Spring Cleansing

The premise of cleansing is popular in alternative medicine circles, seen as one of the most important ways to get and stay healthy. But is it really? Is our modern take on cleansing the same as it was traditionally? And most importantly, is cleansing really appropriate for anyone and everyone? We’ll cover all that and more in our exploration of the spring cleanse.

Here’s what I’ll cover:

What happens in the spring transition that necessitates a cleanse?
The qualities that predominate in winter and what that means for you
The equinox transitions and how patterns in nature affect your health
What to focus on in a spring cleanse
Herbal categories in the spring cleanse: alteratives, nutritives and why they’re important
Is a spring cleanse appropriate?

Why a Spring Cleanse?

When we consider how people used to live, a spring cleanse made a lot of sense. Imagine a time not so long ago when people lived more of a traditional lifestyle, perhaps on a family farm. The availability of fresh food during the wintertime was limited. People lived off sundries, preserves, canned and dehydrated food, smoked food, and often a lot of meat—especially in colder northern regions where growing fresh produce was challenging.

In the winter, leafy greens were scarce, while root vegetables like potatoes, carrots, beets, and celeriac kept well in cold storage. As spring arrived, and fresh green leaves emerged, these plants offered nutrients and medicinal properties people’s bodies were lacking after months of heavier, preserved foods.

All of that said, not too many modern people live like this anymore. Industrial agriculture has made fresh(ish) food available to a lot more people during the winter months. One can walk down the aisles of most grocery stores and find all sorts of greenery in the middle of snowy January! But if we take a step back and think of living this way, it helps us to examine the qualities of traditional winter foods, their effects on the body, and why a gentle spring cleanse makes sense and might even be necessary.

The Qualities that Predominate in Winter

Winter foods are typically heavier, like starchy root vegetables and red meat, which can be harder to digest and lead to bodily stagnation. These heavier foods provide insulation against the cold. Winter is characterized by dampness and cold, which slow metabolism and can cause a cold/depression tissue state, leading to sluggish physiological functioning and fluid stagnation. This affects digestion and circulation, causing cold extremities and digestive sluggishness. As winter ends, the body may retain cold and dampness, varying by individual constitution and environment.

In Āyurveda, this is seen as an excess of kapha dosha, which accumulates in winter and early spring. A spring cleanse helps clear this excess, removing cold, damp, and stagnant qualities to prepare for the new season and maintain harmony with nature's cycles.

As Above, so Below, as Without so Within:

How Patterns in Nature Affect Health

When you look outside, the qualitative differences between the seasons are apparent both in terms of weather and in how you feel within yourself. You tend to be a little more lively and energetic in the summer and more mellow, possibly sleeping more in wintertime.

Seasonal patterns affect your health, and it’s a good idea to orient your lifestyle, daily routine, diet, and herbal protocols to support those seasonal transitions.

Think about it this way: a particular quality accumulates during a season, and then it begins to decrease as that season ends. Meanwhile, the next seasonal quality is rising. The predominant qualities will differ from place to place, so it depends on where you live.

Āyurveda has its own distinct pattern of the seasons and which doshas govern them. However, we must understand that it’s a system that arose in a particular environment (South Asia). Living in Norway is very different from South Asia or Mexico, which is very different from Arizona or Portugal.

It’s important to observe the energetic qualities and characteristics of the ecosystem where you live. By energetic, I mean the temperature, moisture, and tonal qualities of your environment and how that affects you as an individual, your constitution. When you become observant of these patterns in nature and how those qualities change through the seasons, you can learn how to adjust your lifestyle accordingly.

Grand Polarities: The Equinox Transitions

Equinox transitions are significant as they represent a grand polarity of creation, embodying the concepts of yin and yang in Chinese philosophy, and celestial niter and salt in alchemy. Spring and summer are more yang, with upward, outward energy—warmer, more active, and dynamic. Plants grow, birds fly, and there's more sunlight. Fall and winter are more yin, with energy moving inward and downward as plants die back, trees lose leaves, and nights lengthen.

In Āyurveda, kapha dosha has cold, damp, heavy qualities that accumulate in the stomach, potentially affecting the lungs. Dairy, a kapha-genic food, can aggravate kapha, leading to phlegmy symptoms. During spring transitions, it's important to clear kapha to prevent illness, as people often get sick during seasonal changes. Respiratory issues are common as kapha builds up in winter and needs clearing.

