The dust, smoke, fumes, and toxic gas from industries are harmful to your body. They get into the body when you eat, drink, and breathe. These toxins affect how the body functions and cause diseases like stroke, ischaemic heart disease, respiratory infections, chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, and cancer. You can reduce your risks to those diseases by just cleansing your body. Keep reading to determine what you need to do to enhance your body’s natural detoxification system.
The liver, kidney, and lymphatic system work hard to eliminate biologically harmful toxins from the body. Unfortunately, these three organs don’t evolve to cope with the increasing amounts of toxins you unknowingly interact with every day. As a result, they can easily be overwhelmed and cause toxin overload. When this happens, these toxins start damaging your cells and can even cause diseases. It is upon you to give a helping hand to your body’s natural detoxification system to prevent a buildup of toxins in your body.
Symptoms of toxic overload
When your body has accumulated more toxins than it can process, these toxins start triggering some changes. They start by damaging your cells which affect the normal functioning of essential organs like the liver and kidneys. Some of the symptoms that you should look for to whether your body has accumulated more toxins than the natural detoxification system can handle include:
- excessive urination
- nasal congestion
- sneezing or coughing fits
- excessively oily skin
- changes in the body odor
- sleep impairments
- brain fog
- memory difficulties
You can help your body get rid of the harmful toxins to boost your health. Your body indeed has the potential to eliminate toxins without expensive supplements and a special diet. Unfortunately, because your detoxification system does not evolve, it can easily get overwhelmed and cause toxic overload. Here are some evidence-based things you can do to enhance or rejuvenate your body’s natural detoxification system.
1. Drink more water
Water plays an important role in your well-being. Your body is 70 to 80 percent water. You can even survive for several weeks without food, but only a few days without drinking water. When you drink water, it does more than just quenching your thirst. It aids digestion, absorption of nutrients, lubrication of joints, detoxification, and temperature control.
Your body can’t function to its optimum level if you fail to drink enough water. It needs the energy to keep running. This energy is from the food you eat. Your cells breakdown the nutrients from the food you eat to get energy. The breakdown process releases waste (urea and carbon dioxide). Water helps in digestion, absorption of nutrients, breakdown of nutrients in the cells, and removal of waste from the body.
The body needs water to transport waste products and make it possible for their excretion through sweating, urination, and breathing. If your body fails to get enough water, it experiences difficulties in getting rid of these waste products. They start accumulating in the blood and then start damaging cells and some organs start failing. You can prevent all these by drinking enough water.
2. Add prebiotics to your diet
To keep your detoxification system healthy, you need to take care of your gut health. Prebiotics are a type of fiber that acts as food to the good bacteria in your gut. Adding prebiotics to your diet helps the good bacteria produce short-chain fatty acids that are good for your wellbeing. Short-chain fatty acids can lower your risk of inflammatory diseases, obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, colon cancer, and other conditions.
Adding probiotics and prebiotic-rich food to your diet can also increase the number of good bacteria in your gut. These bacteria will help in digestion and detoxification. They also help your body absorb nutrients more efficiently.
3. Eat antioxidant-rich foods
The body naturally produces molecules known as free radicals when your cells are digesting food. These molecules damage your cells and cause conditions like dementia, asthma, liver disease, heart disease, and cancer. Antioxidants help prevent cells from these damages. Apart from protecting your cells from oxidative damage, antioxidants also help your body get rid of toxins.
Getting quality sleep every night can help support your body’s natural detoxification system. When you are asleep, the spaces between your brain cells increase. That allows the brain to flush out toxins like beta-amyloid that build up during your working hours. Getting enough sleep also helps your brain reorganize and recharge.
If you are not getting quality sleep, your brain doesn’t enough time to get rid of all the toxins that build up during the day. Unfortunately, the build-up of toxins like beta-amyloid in the brain ends up causing diseases like Alzheimer’s disease. Poor sleep quality can also cause stress, anxiety, obesity, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart diseases.
You should sleep for at least 7 hours per day. If you are experiencing insomnia or any other sleeping disorder, it is worth talking to your doctor. He can recommend some lifestyle changes like limiting your exposure to blue light from computers, TVs, and mobile screens. Your doctor can also prescribe some medications to help you get quality sleep.
Taking over-the-counter sleeping pills without a doctor’s prescription will do no good. You might end up creating another problem when trying to solve sleep problems. Remember, doctors have been trained and they know what they are doing. They know how to diagnose and treat, but you don’t. If you take your car to a mechanic for an oil change, why not spare some time and visit your doctor. Or is your car more important than you are?
5. Limit sugar and processed foods
You are what you eat. Eating healthy foods will give you a healthy body, but eating junk foods will weaken your body and make it more vulnerable to diseases. The high intake of sugar and processed foods is the root of today’s health crisis.
Junk foods are delicious, but eating them regularly increases the risk of obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and some types of cancer. High consumption of sugary beverages like sodas can cause fatty liver disease. These diseases affect your body’s ability to detoxify by harming organs like the liver and kidney. Avoiding junk foods and sugary drinks can help lower your risks of these diseases and rejuvenate your body’s natural detoxification system.
The best way to avoid junk foods is by cooking in your kitchen if you always dine at restaurants. Taking a protein-rich breakfast before leaving for work can lower your appetite and need to eat junk foods before lunchtime. Replacing the junk foods in your kitchen with healthy fruits and vegetables can also help.
6. Lower your salt intake
Too much salt can affect your kidneys and liver. If you are taking too much salt but not drinking enough water, you are overworking your liver and kidneys. When there is too much salt in the body, The pituitary gland releases an antidiuretic hormone to prevent you from urinating. Remember, urinating is one of the primary ways of removing toxins from your body. If you are not urinating, toxins build up and start damaging cells.
7. Get active
Going to the gym is not just good for your muscles. It can help boost your immune system. Exercise or physical activity lowers inflammations that might be affecting your body’s natural detoxification system. Regular exercise can help kickstart your body’s natural detoxification system and lower your risk of chronic diseases like obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer. At least 150 to 300 minutes of moderate-intensity exercises like walking and 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous-intensity exercise like running can help keep fit and lower your risk of diseases.