Today we are joined by Elaina Love. She's a repeat guest who is known as an authority in the organic and raw food spaces, but more than that, she's known for cleanses. It's something that we didn't cover at all in our previous episode together, so I wanted to have Elaina back on the show. Not just because she's amazing and I really enjoy talking to her, but also because she knows so much about cleanses.

Now if you're skeptical about cleanses I was too. And you know, what I came to realize that all the research about fasting is so positive, and cleanses are just a way  to fast, but to give your body some additional ingredients as you're fasting, to help it clean out and get all the benefits of fasting… and then some. I have to say – I'm a convert. I've committed, on the air as you will see, to doing my first cleanse fast fast cleanse and I hope you guys will give it some consideration as well.

What I love about talking to Elaina is she dabbles in both this soft world of holistic, raw food, and vegan, but she also dabbles in the hardcore science, and she knows to tell you what your biomarkers will do, she knows to talk to you about gut permeability and insulin like growth factor in so many other things that I think a lot of people in the space just cannot hold a candle to her.

I think you guys are going to love this episode. I loved producing it for you. And if you do make sure to leave a comment below!

This episode is brought to you by Organifi. Save 20% on their highly-recommended green juice products with coupon code “superhuman.”

This episode is brought to you by my new online course, Become a SuperHuman. Click this link for a special discount!

In this episode, we discuss:

• What has Elaina Love been up to since we last spoke?
• What's the deal with cleanses? Why all the controversy? What is a “cleanse,” really?
• Why do we actually need cleanses? What are the benefits?
• What's the difference between a 3-5 day fast and a “cleanse?”
• What's happening in the body when we fast, from a chemical perspective?
• A discussion of “ketosis,” and why it's beneficial on various different levels
• When should you fast, during the week? How will you feel? Is it hard?
• Why is the ability to fast more useful than you might immediately realize?
• Refresher: What is the diet that Elaina recommends when you're not fasting?
• What about the myth that your body will atrophy if you don't eat very often?
• How can fasting actually clear out pathogens? What about pre-cancerous cells?
• What about colonics? Why would you wanna clean out your colon? (Seriously)
• A discussion of fibrosis, period pain, and fibrin, and why cleanses can really help with it
• A funny story about digestive enzymes working a little too well
• What is a quick, easy-to-follow protocol for fasting safely?
• An interesting benefit of blending our foods into juices – and what you should put in there?
• How to scale up from 1 day fasts to 5 day fasts, safely!
• A kind of wild hack for amplifying your hack and clearing out your gallbladder
• A pretty graphic discussion of what comes out of you when you flush – enjoy!
• What problems has Elaina Love reversed in her own body using liver cleanses?
• Are there any other skills/tips/strategies for higher performance that Elaina recommends?
• What is “dry fasting,” and why might someone try it? (Try at your own risk)
• How can you get in touch with Elaina Love?
• What's the #1 takeaway from this week's episode?

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• Our previous episode with Elaina Love
• Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss
• Our previous episode with Jimmy Moore
• Siddharta by Hermann Hesse
• Reconstructive Enzymes (available on Elaina's website)
• Quantum Eating by Tonya Zavasta
• A free, downloadable worksheet for fasting by Elaina Love

Favorite Quotes from Elaina Love:

Transcript:

Introduction: Welcome to the Becoming SuperHuman Podcast. Where we interview extraordinary people to bring you the skills and strategies to overcome the impossible. And now here's your host. Jonathan Levi.

Jonathan Levi: This episode is brought to you by Organifi. You guys. one of the only things that every nutritional expert that we've had on the show seems to actually agree on is that we all need to eat more vegetables, eat more greens, eat organic, cut out all the processed junk. Well, who has the time, right? Who has the time to go out, do the shopping, make the salads, make the juices, make the smoothies?

And that's what I love so much about Organifi. Their product is an all-organic green juice. It has all of the nutrients that you need, it tastes absolutely amazing. And it's made by wonderful people who I consider to be personal friends. And as listeners of this show, you guys can actually save 20% on your first order. And all you have to do is go to organifi.com. That's OORGANIFI.comand use the coupon code superhuman at checkout.

Before we get started. I just want to let you guys know that this week's episode is brought to you by my new online course Become a Superhuman. And yes, it sounds exactly like the title of the podcast, but this is actually an online course where we go into the various aspects of improving your health.

Specifically your endocrine health, more specifically, yes, more specifically, getting your testosterone up to the optimal levels. Now whether you're a male or a female, as we've learned in numerous episodes of the show, testosterone is the ultimate feel-good motivation, improved health, improved fitness, improved body composition Superdrug. Okay. So everything from your mood to your recovery time and everything in between is affected by your body's endocrine health and what my team and I have done is we've actually taken years of my own self-experimentation, years of research, every possible literature and study we could find, and we've condensed it into a simple 3-4 hour program that you can follow along and make simple, safe, and easy adjustments to your lifestyle to improve your endocrine health.

Now, as listeners of this podcast, you can get a very special discount by visiting JLE.vi/t, that's JLE.vi, just like my name slash T for testosterone.

Greeting, SuperFriends, and welcome to this week's episode, which is graciously provided to you. Thanks to a review by Eedshod43687 from the US of A who says “Become Better”, but there's more…five stars. This podcast has been an excellent resource for me. I've listened to many self-help podcasts and none of them get so into specific details of the tactics of success of the guests. I understand that the podcast has covered so much. It might seem that 150 episodes is enough, but there's so much more and he goes on and on he or she goes on and on.

It's a long review, which we really do appreciate, and then says, if you stop, I would follow you on YouTube, but there's no question. This podcast could get to 500 episodes without one that doesn't help your listeners improve.

Wow. What a review I'm speechless. I really, really appreciate it. And for anyone else out there, if you want to leave a review half that good.

Well, it will certainly make my day on to today's episode. You guys, today, we are joined by Elaina Love. She's a repeat guest who is known as an authority in the organic and raw food spaces, but more than that, she's known for cleanses something that we didn't cover at all in our previous episode together.

So I wanted to have Elaina back on the show, not just cause she's amazing. And I really enjoy talking to her, but also because she knows so much about cleanses. Now, if you're skeptical about cleanses, I was too. And you know what? I came to realize that all the research about fasting is so pro is so positive and cleanses are just away as I learned to fast, but to give your body some additional ingredients as you're fasting, to help it clean out and get all the benefits of fasting and then some, so I'm a convert I've committed on the air.

