Spring is the time I’m back in the garden, choosing vegetables that will be growing over the next couple of months. Digging my hands in the soil, watching nature becoming green again after the rain, smelling the tomato leaves. Spring is an awakening of all our senses!

When you activate your senses, you bring your awareness back into your body. Tapping into touch, taste, sight, smell, and sounds is a great way to listen to your body messages. With this change of season, you may hear loudly that it is a great time for a Spring cleanse. In naturopathic terms, we call it a “Detox”.

Why would you need to “Detox”?

Your body works 24 hours a day to detoxify all the toxins from your food, your environment and the toxins your own body produce. The main organs involved in this constant process are your liver, gut, kidneys, skin and lungs. A big team playing together.

But sometimes, this team cannot keep up. Eating constantly, chemicals in our food and environment, an overload of stress, overwhelm our natural detoxification system. Like a bucket you fill every day, it becomes too full and starts to cause all sort of problems.

You know your toxic bucket is too full
– When you feel sluggish,
– When you suffer from brain fog,
– When you get skin rashes, and/or body odour,
– When you start to feel sensitive to chemicals, smells or caffeine,
– Or when you generally feel toxic and heavy.

These are the signs you need to support your natural detoxification processes. That’s where a nutritional “detox” comes handy.

What causes your toxic bucket to fill up too quickly?

There are many factors that contribute to burden your detoxification pathways and surprisingly it includes the toxic by-products generated by your own body. This includes the lipopolysaccharides from bacterial overgrowth, excess hormones or ammonia.

This endotoxic load is added to chemicals in your skincare products or cleaning supplies,  pesticides, preservatives, and colouring agents in your food, and indoor and outdoor air pollution. All these substances need to be processed and eliminated by your detoxification team for your cells to stay safe.

In order to keep up with this allostatic load, you can start your Spring Cleanse now with these simple everyday actions:

1-    Hydrate and sweat

If you forgot lately to carry your (glass) bottle of water with you and sip along the day, this is a great time to get into the habit again. With higher temperature and more skin exposure, your need for hydration is increasing.

Sweat is a great way to make your skin functions optimally and regulate your body temperature. Try outdoor exercise or go for a sauna. You will release accumulated toxins through your skin and benefits from a rush of the good-mood hormones endorphins as a bonus.

2-    Detox your food

Pesticides and herbicides are hard for the body to eliminate and are stored in your fat cells. A great way to limit your exposure is to buy organic food from local producers or to grow your own – with the additional benefits I’ve mentioned at the beginning of this article.

Wander in your supermarket with new eyes: avoid the shelves in the middle, packed with food in cartons and boxes full of preservatives, additives and colouring agents, and go to the aisles, to find whole foods.

Visit your local farmer market or order your veggie box directly from your producers. Check Echo Farm Valley wonderful products here.

3-    Detox your home

Between cosmetics, perfumes, personal care products and feminine hygiene products, women apply an average of 168 chemicals to their faces and bodies every day according to the Environmental Working Group.

An average household contains about 62 toxic chemicals from cleaning products only. That’s a lot of work to handle for your detoxification team, namely liver, gut, kidneys, skin and lungs!

Check Here how to DETOX YOUR HOME.

If you feel sluggish, heavy, slow processing and/or sensitive, this is the perfect time to start a nutritional “Detox” to feel amazing again!

Check my Food Focus Detox. Over 21 days, you will experience a GENTLE, EFFECTIVE, EXPRESS detoxification. This program takes you step-by-step through a proven system to eliminate foods and drinks that tend to cause sluggishness, poor digestion and contribute little to nutrition.