The Global Conversation

Tag: Detox

  • Total holistic health – cleanse and detoxify your body

    In Conversations with God, Book 1, we learn that “…all illness is self-created. Even conventional medical doctors are now seeing how people make themselves sick.”

    Let’s look at what you need to do in order to get healthy, stay healthy, and stop making yourself sick.

    There are three basic steps you have to take for stellar holistic health. If you are vigilant and careful, you can improve your own health, reduce occurrence of illness, heal yourself, and start feeling great! First you must cleanse and detoxify your body, inside and outside. Get rid of the toxins that are hanging around in your intestines, clogging your arteries, wearing out your organs, and causing symptoms. You must also detoxify your mind, thoughts and relationships. Second, you must learn to avoid toxins in everything possible from food, beauty products, air, water, household cleaners, emotions, and thoughts. Finally, you must nourish your body with good, clean, whole food and subject your body to nutrient-dense foods, exercise, positive thoughts, actions, and activities.

    Today we will look at cleansing and detoxifying your body, mind, and relationships.

    How To Cleanse and Detoxify Your Body

    Detoxifying and cleansing your body can promote weight loss, boost your energy, and help your body heal itself naturally from many symptoms including digestive problems, acne, and inflammatory issues. Detoxifying isn’t anything new, the ancient Eastern medicines have been promoting detoxification for thousands of years.

    In order to effectively experience a detoxifying cleanse, you need to relieve, clean, and nourish your body starting from the inside! Once your internal organs have experienced this refreshing break, they can work more effectively to do their jobs – and heal the body naturally.

    During a detox, the blood, intestines, and liver are cleansed by using fasting, stimulation, elimination, and nourishment. You can detox for a day or two, or for weeks, depending on your needs and goals. You should ask your doctor first if you have any kind of compromising condition such as pregnancy, chronic disease, or cancer.

    We are surrounded by toxins everywhere and in everything from our air, water, and food to our health and beauty products, household cleaners, and work environment. The body stores the toxins it can’t get rid of and will eventually have symptoms such as infections, fatigue, skin problems, mental fog, or even weight gain.

    During any kind of detox, you should avoid coffee, alcohol, refined sugar, smoking, and household poisons. Get plenty of rest and quiet time, and eat light foods. Avoid meat and fatty foods.

    Water Cleansing

    A great way to detox your gut immune system is to do a hot water detox. For 1-2 weeks, simply drink a mug of heated water (plain – no lemon or flavors) every hour or so. The hot water will open up the drainage in your gut and allow toxins to flow out. Repeating this every hour or so for a few weeks will completely boost your immune system naturally!

    For a gentle daily detox, drink a large glass of lukewarm water with lemon when you wake up. Give your body a half hour or hour before eating breakfast. This habit will help you rehydrate your body after sleeping and will wake up your digestion so it can perform its work later.

    Detoxifying Foods

    Many foods can assist your body in naturally detoxifying. Raw fruits and vegetables provide the most cleansing, especially greens such as broccoli, kale, swiss chard, dandelion, turnip, or beet greens. You can also do a 5-day juice-only fast and consume water and juices of fruits and vegetables only.

    Herbal and Special Detoxification

    You may also choose to use an herbal supplement that will promote gentle cleansing and elimination. Be sure to use completely pure herbal cleanse products without fillers, gluten, chemicals, and artificial color or flavor. Look for a product containing psyllium husk, marshmallow and licorice root, bitter gourd, and slippery elm bark.

    After you complete a digestive cleanse/detox you may wish to do a liver cleanse as well as a gallbladder cleanse, especially if you have suffered from headaches, mental fog or confusion, or lethargy. The best liver detox products will contain bio-available turmeric and milk thistle. There are also total cleanse products that are packed with bio-available chlorella, spirulina, or other algaes, and probiotics that can do wonders for your system and energy level!

    Detoxify Your Mind

    You must also detoxify your mind, thoughts and relationships. Negative thinking and attitude, gossiping, judgmental thinking, and toxic relationships are planting the seeds of disease in your system.

    A great way to start thinking more positively is to try affirmations. You can choose a daily affirming statement about your body, health, love, peace, or any area you need to work on being positive. For instance if you suffer from anxiety, use the affirmation “I am at peace.” Just thinking or meditating on affirmations can start reprogramming your mind.

    If you are a negative person, try to identify your negative thoughts, stop, and reword the thought into a positive one. Doing this day after day will help you to become positive instead of negative. For instance, if you think about a part of your body you dislike such as your nose or your stomach, think about all of the good things that body part does for you instead of your thoughts about the bad side. Your thoughts about how big your stomach is can turn into “My stomach helps me daily to digest healthy food and make me heal.” You might even start eating more consciously with thought like that!

    As far as relationships, if you are spending time with toxic people you have two choices: 1) Work to fix the problem, or 2) Eliminate the problem. Toxic relationships can take a toll on your health and it’s not worth it to maintain unhealthy relationships.

    Now you are on your way to detoxifying your body, mind, and spirit! In Part 2, we will examine how to avoid toxins!

