If I Can’t Say It, I Can’t Eat It

I’m talking about food. You can walk into any supermarket and find aisles and aisles of processed food. You can make your way to the meat department and find refrigerated displays of many options, most of which are injected with antibiotics and hormones. If you look at the labels you will see many different ingredients in each item, most of which we can’t pronounce. I adopted the idea, if I can’t say it, I can’t eat it.

We Are What We Eat

This brings me to body cleanses. Because we spend much of our lives eating food we can’t pronounce, we have polluted our bodies with chemicals and toxins without knowing it. Today there are a growing number of people who are choosing to eat clean. Hopefully the change will encourage more companies to put the health of the consumer above profits.

Body cleansing has become more popular in recent years. The last decade at least has seen a growing number of people concerned with health and environment.

As a person living with Hashimoto’s, you now know that your thyroid is polluted. It has been absorbing environmental pollutants, heavy metals, and toxic food your whole life. Now it’s tired. It can’t function for being bogged down and unable to function. You can fix that with a body cleanse. Well you can’t fix the Hashimoto’s with the body cleanse, but you can clean the toxins out of your body and eat healthy so your body can repair itself.

Hashimoto’s, Detoxification, and Weight Gain

When you begin a body cleanse you are detoxifying your body systems. This detoxification begins in the liver. To use scientific terms, your liver first converts toxins to metabolites, then excretes the toxins. The liver plays a major role in detoxification, but your kidney, lungs, and gut play a role too.

When we are healthy, our bodies are more likely to be able to clean and heal from toxins. But when we have been exposed to an extreme amount of them, we can’t purge the pollutants from our systems. We get more and more toxic and our bodies can’t purge them. Our body systems grow sluggish and our metabolism slows down, causing fluid retention and bloating; weight gain.

There are many ways to look at detoxification. I’ll dive deeper into this in another post. The natural body cleanse can look different to different people. As I become more familiar with Ayurveda, I realize there are many ways to look at healing with food. I have also become familiar with Panchakarma treatments, which is a form of detoxification. We’ll revisit this topic later. I think it requires it’s own post.

Natural Food Cleanse

Ideally, we should be able to cleanse our bodies by changing our eating habits. Healthy food equals healthy living. By eating natural foods such as organically grown fruits and vegetables and grass-fed meat, we are on our way to being healthy. We also need to eliminate processed sugar or fructose. Fructose is a major contributor when it comes to chronic inflammation and oxidative stress. Both contribute to weight gain and the increase in obesity.

You should also avoid trans fats. Trans fats are found in processed foods. When you see “partially hydrogenated” on the label, you are looking at trans fats.

Now you know some of what to avoid, the list below are some foods to incorporate into your diet.

• Natural fats and oils (extra virgin olive oil, organic coconut oil)
• Nuts and seeds (You will be limited with these if you have Hashimoto’s. More in a later post)
• Proteins
• Fruits
• Vegetables

Hashimoto’s and a Healthy Lifestyle

In addition to clean eating here are some detox suggestions

• Eat right
• Support your immune system
• Exercise
• Reduce inflammation
• Support your gut
• Drink plenty of water
• Get plenty of sleep
• Visit a chiropractor
• Supplement with a body cleanse of your choice twice a year

If you have never done a body cleanse before, talk to your health care provider before embarking on the cleanse. Ask for suggestions, you may be pleasantly surprised. No matter what you decide, supplement it with a healthy diet and lots of water.