Seven Ways to Make Every Day Feel Like a Holiday

All work and no play may make Jack a very dull boy, but can too much work actually make Jack sick? According to a wide array of research, the answer is a resounding YES.
Take the study published in Psychosomatic Medicine in 2000. Researchers analyzed data from 12,000 men between the ages of 35 and 57 who were prone to heart disease. The thirteen percent who reported skipping their vacations the previous year had a much higher risk of death than those who took their vacations.

In another study published in Occupational Medicine, workers in a medium-sized manufacturing firm reported fewer physical ailments immediately after a vacation, and the results still held five weeks afterwards.

According to Maharishi Ayurveda, these results are not surprising. Maharishi Ayurveda takes the concept of balancing activity and rest seriously, advising us to include adequate rest and rejuvenation in the cycles of each season and as part of every single day. This is essential for preventing ill-health in body, mind and emotions.

Here are seven ways to incorporate more rest and relaxation into your schedule throughout the year.
Stop straining. Since all disease, according to Maharishi Ayurveda, starts with misuse, overuse or lack of use of the mind, body or senses, it's important not to strain. If you feel exhausted at night after work, or if you feel overly anxious or depressed due to work, you are either doing too much or are doing work that is not suitable for you. Take steps to lighten your workload. If it's the nature of the work itself that is causing you strain, you might want to seriously consider making a change.

Don't slight sleep. It's when you're tired that you tend to overwork. When you're rested you can finish the work without strain and still have energy and time left over for the rest of your life. Research shows that workers who get less than six hours of sleep a night are prone to costly accidents, poor concentration and poor performance. Sleep is also important for producing ojas, the biochemical equivalent of bliss.

Without it depression, anxiety and anger increase.

The quality of sleep is just as important as number of hours. If you have trouble sleeping, try going to bed earlier, before 10:00. This usually creates a deeper sleep. Prepare for deep sleep by avoiding TV and computers in the evening. Take Blissful Sleep to aid in falling asleep, or Deep Rest if you wake up tossing and turning in the night.
Spend time in pure enjoyment every day. Everyone needs a little vacation time built into every single day. If you work on the job, and then come home to endless work there, you're setting up a situation for ill-health, unhappiness and fast aging. Your children will appreciate you more if you take time to play a game with them after dinner, or share a favorite hobby.

If you're on the computer all day, try to schedule real events in the evening, such as walking with friends, painting a picture, or playing a musical instrument. Sharing your life with family and friends rejuvenates the mind and heart in a way that nothing else can. One way to boost your capacity for enjoyment is to practice the Transcendental Meditation® program every day. By allowing the mind to bathe itself in the infinite reservoir of bliss and intelligence that is found at the basis of thinking, you begin to infuse bliss into every activity. Over time practitioners find that life itself becomes blissful, and that no activity is a strain. This is true enjoyment--when every moment of life becomes a celebration.

Structure work breaks. Even while you're working, it's actually more productive to take breaks each hour. A 2000 study in the journal Ergonomics suggested that taking frequent work breaks is the only way to prevent neck and shoulder discomfort due to repetitive work on the computer. Another study showed that the only effective way to reduce Repetitive Strain Injury for computer workers was to institute frequent work breaks away from the keyboard. Breaks are also essential for preventing eyestrain. The most effective break you can take is walking outside and breathing fresh air. Stretch and bend if you can, or walk briskly. This will infuse your brain with oxygen and give you a moment to appreciate the beautiful summer weather.

Schedule rest and rejuvenation between the seasons. One important preventive measure offered by Maharishi Ayurveda is to take time to rest and rejuvenate at the end of each season. The purification procedures of Maharishi Panchakarma are designed to gently cleanse the colon, tissues and microchannels of the body of impurities that have built up during the previous season. This gives the body a chance to enter the new season with maximum flexibility and high immune strength. It also prevents imbalances from remaining in the system. By restoring balance each season, disease is prevented from happening.

Even if you can't do Maharishi Panchakarma every season, you can eat lightly for two weeks during the weeks when the seasons are changing. Favor warm soups, dhals, fresh vegetables and whole grains. This will give your digestion a chance to rest and purify toxins. You can also take Elim-Tox or Elim-Tox-O to purify the liver, Genitrac to purify the urinary system, and Herbal Cleanse to purify the large intestine. Together these products give your body the rest and rejuvenation it needs to create only good health in the coming season.