    (Beth Anderson is a certified Holistic Health Coach and founder of the Holistic Health Hotspot in Evansville, Indiana. She is also the author of “The Holistic Diet: Achieve Your Ideal Weight, Be Happy and Healthy for Life.” Beth received her training from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Beth is helping people improve their lives through nutrition and lifestyle education, health coaching, and by helping others to learn to make informed choices. Beth continues to spread understanding of the connection between body, mind, and spirit and encourages all to discern the truth about food, consumer products, environment, and life choices. You can find Beth on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/HolisticHealthHotspot or email her at beth@holistichealthhotspot.com)

  • The uphill climb from the bottom

    There I was, walking away from my family and towards the detox ward of the hospital. Overwhelming fear, coupled with a hangover and sense of humiliation, weighing on my thoughts and my body.  So many questions running through my head: What is this going to be like?  What are they going to do to me?  How can I get out of this?  Where would I go?  What have I gotten myself into?  I was walking into the complete unknown, and I was afraid.

    I remember very clearly the first thing that took place.  I was greeted by the doctor who ran the detox.  His name was Dr. D’ Amico.  He explained that I would be wearing the typical hospital gown; you know the one that is open in the back and ties around your waste.  He gave his reason for this: “You are sick.  You are suffering from a disease; therefore, you will be treated as any other person who is sick.”  This was my first real introduction to addiction as a disease.

    After changing into the hospital gown, the nurse took all of  my possessions, shoes and socks, clothing, and cigarettes.  There was no smoking in the hospital detox.  I was led to my room, basically an open area where there were two beds sectioned off from the rest of the hospital by only a curtain.  The curtain remained open all the time.

    I was tired and worn down.  Looking back, I felt relief to be out of the cycle of addiction and the pace of the life I had created.  A nurse came to my bed, bringing medication.  And I was told that because alcohol was one of the drugs I was withdrawing from, I had to take anti-seizure medicine.  Alcohol withdrawal is the most dangerous drug to withdraw from.

    My second day in detox was more challenging.  I was already feeling much better after a good night’s sleep and nutritious meals.  Feeling better sounds like a good thing, but for a person who is addicted, feeling good and healthy typically means that it is okay to start using again.  And that is exactly what I was thinking:  “I don’t need this.  I can do it myself.”  I don’t remember saying that, but I would not be surprised if I did, as I know I was thinking it!

    My addictive behavior did not end in the detox.  After the second day, when the nurse would deliver the anti-seizure medicine, I would store it under my tongue until she left the room.  I would quickly remove it and hide it under my pillow for future use.  I was saving it up so I could take more than one and hopefully get high.  Looking back on this behavior reminds me that I was not just a “normal” kid who liked to party a little too much.

    It was pre-arranged that I would go directly from detox to a 28-day inpatient treatment facility.  This is a very common procedure, because by the seventh day of detox, I was feeling on top of the world physically and mentally.  I was very resistant to going to a rehabilitation center.  (Most of the people who do not go directly to rehab relapse and begin using again shortly after their release from the hospital.)  After a brief intervention with my parents and the doctor, I agreed to proceed as planned.

    It is my hope that in the telling of my personal story here someone reading this will have a greater understanding of how to navigate early recovery either for them or for a loved one.  Alcoholics and drug addicts will convince themselves and everyone else that they just need to break the cycle of using and they will be fine.  I am here to tell you it just isn’t so.  Abstinence is not recovery!  And except for extremely rare cases, abstinence does not maintain.  For those who do simply abstain from using their drugs of choice without employing some form of self-improvement program, long-term recovery is much less likely to happen.  It is the addictive behavior that must be addressed.  The drugs are simply the symptom of a far greater issue.  I was not plotting my next binge when I was saving up the medication for “one last high”;  I was exhibiting the behavior of an addict.

    Addictive personalities do not simply go away with time.  It is debatable whether or not they ever go away.  From my personal experience in recovery, irrational thinking, obsessions, desire for instant gratification do not disappear from the recovering addict’s life.  What does go away is the obsession to use drugs and alcohol.  It does dissolve immediately.  For some, it can take years.  But the transformation does take place.

    The motto of the recovery community is “One day at a time.”  Indeed, this is the basis for most programs that deal with addictions.  And what a wonderful way to live life it is.  When we seek to keep things simple and we stop projecting our thoughts into the future or wishing the past was different, we remember that all we have is the breath we are taking this very moment of now.  We have the power to change who we are right now, but not by fretting over the past or fearing what may come next.  When we live one moment at a time in the awareness that the past is the past and the future is unwritten, we find our peace.  This is recovery.

    (Kevin McCormack C.A.d Is a certified addictions professional, as well as a Conversations with God Life Coach.  Kevin is a practicing Auriculotherapist, and a Spiritual helper on www.changingchange.net.  Kevin will be presenting at the CwG Recovery Retreat in Medford Oregon June 23rd – June 26th.  You can visit his website at www.Kevin-Spiritualmentor.com  To connect with Kevin, please email him at Kevin@theglobalconversation.com)