In this day and age, we are well aware there are toxins we are exposed to in our food, water, and air. We need ways to detoxify the body and here are a few easy things you can do.
Take A Probiotic
A high quality daily probiotic supplement is a great way to get a huge number of the essential good bacteria we need to keep our gut healthy and happy. But, you don’t need to take a pill to do that. There are many cultured foods like sauerkraut, kimchi, yoghurt, and kombucha that you can include in your diet to promote a healthy microbiome. Probiotics actually help us break down food such as gluten (in wheat) and casein (in dairy), and chemicals such as pesticides.
Breaking A Sweat
Exercise is essential to release uplifting and regenerative hormonal and neurochemical secretions, as well as activating the lymphatic system. Although you don’t need to actually sweat to have a benefit, sweating does have a great benefit by eliminating various heavy metals and chemicals to help detoxify the body. Antiperspirants and deodorants block that channel of detoxification, so when you can, do a workout without using them so your body can sweat the toxins out!
Fasting
This one seems intimidating, but in reality a fast can be as simple as not eating after sundown and skipping breakfast. A period of 10 to 12 hours overnight is a good way to rest the digestive system and help boost your metabolism. Some people do it daily, others once a week or for a determined period of time, depending on your goals and overall health. Fasting has been around for thousands of years, but it seems to be gaining popularity more recently as we are learning ways to use ketones as the body’s fuel source instead of glucose (the keto diet, as an example). I’ll write more about that in an upcoming blog post.
Spice Up Your Life!
There are spices you probably have in your cupboard or ingredients commonly found in your kitchen that can be added to many dishes to stimulate bodily detoxification. Things like garlic, turmeric, black pepper, cinnamon and ginger, among many others, are amazing at naturally detoxifying the body and adding beautiful flavour to meals.
Avoid Chemicals
This seems obvious, but often we do things that directly put harmful chemicals in our body without even knowing it! Anything you put on your skin like lotions, sunscreens, and cosmetics are full of toxins that are absorbed directly into your bloodstream through your largest organ…the skin. I use coconut oil as a moisturizer, avoid sunscreen unless I absolutely have to, and buy organic products without parabens, chemicals, mineral oils, etc. to put on my face.
This list is by no means exhaustive, but I wanted to bring some awareness of some of the little things we do that we can do better. Health comes in many facets, so keep it simple and change the easy things you can first and the rest will follow.
Some of this information is taken from an article “8 Surprisingly Simple Ways to Detoxify” written by Sayer Ji of Green Med Info.