Take regular vacations. Even if you live a balanced lifestyle, with frequent breaks and adequate time for relaxation each day, it's important to give your mind a complete break once or twice a year. This is especially important if your work is taxing. A change of scenery, away from cell phone, beeper and computer, provides a certain deeper type of rest that is essential for mind and body. It's also healthy for families to spend leisure time together, to forge deeper bonds and share happy times together. Vacations don't need to be expensive--you can camp out, stay with relatives, swap homes. Be creative. The main point is to experience a change of pace, get some deep rest, and allow your mind and body to really take a break. Often, taking a break provides new insights, perspectives and creativity once you return.

Boost your bliss power. Feeling happy is a normal state of mind. If you are fatigued, anxious, or depressed, it's time to take steps to remove the underlying cause. For relief from anxiety, try giving yourself a daily abhyanga, or ayurvedic oil massage. Use Relaxation Massage Oil, and then soak in a tub with Relaxing Therapeutic Bath Salts containing Lavender, Bergamot, Rosemary and Peppermint.

Listen to the soothing rhythms of Gandharva Veda music, and after your bath apply Youthful Skin Advanced Lipid Support, an extraordinary moisturizing lotion that contains herbs and oils that replenish and renew not only your skin but your emotions as well. Take Worry Free or Stress Free Mind to treat the underlying cause of anxiety and to build resistance to day-to-day stress. If your emotions are out of kilter and you feel frustrated or angry on a daily basis, try Cooling Pitta Aroma Oil or light aBlissful Heart aroma Candle.

Massage with Cool Sensation Massage Oil, and bathe with Soothing Therapeutic Bath Salts, which contain a mixture of Patchouli, Vetiver and Cypress to cool body, mind and emotions. Take Blissful Joy or Stress-Free Emotions tablets to give a positive lift to your emotional health. Just making a few changes can put you back on track and help build the inner resources that make every day feel like a holiday.

Maharishi Ayurveda Products International, Inc.

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Health Tip: If You've Missed Your Period

(HealthDay News) -- When a woman misses her period, her first instinct may be to assume that she's pregnant. While lack of a menstrual cycle can indicate pregnancy, there are other reasons that could cause your cycle to stop.
Here are some conditions that may affect a woman's menstrual cycle, courtesy of the Saint Francis Health Care System:

• Extreme weight loss or exceptionally strenuous exercise.
• Obesity.
• Stress or anxiety.
• Menopause.
• Health conditions that affect the thyroid or pituitary gland.
• Some medications.

Prozac May Protect Against Osteoporosis

(HealthDay News) -- Could a widely used treatment for depression be a remedy for osteoporosis?

Researchers have discovered that the drug Prozac also increases bone mass, at least in adult mice.

"Treating animals for six weeks with Prozac resulted in an increase in trabecular bone mass," said study lead author Ricardo Battaglino, assistant member of the staff in the department of cytokine biology at the Forsyth Institute in Boston. "It was a pretty significant 60 percent increase."

Trabecular bone is one of two main types of bone and makes up most of the spongy interior of the majority of bones.

Although it's way too early to advocate popping Prozac to reverse or stop bone loss, experts say it's a tantalizing lead for future research.

"For several reasons, people need to be cautious because fluoxetine [the generic name for Prozac] has central nervous system effects," said Dr. Grant Mitchell, chief of psychiatry at Northern Westchester Hospital Center in Mount Kisco, N.Y. "But it is interesting that current treatments for bone loss in osteoporosis do not take this approach, so the idea that we could at some point have another approach to reducing bone loss or even rebuilding new bone is actually exciting. Having more options would be great."

The study, which was funded by the U.S. National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, is expected to be published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Cellular Biochemistry.

Previous research, some of it by the same team, had found that serotonin receptors were commonly expressed on the surface of bone cells. Serotonin receptors govern the entry of serotonin -- a molecule that helps transmit signals between neurons and is implicated in anxiety and depression -- into cells.

Prozac is a member of a group of antidepressants called "selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors" (SSRIs) that act on this receptor.

The fact that these receptors populated bone cells "was surprising for us," Battaglino said, "because we were taking bone cells and serotonin, two molecules that apparently didn't have much to do with each other."

