Cleanse Your Body

By Kelly Kwiatkowski

What is Cleansing?

Cleansing is a dietary practice more commonly known as a detox diet or fast. It is used to promote health and healing by reducing toxic intake and removing toxins from the body. The concept of cleansing has a long history in natural medicine and has been practiced for thousands of years. Many alternative medical practices, including naturopathic, Chinese and ayurvedic medicine, still utilize cleansing as part of their healing traditions. Today, cleansing has become extremely popular, with several detox programs on the market. The wide variety of cleansing programs or detox diets include different combinations of therapeutic components such as cleansing herbs, juice or water fasting, whole-food or raw-food diets, colonic irrigation and hydrotherapy.

What is common across all detoxification programs is that you will eat differently, usually much less, so you can support the elimination of toxins from your body. These programs are usually short-term and emphasize whole, organic, non-genetically-modified foods (especially fruits and vegetables) that provide the vitamins, nutrients and antioxidants the body needs for detoxification. These foods, along with cleansing herbs, teas or juices (depending on the program), support the elimination of toxins in a number of ways, such as increasing the frequency of bowel movements and urination and supporting the detoxification functions of the liver. Processed and refined foods and alcohol are limited or excluded from the diet and a higher intake of water is also common.

Why Cleanse?

Cleansing is often used as a way to improve the diet, lose weight, increase energy and improve digestion. Typically, these programs are designed to support the body's natural cleansing mechanisms in the removal of toxins. This is important because toxin accumulation in the body and poor nutrition contribute to ill health and chronic disease. Our industrial world produces and exposes us to thousands of chemicals through the air, the water supply and our foods. Daily, we are exposed to pollutants, pesticides and household chemicals which research shows are not biodegradable and which are present in our bodies by the hundreds. Evidence suggests many of these chemicals can alter or disrupt our immune, endocrine, nervous and reproductive systems.

Fortunately, our bodies have built-in defense systems designed to eliminate toxins to maintain health. However, research shows that our bodies are becoming overburdened by repeated toxic exposure. In addition, many of us are not eating healthy enough to support our body's detoxification functions. This leads to what researchers call "oxidative stress." Oxidative stress is thought to be a major contributor to many chronic diseases including cardiovascular disease, cancer, neurological diseases, autoimmune diseases and diabetes.