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Cleansing and Food:
Our food choices and preparations are daily opportunities to:
- Reduce inflammation
- decrease our toxic burden
- and nourish on all levels.
What is the ?cleanse trend? all about?
- Toxicity:
- Toxic acids are normal by products of cell breakdown.
We assimilate varying amounts of toxic material from:
- The air we breathe
- Food we eat
- Environmental sources
How do we become toxic?
- When toxins are being assimilated or created in the body faster than they can be gotten rid of.
- When one or more of the eliminative systems of the body are under active.
What are the routes of eliminating toxins?
The emunctories:
1) Intestinal tract:
- Optimal bowel movement:
- Optimal transit time:
2) Respiratory
- Lungs-takes in our most important nutrient ?oxygen
3) Kidneys
- Filters 500 gallons of blood/day, balance H20 and electrolytes
4) Lymphatics
- Collects and gets rid of toxins, we have more lymph fluid than blood
5) Skin:
- Largest organ of elimination
6) Liver:
- Complex organ-500 known functions
- All blood from intestines goes through liver
- Transforms carbs, proteins, fats into energy
- Makes enzymes that catalyze biochemical reactions in the body
- Makes bile that helps break down fats and carry toxins away from the liver
- Mreaks down hormones, converts vitamins, minerals to utilizable forms
- Detoxifies the body- 2 phases-
- phase 1: makes toxins more soluble intermediate state (can be more harmful than the original toxin)
- **IMPORTANT that phase 2 keeps up with phase 1!!**
- phase 2: through use of certain nutrients, the liver binds toxins from phase 1 then eliminates through bile and urine
- Helps regulate blood sugar
- Supports immune system (50% of macrophages located here!)
Inflammation ? how does it relate?
- Inflammation is one of the results of toxic build-up and/or an ?over-burdened system where the emunctories are unable to keep pace.
- It is a common but complex process that underlies diseases that range from seasonal allergies, auto-immunity, to obesity to cancer.
?How does food and diet factor in to reducing this load?
- Every day we make food choices that can
- Balance out the pro- and anti inflammatory compounds in our body, (homeostasis=health) or
- We can make choices that tip the scale to one end (inflammation).
- Our food supply is a product of our environment.
- There is much that is beyond our immediate control?our water, air, environmental pollutants are all elements that we cannot change overnight.
- One of the ways that we can lighten the load is we can *reduce the foods that are known to promote inflammation, *avoid pesticides, artificial flavours, colours and chemicals, *identify food sensitivities and *expand our horizons by incorporating more natural anti-inflammatory whole foods in our diet.
One of the ways that we can lighten the load is we can *reduce the foods that are known to promote inflammation, *avoid pesticides, artificial flavours, colours and chemicals, *identify food sensitivities and *expand our horizons by incorporating more natural anti-inflammatory whole foods in our diet.beyond the 7 or 14 days of doing a particular ?cleanse?.
To learn more about the anti-inflammatory diet:
- keep posted for more blogs on the topic
- Sign up for the?CLEANSING FOR WHOLE HEALTH WORKSHOP?at Hollyhock, June 10-15, 2012 on Cortes Island.?
- Use this helpful guide from the Environmental Working Group (WWG) about the dirty dozen most heavily pesticide-laden foods and the clean 15:
?http://www.foodnews.org/walletguide.php