Detoxification Schedule | Liver Detox & Gallbladder Flush

Jon’s 5-day Liver Gallbladder Flush

Jon has frequently said that doing the Liver/Gallbladder Flush will probably produce a bigger change in your health than any other single component of the Baseline of Health program. This is because the liver is probably the hardest working organ in your body. It has hundreds of tasks to perform, including detoxification of the blood. It is also a reservoir for sugar and fat and is usually congested with an excess of both, so much so that average people, so-called healthy people, often use more than 60% of their livers just for storage. A sluggish liver means fatigue and toxemia and a high risk of various chronic diseases. For most people it will probably take several (2-3) liver flushes to truly clean the liver out — and about 2 years (since liver cells replace themselves every 18 months) to actually regenerate your liver.

Jon has described in several places how to do a liver and gallbladder flush. But I got him to put down on paper several months ago, in detail, EXACTLY how HE does it. That is the focus of this newsletter.

First thing on rising, drink 8 oz of pure water to flush your digestive tract.

An hour later, in a blender, mix up 8 oz of any fresh squeezed citrus juice (fresh squeezed apple juice or grape juice with all the sediment will work too), one lemon, 1 clove (not the whole bulb, just one clove) of garlic (increase by 1 clove each day), 1 tablespoon of olive oil (increase by 1 tablespoon each day), and a piece of ginger (about 1″ long) along with 4-8 ounces of pure water.

  • It helps to first slice the ginger cross-grain into 1/8 inch slices to minimize the size of the fibers. Then blend the garlic and ginger in a small amount of liquid to minimize “chunking” before adding the bulk of the liquid.

Drink it down and follow with a fresh juice chaser to clear your mouth (If desired).

  • I know this is hard to believe, but this drink actually tastes great — sort of like a tangy Orange Julius. Here’s why. Most people are not aware that fast food outlets rarely use any dairy in their “ice cream” shakes. They use vegetable oil. When you whip the oil at high speed, it gets creamy. Well, the same thing happens with the olive oil: when mixed in your blender at high speed, it makes the drink really thick and creamy — like there was ice cream in it.

Fifteen minutes after consuming this drink, follow with 2 cups of the liver/detox tea. It is also important to take 12 droppersful of the liver/detox tincture each day (spread throughout the day) while on the 5-day cleanse — and continuing after until the bottle is gone. (Again, a dropperful is the amount that fills a dropper when you squeeze and let go — about half the physical dropper.)

The Detox Diet

It is extremely beneficial to incorporate a 2-day raw food and 3-day juice-fast into your 5-day cleanse. (Actually, I usually do a 5 day juice fast while on the detox.)

Day 1

During the morning (after your cleansing drink and stopping one hour before lunch), eat all the live FRESH fruit or vegetable juice you want. Beet juice is especially good. In general, do not mix your fruit and vegetable juices together, and feel free to dilute your juices. (Certain combinations such as carrot and apple work together, but unless you know for sure, don’t mix fruit and vegetable). Make sure to swish all juices thoroughly in the mouth before swallowing.

For lunch you can have more diluted juice, or a raw vegetable or sprout salad. Absolutely do not use bottled dressing. Make your own dressing from fresh olive oil and lemon or apple cider vinegar and any fresh herbs and spices you of your choice. (Even better is to use no oil in your dressing. See note on fats below.) If you are hungry throughout the day, feel free to snack on fresh vegetables or juices.

For dinner eat fresh fruit or fruit juice or fruit smoothies.

Days 2-4

After your morning flush, drink diluted juices and herbal tea throughout the day — as much as you can drink. Try to consume 128 ounces during the day. Avoid all oils and fats.

Also recommended throughout the day is to consume cups of potassium broth. Potassium broth takes advantage of the fact that the outside of a potato is one of the highest plant sources of potassium. Take the peelings (1/4″ to 1/2″ including the skin) of several potatoes. Do NOT use the inside. Add other well chopped vegetables to taste including carrots (with skin), celery , whole beets (including greens), fresh parsley, and lots of onion and garlic (up to 50 cloves).

