Natural Detox Remedies for Strengthening And Balancing Your Digestion
Date Posted:8 September 2012
According to Ayurveda, digestion is one of the key foundations of good physical and mental health. When the digestive system becomes clogged and stops working as it should, the body's channels become congested, toxins are not properly eliminated, and they begin to accumulate. This will affect every part of your health including your emotional, mental, and physical well-being. There are many natural detox remedies out there that can help.
Digestion is a Process
In Ayurveda, a better word for digestion is processing. Everything your body does revolves around a process. When one process is off or is not functioning as it should, it eventually affects every other process as well.
When one's body is perfectly in balance, the medical community considers it a state of homoeostasis; this is the main goal of Ayurveda. However, Ayurveda also works to balance your entire Self, not just your body, so that your body, mind, spirit or soul, and your emotions are all balanced in perfect harmony.
Disease, emotional problems, illness, anxiety, and depression can result when your digestion is off because the body can only cope with being out of balance for so long before it starts to present symptoms. Most people do not realize how out-of-balance they are, until they start to get better. Then, they look back and are astounded that they felt so bad without knowing how sick they really were. Digestion is what maintains the balance within the body and all its systems and is the foundation for healing one self.
Even if you eat the best quality, organic natural food, if your digestion is not working at its optimal best, the food can still be detrimental to your overall well-being. One of the biggest reasons for the digestive system to become imbalanced and ineffective is the accumulation of ama. Ama is anything the body is unable to digest, and it turns into a sticky toxic residue that clogs the body's channels, slows digestion, and can spread throughout the entire body. Toxic ama is the root cause of most disease.
An accumulation of ama could be caused by stress, eating the wrong foods for your dosha type, eating your daily meals at irregular times, not getting adequate sleep, or not performing cleanses on a regular basis. In order for the body to avoid accumulating toxins, it must be able to eliminate them.
Improving Your Digestion
There are several things you can do daily and seasonally to improve your digestion and ensure your body is eliminating toxins.
Daily Oil Massages
Start or end each day with a warm oil massage. Apply the oil in clockwise circles all over your body and increase pressure slightly over your abdomen. Accumulated toxins and stress dissolve away each time you do an oil massage. It is the perfect way to start or end your day.
Water
Water improves the quality of your lifeflow, hydrates every cell in your body, and helps flush toxins, which allows them to be eliminated. To maximize the cleansing effect of water, boil it first and then add raw honey, lemon, or ginger.
Eat Good Meals at Regular Times
Keep your digestion system happy by sitting down and eating home cooked high-quality meals tailored to our dosha type. Plan your heaviest meal as your noonday meal when your digestive fire is strongest. Eating your meals at the same time each day also keeps your digestive fire healthy without burning too hot. Meals should be eaten while you are sitting and in a calm manner.
Get Some Sleep
Most people walk around every day of their lives sleep-deprived. Sleep deprivation affects every facet of your life and is extremely detrimental to your digestive system. Ayurveda principles recommend sleeping when the sun goes down and waking up as the sun arises. Following the earth's natural cycles balances your doshas and allows the body to heal, rejuvenate, and refresh for the next day. Taking naps is not recommend as sleeping during the day produces ama, gas and bloating, and it also disturbs the flow of bile, lymph fluid, and digestion.
Pay Attention in the Bathroom
As bad and as gross as it may seem, your bowel movements are the measuring stick of your digestive system's health, and most people flush away the evidence without a second thought. A healthy evacuation should be the consistency, shape, and size of a ripe (brown) banana. Anything other than that indicates a problem within the digestive system. Natural detox remedies are an important part of cleansing the system and restoring health to your digestive system. When your bowel movement indicates a problem, natural detox remedies are the first thing you should do.
Natural Detox Remedies
Which one of the natural detox remedies is right for you will depend on what balance you are trying to restore. The principle of balance is at the heart of Ayurveda and is essential to remember when detoxifying the body. It is important you do not create a new imbalance while trying to rectify the current one. One of the best ways to determine which one of the natural detox remedies is right for you is by consulting with an Ayurvedic expert that can take your entire lifestyle, diet, exercise regime, and sleep patterns into consideration.
Exercise
Exercise is crucial for good digestion and eliminating toxins. It gets your muscles pumping oxygenated blood throughout the body, it flushes out toxins through sweat and other elimination processes and increases agni, or the ability to heal. If you have not been exercising on a regular basis, start small and give yourself realistic goals to obtain, so that you do not become frustrated and disheartened. Start by taking a ten minute walk outside and breathe in the nature all around you as you walk. Each week, increase the walk by five to ten minutes until you can walk comfortably for thirty to sixty minutes every day.
Agni
Agni is the Ayurvedic word to describe the body's ability to heal. There are four states of agni; three are the result of your dosha being aggravated, and the last one is considered the perfect and stable state of balance. Samagni is the state in which your agni should be; it is centred, balanced, and stable. This state allows the body to digest food properly and assimilate the proper nourishment from the food. It also allows all the organs, cells, and tissue or dhatus to receive adequate nutrition and the body to maintain good health. Following Ayurvedic principles for digestion and overall lifestyle will help your body to achieve samagni.
Meditation
Stress is brutal not only on your emotional health, but on you digestive health as well. It is not uncommon for people with nervous temperaments to have to, quite literally, run for the bathroom as soon as they experience any kind of stress or anxiety. This causes the digestive system to be in a constant state of upheaval and unable to properly digest food or nourish the body. Practicing meditation and Pranayama, a special Ayurvedic technique for breathing, can ease anxiety and tension, increase oxygen levels even at the cellular level, and restore balance.
Detox Cleanses
According to Ayurveda, you should do a detox cleanse with the changing of the seasons, so four each year. A good detox plan consists of three phases – preparation, cleansing and post-cleansing.
Proper preparation includes following a detoxifying diet for fifteen days before you start the cleanse. Avoid foods that produce ama and stick with foods that have ama-reducing qualities. Choose foods specifically recommended for your dosha type and drink detoxifying teas and plenty of hot water.
Cleansing will take place over forty-five days. Continue eating the diet recommended in the preparation phase and add herbal remedies for digestion such as Digest Tone, Herbal Cleanse, Elim-Tox or Elim-Tox-O if you have a pitta imbalance and Genitrac. Take each one according to the directions on the bottle.
Post-Cleansing
At the end of the forty-five days, you should feel lighter on your feet, calm, serene, rejuvenated and blissful. Be careful to hold on to this feeling by not slipping back into harmful lifestyle patterns. If you can only manage one cleanse a year, do it in the spring when your body's natural cleansing ability is at its highest.
Herbal Remedies for Digestion
Herbal remedies for digestion can support the digestive system, especially on days when you cannot live by Ayurvedic principles. Maharishi Ayurveda offers plenty of excellent herbal remedies for digestion such as Digest Tone - Organic. Digest Tone is perfect for the person who finds themselves constipated more often than not, sluggish, and dull. It is specially formulated to rejuvenate the digestive tract, help the body assimilate nutrients from food, and detoxify the body slowly and gently. Agni Balance, while not recommended for Pitta types, helps stimulate the appetite and improve digestion. Symptoms of poor digestion can include loud, excessive, or malodorous burps or flatulence, painful gas, and bloating.
Remember, you cannot depend on herbal remedies for digestion alone. They should be used to support the digestive system, but embracing all aspects of the Ayurveda lifestyle is the only way to achieve true balance in one's Self.