How to detox your body, and why specific nutrients are essential in the process
Your body is meant to detoxify naturally and has a sophisticated way of eliminating toxins, that involves the liver, kidneys, digestive system, skin, and lungs. Only when these organs are healthy, can they effectively eliminate unwanted substances.
Unfortunately, these days due to diet and lifestyle, many people’s natural detoxification pathways are blocked, which results in toxic build-up and a variety of unwanted symptoms.
However, through small changes to your lifestyle and nutritional intake, you can support your organs and optimize your body’s natural detoxification system.
Why our body needs a detox?
With our diets and lifestyles, it’s not uncommon to experience blocked detox pathways and the accumulation of damaging substances that overwhelm our bodies.
Here are some reasons why your natural detoxification pathways might be blocked:
Poor diet – Eating a diet full of processed foods, sugar, and excess of salt.
Exposure to toxins – The average person is exposed to over 100 toxins each day. These toxins are in the air you breathe, the water you drink, the food you eat, your home, office, and even your beauty and personal care products.
Stress and negative emotions –Stress and negative thoughts and emotions affect your body more than you think and lead to the accumulation of toxins that impact your health and bodily functions
Poor lifestyle habits – Lack of exercise, lack of sleep, and a general lack of self-care have a big impact on your health. When you lack sleep, you lack energy and your body goes into fight or flight mode, which decreases or even stops your ability to detoxify.
Dehydration – Proper hydration is key to your body’s ability to detoxify. Water transports waste products, efficiently removing them through urination, breathing, or sweating.
Some of the symptoms of toxin build-up are:
Acne
Achy muscles and joints
Abdominal pain
Constipation or diarrhea
Gas, bloating
Fatigue
Hormonal imbalance
Depression
Insomnia
Mucus discharge
Fuzzy thinking / Brain fog
Difficulty breathing
Congestion
Flu-like symptoms
Cough
Vision issues
Fevers
Yeast infection
What is Detox?
Detox, short for detoxification, is a process of ridding of any toxins or unhealthy substances that may be in your body.
Despite your body being well-equipped to eliminate toxins, there are things you can do to enhance your body’s natural detoxification system.
How to support your detoxification process
1. Limit Alcohol Consumption
Over 90% of alcohol is metabolized in your liver and excessive drinking can severely damage your liver function by causing fat build-up, inflammation, and scarring.
When this happens, your liver cannot function properly and perform its necessary tasks — including filtering waste and other toxins from your body.
2. Focus on Sleep
Getting adequate and quality sleep each night is a must to support your body’s health and natural detoxification system.
Sleeping allows your brain to reorganize and recharge itself, as well as remove toxic waste by-products that have accumulated throughout the day.
With sleep deprivation, your body does not have time to perform those functions, so toxins can build up and affect several aspects of your health.
3. Drink More Water
Water plays an important function in our body. It regulates body temperature, lubricates joints, aids digestion, and nutrient absorption, and detoxifies your body by removing waste products.
Your body’s cells must continuously be repaired to function optimally and break down nutrients for your body to use as energy, but, these processes release wastes — in the form of urea and carbon dioxide — which cause harm.
Water transports these waste products, efficiently removing them through urination, breathing, or sweating. Staying properly hydrated is important for detoxification.
4. Reduce Consumption of Sugar and Processed Foods
High consumption of sugary and highly processed foods has been linked to obesity and other chronic diseases, such as heart disease, cancer, and diabetes.
These diseases hinder your body’s ability to naturally detoxify itself by harming organs that play an important role, such as your liver and kidneys.
By consuming less processed and junk food, you can keep your body’s detoxification system healthy.
5. Eat Antioxidant-Rich Foods
Antioxidants protect your cells against damage caused by free radicals. Oxidative stress is a condition caused by excessive production of free radicals.
Your body naturally produces free radicals for cellular processes, such as digestion. However, alcohol, tobacco smoke, a poor diet, and exposure to pollutants can produce excessive free radicals that cause cellular damage, which might lead to conditions such as dementia, heart disease, liver disease, asthma, and certain types of cancer.
Eating a diet rich in antioxidants can help your body fight oxidative stress caused by excess free radicals and other toxins that increase your risk of disease.
6. Eat Foods High in Prebiotics
Gut health is crucial for keeping your detoxification system healthy. Your intestinal cells have a detoxification and excretion system that protects your gut and body from harmful toxins, such as chemicals.
