Burroughs suggests mint tea (I use peppermint, which is all that is available here) as a herbal tea. It helps with your breath and other Body Odor s, freshens your mouth, and if you drink it with the senna lax tea, it will reduce cramping and nausea.

He was quite strict in his book. Also, judging from the difficulty of people to complete a modified Master Cleanse, while many people on the Master Cleanse Support Forum manage to reach their targets, suggests that it would be best to stick to Burrough's protocol if you can.

If you feel you must drink herbal teas (NOT RECOMMENDED!) then a single herb, containing no calories or caffeine, might not activate the digestive system. If you drink a herbal tea blend, it would be complex enough to be a food, and will almost certainly activate digestion. This would go against your desire to lose weight! A preferable method to drinking herbal teas other than the mint and lax tea would be to go for a gentle walk, do some yoga or stretching exercises, or take a sauna. The sauna would raise your body temperature, which would help burn off more calories, plus the sweating would do wonders to get toxins out of your body. Exercise will increase your metabolism, helping to shed fat cells, and will help you to build muscle rather than lose it as often happens on the MC. Muscle burns more calories at rest than fat cells. The key to making this work is to not overdo it. At the first sign of dizziness or excessive weakness in the legs, stop and rest. Another alternative is to take a detox bath, which will raise your body temperature (burning more calories), sweat out toxins, and replace some electrolytes through the skin.

As far as taking a pain medication, well, that is definitely not on the protocol. Burroughs recommends only taking prescribed medication and doing the cleanse with this medication under the supervision of a doctor. While he didn't go into much detail here, I think that, without food to buffer the medication, the drug might hit the body harder than usual. Plus it creates more work for the liver, at a time when the liver is resting.

I know what you mean about extreme pain. Despite all the above comments, I have also taken a pain reliever during the worst of a violent caffeine headache (Days 2 - 5), otherwise I would not have been able to function in any capacity at all. Knowing the dangers of accidentally overdosing and also of overstraining my liver, I took a reduced amount (compared to what I would normally take), to no effect. I tried a regular amount, again with no perceivable effect. I suppose the medication might have prevented the headache from reaching it's full potential - which is hard to fathom, it was already so extreme - but I don't think it really does much for the caffeine headache. As for your knee pain, that is a different matter. Has it helped you with the pain?

At this point, you have to choose: Do I continue the strict Burrough's protocol (no painkillers), getting better results in the long run, do I take the medication because I can't bear to live like this, or do I quit the Master-Cleanse (going off the fast carefully, as outlined in his book) so that I can safely take the medication?

Only you can truly advise yourself!

Good luck.

PC