Every February my family, ie myself, husband and two kids do a two week liver cleanse together. We have chosen the Designs for Health Vegecleanse 14 day detox for several reasons. First, its easy to use. The box comes with single use packets of vitamin packed detox powder that you stir into water (or almond or coconut milk) twice daily. You also take 4 capsules at the same time as each shake, these contain digestive enzymes and amino acid proteins to assist in your detox. I find the flavor pleasant just mixing the shake into water, but if I have time I make a smoothie with a handful of kale, an avocado, a beet, a carrot, an apple or banana, some hemp hearts, freshly ground flax and 2 cups of organic juice. My favorite organic juice is the Antioxidant blend by Smart Juice in a glass bottle. During these two weeks we also avoid gluten and most grains, dairy, sugar, alcohol, most soy and minimize caffeine. For me, cheese is my weakness and I dearly miss it during those weeks. I have tried multiple brands of cheese substitutes…yuck! My husband misses his beer, my daughter her sweets.
I usually develop some detox symptoms in the first 2-3 days of the cleanse, including headache, brain fog, some body aches. This time I developed a headache the first night of the cleanse, then proceeded to have severe body aches and fatigue days two and three. I thought, “wow, this liver cleanse is really kicking my butt!” It is common to experience some detox side effects when your body is mobilizing toxins but they are not all excreting, some absorbing back into the bloodstream. This is common if you have a poorly functioning gallbladder. Imagine my surprise when, after becoming febrile, I discovered my symptoms were acute Covid! This was my first bout of Covid, how ironic that it started the DAY I started my liver cleanse! My kids had it too, albeit much milder. Normally I have energy in abundance, too much in fact and have to burn it off daily with hard exercise. That first week of covid infection was rough however, absolutely NO energy. I even slept through my morning alarm to get up and get my kids to school, which I never do! We all continued taking our shakes and following the liver cleanse diet during our covid infection, as I knew being on the cleanse would only help our livers process the covid virus faster and improve our immune resistance. Fortunately I never had any brain fog, again I attribute this to the liver cleanse helping keep my inflammation levels down. My sense of taste waned but now fully recovered and after 2 weeks I am my normal energetic self again.
I spent those weeks of fatigue catching up my wish list of reading/study topics. I dedicated days to digging into liver physiology, how the liver works, what it does for us and how we can best support it. I even made weeks worth of videos for my members on liver health during this time! So, while having covid is never fun, I am glad I had it when I did and can now say I understand how it feels. Hopefully my happy liver also helped increase my immunity to future covid infections as well!