Good gut health starts with prebiotics, a type of fiber that feeds the good bacteria in your gut called probiotics. But the good bacteria in your gut can become unbalanced with bad bacteria from the use of antibiotics, poor dental hygiene, and diet quality. When that happens, the unhealthy shift in bacteria can weaken your immune and detoxification systems and increase your risk of disease and inflammation.
Eating foods rich in prebiotics can keep your immune and detoxification systems healthy.
7. Decrease Consumption of Salt
Consuming too much salt can cause your body to retain excess fluid, making you feel bloated, especially if you have a condition that affects your kidneys or liver — or if you don’t drink enough water.
If you find yourself consuming too much salt, you can detox yourself by increasing your water intake to increase urination, in order to eliminate more water and waste products.
8. Exercise
Regular exercise is associated with a longer life and a reduced risk of many conditions and diseases, including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, and certain cancers.
While there are several mechanisms behind the health benefits of exercise, reduced inflammation is a key point.
By reducing inflammation, exercise can help your body’s systems — including the detoxification system — function properly and protect against disease.
The best vitamins and minerals to detoxify your body
Nutrients play a crucial role in fuelling your body in all its functions. Vitamins help your body remove toxins and rebuild the immune system, and minerals help your body produce energy.
Here is a list of nutrients that strengthen and support your natural detoxification processes and help your body function at its optimal levels.
Vitamin C - Vitamin C works as an antioxidant to remove free radicals from the bloodstream. This is why it's so often used to help with a cold, to help remove the germs and bacteria from your body so you can start to feel better.
B-Complex Vitamins – Many B vitamins are commonly used in the detoxification process. Vitamin B3 cleanses the blood, lymph nodes, liver, and skin from any free radicals. Vitamin B1's job is to break down sugar molecules from carbohydrates and help convert it to energy. It also helps synthesize certain brain chemicals to help brain function. Vitamin B12 targets specific toxins and lessen the body's reaction to them.
Magnesium - Magnesium works to push free radicals out of the body and can aid in the digestion process. It also takes toxins - poisonous heavy metals such as aluminum, lead, mercury, and nickel - from your body and binds them together to be pushed out. Magnesium makes sure that heavy metals are not being absorbed by your body.
Calcium - Calcium helps by preventing toxins from re-circulating in the body. It keeps them packed together in bundles so that they don’t get reabsorbed. Calcium keeps toxins out of your blood and guides them to being released from your system.
Glutamine – This amino acid plays a critical part in the immune system and intestinal health. Your intestinal lining uses glutamine to create a strong surface for digestion, absorption, and protection from toxins and infections.
Supplementing with glutamine is the most effective treatment to heal the gut lining for those suffering from leaky gut, malabsorption, or inflammatory bowel disease (IBS, Crohn’s, Ulcerative colitis), and to support our immunity and recovery process in case of illness.
It also helps maintain the barrier between the inside of your intestines and the rest of your body, preventing harmful bacteria or toxins from moving from your intestines into the rest of your body.
Glutathione - Your body uses glutathione to eliminate toxins, strengthen immunity, and protect your cells from the free radicals caused by diet and stress.
Glutathione benefits almost every system in your body. It helps stop the chain reactions created by free radicals and the oxidative stress that breaks down your cellular walls.
Glutathione supports a healthy inflammation response, helps build muscle, supports energy-producing mitochondria, strengthens immunity, and helps your brain function.
Glutathione acts as your body’s natural detox agent. It neutralizes damaging free radicals, removes heavy metals, and other toxins.
Alpha Lipoic Acid - Alpha-lipoic acid helps the body naturally rid itself of toxic chemicals.
It is both water- and fat-soluble antioxidant, which means it can defend against a wider range of free radicals in comparison to other nutrients that are exclusively water-soluble or fat-soluble, such as vitamin C or vitamin E.
Alpha-lipoic acid binds to heavy metals in the body and helps carry them out of the cells.
DETOX treatments at Vit&Drip Center in Puerto Banus, Marbella
Vit&Drip Center offers a variety of intravenous (IV) treatments that supplement essential vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and antioxidants that support and optimize your body’s natural detox pathways. We offer fully customized treatments that maintain the health of your gut, increase antioxidant protection, and optimize your nutritional environment.
Contact us by sending an email to info@vitdripcenter.com, book an appointment online, or call us at +34619228412 to learn more about our treatments and wellness programs.
