Detox symptoms and signs can be confusing and challenging. If you’ve decided to detox, you have some understanding of how important it is to purge the body of toxins. Detoxing is, in fact, essential for your health. We come into contact with countless poisons and toxins while living our lives.
Whether it’s from the water we drink, the air we breathe, the food we eat, injections we’ve had, or otherwise, there are a plethora of sources. Toxic accumulation is ultimately what is behind chronic illness of all kinds, including autoimmunity. When we clean up the body, we have the chance to reverse conditions and symptoms.
How to Detox Properly
There are countless detox methods out there. Some of them work, but many do not. This post is geared mainly towards those who are detoxing using foods as medicine. More specifically, for those healing using the Medical Medium information.
Chances are, if you are reading this you are already detoxing or at least intending to. There is so much misinformation out there around detoxing. Like using clever powders and pills to try to get the body to do it quickly. These are often unsafe and can simply push the liver too hard.
The Medical Medium offers various safe and effective cleanses. There are shorter term cleanses like the 28 Day Cleanse, the 3-6-9 Cleanse, the Celery Juice Cleanse and others. There is also what I refer to as the “Detox Lifestyle” where one focuses on foods that are nutrient dense as an on-going effort to support the body in having what it needs to be functioning optimally. It’s essentially a modified 28 Day Cleanse. You can learn more about this lifestyle here. You can also learn more about how I healed Hashimotos living this lifestyle.
All that said, below are a few keys to cleansing properly:
Eat low fat: One of the biggest problems that prevents people from really detoxing is still eating too much fat. We need to eat low to no fat to detox effectively because fat thickens the blood, thus hampering the rate at which troublemakers can exit the body. Whenever we eat fat, it instantly stops the liver from cleansing.
Keep troublemaker foods out: eggs, dairy, gluten, corn, canola (and most other oils), vinegar, soy, MSG, caffeine, citric acid
Check out this post if you are following the Medical Medium lifestyle and finding you aren’t seeing the results you’re looking for.
What are Toxins in the Body
The reality is that we collect toxins in various ways throughout our lives and they all get stored in the body. Emotions, physical toxins, and pathogens all accumulate and hinder your body’s ability to function optimally. Ultimately, they cause symptoms and conditions. Below is by no means a comprehensive list, but some of the most common toxins we accumulate.
Pesticides, herbicides, fungicides
Toxic heavy metals
Plastics
Cleaners, solvents
Air fresheners, synthetic scents
Radiation
MSG
Pathogens and their toxic waste
Food additives
Trapped emotions
Detox Symptoms
As you detox, it’s common to experience some of the same symptoms you did prior to cleansing. But, if you’re doing it right, you will also notice moments of increased energy and feeling better. Below are some of the most common detox signs.
Headache
Brain fog
Fatigue
Breakouts
Interrupted sleep
Leg cramping
Bloating
Muscle spasms
Emotional disturbances
Brownish urine (not too dark hopefully, or you aren’t hydrating enough)
Increased body odor
Tasting metal
Becoming more energetically aware
Symptoms of Detoxing too Fast
Detoxing is great, but when we go too fast we can create more stress on the body. When one is coming off of the standard American diet, it’s important to go slow. Going into a radical cleanse can cause the liver to expel too many toxins at once and shock the body. This can cause the liver to shut down or simply cause one’s health to worsen.
The liver is designed to remove toxins, but when it’s low functioning (which is the case for most people), it isn’t able to handle too much at once. This, in addition a sluggish lymphatic system can impair the elimination of toxins. Then we are left with recirculating toxins and harsh detox reactions.
The symptoms of detoxing too fast are usually the same as detox symptoms mentioned above; however, they are present much more consistently and intensely. Listening to your body is imperative. The mind might be telling you that you need to hurry up and heal, causing you to push your body too hard. It’s quite possible you need to back off and let it take as long as it takes. Most people feel improvements along their way as healing comes in waves.
Help Slowing Down Detox
If you starting detoxing too fast, I discourage you from just ditching the detox and going back to how you were eating. However, it might be beneficial to not stop those foods you were eating so quickly. Try being more gradual about your shift so you don’t detox too fast or too hard.
When you are eating no fat or very low fat, this increases the speed at which you detox. So does eating a lot of raw foods and fresh juices. Introducing more cooked foods like steamed veggies is beneficial. Eating potatoes is so very comforting and can help slow things down some as well. Small amounts of fat, like from avocado, can help slow things down, too.
How to Help Support Your Body Through Detox
If we can help take the load off the liver, this can smooth out the process for us. This means addressing the detox from the outside of the body as much as possible.
How Long do Detox Symptoms Last?
Detox symptoms last as long as you’re detoxing. However, the intensity of them typically decreases as your body cleans up. The time it takes to deeply detox depends on how toxic your system is. Whether it’s from high pathogen load, high load of heavy metals, or other toxins – it differs from person to person. It depends on which pathogens and toxins are involved, where they’re thriving or stored in the body and how much there is. If it seems like too much, back off some, but don’t throw in the towel. Keep going at a pace that feels right for you.
Whether you have embarked on a short term cleanse or are living the detox lifestyle, there are ways to support the body in getting through it as smoothly as possible. It takes time to truly clean up the body. Not only have we accumulated toxins throughout our lifetime, but we also inherited some from our parents. It took a long time for the toxins to accumulate and it takes time to eliminate them. Thankfully, not nearly as long as it did to collect them!
No matter what, choosing to detox and cleanse your body safely will only lead to a better, stronger way of being. It opens up the potential for us to live more freely and optimally.
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