Detoxing Your Body

I mentioned a while back that I would post my experience with my first detox so here it is in a nutshell. Please feel free to post questions if I don't elaborate enough for you.

I first came about the cleanse from my naturopath. I went in for an evaluation and she mentioned that she does two cleanses a year and there was one coming up. It wasn't the right time for me then, but six months later I went to the class to check it out. There are a lot of different detoxes out there from teas you can drink all the way to colon hydrotherapy (it is what it sounds like). This particular one was a cleansing juice fast. It starts with the prep week where you eliminate all anti-inflammatory items from your diet. This list is pretty long but basically it is meat, wheat, dairy, sugar, certain oils and coffee/alcohol. Mid week you start doing some other things to prepare your liver and gall bladder for the fast. After the first week starts the juice only portion. This lasted between 3 to 5 days depending on how far you wanted to take it. I did 3 days. Some people juiced themselves or she offered an option to purchase some organic juices from her. You could have fruit juice in the first half of the day and a veggie juice the second. The only other thing you could consume was water. After the juice fast you broke fast with a veggie broth that you make with fresh steamed veggies. After that you SLOWLY introduced solid foods back into your body.

I am not going to lie, it wasn't easy but believe me it was worth it. I think the hardest part for me was I had to continue cooking for my family and I couldn't eat it. I love food too, it wasn't fun not eating for those 3 days. Some people in the group (oh sorry I forgot to mention, this was a group cleanse. The doctor has found that it is easier for people to complete the fast if they have a group of people with them through the process) did other things to aide there cleanse like the colon hydrotherapy (which they all said was amazing, I didn't do it though), Castor oil pack treatments, breathing exercises, enemas, infrared sauna treatments among other things which are escaping my mind at the moment.

So, why do a detox you say? The doctor explained it in a way that made perfect sense. Basically look at your body as a cup. The daily toxic burdens keep pouring into the cup (bad diets, stress, environmental pollution, etc.) and every now and again, the cup needs to be emptied. If you don't empty it (and do it properly) the toxins will keep circulating through your body getting stored in your tissues and cells and will eventually take its toll on you. You might get headaches all the time or maybe you are constantly exhausted, bad skin, stomach issues, sore joints and muscles...all these are signs of toxic buildup. Actually they are the little signs, try not to wait until the bigger signs appear!

After I did the detox I noticed some things about my diet I needed to change (I ate too much pasta for starters). I also didn't have some of the same cravings I did pre-fast. I will definitely do it again, however I think if I opted for twice a year my husband would leave me (he said I was a bit irritable during the whole process...what does he want, I was literally starving for goodness sakes!! lol). Anyway, bottom line is I would recommend everyone do some sort of detox every now and again. You know your body best and can tell when the cup runeth over and when it does...empty it!

Here is the website for my naturopath whom like I said, has 2 cleanses a year.
http://www.sarasotahealingarts.com/