The Master Cleanse

Have a look at our recent press:

"In my environmental medicine practice, I attempt to identify toxic elements, physical and spiritual. Then I can help the patient avoid, protect against or detoxify them. I follow that with nutrition to promote as much additional healing as possible. In detoxification, my goal is always to use what works without further harming the patient and I use many, many things.

"The Master Cleanse is simple and combines & surpasses many other detox methods. It literally has been a God-send to my practice. I am grateful to Peter for seeing, loving, and promoting the values of this cleanse."

James F. Coy, M.D.
Past President of the American Academy of Environmental Medicine

Peter Glickman and/or his book on The Master Cleanse, Lose Weight, Have More Energy & Be Happier in 10 Days, have been in The NY Times, The London Times, The NY Daily News, Us Weekly, Geraldo's web blog, CBS News, Fox TV's The Morning Show and on the NBC Today Show!

"I have personally done this cleanse more than 18 times from 2003 onward for periods ranging from 3 to 28 days. I have counseled my wife 3 times, 30 year old son twice, many, many people on the phone, and, more than 1,500 on the Master Cleanse bulletin board during our annual January cleanses (110 in 2004, 228 in 2005, 365 in 2006, 812 in 2007, 709 in 2008 and 1207 in 2009)!

"Please believe me when I say that the Master Cleanse by Stanley Burroughs is, in my opinion, the fastest and most effective way to regain your vitality and to feel the joy of living again, never mind that it will help you lose weight, detoxify and give you astounding energy."

Also available on Audio CD and in Spanish!

Below is a brief summary of some points for doing the Master Cleanse, but I strongly recommend you read Lose Weight, Have More Energy & Be Happier in 10 Days as it was written specifically for new people to give them the information that will make it much easier and answer most of their questions, such as:

It also includes a daily journal form, shopping list, alphabetical Q & A list so you can quickly and easily find what you want, and a section entitled "The 12 Most Common Pitfalls Preventing People from Succeeding on the Master Cleanse / Lemonade Diet." This knowledge has helped thousands of people have an easier time on the cleanse.

"Peter Glickman's Lose Weight, Have More Energy and Be Happier in 10 Days lives up to its title. While I'm grateful to Stanley Burroughs and his family for the original book The Master Cleanser, I found Glickman's book to be of greater use to me due to the wealth of up-to-date examples and modern language. With this book as my daily guide, I completed my first Master Cleanse this March—a full 20 days! Along the way, I looked up issues and found answers to questions that enabled me to keep going. As the Community Education Manager at our local health food store, I have referred many satisfied customers to Lose Weight, Have More Energy and Be Happier in 10 Days and have gotten great feedback. Thanks to Peter and those Master Cleansers for sharing their experiences. Buy the book! Do the Cleanse!"

Kathleen Peterson
Nutrition Stop
4101 Mexico Road, Ste. K
St. Peters, Missouri

For a minimum of 10 days, you drink only the lemonade mixture, made with organic grade B maple syrup, fresh-squeezed lemon or lime juice, and cayenne pepper added to spring, distilled, or purified (NOT fluoridated) water.

"Thanks, Peter...for all your work, all your caring, and all your generosity. It's such a pleasure for me to be a moderator on the Bulletin Board and a part of all this. Yesterday, I met a woman my age who is undergoing chemo for breast cancer and she knew about raw foods and the Master Cleanse, but had not known anyone who 'practiced' both. She has asked me to coach her, starting this week, on going raw or at least incorporating more raw into her life. I'm thrilled...my first client!

"None of this could have happened without you. Thank you. I'll let you know how she's doing. In the meantime, I'm busy experimenting in my own kitchen because I'm off to the Living Light Institute in April, for six weeks, to obtain my Raw Chef Certification. I've made a life-changing commitment to excellent health and a new career, all because of the Master Cleanse and just so you know, my advice to everyone who knows me and sees the change in me is to start with the Master Cleanse and then transition to a raw vegan diet or as much as one can commit to. You figure prominently in my advice, Peter."

Stacy Stableford, Connecticut
Master Cleanse Bulletin Board Moderator and
soon to be Certified Raw Food Chef

I have omitted the exact recipe because I have seen that people get much better results when they have read a book first. You wouldn't believe what people have been told on how to do the Master Cleanse. Even the NY Daily News reported that each lemonade drink was made with a quart of water—that's 4 times the correct amount!

