How to Detox To Help Cleanse Your Spirit, Mind, and Body

Sometimes it takes more than mere cleaning up of your diet — and that means detox. If you are experiencing any or many of the following, then a detox could help:

• Mood swings, irritability, depression, and/or anxiety
• Bloating or weight gain
• Low libido
• Sluggishness, fatigue, or exhaustion
• Mental fog
• Acne breakouts, eczema, or psoriasis
• Hair loss or excess body hair
• Stiff, achy joints or muscles
• Inflammation
• Disease
• Constipation

It’s also important to do a detox to cleanse your liver. When you eat a diet high in processed foods, don’t exercise, or have chronic stress, your liver gets overloaded. Giving it a break twice a year helps to balance maintain your health.

If you eat a diet that is low in fiber that is all meat and dairy and processed foods that causes constipation. That kind of food moves through your body very slowly and you end up in a toxic state. Also many prescription drugs cause constipation.

How to Do It…

Foods to Eat

Here is a short list of foods known for cleansing the liver. Enjoy lots of these foods to cleanse your liver:

• Green tea
• Artichoke
• Garlic and onions
• Cruciferous vegetables: especially broccoli sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts
• Lemon and lime
• Grapefruit
• Beets
• Carrots
• Avocados
• Turmeric

Try drinking a glass of warm lemon water each morning before breakfast.

High-allergen Foods to Avoid

• Dairy and animal products
• Wheat and gluten-containing products
• Corn
• Soy
• Sugar of all types
• Refined vegetable oils such as cottonseed, canola, corn, peanut, sunflower, safflower, and others

Exercise

It’s important to exercise, sweat, and get your lymphatic system moving to ensure your liver and hormones are working properly. This also helps to reduce inflammation from toxicity and unwanted weight gain.

Aim for three to four times per week of high intensity exercise to create sweat.

Excess toxins can be stored in your fat if there’s too much on your body — specifically in the belly, hip, butt, and thigh areas.

Self-Care

Just as foods help clean out your cells, your mind and spirit need detoxing too so practice some self care.

When your brain is peaceful and not inflamed, your pituitary can properly balance and detoxify excess hormones.

Here are a few examples of activities to quiet the mind, balance, and promote detoxification:

1. Meditation

Taking a few minutes in the morning or evening to close your eyes, ground yourself, and do some deep breathing exercises. Think deeply about what you want to achieve with your health. What will your life look like and feel like when you’ve reached your goal. Getting clear on your goals reduces overwhelm and stress.

2. Journaling

Simply writing down the to-dos for the next day will help your sleep, reduce your stress, let go of emotions, and lessening your rambling thoughts. Write what’s on your mind before you go to sleep at night.

3. Give Thanks

Give thanks for everything that you can think of. Thanksgiving is healing on the body and spirit.

 Important Info about Detoxing

Your liver is the main detoxification organ in your body. Your liver and your kidneys both detox your blood and excrete those toxins in your urine and feces. Your lungs remove toxins from your body when you exhale. You skin excretes toxins when you sweat.

Your body has to get rid of all that stuff because it is toxic to you.

If your body is constantly polluted with unnecessary toxins then your liver and kidneys can get over loaded and their ability to work properly diminishes over time.

Your cells dump metabolic waste into your lymph system and your lymph system carries that waste away to your liver and your kidneys to eliminate it. It also eliminates toxins through your skin and your sweat.

Your skin is your largest detoxifying organ. Certain toxins are eliminated more through sweat than any other way. So sweating is very important to maintaining health.

Anything that prevents you from sweating, like antiperspirants, traps toxins in your body and they need to come out.

Your lungs excrete toxins 24 hours a day, so every time you exhale you are detoxifying.

It’s important to stop poising and polluting your body. Cigarettes are the leading cause of cancer.

Your mouth can be a significant source of toxins. If you have silver fillings in your mouth they are 50% mercury which releases mercury vapor in your mouth. Root canals could also allow bacteria causing problems in your body. If you have either you may want to find a holistic dentist  and get them evaluated.

So we want to reduce our toxic load and reduce as many of these things as possible. I’m not trying to overload you but detoxifying does require changes.

Too much stress is going to break you down and cripple your immune system.

Water is important and helps flush things toxins of your body. Water fasting reboots and recharges your immune system. Most people can handle a 3 day water fast without serious conditions. If you have a serious health condition, you should check with your doctor before attempting a fast.  For most people fasting is safe and gives your body a break from digestion allowing it to regenerate. How long is something you should determine. A one day water fast is pretty easy, but a 3 day water fast is a good length of time.

The next step is juice fasting.  A good plan is to start with a 3 day water fast and then do a 3, 5, or 10 day juice fast. Then transition to raw food first. Lots of raw fruit first and then incorporate vegetables.

The more body fat you have the more you can fast.

If you are on a water fast you don’t need intense exercise.

Deep breathing helps clean your blood and when you exhale you are excreting toxins. Deep breathing oxygenates and alkalizes your entire body and promotes detoxification.

Supplements are another detoxification method but vary by your individual needs. If you are willing to do these things then additional supplementation could be very beneficial. But if you just want to take a detox supplement and not change your lifestyle and habits you may not see many benefits.

Switch to non-toxic body care and home cleaning products.

All of these habits work together and greatly improve your body’s ability to detoxify.