Body Detox

"There is a huge toxin burden inside each of us," says Walter Crinnion, N.D., director of the Environmental Medicine Center of Excellence at Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine & Health Sciences in Tempe, Ariz. "It doesn't come out after a week of drinking a certain tea and getting off sugar."

In other words, giving up offending foods for a couple of weeks can eventually help the body to detox --if it leads to a new, long-term healthy mind-set. The best way to help clear out toxins is to put as few new chemicals into your body as possible--and controlling what you eat is among the simplest ways to ease the burden, even if sugar, fat, alcohol and coffee aren't toxins in the same sense as heavy metals, pesticides and plastics are.

What's more, the foods that add to our "body toxic burden" have little or no nutritional value, contribute to weight gain and are habit-forming. That last part is especially important. Making a concentrated effort for as little as two weeks to remove or reduce these foods from your diet can break their addiction like lure and lessen your desire for them. Consequently, you'll eat less junk, and over time your body can devote more of a concerted effort to staying healthy. "I tell patients to try a fast [of a "toxic" food] for two weeks and see what happens," says Mark Hyman, M.D., co-medical director of Canyon Ranch Health Resort in Lenox, Mass., and author of Ultra-Prevention: The 6-Week Plan That Will Make You Healthy For Life (Scribner, 2003). "You'll likely feel more energetic and mentally sharp, less hungry, and you may even lose weight."

Here, the lowdown on four top body detox goals, including what you should know about each for health and weight loss.

Cut the coffee

Joel Fuhrman, M.D., author of Eat to Live: The Revolutionary Formula for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss (Little, Brown and Co., 2003), says one sign that a food is "toxic" to your body is that you feel bad for a short time when you give it up; in the case of caffeine that typically means killer headaches. "You don't go through withdrawal when you stop eating broccoli," Fuhrman says.

Like many aspects of body detox, the wisdom of forgoing coffee is hotly debated. Many doctors believe that drinking one or two cups a day won't harm most people, though pregnant women and those with hypertension are well-advised to avoid the stuff. Others point out that in addition to disrupting sleep when drunk too close to bedtime, coffee causes the jitters and often travels with other less-than-healthy foods--namely sugar, fatty cream and gooey pastries.

Coffee body detox tips: Whether you go cold turkey or reduce gradually is a matter of preference. If you drink, say, five cups of coffee a day, you might cut down every two to three days from five cups to four and so on to minimize withdrawal symptoms. Another choice is to reduce the strength of your coffee by filling your cup with more decaf and less regular every couple of days. Some people just want a warm drink in the morning and feel satisfied sipping a cup of hot water with lemon; try it.

Take a break from booze

Going the teetotaler route can improve digestion and sleep, boost energy and sexual function and lessen muscle pain. The effect that alcohol has on weight gain is complex and controversial, in part because researchers are unclear as to whether alcohol calories count as much as food because of how they're metabolized. But if you're drinking, say, five or six glasses of dry white wine (at 70 calories a glass) each week, you can figure that giving those up could lead to a loss of about half a pound a month. Another benefit of abstaining: Research clearly shows that drinking spurs appetite.

And even moderate amounts of alcohol may increase the risk of breast cancer. A recent article in the journal Public Health Nutrition found that women who average more than four alcoholic beverages a week increase their breast cancer risk by 7 percent for every drink.

If you're a social drinker and just want to body detox from alcohol, Hyman suggests taking a booze break. "If you can give alcohol up for several weeks, but don't notice much of a change and you really miss a glass now and then, go back to drinking," he says. Hyman recommends limiting yourself to no more than five glasses a week. Red wine, he notes, appears to provide the best health benefits since it contains flavonoids, antioxidants that may prevent heart disease. Alcohol detox tips Some people prefer to ease their way off the fermented grapes and grains, while others switch from hard-liquor drinks like martinis to wine. But for social drinkers doing a short-term detox, most doctors recommend going cold turkey.

Kiss the sweet stuff goodbye

We're genetically wired to love sugar. In fact, eating sugar and fat seems to stimulate the same brain receptors as morphine. The fix isn't free, though: Sugar uses up precious antioxidants, substances that help remove natural byproducts caused by oxidation, which play a role in heart damage, cancer and other problems. Sugar is also associated with high-fat, high-calorie foods that cause weight gain, diabetes and heart disease, though the only proven downside of sugar consumption itself is dental cavities.

