Ever since my teen years I’ve always been in pretty good health. I’ve hardly ever been ill, and colds and viruses never seem to latch on to me – or at least not that lasted longer than about 12 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. I’d been to see the doctor on many occasions, and had undergone several test, but every one showed nothing wrong.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, I bumped into a old friend one day who intimated that I was in need of a natural detox, and take some time to learn how to detox the body and understand the impact of toxins on my health. It seemed a lot of people had a lot of good things to say about it, so I decided to learn all about it, and try to understand why alternative health therapists say it’s so popular and advocate healthy detox diets and suggest getting started with the 7 day detox diet so avidly.
Something else she recommended I try was a foot detox. I now use a foot spa about twice a week, if you don’t want to invest in a foot spa, the detox foot pads can work just as well – but doing it this way you miss out on the relaxing foot massage at the same time
Here’s what I learnt to detox your body.
Drink water or herbal teas
Making sure you take in plenty of fluids is very important while you are following a detox diet as it will prevent the build up of toxins and man made chemicals in your body. Drinking plenty of water also has other health benefits like promoting regular bowel movements, reduce bloating, and encourage clear skin. On a normal day try to drink about 2 liters of water, although you will need more in hot weather or on days when you are exercising.
As a guideline, increase your water intake by about half a liter for each hour of exercise. Choose still mineral water, or tap water that has been filtered, or boiled and then cooled. Keep your water at room temperature as it’s more refreshing that way. Feel free to substitute herbal teas if you can’t face all that water – loose leaf tea is the better option if it’s available. Green tea, horsetail, camomile and roibosch (or redbush) in particular are great choices as their hidden ingredients naturally support the detox process. Roibosch and green tea has other health benefits too as it is very high in OPC antioxidants.
Choose Organic Food Where Possible
You do not need to switch to a totally organic diet on a detox diet, as organic produce is normally higher priced than non organic equivalents, but if you can afford to stretch to buying a few organic products it will be a great help.
Don’t panic if you can’t find organic foods in your area. Just eating plenty of fresh fruits and veg is more important, whether they are organic or not, rather than not get enough of them. Having said that, there are some very beneficial health reasons of going organic on a healthy detox diet.
Organic foods are free from artificial pesticides and sprays, so they have very little or no potentially toxic man made chemicals. Although it’s a controversial area, there is growing evidence that the ‘cocktail’ effect of man made fertilizers and pesticides are linked to some of the serious health conditions of today.
Organic foods undergo minimal 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.