Cleansing and Food Choices | Food as medicine

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
When these internal and external toxins can be eliminated from the body there is no problem. When this doesn?t happen, we become overburdened.

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:

  1. keep posted for more blogs on the topic
  2. Sign up for the?CLEANSING FOR WHOLE HEALTH WORKSHOP?at Hollyhock, June 10-15, 2012 on Cortes Island.?
  3. 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


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