Are toxins in your system the cause of your chronic fatigue, poor digestion, bad breath or recurring headaches? What can you do to get rid of your body’s internal toxins? How do you sort through all the options? Are there things you should avoid?
Here are some things to consider as you begin to navigate the ins and outs of body detox.
Start at the beginning
Dr. Moshe Torem, chief of integrated medicine at Akron General Medical Center says internal cleansing starts with rethinking the substances we put into our bodies in the first place.
Whole foods, like apples, tomatoes or cucumbers, in their natural state, are far better choices than processed foods like potato chips. Sure, the chips contain potatoes, but they also contain a variety of chemicals designed to extend their shelf life or appeal to our taste buds so we will want to eat and buy more.
Natural breads that mold in three days may be inconvenient, but they are far healthier than breads that contain preservatives. The chemicals in the preservatives actually kill the mold (a living fungus) to keep it from growing on the bread.
Think about it. “Mold on bread is like the canary in the coal mine,” Torem says. Miners used to send canaries down into the mines to test the ventilation. If the canary came up from the mine alive, the miners knew they could survive there too. In the same way, bread that doesn’t kill mold is safer for the living cells in our bodies. Food that lasts an unnaturally long time is never as healthy as fresh food, eaten before it spoils.
So, the doctor’s best advice for internal cleansing starts with what we eat and drink:
1. Buy organic and whole foods whenever possible.
This includes fruits, vegetables and eggs. Pesticides, growth hormones and other chemical additives are toxins that we ingest right along with the nutrients we get from these foods.
2. Avoid eating processed foods with added chemicals.
This includes beef or chicken injected with hormones, antibiotics or other chemicals that artificially preserve them, bring them to market more quickly or make them unnaturally tender. All these things are done for marketing purposes, but they add pollutants to much of the food we eat.
Latest Comments