Adopting a holistic lifestyle involves more than choosing natural products; it includes living in harmony with seasonal transitions, as marked by equinoxes.

Attending to these major seasonal transitions marked by the equinoxes is very important, and one of the primary ways we do this moving from winter to spring is with “the spring cleanse.”

*Spring Greens: nettles, chickweed, cleavers*

What to Focus on in a Spring Cleanse.

What herbs should we consider during the spring transition?

During cleansing, we should focus on which body systems might be affected by traditional diets high in sundries, preserves, and meat, as these can cause digestive stagnation.

Digestive fire is typically lowest in winter, leading to GI stagnation and slower bowel movements. Liver stagnation can cause toxin accumulation, known as "bad blood syndrome," which refers to poor clearance of metabolic waste, considered toxins when they linger.

"Blood" in this context includes the extracellular matrix fluid, where nutrients and waste are exchanged between cells and capillary beds. Waste is eliminated through organs like the kidneys and liver, which process and excrete it.

Stagnation and toxicity indicate the body's inability to excrete metabolic waste, accumulating in the liver, lymphatics, blood, and digestive system. Western herbalism addresses this with alteratives.

Herbs for the Spring Cleanse: Alteratives and Nutritives

Alteratives

Alteratives are herbs that enhance metabolic processes, focusing on eliminating toxins through the bowels, skin, liver, kidneys, urinary tract, blood, and lymphatics. They are a broad category, affecting multiple organ systems like the digestive system, liver, gallbladder, blood, lymphatics, skin, and urinary tract. Different types of alteratives include digestive alteratives, which are often bitter and have a laxative effect, and hepatic alteratives, which aid liver detoxification and reduce excess kapha dosha. Lymphatic alteratives, or lymphagogues, help move lymphatic fluids to relieve swelling. Antidyscratics, or blood purifiers, address blood impurities and are used for skin conditions. Kidney urinary tract alteratives are diuretic, increasing waste elimination. Subclassifying alteratives provides specificity regarding their organ affinities and actions. Generally, alteratives are drying and cooling, so they may be combined with warming herbs like Angelica, Black Pepper, or Ginger. They are ideal for spring cleansing to clear winter build-up in elimination channels.

Nutritives

The other side of a spring cleanse is nourishing with nutritives. A limited winter diet can lead to nutrient deficiencies, especially if relying heavily on canned foods, which may lack nutritional diversity. This can cause both metabolic waste congestion and hinder the body's ability to absorb nutrients.

Nutritive tonics, also known as spring tonics, are crucial for a spring cleanse. These herbs are nutrient-dense, providing a wide range of vitamins, minerals, and micronutrients essential for optimal biochemical function.

Some herbs are both mildly alterative and nutritive tonic, gently opening elimination channels like the lymphatics, liver, and kidneys, while supplying ample vitamins, minerals, and trace elements. Examples of such remedies include:

Red Clover (Trifolium pratense)
Nettle leaf (Urtica dioica)
Burdock root (Arctium lappa)
Bladderwrack (Fucus vesciculosis)
Kelp (Laminaria spp.)
Dandelion leaf and root (Taraxacum officinale)

Is a Spring Cleanse Appropriate?

Here’s an important question to consider: Is it necessary or appropriate for the modern human to do this? Most people have access to food at grocery stores that probably isn’t seasonally available in that local environment, but because food is shipped all over the world, we can get fresh apples in the spring and lush greens grown in heated greenhouses or in California where they’ve got more sunshine. We can get avocados from Mexico. We can get many types of foods year-round because of the global food system that is in place in many parts of the world. So it begs the question: is the traditional spring cleanse an appropriate thing to do? For me this is an individual question.

But that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily for everyone. We should consider the context in which certain therapeutic models or medical practices emerged and whether those same principles would apply to a modern human that tends to live quite differently. That being said, sometimes a little mild round of alteratives and nutritives can do certain people some good as they emerge out of the cold stagnancy of winter. So whether it’s right for you is up to you ultimately, but these are some of the factors worth considering!

Spring blessings,

Jaya