As you'll see to doing my first cleanse, fast, fast cleanse. And I hope you guys will give it some consideration as well. What I love about talking to Elaina is she dabbles in both this soft world of holistic and talking about food quality and talking about, you know, let's talk about raw food and vegan food, but she also dabbles in the hardcore science and she knows to tell you what your biomarkers will do.

She knows to talk to you about gut permeability and insulin-like growth factor and so many other things that I think a lot of people in the space just cannot hold a candle to her with regards to, so I think you guys are going to love this episode. I loved producing it for you. And if you do make sure to leave a comment on the blog at superhuman.blog now, without any further ado, let me present to you, my SuperFriends, Elaina Love.

Elaina, welcome back, how are you today?

Elaina Love: I'm doing super good, Jonathan. Thanks. It's good to be here.

Jonathan Levi: It's good to have you here. And I have to say I'm so impressed because you are up before dawn to shout with me. So we really, really appreciate it.

Elaina Love:  Yeah.

Jonathan Levi: Elaina a little bit about what you've been working on since the last time you graced the show with your guest hood.

Elaina Love: Well, I've actually moved to bend Oregon, which is in central Oregon in the high desert. And I opened a, it's a cafe that serves organic food and lots of specialty foods so I'm really excited about it.

Jonathan Levi: Very cool. And what prompted the move to Oregon?

Elaina Love: You know, I've been in Arizona for seven years and as much as I love it, I just was ready for a change in like a little bit more community.

And so I came to check it out here and there was a guy that had the cafe, there was just sitting there empty and he just offered it to me, like as a project, because he knew the kind of food I served. So it just was one of those like synchronistic moments in life where everything kind of falls into place.

And I've been here for about six months and I absolutely love it.

Jonathan Levi: Amazing. Amazing. So it sounds like a really, really fun project.

Elaina Love: Yeah. Super fun. And the customers and the people I'm meeting and just the people in bend are just really cool people and a lot of really like conscious-minded people that want to make changes in their life and their diet. And so this is really awesome to have this outlet to meet super cool people that want to have great things happening

in their life.

Jonathan Levi: Very cool. Very cool. So for those who didn't listen to the previous episode, they should do that. Although no prior knowledge, I guess, will be required for this interview, but I realized after we got off the line that you're known as somewhat of an expert on cleanses and we were so busy talking about, you know, enzymes and organic health and things like that. We didn't even get to cover cleanses. So I wanted to have you back on the show and I wanted to dive right into cleanses.

And the first question I want to have is what's the deal with cleanses? What are they, why are they important? I guess we'll get into more detail, but how do you define a cleanse.

Elaina Love: Yeah. I mean, there is a lot of, I would say probably controversy around cleansing because some people say, well, you don't actually really need to cleanse the body of self-cleansing, but I begged to disagree because we live in a modern world. We don't live in a time where we're living outside and hunting and gathering and, and eating whole wholesome foods.

So in this day and age with pollution and with all this stuff, that's taxing our livers, especially our livers seem to be the frontline, the first defense to the world, whether it's putting some kind of chemical on our skin, as you go to a, a natural, or you go to a bathroom somewhere and you put the soap on and that's full of chemicals and you know, the air we breathe and all of that. Plus the food we're eating all the sugar, the fast foods, the junk food.

So we need to take time out. I would say at least four times a year, just to take a break from all this. Eating and to let our livers rest and to actually use supplements, to cleanse out our body, our colons, our liver, our stomach, like all of it.

And what happens after even three days of say, doing a cleanse. Your mind gets sharper. You feel like more of a zest for life, more confidence. Like I've seen this happen over and over again. Of course, people that need to lose weight. The weight just starts to melt off and I do you're right. I am kind of an expert on cleansing and I've led a lot of cleanses over the years.

And the thing I see over and over again is even though people are like, ah, I don't really feel like doing this cleanse because it is a little more work than just eating. In the end, they always say, Oh my gosh, I feel so much better. My digestion works better, you know, on and on so many testimonials of how great people feel once they've done a cleanse.

Jonathan Levi: Very cool. And that's a really great overview and I feel like this is coming at the perfect time for me because just over the weekend, I was reading Tim Ferriss's latest book, which I'm horribly behind everyone else has probably already read it. Tools of Titans. And he's talking about longer fasts three to five-day fasts and reading about the research and resetting the insulin of the body and doing this, all these different things to kind of improve metabolism, improve focus.

And so I've decided I'm going to do one of these. So I want to ask you, you know, what's the difference between. A cleanse and a 3-5 day fast. And I will say, you know, his protocol that he advocates in, it sounds to me more like a cleanse because he, he talks about, you know, the only thing I'll eat is I'll maybe have some coconut oil to help the fast go easier and I'll drink tons and tons of water and green tea and lemon water.

So I guess what's the difference between those two things.

Elaina Love: But we are fast fastened, a cleanse. Okay. So a fast, they usually be for people like a 24 hour or even like, people are talking about intermittent fasting where you don't, you know, you have a 12 to 14-hour window a day where you're not eating and what, the first thing about that, which is great is it does give your liver a break.

Like I said, anything that we're consuming, even a cup of tea can stimulate the liver to produce enzymes. And so when you just give your liver this break of like, not having anything but water for 12 hours, let's say 12-hour window. That's super awesome for you. But if you start going into 24-36 like you were saying a three-day fast, here's a few things that start to happen.

One is your insulin-like growth factor starts to lower. It's called IGF1 is the name for it, but basically what that is is so growth factors can be good when you're growing. But when we get, we come adults, we actually have too much of it. And that can cause cancer. It can cause a lot of illness in our body.

So when we start going on these longer fasts, that lowers, I mean, scientific proof shows that that lowers in our body. And that completely resets our immune system. So we get a super-strong immune system from fasting. The other thing is, like I said, again, the liver just gets a break for three days. Now, what happens after three days?

On the third day, we go into what's called ketosis. So the first couple of days we're living off of the glycogen in our liver, which is basically the sugar in our liver. And by the third day, You shift over into using ketone bodies, which is also known as fat. So we're using fat for fuel. And so any old, so toxins hanging out in the fat cells.

