Foods for Detoxification

Whether you detox for one or two week, the main key to any detox program is your diet. And while the advice is simple, for many, it’s not easy. It’s a matter of what to eat, what to avoid, and water, water, water.

Eat This

First and foremost, go organic whenever possible. This will help reduce the toxin, pesticide, and other chemical load on your body.

Next, aim for two or three light meals a day, consisting of:

• organic vegetable juices (celery, carrot, beet, beet greens, parsley, cucumber, spinach, garlic, and/or wheatgrass);
• low-fat and low-sodium vegetable broths;
• herbal teas;
• uncooked or lightly steamed organic vegetables;
• legumes such as lentils and garbanzo beans; and
• brown rice.

If you’d like to incorporate animal-based protein in your diet, choose eggs prepared without oils (i.e. soft- or hard-boiled) or easy-to-digest fish and poultry, such as wild, organic salmon, and the occasional free-range poultry.

Avoid That

There are certain categories of foods you should work to reduce, if not eliminate, from your diet. These include:

• Alcohol
• Red meat
• Sugar
• Caffeine
• Wheat
• Dairy

Most of these foods, such as alcohol, red meat, fatty foods, and refined sugar, can generate toxic residues that your liver must neutralize. Others, such as caffeine, overstimulate your adrenals and increase already chronic secretions of cortisol, which leads to increased nervous tension and a release of the toxic metabolites required to break down that hormone.

Finally, wheat and dairy can trigger inflammatory reactions that will increase your liver’s need to detoxify the resulting histamines and leukotrienes in your body.

Water All Day

As you liberate stored toxins, it will take plenty of water to flush them safely and completely out of your system through every possible means of elimination—urine, stool, the moisture in exhaled breath, and sweat.

Try to drink a minimum of eight 8-ounce glasses of purified mineral water each day, spreading them out evenly throughout the day.

For more information about detoxification, check out Dr. Lark’s Web site.