There are also several ways you can use equipment to help boost the body’s detox ability, including saunas and exposure to far infrared radiation (FIR). Keep reading to understand what detoxifying is, why your body needs it, and how you can help boost your body’s natural ability without any fad diets or dangerous cleanses.
Understanding Detoxification: What Is It?
Detoxification is so overused these days that it can often be difficult to distinguish what exactly it is. Usually, it’ll refer to a diet or using specific products that claim to rid the body of toxins. There are several extreme programs out there that often require you to spend money on potentially dangerous things, such as herbal detox diets, cleansing regimes, juice fasts and more. However, it’s important to note that these methods often have very little scientific research to back them and can even be dangerous.
Instead, the body has several ways of detoxifying itself. Your liver is one of the front runners here, breaking down toxins from everything you consume and helping to eliminate them from the body. Your kidneys, colon, and intestines also do a similar thing. Toxins can even be removed through the skin and lungs, so rest assured, your body has all the necessary processes to detoxify itself on its own.
However, certain detox diets and methods can help enhance your body’s natural detoxification process. Taking care of your body’s detox processes has been shown to help with weight loss, improve insulin resistance, and manage blood pressure.
Signs You Might Need To Detox
When your body’s digestion and elimination mechanisms fail, it’s possible that the body could go into autointoxication. This is where the body produces its own toxins which are often stored in fat tissues and bones. You might not see any signs or symptoms until the body’s regulatory mechanism can’t cope any longer. This is when signs you might need a detox can show up, so if you see any of the following warning signs, you might want to consider a detox:
1. You’re Constantly Tired
Constant fatigue can often affect every part of your life, whether that be work, social outings, and more. It’s not uncommon for us to dismiss our fatigue due to the pressures of everyday living, but constant tiredness can actually be a warning sign of a deeper problem. Adrenal fatigue occurs when your brain and adrenal glands aren’t functioning very well, and it’s often caused by high levels of cortisol from toxins, stress, inflammation, or chemical imbalance.
2. You’re Experiencing Autoimmunity
Autoimmunity is where your immune system attacks healthy cells, creating disease in your otherwise healthy body. It can occur anywhere in the body and is often triggered by too many toxins in your tissues. Common symptoms might include:
- Fatigue
- Fevers
- Inflamed joints and muscles
- Skin allergies
A detoxifying diet can help reduce these symptoms, and once your body has reversed the autoimmunity, you shouldn’t experience it again. However, if you don’t see any results from your detox diet after a week or so, it’s vital that you see a medical professional to get to the bottom of your illness.
3. You’re Having Intense Cravings
Unless your body’s going through something, it’s not usual to have insatiable cravings. Having a diet full of processed foods can increase your blood pressure and hormone levels, which only causes you to crave junk food more. Switching to a healthier diet or detoxing can help balance your hormones back to their normal function. This should reduce your cravings as well as helping to flush the toxins from your body.
Detox Methods
If you think you might need to detox your body, there are plenty of ways you can do it. No, we’re not talking about the fads you might see on social media ads every single day – detoxifying the body is actually much easier than that! Here are some ways you can help your body detox:
1. Limit Your Alcohol Consumption
It should come as no surprise that alcohol isn’t healthy for the body. The liver can metabolise over 90% of the alcohol you consume into a chemical called acetaldehyde, which is a cancer-causing toxin. Your liver realises this and converts it again into a harmless substance called acetate, which can be eliminated from the body. As you can imagine, this puts strain on your liver and can stop it from working as efficiently to detox the body from the rest of the toxins in your body. By limiting your alcohol intake, you can keep the liver strong and detoxifying.
2. Make Sure Get Enough Sleep
Quality sleep is essential for supporting your body’s health and natural detoxification system. Sleeping lets your brain reorganise and recharge, along with removing toxins that you accumulate throughout the day. Without getting enough sleep, your brain doesn’t have enough time to perform these functions, so toxins can build up and impact several aspects of your health. You should aim to get between 7 and 9 hours of sleep per night to keep your brain function thriving and running.
3. Stay Active And Exercise
Regular exercise is beneficial for health in a number of different ways, from increasing lifespan to reducing the chance of developing diseases like type 2 diabetes. It can also reduce inflammation in the body, and this is key for keeping your natural detox processes working dependably. Inflammation often weakens your body and promotes disease, taking a lot of its efforts to reduce this inflammation rather than anything else. Reducing this through exercise can help keep your body working most effectively. We should be aiming to complete at least 150 to 300 minutes a week of moderate exercise.
Equipment At TH7 That Can Help Your Body Detox
Here at TH7, we have plenty of equipment to help you detoxify your body in a number of different ways:
Infrared Saunas
There have been studies to show that far infrared radiation (FIR) is biologically active and can improve quality of life in a number of ways. For example, exposure to infrared light can help improve sleep and blood circulation, helping to carry toxins around the body more effectively towards your waste systems. As we looked at above, getting the correct amount of sleep each night is essential for improving your body’s ability to detoxify itself, so regular exposure to infrared saunas can help naturally detoxify the body.
Red Light Therapy
Red light therapy has been shown to accelerate cellular healing and reduce inflammation, which as we already know, is essential for keeping your body raring to go to remove toxins from the body. Just like exercise can reduce inflammation, exposure to FIR can also achieve this result. Not only does reduced inflammation help you continue exercising and sweating toxins out of the body, but it can also free up the body’s energy levels to keep your natural processes working as effectively as possible.
Steam Rooms
Steam rooms use moist heat to relax sore and congested muscles, improve skin health, and help your body detox through sweating. The high humidity of TH7’s steam rooms can help open your pores to allow more toxins to be pushed through them, helping to flush out toxins without having them to make it all the way down to your liver or kidneys. There have been many studies on the effectiveness of sweating for detoxification, showing that it can reduce the amount of heavy metals in your body, along with other toxins picked up throughout the day.
Contrast Therapy Pools
TH7 also offers contrast therapy pools which use both hot and cold water immersions to stimulate the body’s natural healing processes. When shocking the body with frequent temperature changes, the blood vessels pump to improve blood flow and nutrient delivery around the body. This can also migrate inflammation, which can give your body more energy to focus on removing toxins instead of reducing inflammation.
Final Thoughts
Detoxing the body is essential to keep it running as healthily as possible, keeping you alert, preventing autoimmunity, and preventing cravings. There are plenty of ways you can detox the body, including helping your natural processes by limiting alcohol and making sure you get enough sleep. However, there are also plenty of ways to boost your body’s detoxification ability even more, with studies pointing to FIR exposure and saunas as some of the most effective ways to achieve this. There’s no need to hop on the latest juice cleanse craze – looking after your body with a healthy diet, exercise, and certain therapies should be more than enough to gently detoxify on its own.