The next question was whether Prozac, which has an effect on serotonin, also exerted an influence on bone cells and, ultimately, bone mass.

For this study, laboratory mice were treated with Prozac for six weeks. The investigators were specifically interested in seeing if the drug stimulated new bone formation under normal conditions and if it blocked bone loss caused by inflammation or by loss of estrogen after taking out the ovaries.

Prozac both spurred the formation of new bone under normal conditions and reversed overall bone loss triggered by inflammation.

The drug was administered both systemically (like taking a pill) and locally (directly to the bone), and the effects were observed with both delivery methods, the researchers reported.
"They developed a way to deliver locally to the bone, which makes more sense," Mitchell pointed out. "The idea there would be to avoid the [potential] brain effects."

Oddly, a prior study using Prozac found that the drug actually hindered bone growth. The discrepancy may have been due to the way bone mass or density was measured and also to the fact that it involved children, not adults, Battaglino said.

In the new study, Prozac was not effective in female mice without circulating estrogen (i.e. after their ovaries had been removed). In those cases, Prozac "did not prevent bone loss associated with estrogen deficiency," Mitchell said. "It looks like, to be effective in relation to bone loss, Prozac needs to be in the presence of estrogen." This has implications for women moving into menopause who lose estrogen and have an increased risk of osteoporosis, he said.

The findings need to be replicated and, of course, tried in humans, but, given the number of people taking Prozac, the implications could be enormous.

"Fluoxetine is one of the most widely prescribed psychoactive drugs in this country and most likely the world, and it's been like that for at least 15 or 20 years," Battaglino said. "From the public health point of view, this would be pretty relevant."

The jury is still out on whether other SSRIs -- such as Celexa, Paxil and Zoloft -- might have the same effect on bone, Battaglino added, since similar tests on those drugs haven't yet been performed.

"This could be a class effect for SSRIs," he said. "However, it is known that in addition to blocking the serotonin transporter, Prozac can target other molecules -- for instance, some nicotinic acetylcholine receptors and even some serotonin receptors. So, this effect could be specific for Prozac. The experiments will have to be done to answer the question."

More information
To find out more about bone loss, visit the National Osteoporosis Foundation.

Lung Cancer Can Run in the Family

(HealthDay News) -- While smoking is far and away the biggest risk factor for lung cancer, having a close relative who has been diagnosed with the disease nearly doubles your risk of developing the deadly disease.
A new study in the October issue of Chest found that people with a first-degree relative -- that means mother, father or sibling -- who had lung cancer had a 95 percent higher risk of developing the disease themselves.
"Our long-term follow-up of a large-scale, population-based cohort identified a significant increase in the risk of lung cancer associated with a family history of lung cancer in a first-degree relative in a Japanese population," the study authors wrote.
Dr. Jay Brooks, chairman of hematology and oncology at the Ochsner Clinic Health System in Baton Rouge, La., said this study confirms what's already known about family history and the risk of lung cancer, and that "it's an important thing for physicians to realize."
"As a clinician, when I have someone with lung cancer, I ask the family members, 'Who smokes cigarettes?' Then I explain that they have a two- to three-fold higher risk of lung cancer because of their family history, and this is just another reason to quit smoking because they have a genetic susceptibility to the carcinogens in tobacco," explained Brooks.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that more than 180,000 new cases of lung cancer are diagnosed each year in the United States, and nearly 170,000 Americans die from the disease annually. It's the second leading cause of death for men and the third leading cause of death for women, according to the CDC. Cigarette smoking is the most common cause of the disease, according to the National Institutes of Health, though not everyone who gets lung cancer is a smoker or former smoker.
The current study followed more than 102,000 middle-aged and older Japanese adults for as long as 13 years; there were more women (53,421) than men (48,834). During the study period, 791 cases of lung cancer were diagnosed.
The researchers found that having a first-degree relative with lung cancer nearly doubled the odds of developing lung cancer. The association was even stronger for women. Women who had a first-degree relative with lung cancer almost had triple the risk of lung cancer, while men with a first-degree relative with lung cancer had about a 70 percent higher risk.
Additionally, people who had never smoked had a higher risk of developing lung cancer themselves if they had a first-degree relative with the disease than did smokers with close family members with lung cancer.
Family history was also more strongly associated with a particular type of lung cancer -- squamous cell carcinoma.
Brooks and Dr. Ann G. Schwartz, who wrote an accompanying editorial in the same issue of the journal, both said it wasn't clear why family history would confer a greater risk for women than for men. Schwartz said one possibility is that women are more familiar with their family histories and may just be reporting family history more accurately. Brooks also pointed out that this finding might only apply to Japanese women and not other populations.
It's also not clear exactly why family history is associated with a greater risk for those who never smoked, though Schwartz said it may have something to do with different lung cancer types. It's possible that the type of lung cancer nonsmokers often get may also be one where the genetic susceptibility is passed from generation to generation.
While there aren't clear-cut screening guidelines in place for someone with a family history of lung cancer, Schwartz said, "You need to make your physician aware of your family history; don't discount it."
She added that she'd like to see people with a family history of the disease identified as high-risk for lung cancer and included in screening studies.
"If you have a family history of lung cancer, you have a genetic susceptibility to the carcinogens in directly inhaled and in secondhand tobacco smoke. Avoid all exposure to tobacco, quit smoking if you're a smoker," and don't let your children be exposed to tobacco smoke, Brooks said.
More information
To learn what steps you can take to help prevent lung cancer, visit the National Cancer Institute.