So whenever we eat toxic food, it goes to the fat cells, which is a lot of times why people do accumulate a lot more fat when they're eating a lot more junk food, or even when their hormones get off from being exposed to too much toxic activity. Like if you work somewhere where you're always exposed to toxins.

Well, anyway, everything that we're exposed to goes into our fat cells. So when you start on this fast and you do three days, five days, seven days, two weeks, and some people do extended vest, the toxins that are in the fat cells start to get demolished and start to leave the body. Now there's a lot of side effects to that.

So when I teach people how to cleanse, I make sure that they are taking these metabolic enzymes and that they are doing things to flush their colon and that they are, you know, taking care to take care of the complete body, because I think we need the support in that, but it is really important to put this time aside.

And I tell people to do like, maybe take, you know, a Friday off a new Friday, Saturday, Sunday cuts is perfect. Cause you're not going to have a lot of energy during that time, but then once it's over, usually people feel like so amazing.

Jonathan Levi: That's interesting. And that's something that I've heard from people is you'll have a lot of focus because as the brain switches, and we've talked a little bit about ketosis on the show, but as the brain switches over to ketones as a fuel source, you start to see this incredible sense of focus.

You know, Jimmy from living Lavita, low-carb said if, if you could bottle that feeling as a drug, it would be the most popular performance-enhancing drug. And I think it's true because you really feel like you're supercharged, but physical energy, everyone tells you, you know, don't go for a run don't weight lift when you're doing an extended fast, the most you should do is kind of a brisk walk, if that.

Elaina Love: Exactly. And the reason for that is because you do get bursts of energy, but what happens is you get bursts of energy, you're out on this run or this walk, and then suddenly the energy dips, like, because you're going through this gluconeogenesis where the glucose in your body can have a little surge, but then it goes away as your muscles use it.

So you can kind of get stuck in this state of like, Oh, I thought I felt great now. Like I want to crawl home, you know? And there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with feeling bad when you're cleansing, you don't have to feel bad. Some people never feel bad. But what I do know this has been my experience, the thinner, the person.

The deeper, the cleanses because they have less of the fat stores and less of the glucose to rely on because let's say a heavyset person, they're probably going to have a lot more glucose stored in their liver. So every person is completely different. If you're a fast metabolizer, you're probably going to have a little bit rougher of a cleanse.

If you're a slow metabolizer, it might be a super easy. And you're like, I could do this all day long. I could do this for a week. And so I just want to say to people, if you are someone that fasts or cleanse or wants to try it, to be loving to yourself and be gentle on yourself because each of us is different.

And I also want to say as the more you do it, the easier it gets and the more exciting it gets, you know, I've been doing this for 20 years. And when I first got into it, my first couple of fast forward, hard, and then I got like, kind of like, almost like Jimmy said, like addicted to it where it's like, I can't wait for Wednesday.

I'm going to do my 36 hour fast. Cause I just always felt so amazing and I didn't even want to end it cause like my brain gets really sharp. I actually did a fast yesterday because Sunday is now my fasting day and I was up late and just, you know, organizing my house. Cause I just moved to do all these things and you know, it's like, You don't really even need to sleep that long when you're fasting because your body doesn't need to sleep as much to process food.

So the more you do it, the better it gets. And it does become a little bit like a drug. You get like excited. Like the first I got to say, the first half of the day of fasting is not. Fun because you're hungry a lot of times like you just get those little hunger grills. If you time your hunger, it usually only lasts like a minute and then it goes away.

So it comes in waves. And then the last half of the day, you know, for me anyway, I'm just like, all right, I'm on a roll. I'll be drinking some green juice and teas and stuff like that. Not just water, but it just gets easier and easier to do.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah. I definitely found that you know, the first time it was like a 12 hour fast and it's, you know, looking back in retrospect, it seems so ridiculous when you think, okay, today I can go 26 hours and you know, not even worry about it.

And at that point, I'm eating cause it's time to eat. Not because I'm hungry, but when you start out. I think so many people are like 12 hours without food. I get hungry after four hours, I have to eat a meal in between lunch and dinner. And if anything, I think it's, you know, Tim Ferriss also talks about this aspect where the ability to fast is actually a kind of a powerful thing.

And he references Herman Hessey's Siddhartha, which is like if you can fast, you then have this whole new unlocked layer of patience, you know, and he talks about it in Siddhartha. In the case of business where, you know, because I can fast, I don't have to make any desperate decisions, but also I think it's very important if you have that ability in your back pocket.

I think a lot of times, you know if you're in the airport or you're on a plane and you're like, well, I need to eat. I'm starving right now. So I'm just going to eat the junk in the airport. And for me having that toolkit in my back pocket saying, you know what. I can make it until the next flight, the next connection.

I don't have to eat junk right now. And in fact, it's healthy for me to go on this flight fasting or whatever it may be. You know, if you're traveling and you want to take a day off because you're in Hong Kong and there's no fresh fruits and vegetables. Okay. You know, it's been a powerful tool for me.

Elaina Love: Yes. That's exactly right. And it's funny that you should bring that up because that's exactly what I teach my students. So, you know, some people might know this, but I have a culinary school and that's what we talked about last time. And I teach people how to eat a super clean, healthy, you know, gluten-free diet.

And it's been a plant-based school for 20 years now that I've been teaching it, but now I'm kind of adding a few other elements into it. But in the end, what it is is it's teaching people how to eat a diet that doesn't include grains and is organic and is wholesome. So what happens by the end of this course is they're like, well, what do I do now?

When I go to the airport or what do I do when I'm out in the world? And that's the exact thing I say is like, when you travel, if you don't have food with you just use that time to fast, what else are you doing? It's not like you need a lot of energy to sit on an airplane. Like you can use that time to go without food and you do have that tool.

And that's what I love that I feel like I've taught myself with fasting because I have done extended fast is I feel like I have another, like, you know, people talk about, Oh, what happens if something happens in the world and our food supply ends and people start to panic, right? If you fast, did you know that you're safe?

You're cool. You're like, I can do this. And it's really an awesome feeling to have to know that you're like, I'm not gonna be one of those people panicking.

