Put Your Natural Detox System to Work

The idea of detoxing your body and ridding it of harmful toxins can be quite seductive. 

But I must warn you, it’s a trap.

If you’ve ever tried a do-it-yourself, at-home detox and wondered why it’s not working or why you can’t sustain short-term results for the long-term, then you are not alone. The health detox industry has generated multi millions in profits selling the idea that you need to buy your way to optimum health.

Detox basics

What do you think of when you hear the word “detox?” Is it a trendy tea being sold by an influencer? A juice cleanse? It’s probably not the same thing that comes to my mind.

The detox I learned about in university is a medical treatment for addicts who have life-threatening alcohol and drug addictions. This type of detox is done at special clinics or hospitals and is supervised by medical professionals. 

However, in America there’s another type of detox that’s often advertised — detox diets and cleanses. And without a basic understanding of how your body works, you might wind up without the knowledge necessary to protect yourself from buying unnecessary products.

The market is saturated with these DIY detox kits that companies sell to the public by making people believe that their health problems are due to toxins built up in their bodies. Some, like this one, will claim to help you lose weight in just five days, improve your skin and your mood, and “firm and tone your skin.”

In many cases, these are likely FALSE CLAIMS, driven by short-term results that ignore the long-term reality. 

Short Term results only yield long term health problems

The first thing to understand is that the weight loss we experience when doing a detox diet or cleanse isn’t really weight loss. That’s just fluid loss due to a very low carbohydrate intake and excessive bowel movements caused by laxative teas and salt water. People will starve themselves for days drinking lemon, cayenne, and maple syrup because these companies claim to be weight loss miracles.

I won’t speak for you, but I can tell you from my own experience that any product that demands you starve yourself in order to lose weight isn’t going to help you achieve long-term results. 

These types of demands, which create additional strain on the body, are exactly why health-conscious publications like Healthline agree with me: sometimes a detox can cause more harm than good.

These detox diets create toxins in the body rather than getting rid of them. 

When your body is not getting enough calories for several days you start breaking down muscle mass which creates ketones, an acidic substitute for fuel that the body must excrete. Ketones can cause loss of minerals like calcium from bones. You should be able to see where this is going: your body is reacting to its depleted resources by slowly breaking down.

The only thing you are losing is water weight. That’s really the whole game for DIY detoxes. And instead of achieving long-term weight loss by losing it and keeping it off, you wind up dehydrated, suffering from an electrolyte imbalance, impaired bowel movements, and with disrupted intestinal flora.

You already have a built-in detox system

Keep this in mind as you read on: your body is already the ultimate detox machine. So why would you believe in a company that only wants to sell you a product? Ultimately, they’re going to want to claim that their product can produce better results than your own body. In other words, they want you to believe the dubious claim that their product is better than what nature and evolution have already provided for you. Sounds unlikely, right?  

Some of these companies that sell detox kits claim that after a few days you will expel a long fibrous gelatinous looking substance from the colon wall. They will tell you that intestinal cleansing from parasites and fecal matter accumulates for years and sticks to the intestinal walls.   

In reality, the inverse is true: when fecal matter builds up, it does not stick to the wall at all; it forms a big mass in the open interior of the colon. for the body to expel naturally.  According to Dr. Ranit Mishori, the cells that form the lining of the colon are shed every 72 hours, which means stool doesn't stick to intestinal walls, creating a toxin build up in the colon. This is just “junk science.” Most of the time, our bodies are perfectly capable of expelling fecal matter on their own.

When it comes to your health, your goals should be long-term, not short-term. In the long-term, a cleanse fast can sometimes lead to binge eating later. That stores fat more easily, which is of course counterintuitive to weight loss. 

So now let’s get back to nature’s greatest detox system: your own body.

We have a sophisticated natural detox system in our body that is doing its job every day without any conscious effort on our part to cleanse our body from toxins. The liver and kidneys filter and eliminate most ingested toxins. Our lungs exhale pollutants. The colon removes toxins and waste products through bowel movements, and our immune system is a network of cells that detect foreign substances and eliminates them from the body. 

Our organs are already naturally detoxing our bodies as we speak. In fact, if the human body couldn’t excrete the toxins every day, we would be in big trouble or maybe even dead.  

Fine-tuning our detox system

While we are all born with high functioning detox systems, there are plenty of things we should be doing to aid our bodies in this process. Most critically, understanding that what we eat and how we eat affect our natural detox mechanism and our body.