One in Four Smokers Will Get Lung Disease

(HealthDay News) -- A new study finds that at least 1 in every 4 smokers will develop progressive and incurable chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a much higher risk than previously believed.
COPD is a respiratory disease that results in blocked air flow to the lungs and grows progressively worse.
For this study, published online in the journal Thorax, researchers at Hvidovre Hospital analyzed data on 8,000 men and women, ages 30 to 60. All were monitored for 25 years as part of the Copenhagen City Heart Study.
At the start of the study, all the participants' lungs were healthy and working normally. However, over the course of the 25 years, the lungs of almost all the male non-smokers continued to function normally, compared to 60 percent of men who continued to smoke.
Among women, 90 percent of non-smokers still had healthy lungs at the end of 25 years, compared to 70 percent of smokers.
Overall, 25 percent of the participants developed moderate or severe COPD over the 25 years. Persistent smokers were six times more likely to develop COPD than non-smokers.
During the 25 years, there were 2,900 deaths in the study group. Of those deaths, 109 were directly attributable to COPD, and nearly all those deaths were in people who were active smokers at the start of the study. Only two non-smokers died of COPD.
The study also found a sharp decline in the risk of COPD among people who stopped smoking soon after the start of the study. Over the 25 years, none of these ex-smokers developed severe COPD.
More information
The U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute has more about COPD.

Ayurveda Body Cleanse Tips

Our bodies were not meant to be toxic dumps. Yet, improper digestion, high levels of stress, and pollutants such as chemicals in the air we breathe, the water we drink or wash with, and the foods we eat, continuously create toxins in the body. If not flushed out on a regular basis, ayurveda contends that this toxic build-up can eventually manifest as disorders. And as we grow older, the body's inbuilt mechanisms for eliminating impurities tend to be less efficient, thus stressing the need for periodic internal cleansing therapy.

Three Kinds of Toxins
Ayurveda describes three kinds of toxins. The most common type is ama, which is the sticky waste-product of digestion that builds up in the digestive tract when your digestion is either weak or overloaded with the wrong foods.
If ama is not cleared from the body and continues to build up, eventually it can leave the digestive tract and start circulating through the body. Once it settles in a specific area, over time ama becomes reactive and mixes with the subdoshas, the dhatus (body tissues), or malas (waste products such as urine). When it mixes with these parts of the physiology, it becomes amavisha, a more reactive, toxic type of ama.

The third type of toxins are what we would call environmental toxins today. Environmental toxins come from outside the body and include pesticides and chemical fertilizers in food, as well as preservatives, additives and genetically engineered foods. Food that has "gone bad" and is filled with harmful bacteria also falls in this category. Other garavisha toxins include arsenic, lead, asbestos, chemicals in detergents and household supplies, poisons, air and water pollution, chemicals and synthetics in clothing, and recreational drugs.
Amavisha and garavisha types of toxins are best handled by an ayurvedic physician, but there are a number of things you can do on an ongoing basis to prevent ama from building up in your body.

