Can Learning To Detox Your Body Protect Your Immune System
For as long as I can remember I’ve always been lucky with my health. I’ve managed to avoid being ill, and colds and viruses never seem to latch on to me - at least nothing that struck for longer than a few hours. So it was completely out of the blue when I began feeling constantly tired and lethargic, and I was even finding it hard to get up in the morning. Over the course of about 12 months I’d seen my doctor many times and had all the tests he threw at me, but they couldn’t find anything wrong with me.
As luck would have it, not long after I met up with a naturopath who intimated that I was in need of a natural detox, and put some effort into learning how to detox and eliminate the build up of toxins in my body. From what people were telling me it was clear that detoxing had a lot to offer, so I decided to learn all about it, and try to understand why alternative health therapists say it’s so popular and advocate doing a detox and suggest getting started with the 7 day detox diet so strongly.
Something else she recommended I try was a foot detox. I now treat myself to a foot massage at least once a week, if you don’t want to invest in a foot spa, the detox foot patches can do just as good a job - but with the patches you don’t get a relaxing foot massage at the same time
So here’s my top tips about how to detox your body.
Herbal teas and water and plenty of both
One of the most important things you need to is drink lots of water while you are following a detox diet as it will prevent the build up of toxins and man made chemicals in your body. It also helps to prevent constipation, improves concentration, and hydrates your skin which improves your skin tone. You should aim for about 2 to 3 liters a day, but increase that when the weather is hot.
A general pointer is to increase your water intake by about half a liter for each hour of exercise. The healthiest type of water is filtered tap water. Ideally drink water that is at room temperature. If you don’t always fancy water, herbal teas - loose leaf tea is the better option if it’s available. Green tea, horsetail, camomile and roibosch (or redbush) are particularly good as their additional properties help boost the detox process. Roibosch (Redbush) tea is also beneficial as it is very high in OPC antioxidants.
Should You Go Organic
When detoxing, there’s no need to go completely organic, because organic is usually much more expensive, but selecting just a few organic ingredients will be a step in the right direction.
If you can’t find or afford organic fruits and veggies, it’s not a problem. Concentrating on eating fresh (and ideally raw) fruit and veg is the main point - even if they are non-organic - than skimp on quantities. Nonetheless, there’s a lot of health benefits to having as much as possible of organic produce on a healthy detox diet.
Organic foods are free from artificial pesticides and sprays, which means they are very low or even free from toxins like man made chemicals and toxins. Organic farming is a hotly debated and controversial topic because there’s a lot of evidence that the build up of toxins from man made chemicals and bug sprays may be related to a lot of the serious health issues we face today.
Organic foods are subject to a lot less processing. That means they contain no hydrogenated fats, artificial additives, preservatives or genetically modified organisms (GMOs). And you may notice that organic foods also taste better and have much deeper flavors.