Booze to Balance: A Chill 30-Day Liver-Healing Program

by Kim Makoi DC, PhD, Nicolette Richer (Foreword by)

Overview

Feel Better, Think Better, and Look Better in 30 Days!

We celebrate special occasions with a bottle of bubbly, take mom to brunch with specially crafted libations, meet our best friends with weekend cocktails, pour wine with dinner, and even watch our favorite football teams with a cooler full of icy beer. Alcohol is a big part of our culture and widely regarded as a major part of the good life.  And it is! But how does all this good living impact our health? Specifically, the liver? Dr. Kim has the solution! Learn how you can transform your relationship with alcohol and reclaim your health and happiness beyond Dry January.

In this comprehensive step-by-step guide, Dr. Kim provides simple practices and a 30-day program that combines exercises, mindset shifts, and holistic strategies to alleviate stress on your liver and optimize your overall health.

Discover the benefits of Booze to Balance.

• Develop a balanced, mindful relationship with alcohol
• Break free from unhealthy cravings at their source
• Improve your ability to handle life's ups and downs with ease
• Lose weight and boost your energy levels
• De-stress your way to feeling younger and healthier

Dr. Kim takes the guilt and fear away and makes balance easy and approachable. Whether you’re participating in Dry January, in recovery, or simply looking to cut down on your alcohol intake, Dr. Kim's safe and easy-to-implement lessons and activities empower you to take back control of your health.

In addition to improving overall health, you'll find practical tools to address liver-specific conditions such as non-alcoholic fatty liver, hepatitis, or cirrhosis, as well as common symptoms like brain fog, digestive upset, insomnia, mysterious skin rashes or itching, joint pain, jaw clenching, tooth grinding, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. Take the first step toward better health today and discover the power of a liver-centered mindful approach to a balanced, healthier, and happier life.

“Dr. Kim brings sharp wit, grounded wisdom, and heartfelt guidance to the complex journey of rebalancing your relationship with alcohol.” - Ralph Remington, author and artist

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781963667240
Publisher:	Jim Dandy Publishing
Publication date:	12/02/2025
Pages:	148
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.34(d)

About the Author

Dr. Kim Makoi (DC, PhD) is a mind-body health expert with over 30 years of clinical experience. He is known for his down-to-earth approach and dark humor, Dr. Kim helps people navigate health challenges with practical no-nonsense strategies. He is the author of several books, creator of online programs, and a certified specialist in the Neuro Emotional Technique (NET). When he is not writing or consulting, you might find him wandering the beaches of San Francisco.

Dr. Nicolette Richer, Doctorate in Social Sciences, MA in Environmental Education and Communication, and BA in Interdisciplinary Studies, is a Chronic Disease Reversal Specialist, entrepreneur, endurance athlete, author, speaker, and podcast host. With over 20 years of experience, Nicolette is dedicated to empowering individuals with chronic illnesses and cancer diagnoses to reclaim their health through plant-based nutrition and detoxification.

As founder of The Green Moustache Organic Cafes, Nicolette created a restaurant chain offering unrefined, whole-food, 100% organic, plant-based cuisine. She is also the visionary behind Richer Health Consulting, supporting individuals in permanently reversing chronic diseases, and Sea to Sky Thrivers, a registered Canadian Charity, raising awareness about food as medicine. At the Richer Health Nutrition + Detox Centre, Nicolette trains health coaches and hosts immersive retreats, reconnecting participants with ancestral nutrition to foster deep, lasting healing and community transformation.

Dr. Nicolette Richer’s first book, Eat Real to Heal: Using Food As Medicine to Reverse Chronic Diseases from Diabetes, Arthritis, Cancer and More (Mango, 2018), showcases the transformative power of whole foods to ignite profound healing and recovery. Building on book’s message, Nicolette also produces the Eat Real to Heal podcast.

Read an Excerpt

Day 19: Cool it down

Totally separate from the elemental Fire in the 5-element system, there’s a concept of "heat" in Chinese medicine that basically means inflammation.

I mean, "inflamed" literally means "on fire," sooo... makes sense! 

When the liver is stressed with excess toxicity, there’s almost always inflammation. From the Chinese medicine perspective, this means there’s too much heat in the liver!

What’s the solution?

To counter this heat, you can focus on cooling foods and avoid things that bring in more heat. Some of this is intuitive—spicy or hot (temperature) foods can add heat to the liver. Seems legit.

But some cooling foods aren’t as obvious. For example, artichokes are great for removing excess liver heat. Why?

Why not! 

Here’s a list of foods traditionally used to help combat liver heat:

• Seaweed
• Spinach
• Chestnut
• Rye
• Vinegar
• Asparagus
• Artichoke
• Egg
• Royal jelly
• Aloe leaf (dried juice concentrate)
• Bitter melon
• Burdock root
• Celery
• Dandelion greens
• Lemon
• Peppermint
• Tomato
• Water chestnut
• Zucchini

Don’t you hate it when people throw a big list at you and expect you to remember it all?!

