety of fruits, berries, nuts, vegetables, seeds and sprouted seeds for a further complete source of protein.
So there you have it. The animals really don't need to die for us.
Final thoughts
Just as i have seen so many times in the past, what we are looking at here is a system which provides the body with all the tools it needs to heal itself. Even those frequency healing devices i reviewed last year are basically the same thing, providing the body with the correct environment (aka frequency) to engage the internal self healing mechanism.
A decent website on The Master Cleanse here which sums it up with the following statement:
"This Master Cleanser is a liquid diet that provides a healthy amount of calories and nutrients specifically suited for cleansing, all while resting the digestive system and allowing the body to heal naturally"
This seems a great summary but The Master Cleanse is also about what we eat once we're done cleansing. If we follow the suggestions of Burroughs i do believe we will be able to maintain perfect health and body size, while eating a whole bunch less than we did before. And if we do this cleanse regularly, two or three times a year, we will never suffer from any of the various diseases brought on by the long-term build up of toxins.
Before i sign out i wanted to mention that i am also doing 20 mins of PaidaLajin every day at the moment which simply put is slapping & stretching. I've started writing a post on this subject and intend to get it out to you this Summer, because just like The Master Cleanse it's very much worth giving a try. I spend a lot of time in the position you can see below and have noticed that my tendons are becoming more relaxed with this cleanse, an unexpected side-effect.
He doesn't directly say it but Burroughs hints in his book that The Master Cleanse, given enough time will cure any disease.
Up to 40 days and beyond may be safely followed for extremely serious cases. The diet has all the nutrition needed during this time.
So whatever your medical situation this cleanse will i think help you a great deal on the road to recovery.
Hope you enjoyed this review and that it inspires you to give the cleanse a try.
Highly recommend what i have experienced of it so far.
Love & Light everyone π±
Thank you for sharing a very informative blog @samstonehill I will try that healthy drink at home
Am on day 11 now and still very much enjoying it. I may even push further and do 14 days. Highly recommend it.
Thanks for the curation @dlmmqb
I am your content fan for a long time. If you are featured in hivepakistan reports by any chance, there is a 20% chance to win 1 DrawMatic. :)
Thanks for creating quality content for hive consistently.
I appreciate you sticking with me all this time.
As always learned quite a bit from your post so thank you for putting it together! I will have to try the master cleanse, particularly because we just got ultra fresh and ultra local maple syrup this winter from some small batch hobbyists. It was wonderful! Weβve got like 9 or 10 bottles of the stuff lol this cleanse is right up my alley.
For the salt water thing - I listened to a great podcast last year that talked about salt water with cream of tartar as a great way to jump start your body in the morning before the other stuff. Iβve done it here and there and itβs great!
I do need to get back into a more regular intermittent fasting routine again. Thatβs when I was at my best!
Great you already have the most important ingredient ready and waiting for you. This is when you know it's meant to be! The Universe has such a beautiful way of clicking things into place for us when we are supposed to do something. We know a lemon tree which for some reason wasn't picked this year! Needless to say we picked them and only later did we learn why.
Am very pleased you are keen to give it a try. Do please let me know how you get on with it. Perhaps you could even leave a comment here under this post to give a second perspective?
Thanks for the salt water/cream of tartar tip. Hadn't heard of that one.
Intermittent fasting really is great. Though something tells me it will be even better once our bodies are 100% clean.
I was up three times again last night and must say am getting a bit bored of the disturbed pooping sleep but hoping to be empty very soon!
Do check out the website i mentioned. It is a great resource and a bit more up-to-date than the book.
Thanks for sharing Sam. This looks a very good cleanse and will see if I can get started on it soon too. My wife also shakes her head when I announce another fasting attempt π
Those stretching moves look interesting, I am doing a similar back/stretching yoga that does wonders too.
What laxative teas are there btw?
It really is a good cleanse brother and am happy you are interested to try it. Am on day 12 now and thinking to do a few more days because i am enjoying it so much. I may even write an update to this post as there are so many things i have to say about it now.
As for the stretches these seem very important in our modern age in which we tend to spend a lot of time sitting in chairs and hunched over computer screens. You know the Chinese have a saying that if we can stretch our tendons by 1 inch this will extend our lives by ten years. This makes sense to me watching all the hunched elderly of our village, dying off in their droves since the covid vaccine.
It seems there are a ton of options for laxative teas. Peppermint, ginger, aloe vera, prunes, liquorice root are some that jump to mind but without a doubt senna is the most effective. 'Smooth Move' is a popular brand but totally overpriced. Better to just buy a big bag of senna. And make sure to let the leaves sit in the water for at least ten mins before drinking.
I ruined my teeth with a similar lemon water, mint, honey with water tea to drink twice daily. Some riffraff on the internet said it would dissolve the calcium crystals in the pituitary gland to open up spiritual senses, and I thought there would be no harm in drinking a tea with natural ingredients. Within a month I noticed the acid had eroded the root edge of most of my molars along the gum line.
Be sure you brush your teeth and rinse frequently after drinking acidic, sugary drinks. I don't want your family to have similar issues to what I experienced.
Wow! Hadn't thought of how this will affect the teeth. Thanks for the heads up.
I found a list of tips which may help avoid this issue:
Personally i drink the lemonade very fast and then drink a light herbal tea afterwards. Always fresh herbs from the garden. I don't brush my teeth 8 times a day though as i think this will also have a negative effect on them.
On the subject of teeth i did have a painful tooth before i started the cleanse but now that i am on day 8, the pain is completely gone. Hoping it stays this way!
All the best to you π
Glad to pass on the info.
When I was doing the lemon/mint/honey tea, I was also a regular coffee and soda drinker, so that could have also been bad for my teeth too.
When you read that honey causes a calcium deficiency, it made me wonder if sticky honey pulls calcium out of the the coated teeth, weakening the enamel. Teeth are full of minerals, right? Perhaps dissolved honey behaves as a super absorber of minerals, salts, and metal toxins through osmosis or a chemical or physical action?
Any dentist worth their salt hopefully knows more about the science of how different chemicals and sugars react to the components that make up our teeth.