Toxic substances abound in our air, water, soil, and food. A healthy person can often eliminate harmful substances through the liver and other organs. But a person whose health is compromised, or on a diet that is too high in fats, processed proteins, sodium, refined sugars, and other refined foods has a reduced capacity to rid the body of toxins. When this happens, the toxins accumulate.
Frances Taylor, coauthor of Natural Detoxification, tells us more: “As we journey through life the way most people do, we become overloaded with the toxins that absorb in the body. Unless we do something to get rid of these things, our bodies become overloaded and our health suffers. We develop symptoms such as headaches, digestive problems, sluggishness, after-meals fatigue. Many health benefits can be obtained by simply detoxifying the body.”
Taylor says there are many ways to detoxify at home. Her guidelines are presented below.
One of the first things people need to do is make sure they consume enough water. Taylor says, “Some people do reasonably well with city water, tap water, which of course contains a number of additives. Most people will do considerably better if they use some type of filtered or ionized water or reverse osmosis water.”
Taylor uses a lot of detox baths with her patients. “We jokingly refer to detox baths as a poor man’s sauna,” she says. “Hot water increases the blood flow in the capillary action near the surface of the skin and causes a faster release of toxins.”
Anybody who has a bathtub can do a detox bath. Taylor explains the procedure: “First of all you need to start off with an absolutely clean bathtub. You wash your body thoroughly before you take your bath. Then you fill the bathtub with water as hot as you can tolerate it without burning your skin. You need to cover the overflow valve so the water will be high enough for you to immerse your body up to your neck.
“This next step is very important. You begin with a five-minute soak in the hot water. Some people say, ‘Oh, gee, it felt so good I stayed in for fifteen minutes.’ These people frequently cannot get out of bed the next day because their body releases toxins more rapidly than the liver can detoxify them, so they don’t feel well. It’s very important that you stay in the plain hot water bath for five minutes only the first time.
“After your bath you must take a shower and scrub every square inch of your skin to get off any toxins that may have been released. If you don’t do this, these [toxins] will be reabsorbed into your body.”
If you don’t have any symptoms after the five-minute bath, increase bath time by five minutes more the next day. Gradually increase your time until you can sit in the plain hot water for thirty minutes. Most people need to do a detox bath only about three times a week. It’s a good idea to drink an eight-ounce glass of water during your bath because you are going to be sweating. You can even take some vitamin C both before and after your bath because this will help your body remove the toxins that are released into your bloodstream.
Taylor recommends the use of Epsom salts in the bath. “The sulfur component in Epsom salts helps detoxify,” she says. “It works as a counter irritant on the skin to increase the blood supply and it changes the pH of the skin surface. Begin with only a fourth of a cup of Epsom salts and gradually increase it over time until you are using about four cups per tub of clean hot water.”
Again you want to do things very gradually so that your body won’t detoxify too rapidly. You don’t want to exceed the capacity of your liver and your detox system to get rid of the toxins.
Apple cider vinegar, baking soda, clay, and herbal teas may also be added to a detox bath, following the same principles as Epsom salts. With apple cider vinegar, Taylor says to start with the plain hot water bath first, then add 1/4 cup of apple cider vinegar, and over a period of time increase this to 1 cup. Baking soda baths are particularly beneficial for people with weeping open sores. Combining baking soda and salt is effective if you have had an X-ray or been exposed to radiation. “We routinely have our patients take a salt and soda bath if they have to have any X-rays done,” Taylor says. “You will use equal amounts of the soda and noniodized sea salt and you build up until you use a pound of each.”
For clay baths, Taylor recommends a cup of clay to a tub of water. Clays can be purchased at many health food stores.
Among the herbal teas that can be used in a detox bath are catnip, peppermint, blessed thistle, and horsetail. Use 1 cup of brewed tea per tub of hot clean water. Taylor says use only one of these teas per bath. In addition, “some sensitive people may not tolerate the tea.”
Diet is important when detoxifying. Taylor says, “You want to eat clean food. Food that has not been pesticided, has not been dyed, doesn’t have a wax coating on it. If you have food allergies, of course, you don’t want to eat your food allergens. Rotation diets will help people with allergies. Some people even find that fasting is helpful. One word of caution about fasting: if you do have numerous food allergies and you start fasting, you could have withdrawal symptoms because people are allergic to the foods or they are addicted to the foods to which they are allergic. If a person has a very heavy load of food allergens, they may not feel very well if they try a fast.”
Following are some foods that can help build good health:
SPROUTS—Sprouts are one of the most nutrient-rich, powerful, healthbuilding foods in nature. They will help cleanse and rebuild your entire system.
