If you’re experiencing symptoms in your body, no matter what they are… allergies, digestive problems, headaches, even hormonal symptoms, then you’re dealing with a level of toxicity in your body that needs clearing out.
Symptoms are not normal.
They’re not “just you” and they way your body works. That isn’t working properly. They aren’t an expected consequence of aging. Getting older doesn’t equal getting sick. They’re your body telling you something is not right and it isn’t happy. We all want happy and healthy bodies, right?
Even if we’re perfect (which we’re not) we get exposed to toxins constantly every single day.
Toxins come in many forms. They aren’t all physical from our food, water, or air. They can be from our thoughts and emotions, what the Naturopath I apprenticed with called, “stinking thinking”. Toxins can even be created through the stress of our spiritual disconnection too. All this stuff creates toxins in our bodies.
Today, I’m going to simply focus on the physical stuff and what we can do about that. Holistically speaking, it’s all important though.
We need to detox and get the toxins out.
You can do that through a cleanse, where you stop consuming inflammatory and irritating foods – think stress producing foods, toxin-filled foods. Common culprits are sugar, coffee, alcohol, dairy, wheat or gluten for starters.
Next you need to bring in super nutrient rich foods to support your tissues and cells in the cleaning out process.
It doesn’t have to be a gnarly juice fast. In fact, I don’t suggest that at all. You need to consume foods that cleanse (which juice does) but equally important you want foods that build the body up instead of breaking it down along with the cleansing (radical juice fasts don’t do this). It doesn’t need to be fancy powders or pre-packaged mixes. Simple, clean whole foods that aren’t inflammatory will suffice.
Inflammatory foods are usually the ones we crave and can’t imagine living without.
That inflammatory response gives us a nice brain hit that says, “Yum, give me more, more, more!” There are the foods I mentioned above, but the foods we need a break from to detoxify can include nightshades, eggs, peanuts, corn, soy and a bunch of others unique to an individual. Sadly, chocolate is one for me :-(.
Essential oils that can help the detoxification process greatly are all the conifers like Pine, Spruce, Fir and Cedarwood.
These also support the immune system, which is beneficial when trying to clear out toxins and eliminate symptoms. Mucolytics (essences that break down mucus) are helpful as well, such as Lavandin, Mugwort, or Rosemary. Rosemary does double duty supporting your digestive system, along with Cardamom or Basil. Generally, if you’re toxic, there is something going on in your gut. Lymphatic supports such as Laurel Leaf, Cypress and Grapefruit will be helpful as well. Grapefruit helps with detoxification like the conifers, so another double-duty one.
The thing is if you’re experiencing any type of symptom, you need a cleaning out to right your health ship.
You can take medicines to treat the symptoms, but those don’t do anything for the underlying cause and can even allow you to side step the healing process because you think with the symptom taken care of you’re all good. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work this way. The toxins are still there and will most likely express themselves in some other symptom sooner rather than later. Do a clean, detox, and your efforts and sacrifices will be well rewarded with greatly improved health for now and down the road.