Edition 28: Spring Cleaning the Body
Focus on what you CAN do and not what you can't do.
This week is all about spring cleaning the body and looking at supporting our LIVER HEALTH.
Enjoy this week.
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❤️ Stephanie 🧠✨🤸♂️🌱
The Freedom to Live 5 things Friday
Every Friday, 5 things of value from the integrative health sciences.
The best of the best functional medicine, educational resources, research, quotes, books, tips, advice etc. all from the key pillars of the integrative health system.
1. Liver Health: WHY this concerns EVERYONE.
For the the last two weeks on Chef Collin's channel, every Monday, Live at 11:00AM EST we’ve been discussing the WHYs of eliminating gluten and dairy to reset immunity and overall health. Naturally, the next phase to this conversation is looking at liver health.
Traditionally liver detoxification is done in the spring and fall when temperatures are moderate and fresh greens are plentiful.
On detox plans we avoid anything inflammatory, processed or white: sugar bread, alcohol, aged, pickled or spices that can trigger allergies or histamine reactions.
A good way to start is to look at food in terms of Alkaline vs. Acidic and to aim for a ratio of +/- 80% alkaline 20% acidic.
Section 8 of my integrative health assessment asks about liver and gallbladder health specifically.
These symptoms are communication messenger that your body/liver is telling you that it needs support.
How many boxes do you check here below: ?
2. What is Liver Detox? How to Reset?
The word Detox, has been so overly mis-marketed as a quick-fix product or crash diet plan.
Truthfully, detoxification is a very in-depth and scientific process that the body does naturally to release toxins through our 4 main detox pathway channels: breath, sweat, urine, faces. But in order to expel toxins out of the body through our kidneys, colon, lungs, and skin, most toxins being fat-soluble, need to be converted over to water-soluble toxins to then be released with the help of different nutrients as shown in the image above. (phase 1 + phase 2).
A lot of "detox" products on the market do not contain these nutrients, therefore there is really no assurance that your body is properly getting rid of toxins. Toxins can actually get stuck between phase 1 and phase 2, an intermediate phase if the proper phase 2 nutrients are missing from diet as well as a detox formula.
Just removing a toxin, like sugar, doesn't mean you are detoxing. The proper term would be a "sugar elimination". Although eliminations are good, by just removing the triggers, this can still be a band-aid approach by not actually getting at the underlying root cause of the issue.
Detoxing is a true physical, chemical, mind, and emotional process of releasing toxicity.
Most toxins are stored in our adipose (fat tissues) because toxins are mostly fat-soluble compounds, and this shows up predominantly in the mid section.
As a protection mechanism, our bodies will hold on to toxic water or fat weight as opposed to just dumping these toxins into the blood stream. This is one of the main reasons no matter how much calories in/calories out, the body will not release this weight.
By choosing a detox nutrition plan and formulation (functional medicine detox) that includes all these nutrients, we are setting the body up to be able to safely remove any stored toxic water and fat weight.
Remember the 3-day reset? That is the basic detox nutrition plan that I use with clients on our 15-day integrative detox. Click the image below to save/print a copy.
If you are interested in completing this 15-day plan, email us to get started.
stephanie@thefreedomtolive.ca
3. Mindset: Perspective
Graduated Exercise: Bringing in the Kettlebells
Kettlebells are so versatile and easily incorporated into daily functional full body workout flows. They are a perfect tool to increase weight and resistance into your workouts, and they are a fun novelty.
The goal of any GEP: Graduated Exercise Program is to gradually increasing the number of reps, sets, and weights weekly or biweekly without burning out or overtraining.
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Have a good week and Happy Spring Cleaning your Health.
❤️ Stephanie