Simmer for 40-60 minutes in a covered pot using clean filtered water. Strain out the vegetables, cool and drink the broth. Refrigerate leftover broth in glass containers in the refrigerator for use over the next couple of days.

As much as possible, do not add spices to the potassium broth. If you must, though, you can add a little “Bragg Liquid Aminos” or real Tamari sauce for flavor.

Day 5

Same as Day 1

Days 6-8

Very clean diet of organic or locally grown produce – fruits and vegetables. Remember, your body will suck up whatever you put into it right after the cleanse. Eating fried chicken and Ding Dongs, for example, immediately after detoxing, will almost totally nullify the entire detox.

Notes on the Morning Drink

Add your garlic and ginger to the blender first. Than add only a little bit of the orange juice (or grape if that’s what you’re using). This will allow you to totally liquify the garlic and ginger before you add the rest of the oil and orange juice and water. One other trick is to slice the chunks of garlic into smaller pieces across the fiber. This will prevent longer fibers from appearing in your drink.

Notes on the Liver Detox Tea

The tea helps with the flushing process itself, but also helps minimize any discomfort or nausea. The key herb in the tea is dandelion root, one of the strongest herbal lipotropics known. That is to say, it flushes fat deposits from the liver. Other herbs that you will find in the tea include things like: ginger, clove, cinnamon, burdock root, and horsetail. Incidentally, some of the other herbs used in the tea (such as uva ursi, parsley root, and juniper berries) are also extremely beneficial to the kidneys.

Two cups of the tea should be consumed fifteen minutes after drinking your citrus and olive oil flush. But several cups can and should be consumed throughout the day. In fact, consuming the liver/detox tea as a regular part of your diet is a pleasant and tasty way to continually optimize your health. (Feel free to sweeten the tea with honey or real maple syrup as desired.)

You will want a small tea strainer to clean out the small tea bits in the water.

I like to make my tea in a big 8 quart Dutch Oven pot. I fill the pot the night before and add 4-5 tablespoons of Tea, which I let soak overnight. In the morning I simmer for 20 minutes. Then I turn the heat to as low as it goes to keep the tea warm and scoop out cups as I want during the day. I’ll drink 5-8 cups a day. At night, I turn off the heat and just top the pot off with water and add 2 more tablespoons of tea to the mix and repeat the simmering process in the morning. Each day, the tea just gets stronger and richer.

Notes on Taking the Liver Tincture and Blood Cleanser

To keep things simple, I use 4 droppers of both the liver tincture and the blood cleanser three times a day during the flush. That’s 12 droppers of each a day. Since each bottle contains about 60 droppers, that means I finish the two bottles in 5 to 5 ½ days. There’s no way to make these tinctures taste good. They are very bitter. I put my 8 droppers in about 1 oz of juice (for this, bottled apple juice works fine) and shoot it down like a shot of bad whiskey. Then I chase with a swig of plain juice to clean the palette. (Note: The blood cleanser is not actually part of the liver detox, but I like to combine my liver and blood cleanse into one operation. It’s not essential to do it that way, but it makes sense.)

What You Need to Know About Fats

The way the flush works is that you starve your body of fats all day. This allows bile to build up in your liver and gallbladder. Then, in the morning, you have your only intake of fat (1-5 tablespoons of olive oil, depending on which day of the flush you’re on). This causes the liver and gallbladder to literally “wring themselves out” in an attempt to deal with the oil — squeezing out accumulated fat, cholesterol, and toxins in the process. The more fat that you consume during the day, the more you minimize the purging action of the olive oil drink. In other words, it’s best to avoid all fats and oils during the liver/gallbladder flush. Note: the purging action gets progressively stronger each day on the flush. On the last day, when you consume 5 tablespoons of olive oil, that really squeezes the liver and gallbladder.

Supplements & Medications

In general, the recommendation is to stop using supplements during the detox. Since most supplements, especially vitamin formulas, have to be processed by the liver, it makes sense to just give your liver a rest during the detox. Exceptions include, a colon corrective formula to keep things moving and digestive enzymes with your juice or salads to facilitate digestion, and you can also use probiotics if you want.