Jonathan Levi: Right. And also, you know, it's like, there is this thing in our culture, just like we idolize not sleeping. It's like a badge of honor to say like, Oh, I only slept four hours on the flip side, we idolize this.

Well, you need to eat every two hours. And especially if you talk to people in like the weightlifting, you know, fitness, like, well, after six hours, your body starts decomposing muscle mass, which like anyone with a basic understanding of biochemistry understands that that's not right. Like not at all.

Elaina Love:  Not true at all.

Jonathan Levi: Right. And you're not going to lose muscle mass, even on a three-day fast because we have so much glycogen in our liver and in our muscles. And then you know, fat is such a better source of energy than breaking down body tissue.

Elaina Love: Exactly.

Jonathan Levi: But we all carry around these beliefs that we've been told. And I don't know where it came from.

It comes from kind of a diet industry that says never be hungry.

Elaina Love: Right. I think it's a lot of brainwashing.

Jonathan Levi: Oh yeah. Absolutely.

Elaina Love: And on that note too, like on the third day. So if you do decide to do like a five-day fast, so those last couple of days, what happens is the brain. So the body makes poop, right? Like everything that we do, like we have bacteria in our body, actually, we're mostly bacteria. So even if you have yeast, mold, and fungus, which I guarantee you, most people probably do have in their body, like unwanted use mold and fungus, what happens is on day three, the body starts to gobble that stuff up.

And what I love about that is it's called pathogen. So any kind of pathogen you have in your body, the longer you fast, the more your body's going to eat that for fuel. And I love that too. So your brain, especially any of the poop that's in your brain, like from bacteria, gets gobbled up. And that's why after a three-day fast, you feel like, like, I guess I can explain it as like a shower for your brain.

Like, you feel like this clarity that you haven't felt since you can remember. So anybody that's thinking about it, I just want to give you that reward at the end, like to know that. Even if you're feeling bad while you're on the path, as soon as you introduce some stuff back in some, you know, your regular eating programs suddenly you're like, Whoa, like my mind is so sharp.

My mind is so clear. And it's also since you have talked about ketosis a lot and different things like that. If someone is planning on trying to do a ketogenic diet, it's a great way to get into ketosis and then just keep going on a ketogenic diet at that point, which I recommend to a lot of people.

Cause sometimes it's just hard to get off those carbs. So if you can just get yourself in this cleanse mode and then when you come back out, you can kind of start a new program because your body's not like hankering for all that sugar anymore.

Jonathan Levi: And also, I, I realized as you were speaking, talking about getting rid of all the garbage, I actually recently learned that if you were to fast, if you fast three to four times a year or cleanse either way that you can actually because precancerous cells are kind of less adept to fasted states. You can actually do like a quarterly clean-out where you get rid of pre-cancerous cells before they become cancerous cells. Of course, because cancer cells are notoriously difficult to get rid of.

Elaina Love: Yeah. So I want to clarify if I can a little bit about cleansing versus fasting, cause it is kind of two different things because fasting is cleansing.

Your body will cleanse, but there's a few things that you can do as part of your cleanse. That's going to actually help one, make the process way easier and to. Get rid of a lot more stuff, because like I said, the body is dumping stuff. So that's why a lot of times people feel bad. So there's a few things you can do.

And one is what I mentioned before is like colonics. What colonics are, is there like a, a super enema. So enemas are where you just take a bucket and you flush your colon with water. And a lot of people are like squeamish about they're like, Ooh, that sounds weird. But once you've done one or two of them, you're like, Whoa, that's not, not that bad at all. And you feel so good because of whatever was in your colon. So your colon, when you're on a cleanse or on a fast, remember, you're not really pushing food through because you're not eating food. So sometimes stuff just sits in the colon. And a lot of that is toxic stuff. And so then you start to feel bad and those toxins start to, so because our colon is permeable, which means we absorb our nutrients through our colon, but we also can push toxins back out through the colon, into the bloodstream.

And so you can start to feel like headaches, dizziness, nausea just generally crappy. So by doing a colonic, which is where you go to a professional and they do all the work. You just lay on a table and they flush your colon with like, 5-10 gallons of water, you can feel really amazing from doing that. But what I recommend to most people is get your own home enema kit, watch a YouTube tutorial, there's tons of them. I also have one, I think, on my website on how to do your own anima at home. And then you can start doing that every day or doing these cleanses are fast and it makes a huge difference. So that's one way is just to keep that colon moving.

 Another way is to take some natural things that move your colon. One of the things I like to do is called Oxy magnesium, which is magnesium combined with oxygen. And so it's not a laxative. So if anybody out there is like, Oh, I can't do laxatives for whatever reason, this is actually it oxygenates the colon. And what it does, is it flushes anything in there that's no longer needed.

So it's not causing your muscles to contract in your colon where some people get cramping when they do a laxative. This one is actually just flushing oxygen through the colon. So you might feel like a little like there's bubbles in your colon a little bit, like, Ooh, here's something squeaking in there, but what it's doing is just think of it as cleaning it out.

So I really recommend doing high doses of regular magnesium or getting something called Oxy mag, which is oxygen and magnesium together. And taking like up to five of those a day. And that makes a huge difference for my people when I have them doing that. A lot of times, if people are on a cleanser like, Oh, I feel constipated.

Because I don't have any fiber pushing things through, so this is a great way to get that stuff moving through. So that's the second thing you could do is get something to move stuff through your colon.

Jonathan Levi: And is that specifically while doing a cleanse or in general?

Elaina Love: I think while doing a cleanse is the best time, but a lot of people take them on a regular basis just because it does create more oxygen.

And as we know, oxygen in the blood is really good for us. Like when we do like the Wim Hof method where we're getting all that oxygen into our brain. So it's the same idea. It's just oxygenating your body. So the third thing is some kind of enzyme, which is what I talked about last time. So I have something I called reconstructive enzymes that we absolutely love because they have what's called serrapeptase in them.

And serrapeptase is something that breaks down or gobbles up blood sled in your body. It goes in and actually kind of destroys any fibrin, and fibrin hangs out if someone has PCOS, which is polycystic ovarian syndrome, or they have a fibroid tumor somewhere in a lot of women notice that more than men, but in their breast tissue or in their ovaries or things like that, where they get painful periods, this is all due to too much fibrin in your body.

