Detox 101

– Post by Love Wellness Advisor: Dr. Francis. Join the discussion and read more on The Love Club

For many of us, loving life tends to include a lot more indulgence than deprivation. When you fill your life (or your plate or your glass) with what you love, it’s important to have a program that you complete periodically to ensure all this fun adds years to your life, instead of taking them away. That’s the pendulum on the health spectrum swinging you back toward vibrancy, radiance, and longevity.

Cleansing, however, isn’t just for pizza lovers and beer drinkers. Most of us don’t get as much sleep or eat as many greens or drink as much water as we should. Even if you’re normally pretty healthy and rarely indulge to excess, the RxStar Detox is a great way to recalibrate your diet, nix any lingering unhealthy habits, reduce stress, and reignite your energy. I don’t know about you, but reducing stress always sounds good to me!

When we detox, we give ourselves an opportunity to cleanse our lives of anything that isn’t serving us in a positive way. What do these “things” look like? Bad bosses, vending machine diets, energy-draining friends, negative thoughts, self-defeating behaviors, skipping the gym. Once you recognize and release what’s not working, you can rebuild and refine your health on a much stronger foundation. Clearing out the bad to make way for the good. You’re creating a beautiful blank canvas so your body can better absorb nutrients. That’s not so scary, is it?

Why Do I Need To Detox?

This is a question many of my clients ask me. They’ve heard the term, but they’re not sure what toxins are and how they got into their bodies in the first place. Let’s take a closer look at why it’s so important to detoxify your body on a regular basis.

There are two types of toxins: external toxins (exotoxins) and internal toxins (endotoxins). It is natural to have a certain amount of toxicity in our bodies. For example, the process of cellular respiration—the mechanism by which our cells produce energy— generates waste products that are considered “toxins” (endotoxins). It’s not a big deal, because your body works to eliminate these toxins in the same way it eliminates any waste—via urine, bowel movements, and sweat. But when the amount of toxins inside the body is greater than what can be eliminated, an imbalance occurs. This can cause irritation or inflammation of the cells and tissues, which in turn causes organs and systems to malfunction. High toxicity may also result in unpleasant physical symptoms, such as feeling tired or unfocused or experiencing skin or digestive issues.

Endotoxins are generally the by-products of normal, everyday metabolic activities, but they can also result from negative and destructive thoughts, emotions, and stress. There are fleeting thoughts and then there are those bigger, all-consuming emotions you push aside. You think they’re gone because you’re not actively thinking about them, but in fact, they may be impacting your immune, digestive, and nervous systems. Stress, anxiety, and other negative emotions have a very real impact on your health, and so a key part of detoxing is not only nourishing the body, but also nourishing the mind.

What Creates Endotoxins?

• Anger and resentment
• Anxiety
• Bacterial end products
• Bowel toxins
• Fear
• Free radicals
• Hormones
• Insecurity and self-criticism
• Jealousy
• Metabolic wastes
• Pessimism

Exotoxins enter your body when you ingest them in food or drink, inhale them into your lungs, or make other physical con- tact with them. For example, secondhand smoke is an exotoxin, as are many of the chemicals and additives in food products. Emotionally, negative and unhealthy environments, activities, and relationships also fit the category of exotoxins.

What Creates Exotoxins?

• Air pollution
• Alcohol
• Bacteria
• Beauty and skin care products
• Caffeine
• Cleaning supplies
• Drugs and medications
• Environmental allergens
• Food allergens
• Food dyes
• Food preservatives Heavy metals
• Hormones in animal products Negative people
• Negative relationships Pesticides
• Petroleum
• Plastics
• Poor working environments Poverty
• Smoking
• Violent living conditions Viruses
• Water residues

Getting Rid of The Toxins

Your body is an incredible work of mastery. It’s designed with many systems—digestive, circulatory, respiratory, and more— that are constantly communicating and relating to each other, with the nervous system running the entire show.

There are seven systems that help eliminate and cleanse tox- ins from your body. Think of them like your very own team of personal assistants. They work behind the scenes 24/7 (yes, even while you sleep) to help you maintain optimal health and a disease-free state.

A detox or cleanse is like giving these systems some much- needed support so they can continue to sweep toxins from your body. Your system can get pretty overwhelmed from the simple act of living in a modern world with processed foods, stress, pollution, and a demanding lifestyle. This can cause cell damage, then tissue damage, and eventually it can lead to disease. Detoxing helps to improve the function of the organs that remove unwanted invaders from our bodies so that they can do their job more efficiently.

The main focus of my detox is to treat the liver and the gut. I’ve learned that if I focus on detoxing these two systems in a new patient, we’re usually able to resolve 50 to 90 percent of the symptoms he or she came in with. From there, I have a clean slate to move to the next phase of healing, which is typically rebuilding. 

With love,

Dr. G

Sources:

The Rockstar Remedy