Signs That You May Have an Ama Build-Up
If you experience a heavy feeling in your body, if your joints are stiff, if your tongue is coated when you wake up in the morning, if you have an unpleasant body odor, if you feel dull and sleepy after eating, if your mind is foggy, you may have a build-up of ama in the body. Diarrhea, constipation, joint pain, sadness, dullness, lowered immunity, frequent bouts of colds and flu are all health problems that can be caused by ama.
Ama clogs the channels of circulation in the body, preventing the unrestricted flow of nutrients to the cells and organs. Or it can clog the channels that carry waste from the cells and tissues, resulting in a toxic build-up.

How Ama is Created: Diet and Lifestyle Factors
Ama is the waste product of incomplete digestion, so any dietary or lifestyle habits that disrupt digestion can cause ama.

If you eat foods that are too heavy to digest, such as fried foods, hard cheeses, meats, leftovers, junk foods, processed foods, and rich desserts, these can overload your digestion and cause ama to form. Cold foods and drinks -- such as ice cream, ice-cold water and foods straight from the refrigerator -- also are hard to digest, since cold temperatures put out the digestive fire.

How much food and the type of food you can easily digest depends on your digestive capacity. Digestion can be weak, strong, or irregular, depending on your body type or imbalances:

If your digestion is weak or dull (a characteristic associated with Kapha dosha), and you eat too much food or food that is too heavy for your digestive system, you'll form ama.

Someone with a strong digestion (associated with Pitta dosha) will be able to eat larger quantities and richer foods without forming ama. A person with an irregular digestion (associated with Vata body type) will find that their appetite and digestive ability fluctuates -- sometimes it's strong and sometimes weak.
You need to adjust your eating and habits to suit your digestive type. Digestion also fluctuates according to the seasons, and if you don't adjust your diet and lifestyle when the weather changes, you may form ama. For detailed information on foods and eating habits for each body type and the seasons, visit the foods section)

Digestion can also be weakened by poor eating habits. For instance, not eating at the same time every day, not eating the main meal at noon when the digestion is stronger, skipping meals or eating between meals can all throw the digestion out of balance.

An irregular daily routine can also disrupt your digestion and cause ama. Mental, emotional and physical stress is another cause of incomplete digestion and ama. If you've ever tried eating when you're upset, and felt the stomach pains afterwards, you know why this is so. In general, any time go against your own nature, or fall out of harmony with natural law, your digestion will reflect that and create ama.

An Ama-Reducing Diet
If a person has simple ama, it's generally possible to remove it from the body by enhancing or balancing agni, the digestive fire. First of all, it's important to begin an ama -reducing diet. This is a simple diet, consisting of warm, freshly-cooked whole foods that are light, easy to digest, and are suitable for the person's body type and season.

The ama -reducing diet includes fresh, organic vegetables; sweet, juicy fruits; whole grains such as quinoa, cous cous, rye, barley, amaranth, millet and rice; and easily digested proteins such as mung dhal or lentil soup. Lassi -- a drink made in the blender with one part freshly made yogurt, four parts water, and salt or honey for flavor -- is an excellent digestion -- booster to drink after a meal because it contains acidophilus, a friendly bacteria that aids digestion. Cooked leafy greens such as chard and kale are especially good for improving elimination and helping to detoxify the body.

The vegetables and grains should be cooked with tasty spices that are suitable for your body type and the season, such as Vata, Pitta or Kapha Churna from Ayurveda. Avoid all of the foods that we mentioned earlier as a cause of ama -- fried foods, heavy foods such as aged cheese, meat, rich desserts -- anything that is difficult to digest should be left out of your diet. Avoid eating or drinking anything cold.

Drinking warm water throughout the day is a good way to flush out ama and toxins of all kinds, especially if you add detoxifying spices to make a tea.

Detoxifying Tea
Boil two quarts of water in the morning. Add 1/4 t. whole cumin, 1/2 t. whole coriander, 1/2 t. whole fennel and let steep for ten minutes with the lid on. Strain out the spices and pour water into a thermos and sip throughout the day. Start fresh by making a new batch of tea each morning.

Lifestyle
TipsThe most important thing is to eat your main meal at noon, when the sun is strongest and the digestive fire reflects that strength. If you eat too much at night, or eat heavy foods such as meat or cheese then, the food will sit in your stomach and create ama. Eat light at night and your food will be easily digested before you go to sleep.

