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Purification

For those of us concerned about the impact of toxic exposures, of eating food laden with pesticides, breathing dirty air and drinking dirty water, the thought of cleansing our bodies of all of this junk sounds marvelous.

But high-priced, trendy spas that promise to purify our systems through harsh regimens of liquid nutrition and repeated colonics often do more harm than good. Radically depriving your body of food, drowning it with water and draining the body with enemas may reduce the toxic load in your body but it won’t necessarily leave you any healthier. And if you go back to eating a diet of junky, processed foods high in preservatives and pesticides when you’re done, you haven’t accomplished a thing.

Health professionals say the safest and healthiest approach to purifying your system is to reduce your exposure to toxic chemicals, pesticides and preservatives in the first place. Eating a diet of organic whole foods, high in fruits and vegetables and natural fibers, drinking plenty of water and getting regular daily exercise is far better than a binge-purge pattern of eating junk and then sweating and starving your body to remove it.

Maintaining a healthy weight is also important, for many reasons. It helps to ward off disease, and reduces the amount of fat in our bodies so we have fewer places to store toxins.

So before you drop thousands of dollars on spa treatments that take the bad stuff out of your body, think about spending those bucks on healthy things to put into your body. That’s an investment that pays lifelong dividends.

To read more about this and other environmental health issues, go to: www.environmentalhealthnews.org, www.ourstolenfuture.org, or www.healthandenvironment.org