The first step to kicking the white stuff is to avoid hidden, or added, sugars that manufacturers load into all sorts of prepared foods, including bread, pasta, ketchup and salad dressing. Finding these requires a bit of detective work, since sugar is often indicated on food labels under other names, like fructose, sucrose, dextrin, dextrose, corn syrup and malts. "If you simply avoid hidden sugars, you stop feeding the addiction and soon reset the sensitivity threshold of the nerves that are hooked up to taste buds," explains David Katz, M.D., director of the Yale Prevention Research Center in Derby, Conn., and author of The Way to Eat. "Your sweet tooth will be satisfied with lesser amounts."

Sugar body detox tips: Use spices such as cinnamon and flavorings like almond and vanilla extracts to add a sweet taste to foods. To ease particularly severe cravings, nutritionist MaryBeth Augustine recommends one cup of a bitter tea, such as chicory root or burdock root, at each meal. If you have a pang for something sweet, enjoy a piece of whole fruit; the skins of apples, pears and other fruits are rich in fiber, which slows the rate at which carbohydrates break down into sugar in the body. After a sugar fast, try to stick to the World Health Organization's guideline of keeping sugar intake under 10 percent of calories, or about 50 grams (12 teaspoons) for a 2,000-calorie-a-day diet.

By now you know the mantra: Not all fats are harmful. Monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats--like those from olive oil, nuts, fish and flaxseed--are needed for body function and for staving off disease. The dietary bogeymen are saturated fats--which come from animal products like beef, poultry and full-fat dairy products--and man-made trans fats. Trans fats, which are created by bubbling hydrogen through vegetable oil, extend product longevity; these fats are the reason that Crisco can sit on a shelf forever. The trouble is, your body can't get rid of the stuff easily, either. You can spot a trans fat quickly on food labels: If you see the word hydrogenated on the list of ingredients, avoid that food. That means you better do a body detox.

Saturated fat raises LDL ("bad") cholesterol, contributing to heart disease. Trans fat does that and reduces HDL, or "good," cholesterol, while also blocking arteries. A 1994 study at the Harvard School of Public Health attributed more than 30,000 heart-disease deaths a year solely to trans fats--and some health experts think that number is low. That means body detox makes sense.

Animal fats transport other toxins too: Whenever you eat a slice of roast beef or a pork loin, you also consume whatever the cow or pig ingested--pesticides, PCBs, dioxins, antibiotics, growth hormones and other chemicals. Fat body detox tips Try this experiment if you drink whole milk (which is around 50 percent fat): Switch to 1 percent milk for a week and then to skim after another week. Your taste buds will have acclimated by then, and the whole milk will seem too rich and creamy.

During a short-term fat body detox, Augustine recommends having just one serving (1 teaspoon, 5 grams or 45 calories) of a good fat, mono- or polyunsaturated, at each meal. In general, 20-30 percent of your daily calories (about 45-65 grams for a 2,000-calorie-a-day diet) should come from healthy fats. The bad fats to cut out first are those we add ourselves, such as butter, mayonnaise and margarine; switching to nonfat dairy products also helps.

If you have a hankering for, say, a piece of pie, try this: Drink a glass of water and set a timer for 10 minutes, pledging to resist the fat-filled treat for that time. Often, the desire will pass. If it doesn't, keep your portion size small.

In most cases, says Katz, making lasting dietary changes requires a focused commitment of at least a few months--which is another reason not to think of a food detox as a short-term fix but as the beginning of a new, healthier lifestyle. That's the real point, he says: "It's not about the purge. It's about a commitment to developing and sustaining good habits so you don't continue to put 'toxic' foods in your body."

The do's and don'ts of body detox:

Do buy organic fruits and veggies, which will dramatically decrease your exposure to pesticides.

Don't use laxatives or colonic irrigations that promise to "flush" the body. These can be very dangerous (risks include a perforated colon and infection) and have no proven benefit.

Do look beyond your diet. Emotional stress is also damaging; regular workouts, including those with a mind-body component, like yoga, can help.

Don't forget to get plenty of fluids and fiber; drinking enough (about nine glasses of fluid daily) and consuming the recommended minimum of 25 grams of fiber a day will prevent constipation, a common side effect of detoxing.

Do be cautious about using saunas as a way to detox: It's not possible to "sweat out" toxins through the skin, and the intense heat can be dehydrating.

Don't eat shark, swordfish, king mackerel or tilefish if you're pregnant, about to conceive or breastfeeding; these fish contain high levels of mercury. Better options are shrimp, wild salmon and canned "light" tuna.

Do check with your doctor before starting a body detox if you are pregnant or breastfeeding, have a medical condition, plan to be on a detox program for more than seven days, or want to try a fast.

Author Joe Mullich is a freelance health writer based in Sherman Oaks, Calif.

COPYRIGHT Weider Publications & Gale Group