The Best Cleanse for Gut Health (Isn’t What You Think)

Building the Foundations of Gut Health Achieves More Than Any Gut Cleanse

• Types of Gut Cleanses|
• Benefits and Risks|
• The Cleansing Mindset|
• Reset Your Gut|
• The Best Cleanse for Gut Health|

Tired of aggravating digestive issues and wondering if a quick cleanse might do the trick? I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but most of the time gut cleanses, juice fasts, and other similar protocols that claim to reset your gut are merely putting a bandaid on a much deeper wound. That is, if they’re effective at all. At the worst, they could be downright dangerous to your health. 

Needless to say, we don’t recommend gut cleanses to our clients at the Ruscio Institute for Functional Health, and in my experience, they aren’t necessary to heal your gut. 

So what’s the best “cleanse” for gut health? Healing your gut for good through essential nutrition, eliminating trigger foods, adding in a few key supplements like probiotics to support your gut, and using antimicrobial herbs and even antibiotics where necessary to go after latent gut infections. It’s very much a step-by-step process, it’s safe, and it’s clinically validated.  

But if you’re still not convinced, don’t worry. Let’s review the types of gut cleanses and what the research says about them, the benefits and risks of cleansing, what cleansing is actually trying to do, how to do it better and safer, and how to heal your gut for the long term.

Types of Gut Cleanses

Usually, when people talk about gut cleansing, they mean one of three options: 

• Colon cleanses or colonics, also known as colon hydrotherapy
• Detoxes like juice fasts or very restrictive diets that prioritize detoxifying foods, teas, and supplements
• Parasite cleanses

Colon cleanses typically involve a combination of products that force multiple bowel movements in a short period of time, similar to what you might take before you do a colonoscopy. Some products can also be administered rectally via an enema. 

Colonics or colon hydrotherapy involves a technician who inserts a tube into your rectum and “irrigates” your colon with water, which ultimately causes the same effect as taking laxatives, but it’s much faster and not typically the most comfortable experience. It can be potentially harmful for those with pre-existing gut conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), other gastrointestinal disease, kidney disease, and previous colon surgery [1].

Juice fasts involve juicing certain fruits and vegetables to support detox, often targeting bad bacteria, parasites, heavy metals, candida, and environmental toxins [2]. Juice fasts are also promoted for quick weight loss, but aren’t a sustainable option [1].

Finally, parasite cleanses typically recommend a regimen of dietary supplements intended to detoxify the body and eliminate parasitic infections without using prescription medications [3]. These cleanses typically advise a protocol of rotating multiple herbal antimicrobials over a period of weeks to months and require strict adherence to the program. 

Benefits and Risks of Gut Cleanses

Now that we’ve reviewed the types of gut cleanses, let’s dig into whether or not they actually support your digestive health. 

(The short answer? They aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, and they can actually be harmful to your health in some cases.) 

This alone is a pretty good reason to invest your time and money into other resources, but let’s dig a little deeper. 

Potential risks and side effects of detox diets, including juice cleanses, include [2]:

• Protein and vitamin deficiencies, electrolyte imbalances, lactic acidosis, or malnourishment from extreme calorie restriction and low nutrient intake.
• Overdosing on supplements, laxatives, diuretics, or even water that may be encouraged as part of the cleanse.
• The commercial juice cleanse industry is not regulated. Products that juice cleanse companies may sell or recommend may not be regulated or vetted by evidence-based health organizations and may be unsafe. 

We’ve worked with many clients who have tried these types of cleanses, usually without success. But when they work on the foundations of (gut) health: nutrition, sleep, movement, and stress management, alongside a few strategic supplements like probiotics, essential fatty acids, and minerals, they make significant progress. The good news is you don’t have to undergo a challenging cleanse protocol only to achieve few if any, results. 

Of course, there are cases where a well-planned herbal antimicrobial protocol can be used to target symptom-causing microbes in the digestive tract (small intestine or large intestine). However, there’s no reason to go overboard with these protocols, and the person undergoing them should be well-supported with a healthy diet and adequate hydration. They should also be able to participate in their everyday life. This isn’t a cleanse so much as one piece of a well-defined plan that includes nutrition, movement, healthy sleep habits, and stress management. 

The Problem With the Idea of Cleansing

The idea of cleansing is based on a wellness trend that promises detoxification. Detoxification is a natural body process that removes toxins from the body and converts some toxins into less toxic metabolites that can be easily carried out of the body [4, 5]. 

While we can support it, we cannot completely mimic our bodily detox functions through external means. And that’s okay! Our bodies are naturally equipped to detoxify and cleanse themselves every day through sweating, urination, defecation, our skin, and the functioning of our organs like our liver, kidneys, gut, skin, and lungs [2, 6, 7, 8, 9].

