Detox Stage 1

 

Although I hear the expression detox everywhere, I haven’t heard very many good explanations of what detox is.  So, by combining my reading, experiences, careful watching of pseudo-medical dramas such as “House”, and my A level Biology here is my explanation of what detox is all about:

 

Most importantly there are two stages of detox; stage 1 is detoxing from the tissues, stage 2 is detoxing from the blood.

 

Let me explain; whenever you eat, drink or even inhale something that the body considers as a poison (such as alcohol) the liver cleverly turns that substance into a less harmful substance that can be tolerated in the body.  Then one of two things happens, either your body manages to quickly flush it out from your blood stream, or, if there is too much to be flushed out straight away, the body sticks it in your tissues - most commonly in fat tissue because fat is a great absorber, and your body then considers it safely put away!

 

This is why fatty foods are such a great hangover “cure”.

The body can take all the toxins you absorbed the night before, stick them in the fatty tissue and get back to business as normal.

 

Once these toxins are safely put away, your body is actually more than happy to hold onto that fat to protect it from having to deal with them.  The problem comes when you start to lose weight and break down those fatty tissues - because the toxins are released, and if the body is not able to flush them out of the bloodstream it’s going to need you to eat more food so it can tuck them away in some fat again.

 

One of the huge benefits of any detox treatment -

massage, reiki, yoga, is that it causes the toxins to be released from the tissues gently and independently of weight loss.  Which means that, if and when you lose weight, you’re not releasing a huge backlog of toxins into your bloodstream at the same time - making it much easier for your body to let go of those fat stores.

 

...but, in order for any detox process to work, the body has to be able to flush out those toxins from the bloodstream - which leads us to Detox Stage 2...