It can feel overwhelming to be healthy when surrounded by unhealthy foods, harmful chemicals, and a revolving door of new fad diets, but it’s easy to forget that your body is always on your side. Sometimes it needs a little push or an opportunity to recover, but it’s always in the process of healing.
Your body is regularly cleansing itself of toxins that can cause long-term issues. This is known as detoxification, a process that involves various organs including the kidneys, liver, digestive system, skin, and lungs. In this article, you’ll understand more about detoxification and how to remove toxins from the body naturally.
What is a full-body detox?
Why does the body need to cleanse itself? Our bodies experience daily exposure to environmental elements like pollutants and the ingestion of synthetic chemicals, heavy metals, and processed foods. These are known as toxins, the reason that our body undergoes its detox process.
Put simply, detox is a term that describes the process of resting, cleansing, and nourishing the body from the inside out by eliminating toxins from the body. Detox may not be a familiar word to you, but it describes a tradition with hundreds of years of history. Particularly, in Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine, cleansing remedies and organic formulas are often offered as a solution to many different kinds of health issues.
Do you need to detox if the body does it naturally?
Detoxification is a regular procedure in the body, but there are several lifestyle practices and dietary changes that can help you reduce your everyday toxins and support your body’s natural processes. Whether you add sulfur-containing foods like onions or garlic into your daily meals or switch to natural body care products, these adjustments can alleviate the extra burden of the effects of toxins.
Are detoxes really effective?
Detox routines are not meant to be a cure-all for whatever ails you. Instead, you should look at it as a way to support the body as it detoxifies itself. Through methods like selective fasting, specialized diets, and plant-based supplements, you can improve your circulation, refuel your body with healthy nutrients, and stimulate the organs that need the extra energy for detoxification.
How to help your body remove toxins in your everyday life
You now broadly know what’s involved in detoxification, but there are several steps that you can take to assist individual parts of that process.
Make sure you’re getting proper sleep
One of the easiest things you can do to help remove toxins from your body is to find a consistent, healthy sleep schedule. You might need to cut back on some late nights, but your body will thank you for the time to properly reenergize.
When you close your eyes every night, your brain begins a series of its own tasks including reorganizing its contents and removing daily toxic waste byproducts from the central nervous system through the glymphatic system. This is an essential process for maintaining your health.
Studies show that poor sleep can also be connected to short and long-term health consequences such as stress, anxiety, high blood pressure, heart disease, and obesity. What does quality sleep look like? The CDC suggests that adults should sleep about 7 to 9 hours per night – although this can look different for everyone.
If you’re struggling to get enough good-quality sleep, here are some proactive measures you can take:
- Avoid late-night stimulants like alcohol and caffeine
- Create a quiet, dark, screen-free space to sleep in
- Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day
If you’re still feeling tired, you can also look into supplemental remedies that can help relax the mind and decrease the time it takes you to fall asleep. Bioray’s Get Sleepy supplement modulates GABA(A) and 5-HT(2C) receptors in the brain to create a mild sedative/hypnotic effect, helping you on your way to a peaceful night’s sleep.
Drink less alcohol, drink more water
Alcohol is a big obstacle in the detoxification process. When you drink alcohol, your liver needs to break down a toxin called acetaldehyde into a substance called acetate. During this metabolizing cycle, the liver has to work overtime, preventing it from performing its essential tasks including filtering waste and other toxins from the body. If you’re looking to detox, you may want to try a dry month.
Water is great at quenching your thirst, but it also helps regulate body temperature, lubricate joints, aid digestion and nutrient absorption, and remove waste products through urination, breathing, or sweating. To function correctly, a body’s cells must regularly repair themselves to break down nutrients. Depending on your weight, a good water intake is about 125 ounces for men and 91 ounces for women. A great way to detox is to keep up with hydration to flush chemicals out.
Eat antioxidant and prebiotic-rich foods
You can also eliminate toxins by adding select foods to your diet that are rich in antioxidants and prebiotics. That may sound complicated, but it’s as simple as adding common foods that are rich in antioxidants like spinach, blueberries, pecans, and even dark chocolate into your meal plans.
