Total Body Detox From the Inside Out
By Unite Fitness Retreat Dietician Brooke Bouwhuis
Liver cleanse, juice cleanse, sugar detox, water fasting – YIKES – That is a lot of cleaning house so to speak! Toxins, pollutants and containments surround all of us. Our body has systems in play to help keep a healthy balance otherwise, well, we would be 6 feet under by now.
Did you know your kidneys filter every drop of blood every 35-45 minutes? The cilia in our nose keeps critters at bay to keep our personalized oxygen filtration system otherwise known as our lungs in tip top shape.
Our superhero organ for cleansing is the liver. It’s critical in filtering and detoxifying the blood from our digestive tract before it reaches the rest of our body. Don’t forget the colon, 25% of our detox is out the back end of our sewer system.
With our own body systems is a detox necessary?
Usually detox’s are expensive, low in calories and completely change the way to you eat so many lose a lot of weight fast. When we don’t eat enough calories, glucose is pulled from our muscles and the water attached to the glucose is flushed out. This is where the term “water weight” comes from. Unfortunately, once we start eating normally again and our glucose stores are revived, the weight that we lost so quickly is back just as fast as it left. If you use a detox as a spring board to a healthier way of eating, I’m whole heartedly in.
5 Easy and Effective Ways to Naturally Detox Your Body
- Water + Lemon Each night fill a glass with 2 cups of water and a squeeze of lemon – leave it at your nightstand or bathroom sink. First thing every morning, hydrate your body with the lemon water. It stimulates your livers detox pathways and hydrates the colon making it easier for the sewer system to do it’s job and not be backed up.
- Drink less alcohol. You know drinking affects the liver in a negative way. The liver does have the ability to regenerate and when you give it a break, it gives back to you. Supporting the liver is your number one approach to being able to cleanse properly without a gimmicky bottle or juice or jug of tablets.
- Eat gobs of colorful veggies, a little bit of fruit & whole grains, beans and lentils. The fiber from these foods will move things along eliminating toxins out the back end before they can be reabsorbed and harm our body.
- Eat Beets! Beets have a compound called betaine (helps liver cells eliminate toxins), pectin (fiber that helps eliminate toxins from our body) and betalains (a beautiful pigment that is anti-inflammatory), which are excellent in supporting the liver’s detoxification pathways.
- Do you want to know a super-secret cleanse that no one will tell you about because no one can make any money off of it? Cabbage. In addition to eating like a champ with a diet full of a rainbow of plants, whole grains, clean healthy protein and healthy fats – add 2 cups of cabbage daily for 2 weeks to your meal plan. Why cabbage? Packed with the raw materials our liver uses to create glutathione – Our #1 antioxidant in the liver, it’s the bomb diggity in cleansing. And its cheap, tastes amazing and is incredibly effective.
Detox is really important but with a down to earth approach, it can benefit you short term and long term which is what we are all about here at Unite Fitness Retreat. Your long term health is always on our mind.
