Every now and again, I believe there are huge gains to be made by undertaking a week-long detox. In the modern world, our immune system, which is controlled by our gut, really benefits from a deep clean. While detoxing has become something of a cult over recent years, I believe the type of detox most people take part in reaches nowhere near its full potential. You see, to really cleanse the body it’s not just our food we need to clean up, but our environment too. For me, a true detox should consist of:
- Only consuming clean organic foods.
- Eating just the Top 20 Superfoods that you will read about later.
- All meals to include cruciferous vegetables whose glucosinolates supercharge detoxification.
- Eating foods high in sulphur, such as eggs, onions, garlic and chicken.
- Take curcumin supplements to aid detoxification.
- Consuming plenty of vitamin C as it helps flush toxins out of the body.
- Undertaking several fast days during the detox period.
- Consuming supplements to replace missing vitamins and nutrients.
- Not using a mobile phone or if we have to, ensuring its either on speaker mode or use headphones.
- Only drinking water that is filtered.
- Completely avoiding BPAs and plastic bottles.
- Avoiding antiperspirants, perfumes or aftershaves.
- Avoiding toxic shampoos or toothpaste.
- Wearing underwear made only of natural fibres.
- Drinking lots of green tea, which contains catechins that aids detoxification.
Flushing Toxins by Sweating
It’s important to stop poisoning ourselves with unhealthy sprays, creams and shampoos, but we can also use our skin to clear toxins. One of the best ways to get our skin working for us is by sweating. When we sweat, our body naturally detoxes from the inside out.
As those living primally are not big on long jogs and epic bicycle rides - both activities where you would definitely sweat a lot - we need to look for alternative ways to detoxify. This is where taking a regular sauna can help. If you can’t get to your local sauna, then when you do your gym routine try turning up the heat. If your gym owner won’t let you do that, then put on lots of layers during your workout. It is really important that, on a regular basis, we find a way to sweat out our toxins. On a biological level, when we sweat it helps remove bacteria from our epidermal layer of skin and increases the rate at which dead skin cells are replaced.
