News, Nutrition

What is a Detox?

Date: July 7, 2022

The words ‘detox’ or ‘detoxification’ get thrown around a lot these days but, few people know what these words mean or how it helps in maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

Detoxification, concerning human health, refers to your body’s ability to convert- or bio-transform- waste products and toxins into non-toxic substances excreted from the body.

We do not need any complicated or external diets to detox the body, as our body has already come with the best organs we can get- the liver and the kidneys.

This blog aims to show you the processes involved in detoxifying the body and how it works.

Why Detox?

A toxin is any compound that can harm the structure or function of the body’s cells and tissues. Toxicity occurs when we take in more or produce more toxins than the body can eliminate.

Even with a healthy diet and only moderate intakes of substances such as caffeine and alcohol, our bodies are exposed to a cocktail of toxins daily.

More than 2 million synthetic substances have been identified as toxins to the human body, and up to 25,000 new toxins are added to that list each year. Every day 700,000 tons of chemicals and toxins are released into the environment.

Toxins can slowly accumulate over time within the body and overload our internal detoxification systems. They can enter the body through the skin and lungs or can be ingested with food and drinks. Our body also produces toxins as part of normal metabolic processes.
Toxins cause damage to our cellular DNA, and long-term exposure can result in metabolic and genetic alternations. This can affect cell growth, behaviour, hormonal balance, and immune response, often resulting in increased sensitivities, allergies, and other health problems.

One of the body’s defence mechanisms, when faced with toxicity, is to store the harmful chemicals in the fat tissue. This means that these poisons can be stored for many years in the body, becoming an ongoing source of ill health.

Symptoms of Toxicity

When toxins start to overload our internal detoxification systems, this often results in many of the symptoms below:

• Lethargy and low energy,
• Recurring headaches,
• Skin problems such as dryness, psoriasis or acne,
• Hormonal problems (including PMS and infertility),
• Abnormal body odour, coated tongue, bad breath,
• Adverse reactions/sensitivity to chemicals and odours,
• Difficulty in losing weight,
• Frequent allergies and infections,
• Poor memory/concentration,
• Digestive problems/constipation,
• Muscle aching and weakness,
• Generally feeling unwell.

By reducing the toxic load on the body, we will see a reduced number of symptoms, with many people reporting the following benefits:

• Prevention of many chronic diseases,
• The digestive tract is cleaned of accumulated waste,
• Liver, kidney and blood purification,
• Mental clarity is increased,
• Reduced dependency on habit-forming substances,
• Stomach bile is returned to normal,
• Weight loss,
• The hormonal system is enhanced,
• The immune system is enhanced,
• healthy skin,
• Increased energy, well-being, and longevity.

How does it work?

When it comes to detoxing the body, the two major areas to understand and consider are the liver and cells within the body, as this will produce the greatest impact on our body. The liver is said to be the most hard-working organ in the body and conducts many important functions vital to life.

It plays an important role in digestion (breaking down the nutrients) and assimilation (building up the body tissue). Therefore, it can also be considered one of the most important organs within it comes to detoxifying.

Additional roles of the liver also include acting as a storage site for many essential vitamins and minerals (iron, B12, vitamin A, D, E & K). Red blood cells are produced in the liver, which is responsible for carrying oxygen around the body. Kuffer cells are also produced in the liver, destroying micro-organisms in the blood to help fight off any infections.

Aside from detoxification, the liver plays a key role in many metabolic processes, so overall health should be of utmost importance to everybody.

The liver detoxifies harmful substances by a complex series of chemical reactions. The role of these enzymes activating in the liver is to convert fat-soluble toxins into water-soluble substances that can be excreted in the urine or the bile, depending on the particular characteristics of the end product.

The liver neutralizes a wide range of toxic chemicals, including those produced internally and externally by the body.

When the liver is not functioning optimally, or our metabolic processes are disrupted, this neutralizing effect is greatly reduced, leaving the body open to attack from toxins.

This is becoming increasingly common due to the rise of genetically modified foods and the poor diets of today’s modern society.

All foods contain naturally occurring levels of toxins. However, with the increasing use of various herbicides and pesticides such as polycyclic hydrocarbons, the body requires a strong detoxification system now more than ever.

The livers role in detoxification

The filtering of blood to remove large toxins, Synthesizes and secretes bile full of fat-soluble toxins,
Enzymatically disassembles unwanted chemicals. The enzymatic process usually occurs in two steps known as phases 1 and 2 in the liver. Phase 1 either directly neutralizes a toxin or modifies the toxic chemical to form activated intermediates, which are then neutralized by one or more phase-2 enzyme systems.

I hope you enjoyed learning about the body’s powerful detoxification system.

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