Detox For Your Gut: Is It Necessary?

In recent years the phrases ‘gut cleansing’ and ‘detox’ have become very popular indeed. There are lots of products and methods being bandied around which claim their product, method or diet will ‘detoxify’ you.  Both terms are a bit misleading, suggesting you need to do something particularly special, or spend lots of money on expensive products in order to get results.

These phrases are misleading because our body is constantly detoxifying on its own. For example, the main function of your liver is to filter and remove toxins from your body. There are lots of processes involved using a variety of complex biological systems. These eventually end up showing toxins the door.

Other ways your body is constantly detoxing include –

• Your skin pushing out bacteria through sweat
• Kidneys filtering blood and producing urine
• Lungs expelling carbon dioxide
• Intestines extracting nutrients from food and excreting waste.

Your liver is very busy, clearing toxic xenobiotics from pharmaceutical drugs, food additives and environmental pollutants. These are metabolised by detoxification enzymes into less harmful compounds.

So, in a nutshell you’re already gut cleansing and detoxing without thinking about it!  It’s really just a question of how effectively you’re doing it.

How to support gut cleansing & detox

Although detoxification happens naturally, that doesn’t mean that we don’t need to support it in doing its job. Your body’s own detoxing mechanisms don’t work properly without the right fuel. The right fuel being the nutrients contained in whole, natural foods.

So while it’s not accurate to suggest that certain types of food/juices/supplements/superfoods will cleanse your gut and detoxify you directly, a healthy diet is definitely necessary to provide your system with the enzymes to detoxify your body adequately.

In addition, factors like –

• Chronic, ongoing stress
• Poor sleep
• Lack of physical activity
• A diet high in processed foods

Can cause your body’s detoxification systems to underperform and not remove all those toxins efficiently.

However, a ‘detox diet’ can provide a great focus to get your body back on track, and help it to efficiently do what it’s supposed to.

If you’re worried your diet is impacting your gut health, and also your sleep, I’d highly recommend downloading my online course The Ultimate Gut Health Programme to help support both your digestive sysem and hormone health, whilst avoiding triggering symptoms.

It’d be impossible to include all you need to know in one blog, but the programme will have all you need to know to ensure you’re soothing your digestive system, whilst eating delicious and filling foods.

In a nutshell, what you’ll need to do to help your body detox more efficiently, is to minimise the things it doesn’t need, whilst maximising what it does need.

Help your body detox like this –

If you tend to drink fizzy and sugary drinks, swapping them for plain filtered water, herbal teas and green tea will ensure you stay well hydrated whilst at the same time reducing your toxic load.

Cut out all highly processed and pre-packaged foods such as ready meals, convenience foods and snacks from your diet.

Whilst you’re decreasing your intake of processed and sugary foods, ensure you increase you intake of whole raw foods, cook from scratch and include healthy protein foods.

It’s just a case of providing your body with the building blocks it needs to do its own, inbuilt, cleansing process naturally.