Don’t worry—you don’t have to memorize this list!

Part of this 30-day challenge is to give you lots of tools to help support your liver. You don’t need to implement everything. You just have to find the most powerful, useful pieces that help YOU the most.

Remember Pareto’s Principle?

80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts.

So what’s your most powerful 20%? It’s different for everyone, but keep your eye out for it and enjoy the ride!

Let me know which liver-cooling food(s) you can painlessly increase in your diet!

Give your liver a pat and tell it, "Cool it, friend. We’re doing good!"

Tomorrow, we meet Fletcher.

Bonus Thoughts

Kitchen Gear

A Word about Kitchen Gear

This 30-Day Challenge doesn’t get into specific dietary regimens.

But one of the biggest contributors to liver dysfunction in America is the increasing reliance on processed and packaged foods. Many of the packaged foods we consume contain ingredients that no one would have in their home kitchen! And guess who has to process all that stuff? Yep—your liver.

One simple way to take the pressure off your liver is to prepare more of your own food at home!

But… if you’re “challenged” like me in that way (“a terrible cook”), well… that can feel rough.

For my fellow culinarily-challenged people out there, I recommend two quality pieces of kitchen gear to make it easier:

1. A good strong blender

This makes it easy to pulverize greens into healthy smoothies. Sometimes, it’s just easier to drink your food than chew it all up!

When shopping for a blender, look for one with high power (at least 1000 watts) and durability to handle leafy greens and frozen fruit.

2. An Instant Pot

I was going to write about the three essential pieces of kitchen gear until I realized the Instant Pot does double duty as both a pressure cooker and a slow cooker!

Slow cookers are great for set-it-and-forget-it meals. Just throw in the ingredients, come back in a few hours, and boom—dinner is ready!

The pressure cooker setting, on the other hand, is perfect for quickly cooking healthy things (like artichokes) that usually take forever the old way.

If I can do it, so can you!

Supporting your liver doesn’t have to be complicated. It starts with a few simple changes in the kitchen.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Introduction

A Note from the Author

Day 1: It Begins

Day 2: Going with the Flow

Day 3: Secrets of Motion

Day 4: The Liver Bank

Day 5: Liver Emotions?

Day 6: Gratitude

Day 7: Slow it Down

Day 8: Only the Best

Day 9: Less is More

Day 10: Mindfulness

Day 11: Under Pressure

Day 12: Can’t Versus Don’t

Day 13: Breath of Life

Day 14: Breath of Life (Part 2)

Day 15: Liver Posture?

Day 16: Positive Liver Emotions

Day 17: FAST

Day 18: Fire it Up!

Day 19: Cool it Down

Day 20: Fletcherize It!

Day 21: Stop the Presses!

Day 22: Beet It!

Day 23: The Dark Crystal

Day 24: The Bitter Truth

Day 25: Backyard Bounty

Day 26: Allergens

Day 27: Oil it Up

Day 28: Skin Deep

Day 29: The Sugar Thing

Day 30: Graduation Day

Final Thoughts from the Author

Bonus Chapter: The (In)Famous Liver Flush

Editorial Reviews

"Dr. Makoi’s Booze to Balance is a refreshingly grounded, body-centered guide that compassionately empowers individuals to improve their health without judgment or dogma. As someone who values integrative and practical approaches to wellness, I highly recommend this book for anyone seeking sustainable change beyond the usual sober slogans."

Zander Keig, MSW, LCSW, author of The Third Space - A Nonconformist's Guide to the Universe

"Booze to Balance is witty, realistic, engaging and beyond the formalities — that too often get in the way of patients being able to hold honest conversations with their Docs. This book provides valuable nutritional information, is easily digestible with self-improvement tips and designed for us to read a chapter each day for 30 days. It's not only doable, it’s enjoyable."

Dr. An Goldbauer, Clinical Sexologist.

"I have always admired Dr. Makoi's refreshing approach to elucidating often knotty concepts within healthcare. May Dr. Makoi's engaging approach continue and even grow for the benefit of all."

Dr. Scott Walker, Founder/Developer of NET (Neuro Emotional Technique):

"Booze to Balance offers a refreshingly simple 30-day path to loving your liver and reclaiming vitality. Dr. Kim delivers clear, doable practices that support holistic wellness without shame or extremes. Instead of prescribing abstinence, he champions balance. He is guiding readers toward a joyful, embodied relationship with their health, their habits, and themselves."

Pavini Moray, M.Ed., Ph.D., author of How to Hold Power: A Somatic Approach to Becoming a Leader People Love and Respect

From the Publisher