’Tis the season where we are overloaded with goodies and/or alcoholic beverages. It happens to everyone, we fall off of our healthy living habits and we over indulge more than we should or care to think about. It starts at Thanksgiving and continues though the holiday season leaving us to forget about our health for the time being as well as all the other gatherings throughout the year. It’s not until we start to feel fatigued, our pants a little more snug and/or brain fog sets in that we realize we are out of balance. With so much misinformation coming at us from every angle it’s hard to figure what’s what in health and our food!
I do believe there is a difference! A detox is just that ridding your body of toxins. Most likely starting from the very environment we live in. It’s almost impossible to avoid all chemicals – its in the air we breathe. But top that with chemicals in our food as well as heavy metals, smoking, cleaning products, makeup, hair and poor skincare products and your body gets overloaded and weighed down and just doesn’t work properly. Sometimes a good detox in supporting specific organs is in order to help you bring your body back to it’s natural balance.
A cleanse on the other hand helps clear out your digestive system and enhances your bodies natural detoxification system. It helps rid your body of toxic matter that is clogging your digestive system. With so many people using them interchangeably it’s hard to decipher which one is for you and I think that’s a personal choice depending on how you are feeling. Believe or not our bodies are meant to cleanse themselves naturally aka the skin, liver, kidneys and colon not to mention our entire lymphatic system. Given the right foods they can work beautifully together. Keeping them healthy and clean is key to keeping them working well. I don’t believe you should be sitting on a toilet and afraid to leave the house! I recommend using food as a natural detoxification even if you are “cleansing/detoxing.” Although some good supplements or herbal teas help the detoxification process move along. One thing you have to remember is detoxing and cleansing may have ill effects on you the first few days if you were eating poorly prior to it. It’s important to keep that in mind and also to prepare yourself prior to do doing a cleanse so the body is eased into it. It would be a good idea for instance to slowly take caffeine out of your diet starting several days before you start your cleanse so you don’t get that dreaded “caffeine headache”.
Here are some signs of that your body is in need of a cleanse or detox:
- fatigue
- stressed
- anxiety
- acne
- not losing weight when you are doing your best
- headaches
- allergies and/or food sensitivities
- joint pain
- mood swings
I hope that helps in some way but either way just ridding your body of the junk one to two times a year is a good idea! It’s almost inevitable even if you are eating well, and not using toxic chemicals our bodies get clogged up. They need to reboot and take a break from working so hard to keep us healthy which is truthfully it’s only goal.