And so these enzymes break that down, but also for anyone, not just women. For men to any kind of scar tissue. Like if you have joint issues where it's like, Oh, I injured my shoulder four years ago and it just always hurting. If you're on a cleanse and you're doing these reconstructive enzymes, it's going to break down that fiber.

And so quickly that you're going to get rid of so much inflammation, including inflammation in the brain, which again goes back to why we get so much more mental clarity when we do a cleanse. So anybody that's got any kind of has been eating grains or dairy or acidic foods for any length of time is going to have inflammation in the body.

We all have a little bit of inflammation, but some more than others. If you have pain in any part of your body, this cleanses doing reconstructive enzymes or serrapeptase enzymes, also known as metabolic enzymes. There's a few words for it. Some people call it proteolytic enzymes. Some people call it metabolic enzymes, and other people call it systemic enzymes, but it's all the same word.

It's different than digestive enzymes. What digestive enzymes do is break down the food you're eating. What metabolic or systemic enzymes do is break down old gunk in your body, in your tissues, in your blood, in your brain, in your colon. So I can't say enough good stuff about using some kind of systemic or metabolic enzyme while you're cleansing.

Your cleanse is going to go from a 4 to a 10, like Jimmy Moore talked about that addiction of like, Oh my gosh, I feel so good. What is it? These enzymes actually help, like give you a boost during that cleanse as well.

Jonathan Levi: So I have to admit you were so generous to send me some of those digestive enzymes and I've been saving them because I know if I take them with food on regular days, they're not going to be as good. And I'm now amped up and I'm ready to take them when I do my fast.

Elaina Love: Good. Yeah. The reconstructive enzymes. Yeah. Oh good. Yeah. I wanted to send those too. Cause I want to see, you know, what results you could get from them. I actually have a funny story to tell about that. My business partner, Kaitlin, she started taking them when we do mega doses. Like I took 10 this morning. A lot of times I'll do cause I fasted yesterday. So I wake up early in the morning when my stomach's still empty and I'll take like 10 on an empty stomach with just water before I meditate, because I know I'm not going to be moving around. She started doing her 10 a day and she has this old injury in her shoulder that has a lot of scar tissue.

Cause she used to get her shoulder used to come out of joint. And it hadn't come out of joint for a while. And she started taking these enzymes and it broke down so much scar tissue in her shoulder because her shoulder dislocated again, it was not a good story, but it's just to show how good these enzymes work.

And I'm like, maybe you should back off of those for a while. It's like you think so it can be like super therapeutic, but anybody that's got like tied up shoulders are tied up joints. It's going to help break down that vibrant. And the other gal that we know that has PCOS and the polycystic where you just get these painful periods and like, it's just so painful.

She had tried everything. She had been the doctor she'd tried all the supplements she took. I think one to two bottles of these. You know, over the period of the month. And she said that it completely reversed everything and that she released a tissue came out of her and a lot of fibroids released from her body, which is so crazy.

I was like, can we use that testimonial? She's like, yeah. And her mom ordered like, her mom is the one that I know she ordered like 10 models for she's like, we got to keep her on these. So it is something that a lot of people don't know about. And I don't think the medical industry wants us to know about, but they're super amazing.

Jonathan Levi: Wow. Do you think that that would be a good thing to recommend to someone who suffers from menstrual cramps severely? Or is it, you know, slim case that it's the same thing.

Elaina Love: It's worked for a lot of people on it. I mean, the actual company talks about, how great it is. I wish I would've known about it because when I was younger, I had all those issues before I started eating healthier.

So I mean, of course, changing your diet is going to make a big difference, getting rid of the inflammatory foods. And that's where we want to start, because we don't want to think of anything as like this, Oh, I can eat whatever I want and then take these enzymes. Cause I, lot of people will do that. You know that, but this in conjunction is going to be like this miracle.

I mean, it really does work. I mean, I'm proof of it too. I don't really have any inflammation left in my body. And I'm in a stage right now where I'm going into I'm in peri-menopause. So I'm going into menopause because I'm 52 and you know, like hot flashes have gone away. I just feel like it's really helped balance the hormones a lot and keep everything more balanced. So it's really working.

Jonathan Levi: So it sounds like I'm going to be sharing that bottle then.

Awesome.

Elaina Love: Oh we'll have the support Israel.

Jonathan Levi: I appreciate that. Yeah. I'll let you know how it goes. So Elena, I wanna change gears back because we got people so excited about the cleanses, but I'd like to give people if possible, a protocol, you know, because whether it's a fast or a cleanse, I think it's important how long, how much, what do they consume? You know, what are the warning signs? I feel remiss sending people on their way with that level of excitement about cleansing and fasting without telling them how to do it safely.

Elaina Love: Okay. Well, what I think people should do if you haven't passed it at all is start out with your 24 hour fast kind of get your feet wet.

So that's your first week. That's your first assignment is just to see, like on a Sunday, if you can do between 24 and 36 hours, if you can do 36 hours, that's ideal, which would be. If we're going to do Sunday, you wake up, you go to bed, you know, seven o'clock Saturday night, you stop eating, right? So that's your dinner.

You finished by seven. You go to bed, you sleep all night and then you fast the whole next day. And you sleep overnight again on Sunday night. And then you eat again on Monday morning at 7:00 AM. So that would be 36 hours. If you can't get that far, then I would say. Do dinner to dinner. So you have dinner at seven and then your next dinner on Sunday night, just have something light, but you could have a light dinner on Sunday night and you need to preplan what you're going to eat.

Because if you just say, I can eat whatever I want at 7:00 PM, people tend to overeat. So I would say, okay, I can have like, You know, a blended soup or, you know, you can have like a salad with some avocado just to keep it something really light. And then the next day you can eat again. So that's one way.

And then I would say that when you're, like you said, change of season four times a year, I do usually right around the Equinox and the solstice, which is the 21st of December is coming up. The 21st of December is going to be the solstice, but you can do it before then for sure. I like doing it around the holidays too because people tend to overindulge with Thanksgiving and Christmas and Hanukkah and all the other holidays that people celebrate during this time of year.

So they try and do one either before or after or both to do a three day. So three days is going to be good, get your feet wet cleanse. And maybe that's all you ever want to do is three days. And like I said to pick a weekend would be great. Like you could start on a Friday and you could still work while you're on your first day, but by your third day, you're probably going to want to just have a day off.

