Which Detox is Right For You?

Detoxing is no longer practiced by only the healthy few. With today's increase in toxins, more patients are waking up to the realization that we need to rid the body of heavy metals, chemicals and parasites to prevent illness. However, with options that include water fasts and colon cleanses, the hard part is figuring out which detox is right for you.

To begin, it is important to note that a general detox is usually done through fasting (either water or juice). In this type of detox, cells throughout the body are cleansed, but no particular organ or system is targeted. Combining a general detox with an organ/system-specific detox makes use of specific herbs/supplements or protocols to target specific areas of the body such as the liver, kidneys, and colon.

General cleansing is usually done through a type of water or juice fast. The distilled water fast is probably the touchstone for all detoxing protocols used in alternative health. The principles behind it are simple. First, when you deprive your body of food, your body begins to consume itself to survive. Being geared to self-survival, your body chooses to consume damaged cells and toxic cells first, saving the healthiest for later. Second, it takes a tremendous amount of energy, and puts a tremendous strain on your body's organs, to process food. (Check your heart rate after eating a large meal and observe how exhausted you feel.) When you fast, your body diverts that energy to repair and rebuilding.

There are three levels of fasting worth considering. The pure water fast is the most powerful form of fasting, but also produces the most toxic side effects. The other downfall is that when you go too long without sufficient calories, your body slows down its metabolism to prevent starvation. Then when you begin to eat again, even normally, your body treats anything beyond the barest minimum as excess calories, causing your body to gain weight at an accelerated rate.

Some add honey and maple syrup with lemon, which helps balance out the blood sugar swings, reduce fatigue, and prevent headaches. Lemon is also antimicrobial and tends to kill bad bacteria in the intestinal tract and works as an alkalinizing agent, raising general body pH.

However, juice fasting is preferrable since it provides basic nutrients while being so easy to digest that it offers 90 percent of the benefits of a water fast. Even better, add chlorella to a juice fast to further help detox and get protein in a form that requires almost no effort to digest. In other words, you still get all of the benefits of fasting, but can easily fast for that much longer.

Article, with thanks, from NutritionalWellness.com