Detox

When hiring a professional—be it a home builder, a plumber, or a landscape designer—you’d likely research their history, examine their educational background, and get some information about how they work and where their expertise lies. You may even ask for references from former clients to get a more objective view of their work habits and performance.

The same should be true of your personal holistic doctor, massage therapist, naturopath, homeopath, colon hydrotherapy technician, dietician, or acupuncturist. Choosing a holistic health care practitioner is not a process you should take lightly since they hold your health in their hands! This is especially true since there are a vast number of practitioners out there who actually make us sicker than when we first began. Your health is a precious thing that needs to be protected and handled with care.

Read more: Keys to Finding a Knowledgeable Holistic Doctor

Your body is constantly working to keep you feeling healthy and energetic. You’ve got several internal systems built into your body that are working around the clock to gather up and remove toxins from your cells and organs. But sometimes your natural cleansing systems get bogged down and needs a little help.

How Long-Term Exposure to Toxins Results in Illness

Every day, our bodies are assaulted with toxins of all sorts, but they generally fall within two categories: environmental toxins and metabolic toxins:

Read more: Detox for a Full Body Cleanse

We do so many things to our bodies that affect our energy levels.

• We eat simple sugars which spike blood sugar levels and leave us hungry after a short period of time.
• We pump chemicals and toxins into our bodies through the things we eat, the products we use, and by breathing toxic air. These toxins impede the normal function of our organs and systems, sapping us of energy.
• We fail to exercise, thereby slowing our body’s metabolism and making us lazy.
• Over time, we gain weight, which further compounds our energy problems.
• And we fail to get the quality or quantity of rest we require to repair our bodies and give us enough energy for the day.

Read more: Detox your Body to Gain Energy and Vitality

Your colon works hard every day to process your food and protect you from potential poisons in your diet. Neglect your colon for too long and you’ll pay the consequences. Sooner or later, you’ll begin to feel lethargic, experience frequent illness, and have trouble with normal digestion. In fact, digestive disease is one of the fastest growing health concerns in North America and can be a significant contributing factor in many other diseases.

Why? Because our North American diet is one of the most unhealthy on the planet. It’s full of sticky, starchy foods, loaded with sugar, pumped full of chemicals and pharmaceuticals, low in fiber, and deficient in essential vitamins and minerals.

Read more: Why a Colon Cleans or Colon Detox is Important for Overall Wellness

An extreme form of body cleansing is the fasting detox. This type of detoxification involves abstaining from food for between one and 10 days, depending on the diet. In the place of solid foods, you consume only liquids, which can range anywhere from fruit juices to the lemonade drink popular in the Master Cleanse Detox Diet.

Fasting is a highly effective method for ridding your body of toxins that have been stored in tissues and your digestive tract over time. You see, when your body encounters a toxin that it can’t process, it’ll find a way to store it in your body—most often in fat. When you do a fast, your body is forced to begin burning fat, and as it does so, these stored toxins are released into the body so that they can be flushed from your system.

Read more: Fasting Detoxifications

Colonics, a treatment that is sometimes called colonic hydrotherapy or colonic irrigation, can help to cleanse the colon of accumulated waste material, including fecal matter and toxins, parasites, worms, mucous, and dead cellular tissue—in some cases up to 40 pounds of the stuff! It has been used for thousands of years and has been show to be effective in relieving many physical ailments, including chronic or frequent headaches, gas and bloating, irritable bowel, colds, fatigue, candida, and even bad breath.

The Colonic Irrigation Experience

Your journey with colonics will likely start with a consultation with a colonics professional in which you’ll give them a complete health history. They should also explain the procedure to you and answer any of your questions.

Read more: Detoxification with Colonics

A detox will involve some pretty significant changes for your body, and so to give it an additional boost, you may want to consider taking a regular, high-quality multi-vitamin. One made with greens by a reputable natural foods company is best.

But vitamins aren’t the only way you can support your body during a detox. Digestive enzymes and antioxidants will give your systems the added boost they need as they slog through the cleansing process. They’ll also help you feel vibrant and healthy throughout the process.

Read more: Vitamins, Antioxidants, and Enzymes for Detox Support

Derived from the Greek word chele, which means claw, chelation is the process by which heavy metals and other toxins are removed from the body by using a binding agent to grab and carry away these poisons. Chelation therapy has been used by alternative medical practitioners for centuries to treat things like mercury poisoning, heart disease, multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, arthritis, diabetes, thyroid disorders, Alzheimer’s disease, and diabetes.

The body cannot process heavy metals such as mercury, aluminum, iron, lead, zinc, and cadmium, making them toxic to a variety of internal systems. It is therefore imperative to remove these toxins before they do long-term damage. During chelation therapy, a chelating agent will react with the offending metal, bonding with its ions and forming a chemically-stable compound that will pass easily out of the body through the digestive or excretory systems.

Read more: Heavy Metal Detox with Chelation Therapy

Our bodies are incredibly resilient and strong when it comes to fending off environmental and dietary dangers. But in today’s world, we are surrounded by potential threats.

Where Do Toxins Come From?

There are generally two main sources of toxins that can negatively affect our health. They include the following:

Read more: Why Detox Anyway?

Detoxifications—or detoxes as they are commonly called—are used by millions as a way to remove potentially toxic and harmful substances from the body. Although you may often hear of detoxes in reference to stars entering facilities to overcome alcoholism or drug addiction, the detoxes we refer to here are systems recommended by alternative health care professionals worldwide and can include special dietary recommendations, herbs and homeopathic supplements, food eliminations, and other ingredients and methods for ridding the body of damaging waste.

Every single day our bodies are exposed to toxins of all shapes and sizes. We breathe in toxins because of the polluted air both inside and outside our homes and workplaces. We absorb toxins through our skin, either through the cosmetics and personal care products we apply or through our clothes and other textiles. We also take in toxins when we eat, especially if we consume conventionally-grown fruit, vegetables, seafood, meat, and processed foods.

Read more: Knowing Where to Start: Different Types of Detoxes