And those who think they’re protecting their health by drinking soda with artificial sweeteners instead of sugar are sorely mistaken. Sucralose (Splenda) has been found to decrease insulin sensitivity by 20 percent.17 Furthermore, a preliminary study presented at a prominent health conference suggested people who drink diet soda have a 61 percent higher chance of stroke and heart attack than those who don’t.18 I could go on, but . . .
Please, just stop!
REMEMBER: RELEASE CAN BE DIFFICULT
I always remind my patients: You might feel worse before you get better.
Release is like going for a facial to get rid of blackheads when you’ve not had a facial in months. Your face will be clogged up, so you’ll need a good exfoliation and a thorough cleanup—and you might look worse for a day until you start to shine and glow (and radiate!).
Instead of your normal bowel movement, you might experience some diarrhea or runny tummy, but don’t worry—that’s part of the cleanse. Let it go. Remember that all the negative toxins need to leave your body to help free your mind. You’re releasing your negative thoughts and emotions by not feeding your emotions toxins such as sugar; you’re releasing your negative food habits to prepare yourself for a big change in your life—a transformation. You’re getting stronger so that you can make strong decisions for yourself.
you’re sensitive to a spice, don’t forget to check those personal care product labels.
You can help the action of the Release process by adding in a bit of peaceful movement. Let’s consider what positive motion looks like on the Release program.
Positive Motion
If you’ve been doing your Tibetan Rites every morning, you’ve likely found that you can do more repetitions or hold the poses for a longer time by now.
I’m not going to ask you to step it up or add any additional strenuous exercise during Release. Why? Because if you challenge yourself, you’ll trigger your stress response, even if you don’t intend to. Vigorous exercise increases the level of oxidative stress and inflammation in the body, and it can be especially taxing during a time of cleansing. So try not to do any intense exercise above and beyond your current level of fitness. Instead, simply keep your body moving in the course of your day, to encourage bloodflow and discourage your lymphatic system from becoming static. In this stage, for additional exercise, I recommend adding fifteen-minutes walks and gentle or restorative yoga.
TAKE A QUICK STROLL
A fifteen-minute walk won’t increase inflammation but will have a drastic impact on your overall health. Squeeze as many of these short walks into your day as possible. I recommend three a day, one after each meal. A study published in the journal Diabetes Care found that a brief walk directly following a meal can help your body absorb the inevitable blood sugar spike from the meal and significantly improve your glycemic control. Indeed, the three walks—instead of just one, for forty-five minutes—were more effective at lowering glucose peaks after meals.20 This is particularly important
because those increases in post-meal glucose are one of most highly predictive risk factors for cardiovascular disease.21 I love this approach because (a) you can do it anywhere on earth, at any time; (b) you can easily create a well-entrenched habit (after every meal, I walk!); (c) you’ll see and interact more with your neighbors throughout the day (and we know how important social support is to overall health and vitality). I’ve also started to get my patients hooked on Jawbone, a diet- and exercise-tracking device that you can use to track steps walked, blood pressure, food intake, and even the number of hours of quality sleep you get.
DO SOME GENTLE YOGA
You may be very disciplined and love to work out, hard. Taking it easy may not come naturally to you. But please don’t worry that you’re not burning calories or building muscle this week. This stage isn’t about that; it’s about healing from your pain. It’s also about changing your automatic stress response from one that’s highly reactive to one that’s more relaxed, steady, contemplative, and not quick to react.
If you’re really eager to add more activity, do some gentle yoga. When you stretch and lengthen your body, when you hold a pose a bit longer than is entirely comfortable, you’ll automatically activate your stress response. But here’s the genius of yoga, the Adaptive Response at work: While you’re challenging yourself, and thus engaging your sympathetic nervous system, you’re also breathing deeply and deliberately, staying focused, and staying present in your body. In other words, you’re actively engaging and training your parasympathetic nervous system to counterbalance your sympathetic nervous system. In this way, yoga strengthens the “cool” response of the parasympathetic system, training your brain to stop automatically sending your sympathetic nervous system into overdrive. It teaches you to approach any hectic or stressful experience in a calm, attentive state. And it also makes you feel fantastic.
Now let’s move on to the Release work that can be the most challenging of all: emotion. If you’ve been carrying around a burden that has created pain in your life, it’s time to let it go.