Spring Cleansing: Self-Maintenance Throughout the Year

It is not uncommon for medical test results to show nothing wrong despite the fact that you are not feeling well. No diagnosis and yet you are experiencing headaches, body pains, insomnia, dry skin, rashes, or fatigue. Better than no diagnosis, have you ever heard the not so helpful “it’s just stress…?”

Just as stress builds up in the body over time, so does toxicity. Stress wears down the tissues and impairs the kidneys and liver’s ability to filter and clean our body’s accumulation of daily toxins. This allows the toxins to flow freely through the bloodstream. Our body, which is cleverly trying to heal itself by finding ways to release these toxins, may begin to expel them through the skin. You may then find yourself wondering why “out of the blue” you are experiencing eczema or psoriasis. Without finding alternative ways of escape, toxicity can wear down the tissues of the digestive system, contribute to the creation of an autoimmune disease, or move up to the head manifesting as a migraine or unclear thinking.

Diet plays as a large part in the build-up or breakdown of toxins. Fueled by the correct foods that complement our bio-individuality, combined with the mindfulness of eating, our body is capable of performing a self-healing process.

Are you choosing foods that harm or foods that heal?

Are you eating too much? Overeating contributes to toxicity by preventing the digestive system from properly breaking down the food.

Are you eating too fast? Digestion begins in the mouth through the saliva. When we swallow our food whole, it makes it hard for the body to break it down. This causes the food to ferment in our systems. If you are experiencing gas, it is not necessarily due to the type of food but to the swallowing of air while shoveling it down.

Are you focused on eating when eating? Do you sit down in a calm environment for each meal or are you multi-tasking fighting traffic or sorting through e-mails? Let your body focus on digestion while you eat. A meal is a conversation between your body and the food. Multi-tasking while eating is like having two conversations at once; if two people are talking to you at the same time about two completely different matters, how much of each conversation are you going to process?! And if the larger portion of your energy is focused on the other thing you are doing, your body is not getting the message to activate the digestive system. Shocked to receive food, the body is unprepared to digest.

When are you eating? Just like the sun, the digestive heat is strongest during the earlier half of the day. If we race through our days too busy to eat right, our body will be starving by evening. Eating too much too late, the body ends up focusing on digestion instead of on detoxification. Thus, the following morning we are still carrying yesterday’s toxins in our system. It is time to take a look into what we are doing and how we are doing it.