We are much better off supporting our detoxification processes and organs by making sure we’re consuming enough nutrients, sweating through exercise, sauna use (but not overuse), and promoting good gut health with safe and proven methods. 

Unfortunately, the idea of cleansing is too often associated with the idea that you must suffer to be healthy. We take great care to push back against this idea with our clients at the Ruscio Institute. 

How to Actually Heal Your Gut

While there may be little harm in trying a juice cleanse, cleansing is more likely to provide a short-term solution, if any solution at all. Your original distressing symptoms, such as constipation and bloating, are likely to return once the cleanse is over. Then you’ll be right back to the same old symptoms and an unhappy gut. 

Instead, we need to work on the foundations of good health and slowly but steadily improve the gut environment for the better. 

If You Need a Gut Reset

If you’re experiencing significant gut symptoms (bloating, constipation, diarrhea, gas, abdominal pain, etc.), it’s a good idea to start with a gut reset. In the clinic, I recommend one of two methods to accomplish this.

1. Intermittent fasting plus an elimination diet 
2. An elemental diet followed by an elimination diet 

The first option is the less intensive of the two. Intermittent fasting simply means that you restrict your eating window to an 8-10 hour period of the day so that you are effectively “fasting” and letting your gut rest for the remaining 14-16 hours of the day. Intermittent fasting has a plethora of health benefits, including improving IBS symptoms, rebalancing gut bacteria, and stimulating gut lining repair [10, 11, 12, 13]. 

The easiest way to do intermittent fasting is to stop eating 2 to 3 hours before bed and wait 2 to 3 hours before you eat breakfast in the morning. This way, you’re mainly fasting while you sleep, and it’s much less noticeable. 
Alongside intermittent fasting, a gut reset includes an elimination diet, which simply means restricting foods that are common irritants to the gut. (Once your gut has had some time to heal, you can add many of these foods back in.) There are several options for an elimination diet, including a Paleo diet, a low FODMAP diet, or even a more simple gluten-free diet.

The second option involves starting your gut healing journey with an elemental diet. An elemental diet involves consuming a nutrient-dense meal replacement shake for some or all of your meals over a period of time. Some people choose to do an elemental diet for 2–3 days, some for a full week, while others prefer to replace just one of their meals daily for a few days up to a few months. Most people find it an easy and enjoyable breakfast option. Note that if you decide to do the elemental diet for more than a few days, it’s best to consult with a healthcare professional. 

This allows the gut to take it easy while providing the exact nutrients required to heal and lower inflammation [14, 15]. It can even begin to starve any potential bacterial overgrowths in your small intestine, allowing beneficial bacteria to flourish [16]. 

After either a short-term full elemental diet or a longer partial elemental diet, the next step includes one of the elimination diets I mentioned earlier. 

Both of these initial gut reset protocols have some similarities to a cleanse, but they are science-backed, safe, and frankly much easier to follow than many popular cleanses. While they may require you to change your behavior and implement new habits, they won’t disrupt your regular life or send you running to the bathroom several times a day. 

And most importantly, these methods are evidenced-backed. It is possible to heal your gut without suffering through a costly, risky, or unproven gut cleanse. 

For the full gut healing protocol, check out our “Great-in-8” gut healing guide.

Parasites 

Let’s address the bug in the room: many people turn to gut cleanses to get rid of persistent gut pathogens causing their symptoms, specifically parasites. 

Gut parasites can absolutely be an issue contributing to symptoms like brain fog, fatigue, digestive system issues, nausea, food sensitivities, and more. 

But the key to dealing with them isn’t a short gut cleanse without any further support. 

To get rid of parasites or any other gut pathogen, we must nourish the gut, repair the gut microbiome, and support the foundations of gut health first, before adding in antimicrobial herbs or medications to target parasites. 

At the clinic, we have all of our clients work on their diet, sleep, and stress, add in Probiotic Triple Therapy, and then add in antimicrobial formulas if necessary. Often, the first two steps will improve or completely resolve their symptoms, making the third step unnecessary. We can always revisit that option later if it becomes relevant. 

Once again, attacking the parasite with herbs or medications isn’t helpful without a foundation of gut health. We can only make real, sustainable progress in healing the gut through step-by-step modifications where each step builds on the last to create a healthy gut environment.

The Best Cleanse for Gut Health is Slow, Steady Healing

You likely don’t need a ton of laxatives, herbal teas, juices, colonic irrigation, or extreme fasts to heal your gut. The right nutrition, the right lifestyle adjustments, and a few key supplements that support your gut long-term are much more likely to do the trick. It’s about nourishing your gut, not punishing yourself to achieve healing. And when you do that, your immune system, energy, mental health, and overall health get a lot better too. Everybody wins. 

For more information on nutrition, probiotics, and the step-by-step process to heal your gut, check out my book Healthy Gut, Healthy You, or reach out to us at Ruscio Institute for Functional Health if you want to work with a clinician. 

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