In this episode, you will learn how to safely detox your body. I know, I know, I talk about this topic quite frequently, about four times a year in fact when I host my four seasonal detoxes. But it is all over my newsfeed again, people starting down the path of these juice detoxes where they subsist only on juice for days or weeks at a time, so today we are talking about the safety of that and what to do instead.
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Resources mentioned in this episode:
7 Day Spark
Eating with Intention
Wellness Circle
Winter Detox
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What is a detox or cleanse?
A detox and a cleanse are essentially the same thing—the terms are generally used interchangeably. For our purposes, I will use the term detox.
At its core, a detox is a process or period of time in which one abstains from or rids the body of toxic or unhealthy substances and simultaneously adds substances via foods or supplementation to assist the body in pushing toxins out. Now let’s be real here, it’s simply not possible in this day and age to abstain from toxins, or really even fully rid your body of toxins. It is, however, possible to BOOST your body’s ability to get rid of toxins.
Detoxing seems to be all the rage right now, the ones I see pop up on my radar usually have some outrageous claims (I guess it sells detoxes, right?) and are usually super restrictive - because if they aren’t how are they going to work, right? WRONG! But we will touch more on that later.
Where am I getting all of these toxins I need to get rid of?
Everywhere. The average woman has gotten 300 toxic chemicals in her bloodstream before she leaves the house in the morning, just from topical soaps, hair products, makeup, deodorants, etc. Not to mention coffee and breakfast.
But it’s not just women. Toxins affect everyone and can come from inside and outside of our bodies.
Toxins that come from outside our bodies, those found in food, air, water are called exogenous. These can be naturally occurring or synthetic. A few examples are: Heavy metals, UV radiation, products of combustion (smog, etc.), oxidation (free radicals), animal and plant mycotoxins (mold and fungus), pesticides, herbicides, industrial chemicals, food toxins, drugs, inhalants, EMF’s (electromagnetic fields), skin products, cleaning products, plastics, etc.
There are also toxins that even come from INSIDE our own bodies. These are called endogenous toxins, and they are things like waste products from normal metabolic activities (carbon dioxide, urea, lactic acid, GI tract by-products, etc.)
Less important than where the toxin originated, endogenous or exogenous, or whether or not it is a naturally occurring toxin or not, is that once they are in the body, they are foreign to the body and they have to get out.
How Do I know I need to detox?
Usually, your body detoxes all of these exogenous and endogenous toxins through its natural detoxification channels. The most common detoxification process happens naturally in a two-phase process in the liver, but if our detox pathways and digestive system are not functioning optimally, these toxins get stored in the liver, fat cells, joints, muscles, bone marrow, tissues, and the brain, where they can be stored for years and then show up as:
White or yellow-coated tongue and/or bad breath
Fluid retention and/or congested sinuses
Cravings and/or blood sugar issues
Gallbladder issues or you had it removed
Abdominal bloating
Overheating/excess sweating
Acne, rosacea, itchy skin
Fatigue that isn’t relieved by more sleep, especially in the morning