How to Detox for a New Year, and Beyond

(By Grace Rollins, MS, LAc) Around the New Year is when many of our patients start to talk about “detoxing” in order to get their health back on track. It seems like a natural inclination, especially if the holidays encouraged a freer intake of sugars, pastries and alcohol. However, as a practitioner I feel the use of expensive kits, concoctions and "crash cleanses" are a bit overrated. 

First of all, what does "detoxing" actually mean? By using its famous enzymes to catalyze changes in other molecules, the liver breaks apart or transforms chemicals, hormones and metabolic byproducts into a form that can be excreted via the GI tract or kidneys. This is why you are wide awake when you first have that cup of coffee, but a few hours later it "wears off"-- the caffeine molecules have been gradually disassembled by your liver and eliminated.

Our daily exposure to high levels of chemicals is a rather recent phenomenon in history. Just think about the following sources our pre-20th century ancestors were never exposed to:

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