Think back a few months to October. Remember Halloween and the candy you ate? After Halloween came Thanksgiving and the big turkey dinner with family and friends. Then came all of the holiday parties and extra food and drink, not to mention all of the stress involved in shopping for the perfect gift for everyone you know. On New Years, you promised yourself that you would go on a diet and join the gym. But it was so cold and dark for the past 3 months, things didn’t go quite as planned. Now it’s finally April and it’s getting warmer and the sun is out later and now you are thinking about the summer, putting on a bathing suit and going to the beach. You need to spring clean your life.
Spring is the season for renewal. It is the time of year that we clean up our lives, homes and bodies. In Chinese medicine, each organ in the body is associated with a particular season. The liver is associated with spring and by no coincidence the liver is our bodies main organ for detoxification
Every day, we are subjected to a variety of toxins and pollutants. The air we breathe is polluted, our food contains hormones and pesticides and many people take a variety of medications every day. Our diet is not much better. We eat a diet based largely on refined carbohydrates, sugar, fried foods, caffeine and alcohol. All of these create toxicity and inflammation in our body’s and force our liver to work overtime to detoxify and restore balance. A seasonal detox offers a chance to eliminate all the built up toxins and allow our body to cope with the burdens we have placed on it.
The first thing we can do is to make sure that we are drinking at least 8, 16 ounce glasses of water a day. I recommend that people drink up to half of their body weight in onces of water every day. If you weighed 130 pounds, you would drink 65 ounces of water a day. Water is essential to our survival and most of us are walking around chronically dehydrated every single day and don’t even know it. Water helps the body to be able to flush out the toxins and proper hydration leaves your skin smooth and wrinkle free.
To combat the amount of pesticides and hormones found in most of our food, we need to choose organic whenever possible. Organic, green leafy vegetables are rich in phytonutrients and vitamins and are a great way to purify your blood. Greens are also a great source of fiber. Fiber rich foods bind up toxins and make them easier for the body to excrete them and do not allow them to be reabsorbed into the bloodstream. Good sources of fiber rich foods are; strawberries, apples, carrots, avocados, kale and bock choy.
Exercise is a great way to detoxify your body. The skin is the body’s largest organ for elimination and our body releases toxins when it sweats. Activities like running, swimming, yoga, biking, rowing all are good ways to sweat out the toxins in your body. Exercise also releases endorphins that help to regulate your mood. Studies have even shown that just 30 minutes of brisk walking is as effective as dealing with depression as taking Prozac.
Stress is a huge source of toxicity in our lives. Any good detox program includes a protocol for reducing the sources of stress in our lives. Yoga, meditation and deep breathing are all helpful ways to deal with stress. It is important to identify the sources of stress in your life. For many people, their relationships are a major source of stress in their lives. Sometimes the people that are closest to us create the majority of our day to day stress. Learn to identify the people in your life who are “toxic” and limit the amount of control that you give them over your life. Trust me, you will be a lot happier for it.
Try a 3 week guided detox program to jump start your health.
