Will Learning How To Detox Your Body Enhance Your Natural Defenses

I've been fortunate enough to enjoy good health for pretty much all my life. I've hardly ever been ill, and can't remember the last time I had a cold or virus of any kind - at least nothing that struck for longer than a few hours. So when I completely lost all my energy and was feeling run down all the time it was quite a shock to my system, and I was even finding it hard to get up in the morning. I'd visited the doctor several times and had quite a few blood tests, but every one showed nothing wrong.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I bumped into a old friend one day who suggested I needed to detox my body, and put some effort into learning how to detox and how my eating habits may be affecting my health. It looked like detoxing had a lot of health benefits, so figured it was a worthy investment of my time to at least check it out, and get to grips with what is really involved and why the natural health industry recommend doing a detox and recommend starting with the 7 day detox diet so strongly.

Something else she recommended I try was a foot detox. I now treat myself to a foot massage at least once a week, if you don't want to invest in a foot spa, the foot detox patches can be just as good - but with the patches you don't get a relaxing foot massage at the same time

This is what I learnt about detoxing your body.

Drink water or herbal teas

One of the most important things you need to is drink lots of water while you are following a detox diet as it will prevent the build up of toxins and man made chemicals in your body. It also helps to prevent constipation, stops water retention (believe it or not), and hydrates your skin which improves your skin tone. Your goal should be to drink about 8 glasses (or 2 liters) of water each day, but increase that when the weather is hot.

As a guideline, increase your water intake by about half a liter for each hour of exercise. Choose still mineral water, or tap water that has been filtered, or boiled and then cooled. Keep your water at room temperature as it's more refreshing that way. If the thought of drinking that much water is overbearing, try herbal teas as well - loose leaf tea is the better option if it's available. Green tea, horsetail, camomile and roibosch (or redbush) are especially great in a detox as their hidden ingredients assist in the detox process. Roibosch (Redbush) tea is also beneficial as it is very high in OPC antioxidants.

Organic Produce Is Better and Healthier

When you're following a detox diet you don't need to buy everything organic, as organic produce is normally higher priced than non organic equivalents, but a little organic produce will go a long way to getting you started.

If you can't find or afford organic fruits and veggies, it's not a problem. Just eating plenty of fresh fruits and veg is more important, whether they are organic or not, rather than not get enough of them. Nonetheless, there's a lot of health benefits to going organic on a healthy detox diet.

Organic foods are produced without the use of artificial pesticides and fertilizers, so they contain the lowest possible amounts of artificial, potentially toxic chemicals (such as nitrates). Organic farming is a hotly debated and controversial topic because there is evidence that the build up of these pesticides may be related to a lot of the serious health issues we face today.

By comparison, organic foods are processed much less than non-organic. That means they contain no hydrogenated fats, artificial additives, preservatives or genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Certain organic foods taste better and have more flavor.