What kind of sprouts should you try? Don’t stop with just common sprouts like alfalfa or mung beans. Expand your cuisine. Try high-protein buckwheat sprouts; the sweet sunflower sprout; the aromatic fenugreek sprout; clover sprout; and for a little bite and pinch, try a radish sprout. A mustard sprout tastes as good as mustard, and yet is subdued enough in flavor to fit in better with a salad.
More than twenty different seeds for sprouting are available commercially. They’re inexpensive and versatile. You can make salads out of them, put them into pita bread, use them in casseroles, and put them in soups.
MISO—Miso should also be on the list of detoxifying and rebuilding foods. For more than 3,000 years, this nutritionally superior food has been helping people build better health. Miso is a fermented product. Like yogurt, its bacteria work well in the intestines. Miso should be used sparingly, however, because it does have a high sodium content.
VEGETABLE JUICES—Vegetable juices are important detoxifiers. Generally speaking, Taylor says, drink no more than one glass of carrot juice per day. Betacarotene is a precursor of vitamin A in the body. If you drink too much carrot juice, you’ll be overloading the liver with vitamin A and your skin may turn yellow or orange. One glass will give you all the benefits of the vitamin. Celery, cucumber, cabbage, parsley, and sprouts can be added. For people who’ve never really enjoyed vegetables, juices are another way to get good-tasting, high-quality nutrition into the diet.
GRAINS—Grains are another group of foods that help the body cleanse itself and rebuild its strength. It is unfortunate that most Americans never taste whole grain. They eat refined carbohydrates in white bread or white rice, but not brown rice or whole grain bread. Whole grains are loaded with far more nutrition than their refined counterparts. The grain family includes rice, corn, buckwheat, rye, oats, and millet, as well as less well-known, newly available grains like triticale, amaranth, and quinoa, a light, fast-cooking grain from South America.
SEA VEGETABLES—The next group of foods to include as part of your healthrebuilding program is the sea family of vegetables. These include hijiki, a form of seaweed that tastes salty like fish. You can buy seaweed dry and store it for months. There are many types, including kombu, wakami, and nori. You can cut it into pieces, flake it, or put it into casseroles or soups. Include seaweed in your miso soup to increase its nutritional value. You can wrap seaweed around rice like grape leaves. Seaweed is so versatile that entire books are devoted to its use in cookery.
Seaweed is loaded with minerals. By dry weight, hijiki has ten times more available calcium than cow’s milk.
BEANS—Beans, or legumes, are a group of healthy, detoxifying foods that many Americans deliberately avoid. The main reason we have kept ourselves away from one of nature’s most important sources of vitamins, minerals, and fiber is that we have never really understood how to cook it. Most people, and most restaurants, do not soak beans overnight. This diminishes their digestibility. During digestion, gas forms in the colon, causing indigestion and flatulence. That uncomfortable feeling needn’t be. All you have to do is soak beans overnight and then boil them for one or two hours. That usually takes care of most gas-producing properties. Then be sure to combine them with the right foods: don’t eat fruit or sugary foods with a bean meal.
Legumes have more protein than grains or seeds. They are also high in fiber. There are more than sixty different legumes.
Taylor also recommends supplements. “We encourage our patients to take bowel tolerance vitamin C,” she says. “I’m talking about a clean, pure vitamin C that is free of the common allergens such as wheat, yeast, corn, and sugar.”
Taylor explains the procedure: “To do bowel-tolerance vitamin C, you start off with a gram, which is 1,000 milligrams, with each meal, and at bedtime. The next day you would add another one at breakfast. Then the next day you would add another one at lunch. The next day you would add another one at bedtime and so on. You know when you have reached bowel tolerance when you develop diarrhea. Most people can take much larger amounts of vitamin C than they would ever imagine. If a person is very, very toxic or has a lot of allergies they may be able to take 10 to 20 grams, that is l0,000 to 20,000 milligrams, of vitamin C a day. Between meals we encourage people to take buffered C, which is an ascorbic acid to which calcium, magnesium carbonate, and potassium bicarbonate have been added. This helps with detox but also helps with digestion. You would continue adding vitamin C, a gram a day, until you develop diarrhea and then you would back up 1 gram and that is the amount you would take in divided doses throughout the day.”
Other nutrients are important for detoxification. These include the B vitamins. “You need to take a multimineral also because detoxification in the body is an enzymatic process and all of the enzymes require a metal to make them work,” Taylor says. “Organic germanium is also good because it helps the body oxygenate at the cellular level. It is a little expensive but is very, very well worthwhile.”