Do you ever feel sluggish or bloated? If so, your body may need to get detox! When you hear the word ‘detox’, a range of ideas may come to your mind like green herbal drinks or pungent wheatgrass shots! A detox is about resting, cleansing, and nourishing your body. Detoxing removes toxins and focuses on feeding your body with vital nutrients that can significantly improve your health.

What is Detoxing?

In simple words, detoxing is a process of eliminating toxins and impurities from your body and helping your body to get a charming look. Detox can cleanse you physically, mentally, and spiritually. It gives your body the time, space, and perfect conditions to restore balance and vitality once again.

Why Should You Detox Your Body?

No matter how healthy your diet or lifestyle is, the body continuously gets affected by your eating habits, alcohol, lifestyle, or environmental changes. When our vital organs are placed under extra pressure, they are unable to work efficiently. This is when illness and disease can appear. Taking time to cleanse the body and nurture this vital organ goes a long way in prevention and also has immediate effects like greater energy, clearer skin, sound sleep, and so much more.

How Will You Know That Your Body Needs A Detox?

It is very important to detox your body at least once in a year as the number of toxins present in the environment and food is just increasing day by day. Detox practice should not be followed by pregnant mothers, children, and people suffering from severe diseases. Many visible symptoms give the signal that your body needs a detox. Such as:

• Skin problems – acne, rash
• Irregular bowel movements
• Bloated feeling
• Puffy eyes
• Irregular menses
• Fatigue
• Stress
• Depressed mood
• Difficulties in sleeping
• Recurrent headaches
• Weight gain

Along with above foods the other measures for detoxification include avoiding packaged and sugary foods, limiting caffeine intake, eating lots of fruits and vegetables and most importantly excercising regularly.

Dr. M.G. Kartheeka, MBBS, MD

How Can You Detox Your Body?

Detox is an opportunity to give your body a break and allow your self-cleaning and self-healing processes to kick into gear. These are some easy ways to detox your body:

• Reduce your sugar intake
• Drink more water
• Limit alcohol consumption
• Eat healthy food
• Drink green tea and detox drinks
• Daily exercise
• Yoga and meditation
• Exfoliate your skin
• Get proper sleep

Foods and Beverages to Detoxify Your Body  

These detoxifying foods and drinks will help naturally reset the metabolism process in your body, balance your hormones, and make you feel healthy and happy.

Broccoli  

• Broccoli has a positive impact on our digestive system, filled with the antioxidant property that helps in detoxing the enzymes that help in neutralizing and eliminating unwanted contaminants, giving us a lighter feel.

Cucumber mint detox drink

• When we add mint with the antioxidant-rich cucumber and lemon, it makes the perfect drink to give a soothing break from bustling heat. Cucumber and mint helps in reducing bloated feeling while lime provides vitamin C.

Lemons  

• Daily intake of lemon juice helps in maintaining the body’s pH levels. They have an abundance of Vitamin C stored in it and is very helpful to detoxification. Try to start your day with hot water to flush out toxins from your system.

Apples  

• ”An apple a day keeps the doctor away” Does it makes a sense? What makes this fruit soo special, that every time it is advised to include it in your diet? The answer lies in the fact that Apple contains high fibers and antioxidants that cleanse the intestinal tract, flush out all the unwanted toxins and undigested foods.

Turmeric

• In Ayurveda, turmeric has been valued since ancient times for its medicinal properties. Turmeric helps to treat digestion and liver disorders. When we consume turmeric, it helps to detox the blood, reduce inflammation, and prevent internal blood clotting.

Carrots  

• Carrots are the most effective detox component that has a high antioxidant level. It is rich in minerals and vitamin A that fights common digestive problems like constipation.

Refreshing coconut water and mint detox  

• A quick detox drink that needs only three ingredients: coconut water, lemon, and mint. When we take this detox drink, it cleanses all the harmful toxins from the liver and intestinal tract, ultimately leaving you refreshed for the entire day.

Beetroot  

• Beetroot is rich in magnesium, iron, and vitamin C. It helps to detox liver and blood.

Garlic and ginger

• Garlic and Ginger are the two ancient herbs incredibly famous for their flavors when cooked. Treat yourself with ginger tea every morning that effectively soothe the body and mind and add garlic to your food for a toxin-free diet. Garlic helps in cleaning intestinal infections from the body while Ginger helps in the detoxification process via perspiration.

Green tea

• Green Tea is a great detox  drink. A detox  diet must include regular consumption of essential liquids. It keeps our organs healthy and helps to flush toxins from the body. Green tea is not only good for weight loss, but it is extremely high in antioxidants and has several other benefits. Drinking green tea can also protect the liver from diseases including fatty liver disease.

Meal timings and portion sizes are very important factors to assist a quick body detoxification. Most calorific meal being the breakfast followed by lunch, small portions of soups in the evening should be sufficient to help the body detox process.

Dr. Ashish Bajaj, M.B.B.S., M.D.

Benefits of Detox  

• Strong immunity
• Healthy and glowing skin
• Mental stability
• Balanced emotions
• Improvement in self-confidence and positivity
• Prevention of chronic diseases
• Weight loss
• New healthy habits and routines

Detox diets are used for eliminating the toxins from your body and by keeping you healthy. But these diets aren’t needed when you have a strong in-built detoxification system. Hence, you can enhance your body’s natural detoxification system by staying hydrated, by consuming less salt and sugar, getting active, and eating proper food.

Also Read: Benefits of Tongue Scraping: A Guide to Better Oral Health

Disclaimer: The information included on this site is for educational purposes only and is not intended to be a substitute for medical treatment by a healthcare professional. Because of unique individual needs, the reader should consult their physician to determine the appropriateness of the information for the reader’s situation.