5 Easy Ways To Help Your Body Detox
Teaching self-care is one of my favorite subjects to talk about. However, the term detox, has become a word that is thrown around constantly. It's fallen into the category of overused buzzwords, but it is actually a critical action of our body.
So what is detoxing? And why do we have to do it all the time?
Are we really swimming in chemicals everywhere?
In some ways, yes.
We're in a natural environment that is filled with lots of toxins. However, what we do on a daily basis shouldn't have to be so burdening to our body.
Detoxing is simply doing something that helps your body get rid of waste, so your body can function better.
We have lots of different types of waste in our body that constantly needs to be eliminated.
For starters, metabolic waste is the cellular waste leftover from when we eat food. Food gets absorbed into our body, the nutrients get absorbed into our cells, the cells get rid of wastes,
and those waste go through a blood stream. Some of the cellular waste goes out through our digestive tract. Some of them go out through sweat, through our skin. We also have a lot of waste that leaves through our lymphatic system. Our bodies are always trying to move regular waste out, on a daily basis.
And then we also have extra waste from our environment. This could be in our food from consuming pesticides and herbicides. This could be in the air we breathe, particularly if we are breathing in smoggy or polluted air. This could be in the plastics that we use and micro-plastics in everything all around us.
Extra waste can also be internal, like from our stress. It's really important to know that
even though there might be lots of different toxins out there. It's the ones that we create on the inside that a lot of times are the biggest stressors to our bodies or the biggest burdens to our body and that's what we have to clear out.
This is why preventing the need to detox is more important than having to think about it as an afterthought. One of the easy ways that we can assist our body by not having a build up of metabolic waste is by keeping our body active. Regularly doing simple exercises keeps our bodies functioning unburdened and helps things move easier through.
5 things that you can do to help your body detox:
1. Move
I know we've all heard, “you got to exercise”. I think during this pandemic, one thing that’s been a really beautiful thing to see is more people getting outside and moving. There are so many people out biking, walking, and hiking! It's exciting to see the world is becoming more active, finally.
However, getting active doesn't have to be a huge thing to start, especially if you're not an active person, start small! I always tell my clients, becoming more active can begin with something as small as choosing a parking spot on the opposite side of the parking lot. Increasing your walking with little bits to start. And then before, you know, it gets easier and simpler. Your body has moved more waste through its system. It's easier. It lessened it’s burden to detox. Moving gets easier the more you do it.
By starting small with movements and building as you go, you're actually helping your body go through its lymphatic detox faze easier, instead of having to clean out so much at once.
I like simple movements like walking, gentle yoga. Yoga with Adriene is one of my favorite online heroes. If you aren’t familiar with her, she offers free yoga classes on youtube. A cool feature she offers a lot are 30 day challenges or series that progress over time. Another helpful feature she has is different yoga for very specific things like lower back pain, energizing before the work day, or winding down for bedtime.
Other options for activity could be running, burst exercises also known as HIIT High Intensity Interval Training. If you’re already into hardcore workouts, awesome! Keep it up!
And if you're not that kind of person don't worry, do activities that you like to do. For me, I'd rather go on a hike than go to a gym. I'd rather go dancing then do a cardio workout. Figure out the ways that you enjoy moving and make sure that you're plugging in movement every single day.