3 Detox Tips That Will SAVE YOUR LIFE!
3 Detox Tips That Could
Save Your Life!
It’s all about the 3S’s...
Thanks for tuning into month 3 of my “Save Your Life” Blog Series. This month we are focusing on the 3 ways to help your body detoxify and stay healthy. This should be part of your daily routine. However, if they are not, I suggest you take 1 week every month when you pay particular attention to my 3 ways to detoxify and follow them daily.
As a side note, I wanted to mention that by now you may have begun to see some common threads in my “Save Your Life” blog series. That is, some things may appear under one or more one of the topics I share with you. HINT: I would pay particular attention to those, because if they’re mentioned more than once, they must be critical to numerous aspects of your health.
Now onto my 3 tips to Save Your Life – the 3 S’s of Detoxification:
1. Super greens and super fruits
2. Sweat, Scrub and Sauna
3. Sh...t it out. I mean, really; work on having soft stools and lots of them.
1. Super greens and super fruits:
Eat 10-12 servings per day of vegetables and fruits.
Ideally, consume 9-10 servings of green vegetables and only 2-3 servings of low glycemic load fruits per day. The vegetables should include watercress, wheatgrass, kale, spinach, spirulina, alfalfa, chard, arugula, or other organic leafy greens. These plants will help give a chlorophyll boost to your digestive tract. Chlorophyll rids the body of harmful environmental toxins, from toxic metals, to herbicides, to harmful cleaning products and pesticides. They also help in detoxification itself in the liver and the intestinal tract. Furthermore, they have many phytonutrients that aid in detoxification.
In terms of fruit, focus particularly on the berries (blueberries, strawberries, raspberries and blackberries) because they are high in antioxidants, vitamins and fiber. They also may contain a special liquid content which helps the body wash out toxins. (3). Last, remember to always eat organic (see Month 1 of my “Save Your Life” blog series).
2. Sweat, scrub and sauna:
Sweat: Exercise regularly. Particularly cardiovascular exercise in the form of running, swimming, aerobics, zumba, barre, jazzercise, etc. This is vital for overall health. It keeps your heart healthy and ensures good blood flow to all the vital organs including the liver, intestines, kidneys and skin. These are all organs that help in detoxification. Remember to drink plenty of water when working out vigorously.
Scrub: Scrubbing your skin either while bathing or showering or doing a dry scrub with a loofah or soft skin brush is great for detoxification. Dry skin brushing not only removes dead skin cells but also stimulates your lymphatic system and aids in detoxification. Another way to “scrub” is bathing in Epsom salts. This practice serves to help detoxification in a variety of ways. Firstly, it helps boost magnesium levels in the body. Secondly, it aids detoxification through a process called reverse osmosis, which sees salt and toxins pulled out through the skin. Thirdly, it helps protect the kidneys from toxin damage. Plus, you’ll also be easing stress at the same time, and sparing your blood pressure from hiking too high.
Sweat: Sweating in a sauna can help detoxify the body of the toxic agents that routinely accumulate in the body (1). Toxins stored in our body fat, especially our subcutaneous fat, are released through perspiration. As toxins stored in the fat pass through perspiration, toxins that are stored at deeper levels of tissue throughout the body are able to move up into this layer of fat and continue to be released through sweat. Circulation also increases when you use a sauna and increased blood flow improves blood oxygenation. Enhanced oxygen levels can assist in the processing and removal of hidden toxic agents in the blood. I prefer a far infrared sauna (FIR), but any sauna is helpful.
3. Sh…t it out!
Make sure you are having soft stools and that you have several per day. Ideally, 2-3 is ideal, especially when you are working on detoxification. Your digestive tract is in a way, the assembly line for the food you eat. Thus, if you are eating 2-3 meals per day you should also have 2-3 bowel movements to be healthy.
Eating 35 grams of fiber per day is essential for adequate bowel movements to occur. Eat fiber from nuts, seeds as well as your vegetables and legumes. Please note that when you increase your fiber, you also need to increase your water intake and hydration in order to help move the stool along and not cause impaction. In total, when you combine increased fiber with sweating and sauna, you will be able to excrete toxic chemicals that accumulate in our body (2).
Finally, remember that your gut contains the toxins that have accumulated in your body. Consequently, expect that during the initial days of detoxification you may have fowl smelling stools that will change as you continue your detoxification. Your stool should float in the toilet if everything in it is waste material from food that has been properly digested. Stool that has become too hard and dense due to constipation will usually sink.
I hope you can incorporate my 3 S’s of Detoxification to save, extend and improve the quality of your life!
- Dr. Trindade
Bibliography
(1) Crinnion WJ. Sauna as a valuable clinical tool for cardiovascular, autoimmune, toxicant- induced and other chronic health problems. Altern Med Rev. 2011 Sep;16(3):215-25. Review.
(2) Genuis SJ1, Birkholz D, Ralitsch M, Thibault N. Human detoxification of perfluorinated compounds. Public Health. 2010 Jul;124(7):367-75. doi: 10.1016/j.puhe.2010.03.002. Epub 2010 Jun 19.
(3) Madrigal-Santillán E, Madrigal-Bujaidar E, Álvarez-González I, et al. Review of natural products with hepatoprotective effects. World Journal of Gastroenterology : WJG. 2014;20(40):14787-14804. doi:10.3748/wjg.v20.i40.14787.