Elson Haas, MD: The Modern Medicine Man
Sharon Sayler: I’m also curious about another book you wrote that is super popular, The Detox Diet. Please explain what detox is, as for me personally, it’s a scary word.
Dr. Haas: Well, it’s a simple idea that suggests cleaning up our habits, especially our diet, and honestly looking at the habits that we have, and seeing how they affect us.
Every year since 1985 I have offered Seasonal Detox classes at my clinic. I not only lead the courses, but I participate in them myself because detoxing and/or cleansing are key parts of my lifestyle and personal health plan. I do a detox or cleanse at least 3 times a year; in January, the spring and in the fall. I now offer these programs online where we engage in group detoxes, which I have discovered, increases everyone’s success rate.
The key is to be simple: eat nourishing foods and avoid toxins—metals and chemicals—that get into our system from our air, food, water, and cosmetics, etc.
Detoxification is a process that allows the body to reset and return to its optimal function. I have several acronyms in my practice, and a favorite one in my detox diet book is SNACCs. It stands for Sugar, Nicotine, Alcohol, Caffeine, and Chemicals.
One of the reasons I wrote The Detox Diet is to get into detailed chapters on each of those SNACCs. I saw when I traveled around and was starting to talk about detox, that more than 90% of people habitually use one or more of those substances daily.
They’re eating sugar and caffeine every day, and alcohol, cannabis, /or using over the counter meds or sleeping pills at night. I realized that even healthy people need to take a break to clean up from these habits and that even fit people develop congestive and inflammatory conditions, pain, allergies, digestive upset, and more. We could all benefit from this idea of detoxification. In fact, I believe that detoxification is the missing link in Western nutrition.
My motto and my practice is to focus on “Lifestyle first, natural therapies next, and drugs last.” However, many people are using medicines to treat problems when, if we corrected our lifestyle, we probably wouldn’t need them in the first place. When I evaluate people, I do health and life assessments. I look at prevention as mostly the way we live. How are you living today and what’s that going to do to your health 20 years from now if you keep up those behaviors?
Many people think of colonoscopies and mammograms and blood tests as prevention, but they are prevention-oriented tests—looking for an early diagnosis and trying to assess our body and see if it’s at a healthy state—real prevention has to do with cleaning up our habits and our overall lifestyle. I have developed the 5 Keys to Staying Healthy as the real preventative measures to good health.
Sharon Sayler: What are your 5 Keys to Staying Healthy?
Dr. Haas: They are basic ideas as areas of life: nutrition, exercise, managing stress, sleep, and a healthy attitude—and an attitude of gratitude is good when we get up every day, “Wow, I have another day to live.” “I’m living one day at a time.” “I’m going to make it the best day I can.” My attitude changed when I went on my first spring cleanse back in 1975. I had just finished med school, moved to California and realized I knew little or nothing about health and healing. I was out of shape, had allergies, so I started with myself. I did a ten-day juice cleanse—which totally changed my body. My allergies of 20 years cleared up. I dropped weight. I felt great and I realized that I had to make some changes.
On my website, I have a free 5 Keys to Staying Healthy course where you can assess your lifestyle—your nutrition, your exercise program, your stress, your sleep, and your attitude—and then look at where you need to improve.
Sharon Sayler: I gradually cleaned up, like when I quit sugars, and I don’t have alcohol, yet I can’t say I’m totally caffeine free, but I’ve cut way back on it. I did that at different times, not all at once.
Dr. Haas: I did my first cleanse in the early spring; it was the lemonade diet called the Master Cleanse by Stanley Burroughs—with lemon juice, maple syrup, cayenne pepper, water—and that was very dramatic for me. Growing up I ate the standard American diet—lots of sugar, junk, much red meat, fried foods, burgers, fries, sodas, and milkshakes. I was overweight all through my childhood and even in college and medical school, and I had allergies. I would wake up congested and blow my nose and not sleep great because I was always congested.
Burroughs was writing about things that I didn’t learn in medical school; he talked about doing a ten-day juice cleanse, and so I said, “Okay, what do I have to lose?” I started it. I felt pretty crummy for a couple of days, but the third day I remember it was a shift. I woke up clearheaded, I slept five hours, I woke up energized, and I started to feel vitality and a clarity that I hadn’t had before, and I was 27 years old or so.
I started to feel clearer, lighter; my body let go of 20 pounds, I had energy all day, I slept less yet I had more energy when I woke up. I realized that was how I wanted to feel, so I shifted my attitude. My new attitude was basically, “This is the only body I have. I’m going to treat it well. I’m going to treat it with love.”
I started an intensive study of herbal medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, mind-body healing—from the inside out.
There are many benefits of juice cleansing and detox programs —such as reduced inflammation, aches and pains, as well as helping to alleviate digestive upsets, skin rashes, headaches, allergies, lowering cholesterol, and high blood pressure, even rebalancing diabetic patterns. Remember when we keep ourselves healthy, we don’t get sick very easily.
Sharon Sayler: When and how do we start a detox?
Dr. Haas: The spring is a good time to start. The idea of spring cleaning is an eternal nature message. Things start then as they’re fresh; they’re green. I find that when I do juice cleansing, the benefit is that I start cleaning up everything, not just my body. I go through my closet; I get rid of stuff I don’t need. I clean my refrigerator out; I clean my cupboards out. I even do the dishes. The hardest part is just saying, “I’m going to do this.” Be sure to give yourself time and be specific about a length of time that you’re going to do the detox. My website has information about spring cleanses and other seasonal programs if you are interested in trying a program.
Having a guide is helpful. It’s also nice to have other people that you’re doing detox with. When I first started doing these programs 40 or so years ago, people would say, “Oh, I’m on the fourth day of a cleanse,” and people would look at them like, “Are you crazy? You’re going to kill yourself. That’s not safe.” Alternatively, doctors would say, “Why are you doing that? That’s not safe.” Well, it is safe and Detox Programs can help support and improve our health.
Sharon Sayler: I know in your books you write a lot about our mindset, but sometimes mindset can get a little confusing for at least some of the people I talked to tend to fail in this area, especially with an autoimmune disease. They might ask, “Am I ever going to get better?” Often with our first diagnosis of an autoimmune, it’s almost ingrained, tattooed on your forehead as if, this is your life; get real! However, I have found that with your books and your work, you don’t have that same temperament and belief about autoimmune conditions.
Dr. Elson Haas: I think there’s a psycho-emotional, spiritual side to autoimmune conditions, as there is to most dis-ease. In western medicine, it’s what we call, a self-attack. Your body is attacking some parts if itself. That’s why I talk about attitude really being the key, and when you have a loving attitude towards self and others and maybe a little more trust in the world, which is not always easy, especially if you’re watching the news, then it’s stress. I think there’s also inflammation that comes from your body misguidedly making antibodies, or having immune activities against body tissues like with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis or rheumatoid arthritis.
Continue to Page 3 of the Interview with Elson Haas, MD
