Detoxification is commonly known as Detox. It is an ongoing natural process through which our body neutralizes or eliminates the toxins. In detoxification the toxins get neutralized or transformed chemically in to less harmful compounds and excreted in the form of urine or stool.
What do you mean by a Detox Diet?
Initially detox is thought as a treatment for drug or alcohol addiction. But the term is also used to refer to herbs, diets, and other technique which is used to remove natural and dietary toxins from the body to keep you healthy.
There are different types of detox diets. In general, a detox diet is a short-term diet that:
- Stress those foods that provide the vitamins, nutrients, and other essential antioxidants which your body requires for detoxification.
- Detox diet contains fiber rich foods and water that helps to eliminate toxins by increasing the frequency of bowel movements and urination.
- Eliminates or neutralizes the amount of chemicals which enters your body through food.
Why do most of the people prefer a detox diet?
Researches suggest that we are exposed to a lot of chemicals daily through air; water, food, and it get deposited in fat cells in our body. A diet that lacks essential nutrients will not have the potential to avoid chemical build-up and to perform detoxification in the body.
This chemical build-up may lead to illness such as damaged immune function, nutritional deficiency, hormonal imbalance, and an inefficient metabolism. The symptoms include bad breath, fatigue, indigestion, muscle pain, and poor skin.
What are the benefits of a detox diet?
With the help of detox diet we can attain clearer skin, increased energy, better digestion, frequent bowel movements and enhanced concentration and clarity.
Our body gets dumped with toxins from cigarettes, alcohol, pesticides, pollution and food additives. These toxins which gets deposited in our body has an adverse effect that causes numerous health problems such as fatigue, headaches, weight gain, dull skin, bloating, aches and pains and a lot of other problems. Detox diet, thus helps to eliminate those unwanted toxins and helps you to recover from these troubling health problems.
Does detox diet have any side effects?
Headache is one of the most common side effects within the first few days of starting of the detox diet. Other side effects include excessive acne, diarrhea, fatigue, hunger, irritability and weight loss.
Detox diets are recommended to do at least once or twice in a year to improve health and the immune power. Detox diets are not supposed to follow more than three times a year.
What are the criticisms against detox diet?