As for medications, you will want to talk to your doctor before doing the liver detox to see if there are any potential problems. For example, all of the garlic used in the program thins the blood. If you are taking blood thinning medication, that could cause problems. In general though, the rule of thumb is that if you are on medication, you will want to keep using it while detoxing. One other thing to watch for is that blood pressure tends to drop significantly during the detox — especially if you’re combining it with a 5 day juice fast — so you will want to watch any blood pressure medication you might be using.

Needed Cleansers

  • Liver detox tea
  • Liver detox tincture
  • Blood cleanser (if you choose to do the blood cleanse at the same time)
  • Colon activator

Note: all of the above formulas (my versions of them) are available from Baseline Nutritionals®, and all of the instructions in this newsletter apply specifically to those formulas. If you have other formulas from another company that you prefer, go for it. Just adjust your use of those formulas according to the instructions that come with them.

Needed for Morning Drink

  • Whole organic oranges for juicing for 5 days. Or organic fresh squeezed orange juice from the market. (Remember, fresh squeezed apple juice or grape juice with all the sediment will work too.)
  • 5 lemons
  • 1 bottle of extra virgin olive oil (organic if possible)
  • 1 big organic ginger root (about 5 inches worth)
  • 4 Organic garlic bulbs should provide enough garlic for your morning drinks (15 cloves over 5 days) plus 50 cloves for your potassium broth.

Potassium Broth

  • 4 Large organic potatoes
  • 4 large organic carrots (with skin)
  • 2 sticks organic celery
  • 3 whole organic beats sliced, plus greens
  • 2 peeled and sliced organic onions
  • 50 cloves of garlic (see morning drink)

Juicing

  • Juicer. Any good juicer will do. If you don’t have one, look on the net for the Miracle Juicer, which you can pick up for less than $100. (Note: a good juicer is probably the single best investment you can make in your health.)
  • Any combination of all vegetable or all fruit will do. One exception is mixing apple and carrot. I usually make a juice of Apple, Carrot, Celery, and Ginger. (1 large apple, 1 stick celery, ½” piece of ginger, and enough carrots to make 20-24 oz of juice.

In Addition

  • Psyllium husks taken daily will help keep things moving and minimize toxic build up. I usually take a tablespoon of psyllium with 8 oz of water about an hour after my morning olive oil drink and at around 6 pm with my Activator to keep everything moving. (Note: if you are allergic to psyllium, use oat bran instead. Do NOT use ground flaxseed during the liver flush as it contains a lot of oil.)
  • A colon corrective formula taken each evening should help keep things moving in the morning.
  • A couple of packets of Sun Chlorella taken daily with your juice will help give you energy, and will also help with the detoxing and elimination. (If you don’t have chlorella, you can use virtually any other pure green food such as spirulina, barley grass, green kamut, etc.) I usually take my two packets of chlorella with my juice at around 4:00 PM to help give me a lift in the afternoon and on into the evening.
  • If for any reason you feel off (sluggish, achy, nauseous, toxic, whatever) do an enema. Most people tend to feel off in the morning when they wake up because of the accumulated toxins. For most people, the psyllium and corrective formula should flush those toxins with your morning bowel movement. But if for any reason your bowel is sluggish and you don’t fully eliminate the toxic waste, do an enema. Or go for a colonic if you want.

Notes for Diabetics

If you’re diabetic or hypoglycemic, you’ll want to make a couple of adjustments.

  • For your morning drink, you’ll want to shift away from the orange or grape juice version to more of a lemon juice drink. It wll be much tarter, and you will need to dilute it more than you would the other versions.
  • For the fresh juice you drink during the day, you will want to tend more to diluted pure vegetable combos (avoiding beet and carrot), and back off from the fruit juice based drinks.
  • One other thing that you might help is to use Glucotor® v.2, which will minimize the glycemic response.

Exercise

Moderate exercise every day will help make you feel a whole lot better – and will help keep things moving.

Interested in a full-body detox?
Utilize our Self-Guided Detox Program!