MUCH of modern living is toxic, and we suffer for it, with symptoms ranging from fatigue to weight gain and digestion problems. Now, one programme claims it has found a way to get rid of the poisons with a regime that has inspired its own global cult following, with a website, a TV show and support from the likes of the glowing Gwyneth Paltrow who rhapsodises: “I feel pure and happy and much lighter. I enjoyed learning about the incredible benefits of resting your digestive system.”

While not long ago, shunning food at lunch in favour of a green juice might only have been the prerogative of wealthy Hollywood types with private chefs at hand, our cultural fixation on cleansing and detoxing means more of us are pleading to purge, despite the fact there’s little medical evidence to prove it’s good for you.

The push to ‘cleanse’ is sparked by the theory our bodies have hardly evolved since caveman days, and can’t cope with a diet full of refined, processed food and caffeine-laden drinks, not to mention the pesticides, heavy metals and other junk we unwittingly ingest.

Enter ‘Clean’, a 21-day detoxification programme designed by Dr Alejandro Junger, which has topped the ‘New York Times’ best-seller list and is now sweeping the globe.

Coffee

“The programme requires you to be off coffee for its duration,” Dr Junger tells me by telephone from his busy practice in New York, where he is also a cardiologist.

In addition you have to consume a lot of smoothies and ditch wheat and dairy, plus a whole lot of other foods (see panel p5), for the duration.

Still, such restrictions were obviously no impediment to Gwyneth Paltrow, who is one of Junger’s biggest fans.

On finishing the three-week plan, Paltrow (38) said: “I followed it to the letter, and it worked wonders. I feel pure and happy and much lighter — this is amazing.”

The 57-year-old Junger, who moved to New York from Uruguay for postgraduate training in 1990, came up with the programme through trial and error.

Much of it is based on his experiences working at a health retreat in California, and supervising a medical team in India where up to 400 patients a day flocked.

The medic regularly does the three-week detox programme himself.

“The hardest aspect is finishing,” he tells me, taking time out from his busy schedule in New York. “During the programme there is so much structure — you know what to expect from food throughout the day. Your mood becomes stable, since it is not subject to the ups and downs of blood sugar, cortisol and adrenalin, among other influences, hormonal and otherwise,” he says.

“Energy is steady and sleep is sound. Ending the program will mean accepting more dinner invitations, and somehow taking a step back from all the vibrancy I feel while I’m on it.”

Dr Junger was led to seek a better way of eating when he got overweight, burnt-out and unhappy after entering the US in 1990. He had to call on friends and fellow doctors for assistance and they did their best — pills, tests, more pills and suggestions of psychotherapy.

Treadmill

But the young Dr Junger felt restless, even though he was doing well in terms of the status-conscious treadmill of New York, where he was successful in a busy hospital.

“A few months before finishing my fellowship, I started waking up with chest pains,” he recalls. “If I hadn’t already been a cardiologist by then, I would have gone to see one.”

But the problem wasn’t just medical. “That other aspect of the heart — the one I hadn’t had a single class or discussion about in all my years of training — was what was wrong. I was depressed.”

He says his low spirits were partly due to being involved in a medical machine that was trying its best but not producing healthy, happy patients.

So he went to India and worked as a medical volunteer. There he started to observe the impact diet and meditation had on people with less money and means than his previous patients.

Now, some 20 years later, he’s written ‘Clean’. Put simply, it consists of two liquid meals a day and solid food at lunchtime, with lots of raw fruit and vegetables and plenty of soups and juices.

Grains are kept to a minimum, and include barley and quinoa.

A word of advice: read the book before starting the programme, and don’t make the mistake of this sheepish enthusiast, who tried to go straight to the back of the book and do the detox program without the preparation. Not a success.

The idea of detoxing your body and mind isn’t new. The quest to achieve purity by removing waste from the body goes back at least to ancient hatha yoga practices and Indian yogis swallowing cloth strips to pull filth out of their digestive systems.

Luckily, we don’t have to go to such lengths, and a few simple changes can work wonders, according to the millions of fans worldwide who are following the Clean programme with remarkable results.

The franchise is currently rolling out across the world with a heavyweight line-up of celebrity backing that includes the aforementioned Gwyneth Paltrow, Demi Moore and Debra Messing.

Dr Junger monitored Paltrow’s progress personally: “Gwyneth is a good friend, and she’s very curious about health in general and detox in particular. I helped her follow the Clean programme a few times.”

His book looks at topics from global toxicity to anxiety and irritable bowel syndrome, and ranges from the simple to the complex, with thorough analysis of why we should question what we eat — even plants coming from depleted soil, corn-fed cattle and over-processed foods.

The solution: choose wisely, eat slowly, chew well, sit down at mealtime, don’t drink fizzy drinks, move a lot and spend time in the sun. And use good probiotic foods that encourage healthy bacteria in the gut, the key to good digestion.

Dr Junger says many of us take probiotics without changing our diet, an action he compares to “throwing a Tic Tac at a juggernaut”.

A juicer is a must, and a good blender. And plenty of time to prepare your food for the day, as two of the meals are soup or fresh juice.

So is the Clean programme just for the wealthy who can afford chefs and expensive juicers? Not at all, maintains Dr Junger. And don’t worry if you don’t follow the program perfectly, he says — after all, he doesn’t always manage it himself.

“Probably the most common failing we have as humans is we end up doing things we know are bad for us. And everything around food is such an issue for most people,” he says.

“I fall of the wagon constantly, to different degrees at different times. Many just throw in the towel after one indulgence and go crazy — they just keep on doing it, and in their minds they set up a future date in which they’ll start again. This takes people on a downward spiral.

“It’s better to learn how to deal with a slip-up immediately, rather than finding yourself back in the same situation months afterwards.”

He prepares his own meals and juices, unlike many of his celebrity clients who have a personal chef. “My wife and I are the chefs in our house,” says the father of one, who dedicates his book to his six-year-old daughter Grace.

The programme requires you to leave a long break between your last meal of the day and your breakfast, and a good gap before your evening food and sleep.

This might sound tough, but it’s really worth the restful night that results. Ayurvedic and therapeutic massage are also part of the programme.

When I put the Clean programme to the test, I find it’s a wonderful way of eating, although hunger pangs and headaches plague me at first. I also think you’d need some kind of help to maintain it perfectly. A good tip is to make sure you stay put for the 21-day duration, as trips away just aren’t going to work.

There’s plenty of online support to help you on your journey and lots of practical help with the free service, although some of the agonising on the blog can seem a little neurotic, with long debates about how eating after 8pm is a crisis.

Dr Junger says we Irish need to clean up as much as anyone. “My message doesn’t change for the Irish.

“We live in a toxic world. Save your life, learn how to detox.”

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