Detoxing and cleansers

I'm going to be straight with you: Eat lots of fruits, vegetables and complex carbs (whole grains!), drink plenty of water, exercise.

The body is made to "detox" itself and unless a doctor tells you that you need to do something more than live a healthy lifestyle, a "detox" can be very dangerous to your health.

There are lot of methods. My suggestion is go light on the salt, it bloats you and makes it difficult to feel better. Drink lots of water, even when you do not feel like it and add some lemon to your water to help cleans the body. I sweeze half a lemon to eight cups of water. try it for a day and see how it helps.

I agree with other posts. Do not do an OTC detox "system". I see a Gastrointestinal specialist and she said those are so so bad for you and can actually lead to chronic stomach conditions. All they are are harsh laxatives. They try and blind you with the fact that they have healthy nutrients/vitamins in them but none of that stuff can be absorbed into your body while there's a harsh laxative flushing them out! My doc recommends miralax or milk of magnesia and a lot of gatorade for one whole week. Good luck to you hun!

Acidophilus is a great suppliment you can take to help ease bloating. Don't bother with Activia or those yogurt drinks - tons of sugar and the 'good bacteria' gets killed by your stomach acid, so a tiny proportion gets to your intestines.

Take the tablet - they have a special coating to survive your stomach acid, and then start working when they get to your intestines.

My dietician friend recommended these to me - they definately work!! And they aren't that expensive. And good for you!!

But agreed re: the above posts. Tons of water and lots of fruit / veggies - much better than any 'detox' diet!!

Good luck!

Once upon a time the word detox brought images to mind of a weekend of eating nothing and drinking only water and fresh home squeezed fruit juices. I've tried it...you feel terrible for the whole time and you just pile on a load of weight afterwards!

Thankfully people, realising that this is an awful thing to do to yourself, have come up with better ways. If you really want to detox, then the best way is to help your body do what it does best, and it needs both the tools and the fuel for this; you wouldn't send a builder to straighten up your house without electricity to power up his drill, after all!

You have 4 major detoxing organs in your body; your skin, your liver and your two little kidneys. Drink pleanty of water to really flush out your skin and kidneys, it will also help soften your stools and help them get moving. Also drink cranberry juice for your kidneys. My sister used to get terrible kidney infections when she was a child and every doctor out there she saw to try and rectify the problem "prescribed" cranberry juice alongside their more conventional antibiotics because there really is an awful lot to it! Some people don't like cranberry juice, but I would highly reccomend it after seeing the good it has done first hand. You can buy supplements in pill form if you really can't stand it.

For your liver, it tends to do a pretty darn good job all on its own, but help it out by not drinking alcohol or caffeine while detoxing and switching to organic for a while so it doesn't have to contend with all the pesticides and chemicals used to grow your bags of salad and yummy fruit. I mean sure we've been eating these chemicals for an awful long time now, and it's relatively safe to do so, but it's your liver that has to deal with it so give it a break and help it along a little Besides, it's great for the environment too; I watched a rather scary programme last night about the effects of killing off our little insects is having not just in nature but on our pockets too (pollination by hand? Gonna add billions to our food bills!)

For your skin, have some fun and treat yourself to a good exfoliator. Getting rid of all the dead skin cells will make you look and feel better anyway, and giving it a good rough (not too rough!) scrub will stimulate the skin will encourage blood flow which can only help it do its job better.

As for what to eat, don't starve yourself, your body doesn't like that, and it needs all the help it can get if you really want a thorough purge! While you are in your detox phase, eat lots and lots of fruit and vegetables. Raw is best, but steamed is fine. Boiling leeches away all the good nutrients. Eat your carbs for fuel, you'll be needing it, but eat complex carbs like wholemeal bread and pasta. An awful lot of people say no to meat during detox, once again even fresh meat can be harbouring chemicals from when the animal was alive that you then have to break down so try eating lots of beans and other pulses for your protein. These also provide pleanty of roughage for your bowel, which is ultimately going to get things moving again...the ultimate digestive detox done the natural way Certain fish are a no no during detox owing to the high levels of mercury that can be found...just what your body doesn't need.

All in all, the general theme is eat pleanty, eat naturally, avoid alcohol and caffeine (caffeine will just hold onto water in your body, making you feel even more bloated), and give the old system a good flushing with lots and lots of water!

I find Slimatee tea bags from Holland and Barrett are very good for bloating and they are really cheap to buy.