Just to let your body rest because if you're fasting and you're running around doing all kinds of stuff and you're not going to get the full effects, because part of it is. Stress causes a lot of our problems. I would say stress is worse than eating bad food. Like that's the number one thing for us. And if you're fasting and trying to get stuff done, like, Oh, I got this deadline and I'm doing this, or I'm doing that or even running the kids around whatever it is you're doing, it's not going to be as effective.

So I really like begged my people, like, please. If you're going to fast or do like three days, please take at least that last day to not do anything to literally, you know, rack up some movies you want to watch or get some books out and just lay on your couch and chill, drink your juices, drink your liquids.

So what a fast would include what a three-day cleanse would include. I have three different ways. I do it, and I actually do have a cleanse on my website that you can just look and see what it looks like without having to purchase it or anything. But it's basically, I recommend three ways to do it.

One is a juice fast where you do green juices and I recommend not doing like apples or carrots or beets in your juice because you know, those of you guys who've been listening to this podcast know that I'm sure you talk a lot, Jonathan, about like ketogenic and getting into ketosis, which means low carb, which, and carrots and beets and apples, especially with other fiber are going to be a more high carb. So like a green juice would be something like celery, cucumber, lemon, and maybe some parsley or kale or something leafy green like that. You can make a bunch of juices and keep those in your fridge and just live off of those for three days, which is what I tend to do. Cause I love the way I feel what juices you could have, all the herbal tea you want.

No caffeine. I know Tim does a little bit of green tea, which is definitely better than coffee, but you might want to even take a break from any caffeine cause that stimulates the liver as well. So that's the first kind of cleanse and all the water you want. Of course, tons of water. Keep yourself hydrated.

The second kind of cleanse is what I would call a juicing and blended cleanse. And these recipes are tons of recipes on my website. So we'll give you this information, how to get all the information. A blended soup would be something like for me like I'll blend half of an avocado with some parsley and some, you know, I'll put some cumin and some spices in there and then I'll throw in some cilantro, parsley, cilantro, maybe a zucchini.

Things like that into your blender with some hot water and you get this yummy creamy blended soup, onion powder is great in there too. Cause you get all these flavors, you don't feel deprived. So you could eat that. Some people even do bone broth on their fast. So that was kind of getting into yeah. A different range because you know, your body's going to definitely love the nourishment from that.

But I would say the more you can clean and green, you can keep it the better. And then other blend things you can do is smoothies. And for me, I don't do fruits in my smoothies. Maybe you could throw like a handful of raspberries or something, something really low-glycemic. But again, it sounds weird, but you could throw us a zucchini into your blender for a smoothie, put some cinnamon, but some Mesquite, put some cardamom, you know, throw a zucchini and maybe a handful of spinach and some coconut milk in that. Like you could have coconut because the liver doesn't have to process coconut the way it does other fats, coconut bypasses the liver, which is awesome. So you could do, like, that would be called a juicing/blended cleanse. So you could do a little bit of both.

You could even make your own veggie broth on the stovetop just by using veggie scraps and. Boiling up that stubbles and then straightening it out and drinking that all day long. Cause there's so many minerals in vegetables, but then you won't be getting the fiber. So your colon won't have to work so hard.

We did have you blend it's called pre-digesting. So you're pre-digesting your food because guess what? The mouth and the stomach have to usually work really hard to get that food broken down because let's face it, most of us don't chew until it's liquid. So by blending food, you're actually giving your body a break from eating by blending it. So if you're someone that's like, there's no way I can fast. I'm just too busy. You could do a blended cleanse. So take anything you would like any healthy foods you would normally eat, even like, let's say a zucchini noodle pasta, maybe you were going to do a marinara, like a yummy tomato marinara with zucchini or pesto, you could blend that all in the blender and make us some creamy kind of soup out of it.

So there's a lot of different ways that you can get through this. The third one is to do, um, it's kind of basically I call it a raw food cleanse where you're doing maybe juicing and teas in the morning, then lunches are blended soup and then dinners like a light salad, maybe like. Super yummy lettuces with all your favorite shredded vegetables on them and then a nice light dressing, maybe some melted coconut oil with a little bit of onion powder and, um, your favorite spices and kind of just keep it really simple.

But then you get to chew and you get a little fiber, but it's all to snow grains, super anti-inflammatory foods. And that's sometimes for people a little bit easier way to get through the three days, it would still be considered a cleanse because you're not eating grains. You're not eating heavy fats, you know, you're keeping the diet really light.

And then if you want, like, so the first time you do three days, and then if the next time maybe you could do a five day cleanse. And what I do when I do a five-day cleanse with people is I include a liver flush with that. And what the liver flushes is, because our liver performed so many functions, actually over 500 functions.

There's so much involved with what the liver does. It, uh, actually really helps with so when people aren't losing weight, a lot of times, it's just because their livers bogged down. So when someone does a liver flush or liver cleanse, they notice that they start to lose weight more effectively. They're things move through their colon more quickly.

So they're having a lot more bowel movements in a day. Their allergies might go away and their metabolism speeds up. Anytime you have excess gas or bloating, sometimes you just need to do a liver flush. If your tongue is coated or you have high cholesterol or high blood pressure, if you have any kind of fatigue and some people have been diagnosed with fatty liver, so all of this.

Oh, and including also eyesight, like I've had my eyesight improve after a liver flush.

Jonathan Levi: Really?

Elaina Love: Yeah. Yeah. Because, um, the liver, if you can't process fats correctly, sometimes if I eat. It hasn't happened in a while, but if I would eat too much fat, I would notice my vision would get a little blurry. So once you do a few liver flushes, then you can eat all the fat you want.

Cause I know now with the ketogenic diets, people are eating more fat. Your liver does still have to process all that fat and you do need to produce bile. So we're supposed to be producing, believe it or not, six cups of bile a day. And bile is produced by the liver and stored in the gallbladder, which is a little tiny organ above the liver.

And when we're not producing enough bile where our digestion slows down, when we're not digesting fats, we're not getting the most out of our food because bile is this bright yellow acid that squirts into the stomach to help create a really low pH in the stomach to digest that fat. So when you do a liver flush, what happens is you dilate all your bile ducts and your gallbladder ducks and your intrahepatic ducts, which are all the ducks that connect to the colon and the liver and the gallbladder, like everything.

