When you hear the word detox, you may think of an extreme nutritional detox, like a juice cleanse. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need some expensive product to detox your body, not when your body is already set up with its own way of eliminating toxins. Detoxing your body should be a fun and enjoyable experience that doesn’t mean overhauling your eating habits. The best way to approach nutritional detoxing is to work with what’s already available to you. Here are a few tools and strategies that can be helpful along the way.
What does Detox mean?
-A process or period of time in which one abstains from or rids the body of toxic or unhealthy substances; detoxification.
Figs and Radishes Definition of Detoxification:
-The practice of cleansing or clearing the body of toxins.
Detoxing through Nutrition helps rids the body of harmful toxins and allows you to develop the habits that will keep you on track for a healthier life.
As you may know, the body has its own natural detoxing methods. Through the liver, skin, gut, lungs and kidneys just to name a few ways your body rids itself of toxins.
Lungs:
-The lungs are always working for us to remove those air particulates, especially if we live in a polluted area. Interestingly there are certain foods and nutrients that help remove air pollutants from the body like broccoli and kale compounds. Other helpful tips are quitting smoking, regular exercise, healthy diet and keeping our indoor air clean so check your filters.
Kidneys
-They play an important roll in filtering fluid in the body. We need to be urinating to flush toxic compounds from the body. Drinking pure water is of vital importance when it comes to keeping clean on the inside. By increasing your water intake, your body reduces the secretion of the antidiuretic hormone (created when to body consumes to much salt, this hormone blocks the body from urinating and detoxing) and increases urination, eliminating more water and waste products.
Gut
-The gut helps us eliminate through our bowel movement on a daily basis. This is where dietary fiber can come in handy to swell and expand with water and trap contaminates and carry them out. A great way to promote gut health is with the help of a prebiotic, a fiber that feeds the good bacteria in your gut called probiotics. With adding in a prebiotic your good bacteria are able to produce nutrients called short-chain fatty acids this will aid your gut in detoxification. Foods rich in prebiotic are: onions, asparagus, beans & legumes, dandelions, leeks, oats, peas, whole grains and sprouts.
Liver
Our liver is the body’s primary filtration system, transforming toxins into waste, cleansing your blood, and metabolizing nutrients and medications to provide the body with some of its most important proteins. As an important role of the body’s overall regulation, it is a central to keep your liver healthy and to limit overindulgence. Ways to help the liver: focus on sleep, drink lots of water, eat anti-oxidant rich foods, limit alcohol intake and decrease salt intake.
Skin
-It’s been study that sweat is an effective way to get out many types of toxins. So if we are sitting in a sauna, exercising, or indulging in warmer weather activity we get the benefit of releasing toxins from this large surface area. Get moving by going for a 30 min walk or try going for a run in the park or your neighborhood.
Natural Herbs To Help Detox The Body:
-Turmeric
-Dandelion
-Cilantro
-Red Clove
-Milk Thistle
-Burdock
Everyone thinks you need to go on some crazy elimination diet to rid the body of environmental toxins, but your body already has its on way of doing that. All you need to enhance your body’s natural detoxification system and improve your overall health is to stay hydrated, consume less salt, get moving with physical activity, and form a few healthy eating habits. If this seems a bit challenging and you have other question about detoxing reach out and we can get started working together on detoxing your life in all areas.
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Thanks for stopping by and hope that you found this post to be enjoyable and enlightening.