Spring is in the air! With the thawing of snow and the gradual and eventual budding of trees and flowers, it represents the season of new beginnings. And what better way to support your body in this season than to have a gentle detoxification!

There are different ways to detoxify, and with how most people are running about their days, there are a number of different ways we are consuming. Are you consuming cakes, fatty meals, alcohol, negative news, gossip, negative social media, etc? Are you reinforcing your own negative perspectives and views of yourself through your friends and media? To support your body with detoxification let’s first support a physical detoxification, which can also be paired with mental detoxification.

The body eliminates waste and metabolites through 3 different routes: urine, stool, and sweat. All 3 of these routes need to be working optimally to allow our body to not accumulate any of these wastes and metabolites.

First things first - you need to be having regular, fully voiding stools. Regular means going 1-3 x day. If you are not having a Bowel Movement (BM) regularly, you will be upcycling certain hormones and other components, as well as fermenting whatever gunk is in your stool. This can often result in bloating and nausea. If this elimination system isn't working optimally, any liver support we do won’t take hold. Best ways to support regular BMs is to make sure you are well hydrated and are taking in enough fiber (~30 g/day). If this isn’t enough to get you going regularly, you will need extra support from an ND because it’s more complicated than that.

Secondly, you have to be urinating - which generally isn’t an issue. However, what does your urine look like? Is it dark yellow, medium yellow, pale yellow, clear? Ideally your urine is pale yellow. If it is dark yellow - and you are not taking a B complex - you are dehydrated and need to drink more water. Water allows our body to flush the metabolites and toxins from our bodies smoothly. If there isn’t enough water, the metabolites and toxins won’t have enough solvent to move out of the body effectively. If your urine is clear, you are most likely overhydrating, this can disrupt the balance of electrolytes in your body. So cut back on your water intake a bit until your urine is a pale yellow.

Lastly is sweat. Are you sweating regularly? Sweating is a great way to eliminate various metabolites and toxins from our body, including heavy metals. Sweating via physical activity, sauna, infrared sauna are all great. Some of these have other additional benefits, including strengthening your body and heart (exercise and cardiovascular activity), while sauna and infrared sauna allows you to sweat and rest. Infrared sauna penetrates deeper into the body than sauna, so I tend to recommend it over sauna, but if it’s easier to do one over the other, that’s the one you should do. The key is that you are sweating. So, get your sweat on!

~Dr. Charmagne