Dr. Alejandro Junger brings us Clean Gut to show us that “life these days is not gut friendly.” With the help of what he calls the four pillars of gut repair – Remove, Replace, Reinoculate and Repair – Dr. Junger explains the essential steps that need to be taken in order to clean the gut and begin a healthier life full of energy and disease-free. In Clean Gut, Dr. Junger traces some of the most common chronic symptoms and diseases in the world back to their origins in the gut.
In the first half of the book, Dr. Junger talks about how he learned that gut repair was the answer to most illnesses, both ordinary and chronic, through personal experience from past struggles with his own health. With the help of clever analogies of LEGO pieces, bamboo shoots, wildfires, terrorists, artillery and other things, Dr. Junger helps readers to understand how the gut and the immune system work and how the condition of both, the immune system and the gut, affect our overall health.
Dr. Junger shares his journey in the medical field and describes how the diet plan explained in Clean Gut worked wonders for his past patients, friends and even for him. While Dr. Junger makes it easy for audiences of all backgrounds to understand the book through stories and analogies, he is still able to explain things in a literal and scientific way to backup his claims. Clean Gut is simply the perfect mix of personal experience with professional facts and knowledge.
As you read Clean Gut, you will find that Dr. Junger’s message is all about food and that “food is medicine, and the gut is the key to a long, vibrant life.” He emphasizes the importance of proper nutrition along with cleansing of the colon as the secret to prosperous health. According to Dr. Junger, “the most common toxins come in our food, and your gut bears the brunt of these toxins.” – based on this fact, Dr. Junger created the Clean Gut diet to help people like you eliminate these toxins that come into your body with food.
Not only does Dr. Junger explain the basics of cleansing the colon in Clean Gut, but he also shows us how to prevent chronic diseases such as cancer, heart disease, depression, back pain, etc and why poor health of the gut is responsible for these illnesses. “Before chronic disease, there is inflammation; but before inflammation comes gut dysfunction. Anti-inflammation treatments help, but gut repair corrects the problem right at its source.”
The second half of the book gives you a detailed diet plan that is referred to as “The Clean Gut programme,” which is based on the four Rs of functional medicine –
- Remove
- Replace
- Reinoculate
- Repair
The programme is divided into two phases. The first phase consists of a twenty-one day diet that cleanses the system and repairs the gut by only allowing for easily digestible food to be consumed during this phase. The second phase is a seven-day process that reintroduces normal food into your diet in a way that allows you to identify which foods cause the most harm to your gut, so that you can stay away from toxic triggers.
As “the body’s health begins in the gut, its own internal roots,” Dr. Junger advices to do everything possible to have a healthy colon with the help of colonic hydrotherapy and a healthy diet.
“I received colonic hydrotherapy treatments daily to help flush out all the toxins that were being released from my tissues via my intestines. By the third day of the detox program, my energy was returning and my constant hunger and headaches were dissipating.”
-Dr. Alejandro Junger
Clean Gut encourages people to take the necessary steps to get healthy and spreads the message that “we no longer have to get sick to get healthy.” Taking a step forward to better health will prevent chronic illnesses and provide a longer and better quality of life.
While the book is about why and how we should maintain a clean and healthy gut, the message is not just for patients, but for doctors as well. In the book, Dr. Junger encourages professionals in the medical field to be more prudent and vigilant about prescribing antibiotics so promptly, which could weaken the immune system and kill good bacteria in the gut, causing a long-term negative impact rather than positive.
After having been introduced to a plethora of gut-health-related information and the Clean Gut diet programme, you can find numerous recipes for the diet, such as Shepherd’s Pie, chicken pot pie, turkey chilli, garlic lemon chicken, sweet and spicy chicken wings, salmon salad, fish and chips and much more. Plus, so that you don’t cheat, there is also a list of recipes for salad dressings, like clean Caesar dressing and clean ranch dressing.
Overall, Clean Gut is a very complete guide that provides valuable nutritional information to keep your gut clean and healthy. Dr. Junger does an excellent job describing how chronic and regular illnesses happen so that you can do everything you can to prevent them to achieve a healthier lifestyle.
Dr. Junger approaches health in a relatable way by discussing his own dilemmas with his personal health and takes it a step further by providing samples of special cases from his patients that were chronically ill and improved their health significantly thanks to the Clean Gut programme.
Clean Gut is undoubtedly an invaluable, reliable and life-changing resource for anyone – healthy or ill. This is a great way to take a step towards a healthier lifestyle with professional advice from one of the most sought-after doctors.
As a professional, not only do I recommend Clean Gut, but I praise it as a valuable source of information for anyone who would like to change their lives significantly. I highly recommend Clean Gut and encourage everyone to try the Clean Gut programme complemented with colon hydrotherapy, just as Dr. Junger did. This is a great read – so interesting that you will not be able to put it down until the end. When you finish reading the book, you will see why Dr. Junger is Gwyneth Paltrow’s go-to doctor.
What do you think? Have you read the book yourself? Do you agree with its content? Let me know by commenting below, I will attempt to reply as soon as possible.
Miss Velile Ndebele RGN (Registered General Nurse), Colon Hydrotherapist I-ACT Instructor has been working in Healthcare in both the NHS public sector as well as private sector since 1994, working for major public hospitals as well as respected private healthcare companies like BUPA.
She is Founder and Clinical Director of Aqualibria Colon Hydrotherapy MediSpa since its inception in 2005.