Antioxidants defend the cell from damage that can be caused by organic molecules called free radicals. While the body naturally produces free radicals, in excess they can have negative health consequences. Including a variety of antioxidant-rich foods can be a great way to guard against these.
Prebiotics are equally important to the excretion and detox process of the body, protecting the gut and the rest of the body from harmful toxins. Within the body, prebiotics are a type of fiber that feeds the good bacteria that can produce short-chain fatty acids.
Like antioxidants, prebiotics are naturally available in many foods, including:
- Vegetables like asparagus, beans, onion, peas
- Fruits like tomatoes and bananas
- Grains like barley, rye and wheat
- Honey
- Garlic
- Milk
Take daily probiotics
Probiotics are helpful bacteria that encourage gut health. The gut is the body’s main way of removing toxins and supporting the immune system, and probiotics add healthy bacteria to the gut to make this process easier.
Specialty herbal supplements such as Bioray’s Belly Mend help support a healthy gut and bowel movements through the use of traditional ingredients.
Reduce intake of sugars and processed foods
One of the biggest sources of toxins can be found in sugar and processed foods. Foods with these additives can be tasty, but eating too many fried, sugary, or processed foods has been linked to obesity and other chronic diseases.
Limiting your consumption of these foods and enjoying them in moderation can be a helpful way to promote a healthy lifestyle. If you need a little extra help, incorporating a natural formula such as Bioray’s Microbe Slayer can help improve digestion and reduce your cravings for sugar and carbohydrates.
What to avoid during the detoxification process
It’s important to remember that detoxification is all about balance in your body. Just as there are things you can do to help with detox, there are other practices that can weaken the detoxification process.
Restrictive detox diets aren’t effective
You need to put your health before any kind of routine. Some restrictive diets, laxatives, and juice cleanses claim to help detox your body, but these types of interventions are rarely effective.
Studies on detox programs have shown positive results for weight and fat loss due to reduced calorie intake, but the test subjects have been known to gain that weight back as soon as they stop these diets. Worse, extreme dieting can contribute to the development of disordered eating, and have long-term consequences on your health.
Rather than engage in a drastic detox program, consider taking gentler steps to a more natural, healthy life—such as getting regular exercise, consuming nutritious food, and adding plant-based supplements as needed.
Avoid alcohol, desserts, and soft drinks
You might have difficulty cutting out alcohol, desserts, and soft drinks from your diet, but they are only hindrances to your body’s ability to successfully detox. Instead, try to replace those foods with added sugars for plant-based foods rich in antioxidants like beta-carotene, selenium, and vitamins A, C, and E.
What are some supplements that can help remove toxins from the body?
Detox is not something that you can rush into, but some supplements can target different parts of the cleansing process as it relates to the liver, digestion, and sleep quality.
Products that help with liver function
You’ve probably learned about several practices to improve your daily liver function, but other naturopathic options can enhance your liver’s ability to filter toxins and support a healthy metabolism. Bioray’s Liver Lover contains ingredients traditionally used to support your liver and can provide mild detoxification from environmental toxins.
If you’re looking for more comprehensive support, the Adult Liver Restorative Program is suited to adults looking to support healthy liver function, improve pH balance, and neutralize toxins created by modern living.
Products that help with digestion
Everyone from the elderly to children can have digestive difficulties that impede their ability to go through their day. Bioray’s NDF Tummy tincture can help reduce stomach discomfort, push harmful elements out of the gut and bowels, and build up gastrointestinal integrity for those of any age.
Products that help with sleep
You can try your hardest to create the perfect place to fall asleep and ease your brain, but that’s sometimes easier said than done. Bioray’s Get Sleepy is a great way to deepen your night’s sleep and promote rest.
Bioray offers natural products to support your body’s detox process
Being healthy and removing negative elements from your body is never going to be an instant process, but there are always better ways to take care of yourself. It’s all about knowing yourself and what you need to feel your best.
Here at Bioray, we create safe, effective natural remedies that can help facilitate your body’s detox process. Our 45-day natural detox program for adults is a great way to get all the benefits we’ve discussed in this article in a single, structured program. To find out more,
reach out to the team at Bioray today.