Breaking Your Fast

Breaking a long fast is very, very important. You should ease your way back to solid food after two additional days of orange or grapefruit juice. If you are going back to raw fruits and vegetables, you may do so on the afternoon of the third day. If you have been a meat eater and/or milk products consumer, shift to home-cooked vegetable soup for dinner the second night and lunch the third day with a salad for dinner.

You may keep the lemonade drink as your breakfast drink after that. Of course, you would do better with the least amount of meat and no milk products as they are very productive of mucus and hinder digestion and absorption of nutrients.

I also strongly recommend you take probiotics AFTER you finish breaking your cleanse to replace the good bacteria you lose when you clean your colon thoroughly. These good bacteria manufacture vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B12, and K and help control bad bacteria, such as Candida. By the way, don't waste your money taking probiotics during the cleanse. They'll just get washed out. Do it after the cleanse.

You can read more about what probiotics do for you here.

Detox Symptoms

Detoxifying literally means removing poisons from your body. Once these poisons are gone, you will feel energetic, vital, happy and healthy. It is the poisons that make us feel tired, mentally confused, irritable, unhappy, depressed and ill. Consequently you should look forward to detoxification.

Unfortunately, when the toxins are mobilized, they will bring about those unpleasant feelings and tempt you to quit the cleanse before you are through. So, you need to understand the symptoms of detoxification and ensure that you drink your laxative tea and salt water to stimulate elimination of those toxins.

My experience with the cleanse and with various people doing it has taught me that whatever symptom I experienced one day, it would be gone the next morning with my bowel movements. It is nevertheless helpful to know when you are detoxifying because it helps you to get through that symptom to know it will be gone tomorrow.

I have grouped the detox symptoms I and others have had into five groups:

1. Cravings: Only 1 person in 4 experiences any hunger on this cleanse and drinking more lemonade or water handles usually handles that. I have, however, observed that people on the cleanse crave what they are detoxifying. Proof that this is true is that the cravings usually go away the next morning with bowel movements. You can crave anything when detoxifying, but most likely you will experience cravings for the most toxic foods, such as pizza, hamburgers, barbeque ribs, etc. The way to tell if it's a craving rather than true hunger is to imagine sitting down to a large, green salad. If that inspires you, you're hungry. If all you want is pizza; if that is all you can think about; then, you're experiencing a craving.
2. Tiredness: When your body fights toxins, whether from detoxifying or an infection, it diverts energy into healing and away from the energy you use to work and play. On my first 20 day cleanse, I was not tired except on the fifteenth day. The next morning, I experienced heat in my bowel movements, an indication that acidic toxins were being eliminated. I also lost all sense of tiredness after that morning's eliminations.
3. Irritability: This includes boredom and the desire to "just chew something solid".
4. Physical aches, pains, nausea, vomiting, etc.: These are the most severe reactions and only occur where a person is severely toxic, only a small percentage of people experience these. Fortunately, these have gone away after only a day or two in every case I have heard about.
5. Hot bowel movements: Your body wastes are acidic and when you eliminate the most toxic ones, they actually feel anywhere from warm to burning. This experience is very infrequent, but worth mentioning because hot bowel movements after a day of heavy detox symptoms will confirm that you just eliminated significant toxins.

A Special Note on Headaches

In talking to people doing the cleanse, I've learned that people with caffeine addiction (coffee, soft drinks, etc.) may experience headaches for the first 2 to 4 days.

Final Note

I hope you will have the same wonderful increase in mental clarity, health, energy and positive mental attitude that I and others have found. For more information on how to answer the critics of the Master Cleanse click here.

Not Your Usual Disclaimer

Of course, this information is not intended to diagnose, treat or cure any diseases, and if you have a disease you should seek advice from a licensed health professional, but there is a much more important point here. We are all responsible for our own health. Licensed health professionals can diagnose and prescribe, but in the end it is ourselves who must decide to follow the prescription or not. Therefore, I urge you to learn about nutrition and health so that you can make informed decisions to preserve or regain your vibrant good health. Toward that end, this website is dedicated to your education.

Yours in Health,

Peter Glickman