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Spring Cleaning on the Inside

by Dr. Marcus Laux

Published 02/04/09

Skin Cleansing

Scrub yourself with a loofah, brush, or cloth as you shower. The scrubbing removes dead surface skin cells, opens your pores, and wipes out various clogging substances to improve your circulation, stimulate and tone your nerves, and deeply clean your largest organ of elimination. Try a natural bristle brush with a handle to get your entire back in the shower after you’re warmed up and your pores are primed. I don’t do this every day, but when I’m up for it, I wonder why I don’t do it all the time.

You bath folks can brush after a nice soak in the tub with some essential oils (lavender or jasmine, for example). This combination will leave you with a clean body and calm mind.

Body Shock

End your bath or shower with a cool or cold rinse. I know it sounds like a shock (and it is), but it is great, great, great when done right.

After you’re thoroughly warmed up in the shower, turn the water to as cold as you can. The first few seconds will be...well...bracing, but the sensation will quickly turn to totally enjoyable and invigorating. Keep the water cold for 30–60 seconds, then either repeat or turn it off. Always start with warm, always end with cold. It’s tough at first, but you will eventually welcome its amazingly refreshing effect. Deep and controlled breathing may help you master this body and soul wake-up call.

The cold is your healing friend, needed as much as warmth for health and detoxification. The cold closes your pores, and your body pushes the cold surface blood to your core and exchanges it for warmer blood from your depths. This deep dredging of your circulatory system is like vascular aerobics for deep cleansing. Further, the jolt to your nervous system will create a wave of returning warmth, leaving you feeling cozy, calm, and content within 15 to 30 minutes. You’ll be more clear-headed, and sleep better than ever.
Here’s a goal for this month: try this hydrotherapy technique on two days as part of a detox program.

Water Inside

Drink water as your only fluid for a few days to flush your body of impurities. Have it sparkling or flat, cool or room temperature, maybe with a lemon or orange twist, but just water—no artificial sweeteners and no sugars. Water acts as a diuretic to help cleanse us naturally. It helps balance our chemistry and pH for health. It hydrates all of our cells, and helps carry nutrients in and wastes out. Our body is mostly water, and blood is the river of life going through it to every single cell, providing needed moisture and healing memory.

Let your body find a balance that is difficult with much of today’s fancy fluid fixes, but natural with the universal solvent—plain, pure water. Six to eight 8-ounce glasses of water a day will provide you with the amount you need for healthy elimination.

Green Foods

Give the green light to green foods. These superfoods—usually derived from either aquatic plants such as spirulina or chlorella, or young grasses such as wheat or barley—are wonderfully cleansing and naturally detoxifying, and can even deodorize your insides. Greens help naturally clean our bodies from blood to bowel. They should play a role in our diet every day, and supplementing with green superfoods is one way to keep the cleansing and detox ongoing every day.

There are a variety of green foods combinations available. I like Sun Chlorella (convenient tablets of concentrated chlorella), and Greens+ and Natural Factors’ Enriching Greens—both are a blend of grasses, aquatic plants, and other nutrients. Follow label directions for daily amounts. 

Detox need not be a big and rigorous production. It can be done a little at a time, bit by bit. Everything from eating better and eating less to drinking more water and moving your body an extra 2 to 10 minutes a day can help you win the waste war.

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