It's also important to eat all three meals at the same time every day. If your body gets used to a regular routine, the digestive juices will start to ready themselves before the meal, and will be more efficient in digesting. If you eat at all different times, your digestion will be thrown off.

Don't snack between meals unless you are actually hungry, and wait until the food is digested before eating a meal. If your digestion is already occupied with digesting and you add new food on top of that, the result is ama, the sour, undigested waste product of undigested food.

Other aspects of the ayurvedic routine are also important. Going to sleep before 10 p.m. is essential, because then during the Pitta time of night (10-2) your digestion has a chance to cleanse and rejuvenate itself. If you stay up, you'll probably feel hungry about midnight and will want to eat, which will tax the digestion and create ama.

Waking up before 6 a.m. is recommended, as if you sleep late into the Kapha time of the morning (6-10 a.m.), the channels of your body will become clogged with ama and you'll feel dull and tired.

Daily exercise that is suitable for your body type will stimulate digestion and help cleanse the body of toxins. It's also important to manage your stress, and to have a job that your enjoy and is not too taxing for your body type. Everyone can benefit from spending time each day practicing the Transcendental Meditation® program to remove mental, emotional and physical stress.

Herbs That Heal: Espically for Internal Cleansing
Ayurveda offers a range of detoxification products. For all types of toxins, the first and foremost treatment is to improve elimination. Digest Tone is an excellent herbal formula for supporting regular bowel movements. Taking two to five tablets of Triphala before going to bed will help purification.

Genitrac helps flush out ama from the genito-urinary tract. It targets the genito-urinary channels to help eliminate toxins through the urine.

Elim-Tox and Elim-Tox-O are both effective in removing toxins from the liver, blood, sweat glands and elimination system. For example, Elim-Tox contains Indian Sarsaparilla, Red Sandalwood, Vetiver and Neem Leaf to enhance purification of toxins through the sweat glands and skin. Other herbs support elimination through the urinary tract by balancing lubrication (Shleshaka Kapha) and the downward energy in the body (Apana Vata).

Another group of herbs contained in Elim-Tox, including Psyllium Seed, Rose Petals, Licorice Root, Turpeth Root, Tinospora Cordifolia and Chebulic Myrobalans, support elimination of toxins by lubricating the digestive tract and supporting the process of elimination through urine and stool.

Elim-Tox is faster acting, but if a person has a Pitta imbalance, Elim-Tox-O is safer because it first pacifies the reactivity of Pitta dosha before flushing out the toxins.

Liver balance is good for strengthening liver function, and the liver plays a critical role in filtering impurities. Radiant Skin is good for keeping the skin clear -- it enhances digestion and helps keep the blood pure.

Spring is Ideal for Cleansing
Many people feel the signs of ama build-up in spring more than at other times of year, because the toxins that are already in the body start to display their symptoms then. The reason is that if you don't follow the proper seasonal diet and routine during the first two months of winter (November and December), the body can accumulate more toxins then. The channels become clogged, and at the same time because of the cold temperatures, ama gets stuck or "frozen" in the walls of the channels.

At this point there will not be as many symptoms of ama. But during the second two months of winter, January and February, there is a slight warming effect, because the sun is starting to gain in strength and is moving toward its zenith in June, even though it's still cold out. By the time spring comes and it really is warmer outside, the frozen ama starts to melt, and as it flows into the body's channels, the channels become flooded with toxins.

Because these toxins are naturally melting in spring, it's the best time to detoxify. The body is already in the mode of eliminating toxins, so it's a good time to support the body in that role.
To detoxify in the spring, The Council of Ayurveda Physicians recommends that for two months, you take Elim-Tox or Elim-Tox-O, take Triphala or Herbal Cleanse, drink plenty of the Detoxification Tea mentioned earlier, follow the ama -reducing diet, and follow the ama -reducing ayurvedic routine mentioned earlier.

Keeping your body cleansed and free of toxins is a matter of following the ayurvedic diet and routine suitable for your body type and imbalances throughout the year, and following an ama -reducing diet daily routine in spring or any time that your feel a toxic build-up. In this way you can take care of these three areas of the body -- strengthening the digestion, cleansing the liver, and cleansing the bowel. If you do this, over time you will find that less and less toxins build up in your body, and you will enjoy the energy, clarity and lightness of a toxin-free body, mind and emotions.