What is a Detox Diet?

Going on a "detox diet" can help cleanse your body of harmful toxins it has accumulated over time.  Toxins enter our body every time we eat processed foods, smoke, drink, or use drugs (prescription or otherwise).  These toxins can build up and cause us to feel sluggish, achy, emotional, and sometimes ill to the point of seeking medical care. 

Even if follow a healthy diet, you still may be exposed to many toxins. Toxins can come from food or water, from chemicals used to grow or prepare food, and even from the air that we breathe. Our bodies bring in toxins and then process those toxins through organs such as the liver and kidneys and eliminate them in the form of sweat, urine, and feces.

Supporters of detox diets believe that toxins don't always leave our bodies properly when we use the bathroom. Instead, they say that these toxins hang around in our digestive, lymph, and gastrointestinal systems and even in our skin and hair.

These toxins can cause many problems, such as nausea, headaches, and fatigue. The basic idea behind following a detox is to temporarily abstain from certain kinds of foods that are thought to contain these toxins in the first place. The idea is to purify the body and purge it of all of the harmful toxins.

Although detox diets differ, many of them involve some version of a fast which means abstaining from food for a certain period of time, and then gradually reintroducing certain foods into the diet. Many of these diets also encourage you to undergo a complete colonic irrigation, which involve cleansing of the colon. Of course, there are still others that recommend that you take herbal supplements to help speed the cleansing process.

There are many detox diets to choose from. Some popular methods include:

• Juice fasting
• Liver flushes
• The Master Cleanser (or Lemonade Diet)
• Colon cleanses

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They typically involve several days on a completely liquid diet and another four or five days slowly reintroducing foods such as brown rice, fruit, and steamed vegetables to the diet. After a period of eating only these foods, you gradually reintroduce other foods, although the goal is to stay away from foods that cause problems in many people, such as red meat, wheat, sugar, eggs, and all prepackaged or junk foods.

Lots of claims are made about what a detox diet can do for you from preventing and curing disease to giving people more energy to making someone more focused and clearheaded. However, one should be careful before starting a detox diet, as they have the potential to be harmful if not followed correctly. Detox diets are intended for short-term purposes only and should not be followed for an extremely long period of time.

That being said, when used at appropriate times for a reasonable length of time, detox diets are not be not harmful and will help cleanse your body of harmful toxins. You will most likely shed a few pounds and gain energy!