Detox Diary: Day 1

Here I sit tonight with a glass of piping hot herbal tea, finally updating my blog. However, the catch is that this is no ordinary herbal tea, it is a herbal laxative. That’s right, folks, yours truly has decided to test herself, mind, body and bowel and try detoxing.

I had asked my doctor just over a month ago if she could tell me more about detoxing, and unfortunately, the only information she could give me was that people generally detox their bodies if they are constipated. And just in case you were wondering, I’m not. I have a bit of an issue with my stomach and esophagus, a condition called a sliding hiatus hernia and poor muscle control in my esophagus resulting in food to travel too quickly into my stomach (the weak muscles) and lots of acid reflux (the hernia). I have been on medication for this problem for years with so-so luck. My stomach is still immensely sensitive and I pretty much have to eat bland food or else I cause a reaction.

Anyway, I decided to try a herbal supplement, Dida (after running it by my doctor first) to try and get rid of the bloating and cramping I have recently been experiencing. She suggested trying that for about a month, and if that didn’t work, she would put me on another medication to reduce the bloating and cramping. To sum everything up nicely, the herbal supplement didn’t work at all (and smelled terrible) and the medication has to be taken four times day but must be taken before meals (which I always forget, or don’t leave the allotted time for it to absorb into my body).

This leads me to today, where I made a trip to Goodness Me! to inquire about a herbal detox. I had read up on the Lemonade Diet, and although I really liked the results people were having, I really don’t think that I could last that long on only lemon juice maple syrup, water and Cayenne pepper. The guy working at Goodness Me! was an enormous help and sorted a lot of things out for me. He clarified that the herbal tea detoxes that they offered were very good and even suggested the top three brands. He told me that if I only wanted to detox I could, but if I wanted a full cleanse, I should get the herbal laxative (but also warned that I would probably be making more trips to the bathroom). I left feeling really confident in my selection, and here I am right now, tea steeped and waiting for it to cool a bit.

My first reaction to the teas when I took the packaging off was that they reeked. I thought to myself that I have just gotten myself into a mess of trouble and probably wouldn’t be able to drink either of the teas. I put some lemon juice and a bit of sweetener into this cup of tea, and to tell you the truth, it tastes really, really good. I never thought that I would say that about a laxative!

My main concern is that I will be waking up in the middle of the night running to the toilet, or that I will be spending my mornings in the bathroom ridding myself of toxins while at work, not being able to be productive.

The dosage is this. Two to four cups of the detox tea during the day, and one cup of the laxative before bed (both kinds of tea bags can be used more than once, so I am getting double for what a paid, a mere $6 each). In between the multiples cups during the day, I have to drink water like it is my job. I have already started doing this today, and I can’t even tell you how many bathroom breaks I have taken. I can only imagine what the ladies at work are going to think when I’m getting up twice every 30 minutes to empty my bladder.

All negative thinking aside, I think I may enjoy doing this. It may not feel great at first while my body is getting rid of all the gross toxins, but I’m certain I will feel more than 100 per cent better by the end.