And they're these tiny little ducks, this liver flush, which I give people supplements to do, helps to dilate the bile ducks and soften the stones. So then on the fifth day, maybe you've heard of this. I don't know if you have, tell me if you have, you drink grapefruit juice blended with olive oil. And then you go to bed and you wake up the next day and you pass out a ton of old nasty gunk from your liver and gallbladder. Have you heard of this?

Jonathan Levi:  I haven't. I've heard about the grapefruit juice effect. I haven't heard about the grapefruit juice and the olive oil though.

Elaina Love: Yeah, because they work synergistically because of the, all the. Whatever the chemicals are in the grapefruit and combined with the olive oil, it helps to really break up.

It doesn't break down the stones, what happens is the five days we do a protocol having you do castor oil on your liver, which is on the outside. You don't drink it. And that softens stones. And then you drink something called malic acid, which is also in apples and it's an Apple juice and Apple cider vinegar.

That's why a lot of people take Apple cider vinegar for digestion because it's the malic acid in there that actually helps to produce more bile one, and break down any kind of old sludge that's in the liver. So it actually makes your digestion improve. So what we do is give a five-day protocol of taking malic acid every day, and it just tastes really sour.

You drink it in tea or water. And then by the fifth day, you can drink this grapefruit juice and olive oil. And after that day, people feel amazing. They feel so much lighter, so much better. So that's kind of what I would consider more of a cleanse versus a fast as you're actually taking supplements. And I talked about that oxy magnesium. You're taking that to keep your colon moving the whole five days. You're taking malic acid to break down the stones and dilate the bile ducts. So it's almost like getting ready to give birth because people tell me, well, what if a stone gets stuck? Well, if you take this, uh, malic acid, it helps dilate the ducks so that nothing will get stuck.

And I've actually passed stones on the third day before I've even taken the oil because some people say, Oh, you're not passing stones. It's just oil. I can guarantee you, those people have never done a flash because what happens is when those stones come out, they are not just olive oil. They have old like motor oil, bright yellow gunk on them.

Like it can be anywhere from a black stone to a white stone, to a green stone, to a yellow stone. And they look like peas. So don't worry. They don't come out through urethra. They come out, you just poop them out. So don't people get worried, like where are those going to come out? They think I'm gonna like kidney stones.

No, no, no. You just flush them out on your colon on that last day, there's so much, I want to share with you, man. I can take two hours explaining even just deliver flush. That's why I'm kind of going quickly over this, but if you've not done a liver flush, I would seriously consider it. And that's kind of one of my specialties.

I just led the group here in Oregon, 10 people on a liver flush, and we're doing another one in November because I feel like they're so important and I've done over 40 of them. And I've really cleaned up my liver over the years. And now I only need to do like one or two a year. And it's something you want to do as a lifelong practice because again, we're exposed to so much junk. And I guess-

Jonathan Levi: I mean, people can go and they can test this stuff, right? Like you, I forget which exactly which biomarker indicates liver function. But I imagine over the years you've tested the biomarkers and seen in your blood work the difference.

Elaina Love: Yeah, for sure. And I mean, for me, I've never ever had any liver issues per se or gallbladder issues per se, because I got into, you know, from my last time we talked, I got into raw foods 20 years ago and just did all my own biohacking line people.

Weren't doing, you know, this biohacking like they're doing now. They weren't like figuring stuff out. And so I just kind of had to figure a lot of it out on my own. And I completely reversed all of my, I had eczema, I had skin problems, I had menstrual problems, I had, you know, headaches constantly, I had chronic pain in all my joints, so I reversed all of that just by doing cleanses.

And by doing like raw food diet at that time, which I'm not doing a hundred percent anymore, but that time I knew I needed to do these cleanses and these liver flushes took me to the next level. Cause I was doing really well on just these other colon cleanses these things I was doing. But the liver flush has suddenly, I noticed the bloating went away and my digestion improved, my energy improved. I had a, more of a zest for life after my first couple liver flushes. So that's why I'm so passionate about it. Now. I'm like, people need to know about this. And anywhere you go online, you're going to hear two schools of thought. Some people are going to say it's amazing. And other people are going to say, Oh, it's a bunch of hooey. But those people that say it's not real, have not done it. So, yes, I have had.

So to answer your question, I haven't personally been tested for my liver and gallbladder, but I've had at least four people to this point, come to me to do the cleanse whose doctors have told them, you need to get your gallbladder removed.

You've got stones. One woman was in the middle of a gallbladder attack, whatever you want to call it. Like she was experiencing extreme pain in her gallbladder and in her ducks. And we put her on the liver flush and by the end she passed the stones. And she went back and got tested and all of these women, this happened to it, did not, they need to get their gallbladders removed.

So it's real. And you can actually fix your gallbladder and you can fix your liver and you do not need to get a piece of your body removed.

Jonathan Levi: I love it.

Elaina Love: That's why I think it's so important.

Jonathan Levi: I love it and the best part is like, you know, there's no fancy diet for sale here. It's just like,

Elaina Love: No. It's cheap. It's easy.

You can do it on your own like you don't even need my stuff, like you can go online and even just get my ebook and like, you can do it on your own, or you can look up your own online. I do have to say though that be careful because some people are like, just drink the oil. They don't have the protocol and you really need that five days of cleansing beforehand because you could get yourself into trouble if you just go in and drink olive oil and grapefruit juice without preparing your body.

Jonathan Levi: Right. That was just going to say, you know, I've been listening and I've had the chance to ask you every possible question. And I'm the memory guy. And yet still I'm like, okay, well, there were three different protocols, which one is right for me.

So where Elaina can people find all this stuff laid out in prescriptive form because if I, the memory guy am now like, wait, which one was what? Then I'm imagining when people need it written out.

Elaina Love: Yeah, and I do make it really simple. And I know I was just trying to kind of throw a lot of stuff in there cause there's a lot of options, but just go to yourjoyplanet.com your joy planet, and just click on courses for the liver flash or click on the store if you want the enzymes. But I have a lot of free information on there too. You can just click on recipes, you click on my blog and I do try and talk about a lot of stuff. There's so much for us to know. And I mean, I'm like you, I love learning and I'm constantly listening to podcasts and to, you know, reading books, like, you know, I haven't actually gotten to the Tools of the Titans, but I love Tim Ferriss.

