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Check nowLiver detoxification is a hot topic. Many of us are prone to having a blow out; say when you are off on holiday enjoying yourself or over the festive period, and you end up overindulging in food, or having one too many drinks. However, the guilt soon kicks in, your clothes suddenly feel that little bit neater and you soon feel the after-effects. You suddenly realise a detox is in order and you hope your poor liver will forgive you.
Many detox programmes out there boast some impressive results: “Shed weight in 2 weeks” or “Flush your liver out in 7 days!” But just how effective are they? Well, it all depends. Some involve adding a barrage of supplements to your daily regime but not really giving much thought to your diet and lifestyle, whilst with others, you soon find yourself not drinking much more than a gloopy green juice for a week.
In my opinion, there are many stages to a detox and these don’t necessarily need to be so extreme – or short-lived. Slow and steady wins the race after all. Make some gradual changes that you are more likely to be able to stick to them longer-term, rather than revert back to your old ways within a week.
Below I outline 3 steps for a safe and effective liver detox.
The meaning of detox is to rid your body of toxins – so, unsurprisingly this is my first step. What’s important to understand is that your liver is pretty good at ridding your body of toxins already. Once they’re in there it’s pretty efficient at breaking them down and getting rid. So, as much as it’s nice to support the function of the liver directly (we will go on to this later) actually, what is most effective is to stop putting so many toxins in there in the first place. You may be more ‘toxic’ than you realise so here’s our guide to reducing the toxic load on your liver.
OK, so you’ve managed the important first step of eliminating as many toxins as possible, now you are ready to nourish your liver and body as whole – give it some goodness back! So, what foods should you be opting for?
Finally, herbs certainly have their place in the process of detoxifying your liver. Once you have decreased your exposure to toxins, added in some nutritional goodness, you can begin to support the liver with herbs.
Bitter herbs are extremely beneficial for digestion. Try having a small bitter salad before your meals (this is a common feature in the Mediterranean diet, which is regarded as one of the healthiest in the world) and include leaves such as chicory, endive, rocket or dandelion leaves.
Dandelion leaves act as a gentle diuretic which help encourage the excretion of toxins from the body (helping the liver out!) and the root of dandelion is useful too, it helps with bile secretion, therefore, also particularly useful for people with gall bladder issues.
Globe artichoke is classed as ‘bitter’ too and research [1] has shown that it helps the functions of the liver, specifically helping to better process, and as a result, lower blood cholesterol levels.
Finally, the herb milk thistle is rich in antioxidants which help scavenge free radicals which can damage your body cells, so this may also prove useful.
Kelp tablets are also a nice addition for any detox programme. Kelp is an excellent food source of many vitamins and minerals which can support metabolic processes in the body.
So there we have it: eliminate + incorporate + introduce herbs – three simple steps to a liver detox! We suggest trying to eliminate toxins and introduce nutrient packed foods on an ongoing basis rather than just for a specific period of ‘detox.’ The herbal additions can be nice to add into your programme as necessary, to give your liver a little boost. Good luck!
1. Bundy R et al. Phytomedicine 15 (2008), 668-675
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