5 Simple Detox Hacks to Keep You Healthy for the Holidays

Stay healthy and happy through the holidays with these quick and easy detox hacks.

During the busy holiday season it can be hard to find time for self care, but no time is more important to support our bodies than when we are stressed, busy, and being exposed to winter colds and flus. While good diet goes a long way towards preserving our health, no diet can replace the need for detox, which cleans out all of the cellular debris and toxic chemicals we come in contact with on a daily basis. Here are 5 things you can do right now to detox your body naturally and boost your energy and immunity.

1. Get Moving

Exercise does so much more than boost your moods and slim your waistline. When it comes to detox, exercise acts as a pump for your lymph, getting it to where it needs to go in your body. Your lymphatic system is responsible for “taking out the trash” from your cells, and without exercise, those toxins can’t go anywhere. Unlike your circulatory system, which has the heart to pump blood wherever it needs to go, the lymphatic system doesn’t have it’s own pump – it relies on the movement of your muscles and joints for its circulation.

Lymph fluid contains powerful infection-fighting white blood cells, and an entire network of vessels and nodes that go all the way from your brain to your toes delivers these essential germ fighters to your tonsils, spleen, thymus, bone marrow, and digestive system, which are all critical structures in your lymphatic and immune systems. That same network picks up your cellular toxins and carries them out of circulation, to be dumped into the subclavian veins that sit at the base of your neck.

While it may seem like a daunting task to get enough exercise to move the lymph from as far away as your legs, all the way up to your neck to go through the detox process, let me assure you it’s easier than you think. Stretching, yoga, tai chi, bouncing on a rebounder, and even walking are enough to get your lymph moving. If you don’t already exercise, start small – park farther away from the stores when you shop, take the stairs instead of elevators and escalators, and take the time to do simple stretches throughout the day.

2. Sweat It Out

It may come as a surprise, but your skin is a major detoxification organ. There are a number of toxic chemicals and even heavy metals we come in contact with that can be eliminated through sweating. And there’s no better way to sweat in the winter months than spending time in a sauna.

There are several types of sauna to choose from, everything from traditional dry and steam saunas to modern ozone to infrared, and as long as it makes you sweat, you’ll detox. I personally use far infrared sauna. It’s been shown to penetrate to the deeper tissues and increases cellular energy production, so I feel relaxed and energized afterward. Because I travel a fair amount, I have a Relax Portable Sauna, which is low EMF and fits easily in the back of my car.

3. Stay Regular

Your body relies heavily on your digestive system to remove unwanted toxins and escort them out of the body. Constipation is no laughing matter. If you aren’t moving your bowels after every meal, then by definition, you are constipated, and holding on to those waste products is costing you your health.

When you are constipated, you can store up to 50 pounds of toxic waste material in your colon, waiting to be eliminated. As it sits there, your body recycles everything it can. Toxic bile gets circulated back to the liver to be re-used, and as a result becomes thick and sludgy, which affects everything from your weight to your thyroid health.

Your body extracts every bit of fluid it can from the waste and your kidneys have to filter all that wastewater, which puts a strain on them. The waste sitting in your colon then becomes hard and dry, making it harder to move through, so as it sits, your body shuttles those toxins into your fat cells to be stored since they can’t be eliminated. The end result is water weight, bloating, and fat gain.

Whatever the reason behind your constipation, it’s important to get things moving again. People who are constipated are often deficient in magnesium, and supplementing daily with this mineral is known to relax the muscles of the colon and relieve constipation. Repopulating your digestive system with healthy bacteria by supplementing with a good probiotic is another way to boost the cleansing power of your digestion and relieve constipation. It’s also a good way to boost immunity during the winter months.

Finally, if constipation has been a long-term problem for you, then a 30-day colon cleanse should be on your list of new year’s resolutions. A good colon cleanse contains gentle but effective pH balanced herbs that clean out unwanted toxins and harmful microorganisms, while rebalancing with the right intestinal flora.

4. Build Better Bile

Your liver is the hardest working detox organ in your body. When your liver cleanses your body, it dumps all the toxic waste into the bile, which carries those toxins to be eliminated from the body. When bile isn’t flowing properly, either because it’s become thick and sludgy, or you have a fatty liver that can’t produce good quality bile, or because you don’t have the nutrients to support good bile production, then your body can’t fully detoxify itself. According to Ann Louise Gittleman:

“Bile has such a substantial role in detoxification that there is already a 75 percent bile deficiency by the time allergies, arthritis, and inflammation in joints and muscles develop – conditions with a direct relationship to unnecessary toxins in the body. By the time cancer or chronic illness is diagnosed, a whopping 90 percent deficit has already occurred.”

A key to detoxifying your body is building better bile, and taking a supplement like our Bile Builder to support healthy bile production. This is especially important when you don’t have a gallbladder, because your gallbladder is the storehouse for bile and normally releases bile into the small intestine for fat digestion and elimination of toxins. If your metabolism is toxic, you suffer with fatigue, and you can’t lose weight no matter what you’ve tried, then Ann Louise Gittleman’s new Radical Metabolism  must-read for you.

5. Coffee Enemas – the Ultimate Detox and Energy Booster

If you’re feeling sluggish, fatigued, bloated, and are looking for a stronger detox, then consider getting your daily coffee in a new way. Coffee enemas help to relieve constipation, cleanse your bile, boost your energy, and support your liver while you detox. All throughout history coffee enemas have been used for everything from digestive issues to natural cancer protocols, migraine therapy, fighting the flu, autoimmune diseases, and whole body wellness.

Coffee enemas help cleanse the colon by releasing waste and plaque stuck to the walls of the colon, and stimulate removal of parasites and other unwanted organisms. They also help detoxify the liver by stimulating the bile ducts to open and release bile, and promote up to a 600 percent increase in the production of glutathione, a powerful antioxidant that stimulates cellular detox and protects DNA from damage.

Coffee enemas can be done weekly or even multiple times daily, depending on the protocol you follow. I recommend no more than once daily. For best results, use a good quality organic coffee, so you aren’t flooding your colon with pesticides and molds.