I just love learning what other people have learned. So don't be, you know, if you're listening and you're like, Oh my gosh, where do I start? Just start. And I feel like there's something to having a physical, practical experience of something, when you, first time you do it, it might be confusing, but then you do it and you know it because your body knows it.

And that's why I love teaching people through hands-on experience versus just book knowledge. You actually have to read something and then implement it, right? Because what do they say? Knowledge without implementation is useless. Like we can know a ton of stuff, but if we haven't actually tried it, what's the point.

Jonathan Levi: I couldn't agree with you more. I couldn't agree with you more. And I think that's one of the things that why you and I connect so well is you dabble in and you operate in the world of like holistic and the soft skills of, Hey, let's talk about food quality and let's talk about that. But you also go into the science and you, you know, you get it, you get the IGF1 one and you understand the, you know, the colon enzymes. And so we can rap about both and, and people really get a sense that you've come at this from both angles.

Elaina Love: Right. Exactly. And I've tried it. If there's something to try, I've tried it as far as when it comes to health.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah, absolutely. So I'm really excited. I'm going to do, you know, I got a ton of cooked food in the refrigerator right now, but next week I'm going to do this fast and I think I'm going to take these enzymes and I'll let you know how it goes.

And for the audience, I think we've already given them a piece of homework, which is start out with just a 24-hour water fast.

Elaina Love: Yes. That's a great way to start.

Jonathan Levi: Awesome. Awesome. So I wanted to ask Elena, are there any other skills, tips, tricks, or strategies that you would want to share with the audience that you didn't share last time that have maybe come up in terms of improving your own performance?

Elaina Love: Well, this is going to be like, I noticed you asked me in one of the questions you emailed me is like something that I do that people think I'm crazy. I'm going to talk about this and it's not really well known in America, but it's really well known in Russia. And if you know how to read Russian, you could probably study it.

It's called dry fasting. And maybe you've heard of it, but it's where you go without food or water for an extended period. And so that's next-level stuff but if you have any kind of hormonal imbalances or if you're dealing with cancer or anything extreme, and I'm saying this from experience like I'm not a doctor, so I can't give people actual advice, but just, if you want to open your consciousness to doing what's called a dry fast, you go without food or water for let's say you just start out for 18 hours.

Wow. What that does is so cells need water. Yes. We know that. But guess what else needs water, guess what happens when you go underneath your house and there's something growing down there. Why does mold usually grow? Because the walls have leaked, right? Because there's moisture underneath your house. So when you take that moisture away, that water, that liquid away, the pathogens and the cells in your body, which are way more intelligent than pathogens compete for that water that's left in your body.

And guess which one wins? The cells. So, if you can even just do like the longest I've gone, dry fasting, believe it or not as six whole days, which was pretty intense for me. And believe me, I wasn't out exercising. I wasn't doing a whole lot, but if you could even just consider and put your mind around an 18 hour dry fast, if you are dealing with any kind of pathogenic thing, be it Kendea, be it yeast, mold, fungus, be it like a lot of guys get, so women get yous, infection, men get mold on their feet. A lot of times you get fungus on your toes. And if you're dealing with anything like eczema, cystic acne, just consider that. Maybe trying to dry fast. Could be like, and you only have to do one, maybe once. Just try it once you could do a couple in a year and see how you do, and then start reading and researching about it.

A great book I can recommend on that is it's called and it's only one chapter in the book, but the book is by Tanya's of ASTA and it's called Quantum Eating. Quantum eating and she's the one that originally introduced me to dry fasting, but then now there's a lot more information out there on it. So anyway, that's kind of one weird and crazy thing that I would say people could consider after they've fasted a couple of times on liquids.

Jonathan Levi: And should we tell people, you know, consult? I imagine we should probably tell them consult a medical professional.

Elaina Love: Yes, that's a good idea. Yeah, but your doctor's going to tell you you're crazy. Just so you know.

Jonathan Levi: Totally.

Elaina Love: And I wouldn't be sharing this. If I hadn't done it myself and completely reverse things in my own body, including hormonal imbalances.

Like when I was doing a lot of dry fasting, all of my nights, sweats, and hot flashes and everything went away, plus the added benefit of weight loss. So that's just another fun to throw in there.

Jonathan Levi: Well, that's a really, really good one. Elaina. We have now completely run up on time again. And I think we still have so much to talk about, but I wanted to give you an opportunity, you mentioned that people should reach out to purejoyplanet.com. Is there anywhere else that we should send people?

Elaina Love: Well, that will lead you to my Facebook page. And you might want to follow that because we do a lot of fun food posts and recipes. You can personally email me at elaina@purejoyplanet.com. If you want to send me a message or send me a question and you can send me messages on Facebook as well, it's just Elaine Love on Facebook.

Jonathan Levi: Awesome. And so I will ask you our last question that we always like to ask, which is if people take away just one message from this episode and remember it for the rest of their lives, what would you hope for that one to be?

Elaina Love: That you have complete control over your life in your body, and no one's in charge of you, but you, so don't be afraid to experiment and explore and trust your body and let your body trust you again.

Jonathan Levi: I love that. I love that. And really wise words to end on. Elaina Love, I want to thank you again. It's a pleasure as always to chat and I do hope we keep in touch.

Elaina Love: Awesome. Thanks to Jonathan. Take care.

Jonathan Levi: All right, SuperFriends. That is all we have for you today, but I hope you guys really enjoyed the show and I hope you learned a ton of actionable information tips, advice that will help you go out there and overcome the impossible.

If you've enjoyed the show, please take a moment to leave us a review on iTunes or Stitcher, or drop us a quick little note on the Twitter machine @gosuperhuman. Also, if you have any ideas for anyone out there who you would love to see on the show, we always love to hear your recommendations. You can submit on our website, or you can just drop us an email and let us know that's all for today, guys.

Thanks for tuning in.

Closing: Thanks for tuning in to the Becoming SuperHuman Podcast for more great skills and strategies, or for links to any of the resources mentioned in this episode, visit www.becomingasuperhuman.com/podcast. We'll see you next time.