This, unfortunately, is especially troublesome in America, where many diets include too much sugar, salt, animal fat, carbonated drinks, fast food and industrial fruit juices. We also need help with how we eat, so that we can allow our digestive system to rest and recharge.  If you are eating constantly and not giving your digestive system and your liver a much-needed break, you are not allowing your natural detox system to work at its full capacity. Much like you after a particularly grueling assignment at work, your body needs time to rest and process so it isn’t constantly breaking down problematic foods. 

If you’ve ever dealt with indigestion, weight gain, and a sluggish liver, then you might be falling prey to this. Bloating, headaches, and brain fog also add to the long list of side effects of an unhealthy diet.

So how do we go about detoxing our bodies from these harmful toxins? 

The answer is very simple: a healthy, well-balanced diet leads to a healthy, energetic body. 

I know you might be having some doubts right now; perhaps even a cynical comment or two to make. What is a healthy, well-balanced diet? You’ve probably heard so many different answers to this question (Low fat! Low carb! Paleo!) that you are skeptical at this point. The reality is this: there is no new, secret formula for detoxing your body, losing weight, or being healthy.  

The basic tenets of good nutrition have not changed much over time. The healthiest diet has been the same for centuries: vegetables, fruits, whole grains, nuts, high-fiber foods, protein from plants and naturally raised animals, and plenty of water. These foods help supply the necessary nutrients that support our organs and immune system to naturally perform the detoxification process.  Pro-tip: add in a little exercise, at least 30 minutes per day, and you will start to feel the difference.

If you are ready to aid your body with detoxification, there are simple ways to do this and not starve yourself in the process. Add lots of brightly colored fruits and vegetables to your daily diet.

Mother nature provides us in every season with vegetables and fruits that are high in fiber and potassium, but low in sodium to detox your liver, colon, and kidneys. 

During these summer months, there are lots of fruits in season that are just as sweet as the sweetest candy bar yet aren’t full of processed sugars. And let’s not forget fresh veggies and herbs right out of the garden. I don’t know about you. Instead of planting flowers in front of my house, I plant all sorts of herbs and enjoy fresh herbs in my cooking over excess salt. A very common herb-- cilantro-- which is delicious in homemade salsa,  has many wonderful benefits and even detoxifies the body from heavy metals like aluminum, lead and mercury.

All these wonderful fruits, vegetables, and  herbs in season don’t just help optimize the function of our natural detox system but benefit our entire body by providing us with essential minerals, vitamins, and antioxidants.

Every summer, I make sure to add healthy doses of the fruits and veggies that are in season to my daily diet. My favorite is a combination of watermelon, cherries, and carrot juice. They hydrate the kidneys and flush out toxins from both your liver and your kidneys.  

There are all sorts of ways to maximize the health benefits of fruits by consuming more of the fruit. For example, watermelon seeds are high in minerals, especially potassium. Cherry stems are a diuretic and that naturally helps with weight loss. 

I was raised in Morocco, where dieticians prescribe cherry stem tea or artichoke tea daily for two weeks for people that have fat stored in their liver, along with a healthy diet and exercise program to help them lose weight.

So, the next time someone tries to sell you on a detox kit, remember that your body already has everything you need for detox, all you need to do is fuel it with the right foods, get a modest amount of daily exercise, be aware of what you put on your body, drink plenty of water, and arm yourself with the knowledge that no company is going to help you detox better than your own body.

The secret ingredient to optimum health cannot be sold in a “detox kit,” it is you.

Recipes to optimize your detox system

Here are some of my favorite refreshing juices for the summer that are full of minerals and vitamins and will optimize the function of your organs. You can enjoy this alongside your regular breakfast.

Carrot, watermelon and cherry juice:

4 carrots

3 -4 cubes of ice.

2 cups of watermelon

2 cups of cherries pitted. If you don’t have cherries, use a peach and a plum. Make sure you keep the skin on for fiber and the amazing vitamins the skin has.

Juice the carrots, transfer the carrot juice to a blender, add cherries, and watermelon. Share this with your kids.

Cucumber, celery, parsley and cilantro:

Half or a quarter of organic cucumber

2 organic celery stalks

4 parsley strands 

3 cilantro strands

Juice the celery and cucumber. Transfer the juice to a blender then add cilantro and parsley. Add a splash of lime and drink. It tastes like a gazpacho.

Artichoke detox:

Wash 4 organic artichokes, place in a big pot and make sure artichoke are submerged in water. Bring to boil, reduce the heat and allow the artichokes to cook for about 30- 40 min. allow to rest for an hour. Remove artichokes from pot. Enjoy the fibrous artichoke heart and save the water in the fridge for a week. Drink 3 times a day as a hot tea before meals.

Cherry stem detox:

Select 4 stems per a cup of hot water. Boil the water add cherry stems and allow to infuse for 10 min. drink as a hot tea before meals.

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