The Importance of the Clean-Break

When practicing an extreme-avoidance-protocol, mastering the art of the “clean-break” can offer crucial boosts in your healing. When detoxifying from an environmental illness, your body can go through a phase of hyper-reactivity where tinier and tinier amounts of environmental toxins can initiate a large inflammatory response.

What is a “clean-break?” It describes the process of getting your environment all-clean, all-at-once. This is especially crucial for sleeping, so let’s walk through what a clean-break means for a sleeping situation.

Firstly, it means calibrating your bedding to only what can be cleaned in one day. If you are hand-washing your bedding, you need to have have enough blankets to keep warm, but not so many that you can’t get them all washed and dried in the same day. (In the winter, that ratio can be difficult to achieve, so it helps to have 2 or 3 sets of back-up bedding in your “clean box.” (Always store clean things in boxes that click shut.)

If you can afford it and you have a safe, mold-free, frost-proof zone, get your own brand-new washing machine and share it with no one.

We detox through our sweat and breath and therefore bedding needs to be cleaned not just from ambient toxins and spores, but from self-contamination. For many months, I needed to have a clean set of bedding every other day. If you are able to pull this off, it allows for a faster detox and recovery.

In order to have bedding that can be fully and thoroughly cleaned, it could be that you may need to sleep for a while on a washable surface, like a Thermarest. Part of the clean-break will be that you scrub the Thermarest with a soapy scrub brush (which is not used to clean anything else,) and leave it out to dry in the sun.

Next, you will want the blanket and/or sheet on top of the Thermarest to be washed, along with your blankets or sleeping bag. Everyone has different tolerances, so you will have to discover for yourself whether you can tolerate cheap fleece blankets and nylon sleeping bags or whether you need organic cotton and wool for sleeping.

Of course, the ideal for warmth and ease of handling is down. If you can afford a down sleeping bag, you might want to invest in one so that you stay warm in the winter. I have had success with this brand. You will need to wash it an absurd number of times, however, and leave it out in the sun to dry. It may not last more than 2 or 3 months, but so what. If it’s a choice between ruining a $200 sleeping bag and a) sleeping cold, or b) sleeping contaminated, it seems like a small price to pay for two months of sleep.

Since pillows are not easily washable, I settled on using wadded up fleece blankets as a pillow, and it works well. I wad it up in a circle so there’s a space for my ear, if I’m sleeping on my side.

Okay, now that your mattress, pad, sleeping bag, blankets and pillow are clean and dried in the sun in a clean area, let’s think about pajamas.

Sara Riley Mattson, the Girl you want to Camp Like, was my coach in the early part of my mold avoidance sabbatical. She suggested pajamas that work so well, I still use them. Knowing that mold-avoiders do better sleeping in fresh air, she suggested buying cotton hoodies, long underwear bottoms and the 6 pack of men’s cotton t-shirts to use as pajamas. These are cheap enough to replace a couple times a year, which you will want to do when you are detoxing heavily.

In addition to these, you want fluffy, ugly socks (so you won’t be tempted to wear them anywhere but in bed,) and a fleece hat (which is crucial, since you usually have wet hair when you go to bed.)

When achieving a clean-break, every single one of these items will be freshly laundered. I have learned the hard way dozens of times that having a hat or socks that were not freshly cleaned could ruin the whole clean-break.

Before you put on your pajamas, you need to be clean yourself. You go straight from batheing to bed. You don’t get into your car, you don’t check your email on a problematic computer. If showering means passing through a questionable area, you wear a “transitional” set of clothes– not day clothes, but not ultra clean pajamas. You change out of them and into pajamas right before you get into bed.

Likewise, when you rise in the morning, you sequester your pajamas in a clean box or bag. If you plan on wearing them twice, at least change your cotton t-shirt. Your pajamas should never cross paths with contaminated items, if at all possible.

I can’t emphasize this enough: when you go to the absurd, extreme measures that mean that everything that touches you is the absolute-cleanest it can be, you will be rewarded with a whole night of feeling peaceful and sleeping well. This break is the rest that your nervous system and immune system need in order to heal.

Although it sounds like a ridiculous level of attention to detail, it actually becomes quite routine after a while. It becomes second nature and much easier once the pattern is established in your life. If it all sounds quite overwhelming, don’t worry.

You actually don’t want to go from a fully contaminated space to a wilderness clean-break. You would start dumping toxins too quickly and that is very uncomfortable. The ideal is to achieve the cleanest-break you can create in the setting you are in. As you progress through detoxification, you need to steadily improve your environment or find one that is next-level cleaner.

You can apply the principle of the clean-break to your car before a long drive and to your living space.

In a world where there is no such thing as a mold-free or chemical-free setting, perfecting the art of the clean-break can be the closest thing you can find to the “bubble” that we need in order to heal. The best news of all: It works!