Cleanse Yourself

Perhaps you’re constantly feeling tired, or digestive problems are affecting you. Your skin may be less than glowing and you’re generally feeling out of sorts. One of the root causes of these symptoms is potentially the excessive festive meals and celebratory glasses of beer, wine and liquor that you’ve been indulging in. Alcohol, processed foods, refined sugars and grains, artificial sweeteners, and conventionally farmed meat products are all acid forming when ingested and are toxic to your body. Your blood should be slightly alkaline, with a pH of 7.4. If it isn’t, it indicates that your metabolism is out of balance.

To nourish your body back to its optimum health and pH, we believe that you need to strike a good balance. Introduce a mix of alkaline-inducing foods into your diet and reduce the acid-forming ones. Bear in mind that it is not the pH composition of the food itself, but the outcome when it is metabolized in your body that is important.

Lemon, for example, is acidic, but has an alkaline effect when your body processes it. Raw spinach, asparagus, soy beans, tofu, stevia, amaranth, quinoa and carrots are some other examples of alkaline foods. Keeping your health on an even keel is all about detoxifying and increasing your intake of alkaline foods.

To help you give your body’s natural healing system a jumpstart, here are our top 10 detox tips.

1.    Clean up your act by reducing acidic refined sugars, saturated fat and alcohol from your diet. This will lighten your toxin load.

2.    Choose to eat natural, less-processed foods. Go organic and try out raw foods. These will contain fewer chemicals and are nutrient-rich.

3.    Eat plenty of fiber (including brown rice and organic fresh fruit and vegetables) to prevent constipation.

4.    Keep your blood’s pH levels at its optimum by regularly incorporating alkaline foods such as leafy greens, cruciferous vegetables, roots and lemons into your daily diet.

5.    Drink lots of water. It keeps your kidneys, which cleanse your body of toxins, healthy.

6.    Eat lots of green coloured fruits and vegetables as they contain chlorophyll, which helps cleanse the body of environmental toxins and aids liver detoxification.

7.    Add garlic, one of the best detox foods, to your diet. It helps stimulate your liver to produce detox enzymes.

8.    Learn to relax. Stress hormones create toxins and retard the detoxification of enzymes in your liver. Conversely, happy thoughts generate alkaline-forming chemical reactions.

9.    Exercise to improve blood circulation, and learn to breathe deeply for better oxygen circulation within your system. Both boost your body’s ability to eliminate.

10.    Sweat it out in the sauna. Your body expels waste through perspiration.Regaining your health doesn’t mean you have to eliminate all your guilty pleasures entirely. It’s about attaining balance. Just try applying these tips to your daily lifestyle for a month and see what a difference it makes!