Detox
Shake off the doldrums from the inside out with this super-simple, non-fasting spring cleanse.
Photo by Glen Wexler
It's a familiar urge. Come spring, you can't help but throw open the windows and scour every inch of your house to get a fresh start on the new season. So why not take it further? After all, you've spent the winter in hibernation mode, eating more, exercising less, and getting less sunlight and fresh air. Wouldn't you like to peel away the stale, tired layers from your body just as you shook the cobwebs from your home?
"Spring is an optimal time to detoxify," says Ann Louise Gittleman, Ph.D., author of The Fast Track One-Day Detox Diet (look for it in stores in May). "A long, hard winter can leave you feeling lethargic and wanting to lighten up on all levels. As the world renews itself, your body yearns for replenishment as well."
Detoxing doesn't have to be a grim chore. A simple spring cleansing program can increase your vitality, bolster your immune system, and leave you with healthy habits to live by all year long.
Trash Talk
Detox is a perfectly natural process--in fact, your body already detoxifies itself as it goes about its business.
Think of it as a well-organized sanitation system. Your five main detox systems--lymphatic, respiratory, urinary, the gastrointestinal tract, and the skin--work in concert to neutralize and eliminate potentially harmful substances, from the outside (pesticides, food additives, airborne allergens) as well as the inside (free radicals, metabolic waste). The hydrochloric acid in your stomach kills bacteria; your colon readies wastes for expulsion; your skin secretes toxins via sweat. The tiny vessels that make up your lymphatic system act like garbage trucks that shuttle fluids, fats, and waste throughout your body, channeling these to your liver, which constantly filters and purifies the blood. ("The liver decides which substances the body needs, and which to purge," Gittleman says. "It's the key to life.")
Look deeper, and you'll see that all this activity begins at the cellular level with glutathione, a molecule made
up of amino acids. Just as we identify trash by placing it at the curb, glutathione binds with harmful wastes, tagging them for expulsion from the cell. Normally, the availability of glutathione adjusts according to the amount of toxins present.
But there are limits. "Pesticides, herbicides, heavy metals--we get rid of these with the help of glutathione," says Sharol Tilgner, N.D., a naturopathic physician and owner of Wise Acres Herbal Educational Center in Pleasant Hill, Ore. "But as we do more damage to the planet, our bodies need to work harder. Glutathione gets used up more quickly--faster than we can replace it."
If too many harmful agents accumulate, your body is unable to expel them. The mercury your liver can't eliminate, for example, likely ends up in your hair, while xenoestrogens take up residence in your fat cells. This "body burden" can result in immediate problems like fatigue, headache, and low-back pain, and over time, it may create conditions ripe for disease.
"People used to take up cleansing as part of the old puritanical idea that our bodies are dirty, evil, and in need of purging," says Tilgner. "But our bodies are these beautiful temples that extract all the nutrients and fluids we need from food and get rid of what we don't need. So the question is really: How can we restore normal body function and elimination?"
The answer is easy: This spring, earmark three days for renewing and supporting your organs of elimination. Cleanses vary in intensity and duration, but effective ones blend nutrition, herbs, rest, and movement to stimulate and enhance our own natural systems, says Scott Blossom, a yoga therapist and practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurveda in Berkeley, Calif.
"Clearing your schedule for a cleanse allows you to watch, moment to moment, the cause and effect of food and lifestyle choices that often remain unnoticed," notes Blossom.
It also provides a time for reflection and fresh insights into how diet and lifestyle habits are serving to support or undermine our health, he adds.
On the next page, you'll find a recipe for a basic cleanse; you can follow it exactly or adjust it to meet your personal needs. It calls for a light diet, herbs to support organ function, and beneficial yoga poses.
This cleanse provides the benefits of fasting without the hardships. (When toxins are released from fat reserves during a fast, the body has insufficient nutrient support to rid itself of them, says Gittleman; this often results in headache, fatigue, and other problems, so anyone tempted to fast should consult a physician.)
As you cleanse your inner dwelling, take time to purge your outer environment as well. Do you slather yourself with lotion containing artificial colors? Do you fill your shopping cart with only non-organic foods? Bit by bit, you can lessen your body's toxic load, leaving more energy for battling the factors you can't control.
"We are creatures of habit," affirms Blossom. "We get into familiar patterns of eating, moving, resting, thinking, and feeling that aren't necessarily optimal, and a cleanse creates the opportunity to see things from a new perspective." In this sense, spring cleansing challenges those bad habits and sets a standard for a healthier lifestyle--one that mitigates the need for detoxifying in the first place.
