Chef Wendell: Liver Detox with Food

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The liver is the hardest working organ in the body, but it needs your help. You already know what your furnace filter looks like right before it’s changed. It’s overwhelmed with crud and struggles mightily. The whole idea of a healthy liver is to filter your blood and contain snarky contaminants so they won’t become a health hazard.

Your liver continuously filters your blood of Pharmaceutical drug residue and snarky agrichemicals added to the food we eat and expel them via elimination.

That’s how your liver works. It’s your body’s filter that traps toxins that enter the body through digestion, skin, or breathing. The liver detoxifies the body by filtering the blood, producing bile, and breaking down toxins and waste.

If your liver is over-taxed, it can’t process toxins efficiently. There are many foods that can help cleanse the liver naturally by stimulating its natural ability to clean toxic waste from the body.. Those with toxic livers often suffer from acne, eczema, psoriasis, bloating, headaches, and more, from carrying around an excessive toxic burden.

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5 Things to Remember Next Time You Decide to Detox

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It’s the phrase heard round the world come Monday morning, usually after a weekend spent downing a few too many margaritas and “recuperating” with greasy egg-and-cheese bagels and bacon-infused Bloody Marys: Man, I really need to detox. These words are usually followed up with a quick trip to our favorite juice shop and a pledge to never eat processed food again, and voila: like magic, the detox process has commenced. Right?

Well, not so much. And this misunderstanding of the term “detox” is exactly why Refinery29 decided to break it down for us. Because, while a good chunk of folks have uttered these exact words, it’s doubtful many could explain what they actually mean. Here, five key points from Refinery29′s piece to remember about the ubiquitous detox:

1. When we think of detoxification, most of us think of our livers (probably because they've taken a bit of a beating over the weekend), but it's important to remember the other organs of detoxification, as well: the skin, the kidneys and the colon. The skin eliminates toxins through sweat, meaning: exercise is crucial. The kidney and the colon filter toxins through blood, urine and waste, so it's important to make sure you're getting enough fiber and water during the detox process.

Read more at BeWellPhilly

Natural Liver Detox Diets (Liver Cleansing)

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Using a natural detox diet to remove toxins and poisons from your body might sound like a good idea. After all, what could be better than eating pure and natural foods and avoiding processed and refined ones?

Certainly, there's something to these ideas. But there's also more than meets the eye. The rising interest in lifestyle enhancement has also ushered in many misconceptions about toxins and about the best way to clear them from the body. Fueling the confusion is a major marketing blitz by authors of diet books and producers of supplements and other detoxifying products.

What Is the Idea Behind Detox Diets?

The idea for detox diets comes from the concern that toxins are constantly bombarding our bodies. Toxins are chemicals with potentially harmful effects. While some toxins are more obvious, such as pesticides or smog, some people consider even seemingly normal substances to be toxins. They may come from many sources, including...

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Detox and Cleanse: Healthy or Not?

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Detox has certainly become quite a buzzword as of late. Many people are using various programs from the Master Cleanse (water, cayenne pepper, lemon juice, maple syrup) to colonic cleansers with the hopes of improving digestion and ridding the body of harmful toxic chemicals. One would think that all these programs provide something to the body that it is currently lacking. Not so. The liver and kidneys are the body’s own detoxification organs and their job over millions of years has been to rid the body of wasteful chemicals and ingested toxins. When the kidneys and liver are functioning at their best, they do an incredible job of detoxifying the body. These organs, when not inhibited by processed and junk food (more on that later), are working every second of the day to naturally cleanse the body. So before you sign up for a cleanse or detox program, consider how you could improve the natural detoxification system your body already has.

Read more from Lake Forester

Top 4 Liver Detox Foods

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Every branch of natural healthcare seems to have its own perspective on how to help detoxify the liver. Ranging from juice fasts to herbal supplements to saunas to enemas, there is more than one route for helping the liver eliminate toxins from the body. Although several different approaches can be beneficial to the liver’s well-being, it is easy to overlook the fact that certain everyday foods aid in liver detoxification.

The practice of detoxifying the body to rid it of unhealthy toxins has been around for centuries. Technically, toxins are anything that can potentially harm the body, including waste products that result from normal cell activity, such as ammonia, lactic acid and homocysteine, and human-made toxins that we are exposed to in our environment, food, and water. The liver is the body’s first line of defense against toxins, functioning as a filter in preventing toxic substances from accumulating in the blood stream. Unfortunately, a sluggish liver impairs this organ’s vital cleansing function – causing a backup of toxins, a potentially harmful situation.

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Body Clean Detox Kit

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Milk Thistle helps promote the elimination of toxins from the body, through cleansing of the liver, lower intestines and bowels to improve overall health and digestive function.
 
Clear Digest Detox contains psyllium, well known for its gentle and natural laxative action that helps to bind toxic substances and stimulate bowel movement for proper elimination. It also contains Chlorella and Spirulina which are excellent sources of chlorophyll. They also contain dietary fiber, to help with the absorption and elimination of toxins.

Read more from Holista

Celebrity Detox Diets You Should Try - and Avoid

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So-called detox diets, like the Master Cleanse, are seen as a quick way to lose weight, especially among celebrities like Oprah and Gwyneth Paltrow. But what is a detox diet? Is it a healthy way to cleanse your body, or a dangerous way to lose weight? FITNESS reports on popular detox diets, how they work, and who's doing them.

So which detox diet could be right for you? FITNESS took a hard look at a few popular detox diets, assessing each one based on the nutritional value, liver-cleansing value, and their ability to help you start a long-term healthy eating habit.

Read more from Fitness on The Master Cleanse, Gwyneth Paltrow's Latest Detox Diet, and others.