Last week, I attended my first session with a Naturopath. For those who don’t know, a Naturopath is someone who treats diseases without the use of drugs or surgery. He said that the digestive system usually starts a daily cleansing starting at approx four am and finishes around noon. This is the critical time to feed your system with only fruits and water and nothing else. No bread, no bacon, no eggs, etc. He only said that it?s very hard for North Americans to understand this because we all heard growing up that breakfast in the most important meal of the day and the more we eat the better.
Chivas989, it’s hard to understand for Italians as well. A colleague of mine drinks a coffee at breakfast, eats an apple at lunch and of course the dinner is huge. His body is a perfect sphere and he is always angry at work (moreover he is our megaboss !).
[quote]Chivas989 wrote:
Last week, I attended my first session with a Naturopath. For those who don’t know, a Naturopath is someone who treats diseases without the use of drugs or surgery. He said that the digestive system usually starts a daily cleansing starting at approx four am and finishes around noon. This is the critical time to feed your system with only fruits and water and nothing else. No bread, no bacon, no eggs, etc. He only said that it?s very hard for North Americans to understand this because we all heard growing up that breakfast in the most important meal of the day and the more we eat the better.
Do you think we should eat a lot in the morning? He always mention that wheat & oats and food made with wheat (etc, pasta, oatmeal etc…) tend to stick to our intestines…He suggested that I eat more wheat-less food, like rye bread, pumperknickel…etc
What exactly is a cleansing supposed to be? The body produces a fluid and gives the pipes an internal enema or something? And it takes 8 hours to accomplish this? Wasn’t John Kellogg, you know the guy who invented the highest GI cereal of all time, also a naturopath? If your “doctor” means that naturopaths have now decided you ought not eat a bowl of corn flakes every morning, well, he’s probably right. Otherwise this sounds like crap.
I’m also curious about the timing–why 4 am? Why doesn’t it start when you go to bed?
And the bacteria that line your intestinal track don’t just turn off at 4 am. Which brings me to another point–your intestines are covered in bacteria. They aren’t getting cleaned off, they don’t need to be cleaned themselves, and you don’t want to get rid of them.
Also, I’m pretty sure a lot of people in the world eat breakfast. Since, technically, “break” “fast” is your first meal of the day after not eating during sleep, I would generally assume outside of famine stricken Sudan, most people in the world do, in fact, eventually break their evening fast and eat. It might not be a traditional American breakfast, but they do eat and eat in the morning.
As far as the “4AM-noon Cleansing”, he’s probably referring to Giant Migrating Contractions (GMCs) of our gut, which actually have a kind of “cleansing” action (I’m hesitant to mention). The 4AM time is rather arbitrary, because it actually depends on when your last meal was consumed (and of course a dozen other factors). I’ve used nocturnal feedings for years without problems, so I question the value of this timing.
As for pasta “sticking” to our intestines, maybe he just doesn’t grasp the concept of chemical and enzymatic digestion.
