How To Eliminate Excess Toxins From Your Body?

How to detox your body from toxins

Every day, we encounter various toxins in the environment, air, water, and food. Therefore, our bodies need to process and eliminate these toxins to prevent them from building up. This buildup can cause damage to the brain, lungs, liver, heart, fertility and so on, and lead to chronic diseases.

Thankfully our body naturally detoxifies to remove harmful substances every day, whether they come from outside or inside our body. Notably, the liver (60%) and intestines (20%) play the main roles in this process, although every cell in the body contributes.

What Are Toxins?

Toxins, also known as xenobiotics, come from various sources:

Food Sources: Food additives, agrochemicals, and heavy metals (like aluminium, mercury, and lead).
Environmental Origin: Plastics, utensils, pollution, cosmetics, and medicines.
Endogenous Origin: Metabolites from cells that need removal.

Supporting Your Body’s Detoxification

To support detoxification and speed the natural process, it is important to consume foods and nutrients that contain particular compounds that aid detox. These include B vitamins, minerals like selenium and zinc, antioxidants, polyphenols, and amino acids. Leafy greens that contain chlorophyll like spinach and kale, cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cabbage, asparagus,, antioxidants like berries. So a green juice or a big plate of greens will be a must!

Tips to Minimise Toxin Exposure:

It’s important to learn the main sources of toxins that can impact our health so we can make better choices in every aspect of our life:

Choose Organic Produce: Prefer organic foods, especially staples like rice, vegetables, and fruits. Additionally, organic options are less likely to contain harmful chemicals.
Avoid Certain Foods: Avoid cow’s milk, gluten products (wheat, rye, barley, and oats), colourants, food additives, trans and hydrogenated fats, fried foods, soft drinks, artificial juices, and sugar. Furthermore, limiting these foods can improve overall health.
Stay Hydrated: Proper hydration helps eliminate toxins through faeces, urine, sweat, and breathing. Therefore, make sure to drink plenty of water daily.
Maintain a Healthy Diet: Incorporate detox foods into your regular diet. As a result, you can support your body’s ongoing detox efforts.
Avoid plastic: plastic contain a harmful compound called Bisphenol A (BPA), which is very detrimental for our hormones
Use less chemicals: cleaning products and beauty products contain an awful list of chemicals. You can try baking powder and vinegar to clean your house and swap your beauty products for natural products sold in natural and organic shops.

Making mindful choices about what you eat and staying hydrated can support your body’s detox processes and help you maintain a healthier lifestyle.

Professional help

If you think you need help in finding out more about body toxicity or need help to have a tailored diet and recommendations, our team of nutritionists in London can help you. We can test for heavy metals and minerals. and design a plan based on your results to detox from heavy metals.

12/11/201808/23/2024

Tips for Sticking to a Healthy Diet During the Festive Season

Tips from Raquel Britzke, Nutritionist in London, for sticking to a healthy diet during the festive season

The festive season is so wonderful, we celebrate the achievements of the year by spending time with our family and friends and at these parties, it is natura to always be accompanied by good food and drink!

And for those who are in a weight loss process or following a diet plan, what should you not exaggerate at this time?

Here are some very important tips for you:

Enjoy the moment and do not become anti-social by following a diet. But do not use these events as excuses to overdo it and do not throw everything you’ve already achieved!
Never go to a party with an empty stomach! Always eat a snack before you leave home.
Avoid pinching snacks all the time, because then you will lose track of how much you have already eaten.
Avoid drinking sodas, juices, energy drinks, and alcohol because they are empty calories that will greatly increase the daily calorie quota that you can consume in the day.
If drinking alcohol, drink moderately and choose drinks that do not contain added sugar or condensed milk. And drink with glasses of water while you drink alcohol, so you will not overdo it.
Make your dish as close as possible to your meal plan in both the type of food and the quantity.
Put enough vegetables on your plate, this will help to control much of your hunger.
If you have desserts choose only one type and eat in a small amount to try it.
Avoid repeating the dish.
Go back to your healthy eating habits at the next meal or the next day!

Being healthy or having a lean body is a way of life and you need to learn how to eat in a balanced way at social events =)

Parties go fast, and soon you’ll be in your routine again, think of everything you’ve achieved in results this year and keep those results forever with you.

Now that you know everything about healthy diet on festive season, enjoy the best time of the year!

09/06/201808/20/2024

Carnivore Diet: Is It Healthy to Eat Only Meat?

Carnivore diet: can you eat only meat?

What do you think about eating meat, just meat and still improving your productivity and mental clarity, boosting your libido, and controlling your blood pressure? Well, that’s what the followers of the carnivore diet believe in, and the basis of this diet is just meat, offal, and eggs (some include fish and cured cheese) and no vegetable or plant-based foods or any kind of supplement.

It is the opposite of the vegan diet. The carnivore diet is based on high protein and saturated fats and no carbohydrates, and there is no defined protocol for the number of proteins and fats to be ingested.

In some countries, people have migrated from the low-carb and ketogenic diet to the carnivore diet, and one of the most famous adepts of this diet is Shawn Baker. In his profile on social media, he said that the diet is very easy because he does not need meal plans or counting calories. “I just have to think about how hungry I am and how many steaks I want to eat,” he said.

Followers of this diet say that it brings several benefits such as fast weight loss, improved sleep, more disposition, improved libido, greater mental clarity, less hunger and more satiety, more strength and more endurance in training.

And now from the nutritional point of view, is a carnivore diet healthy in the long term? And how about the other nutrients and fibres?

The disadvantage of the carnivore diet is that it is just meat, which means that carbohydrates and healthy fats are completely out of the diet. Carbohydrates contain almost non-existent nutrients in meats such as fibre, vitamin C, vitamin K, and folic acid among others. A meat-only diet, especially with an excess of saturated fat, can increase the risk of inflammation in the body.

Moreover, the functioning of our gut is impaired due to the lack of substrate to have a healthy gut microbiome. Recent studies have shown the importance of having a healthy gut microbiome to have good health, strong immunity and prevent various diseases.

Another aspect is that there are bioactive compounds such as polyphenols and antioxidants that are found specifically in plant-based food that reduce the risk of oxidative stress and also inflammation.

Despite the promises that the carnivore diet brings no evidence studies are showing its benefits.

Before making any drastic changes on your diet always consult with a nutritionist or dietitian to ensure you meat all requirements and don’t miss out on any essential nutrient.

07/27/201808/22/2024

Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease, How To Treat It?

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (steatohepatitis) is the accumulation of fat in liver cells impairing liver function and is one of the most common forms of liver disease that is mainly related to increased obesity around the world. Approximately half of the cases can progress to more severe forms of the disease like liver cirrhosis and cancer.

The most common risk factors for non-alcoholic steatohepatitis are obesity, diabetes, carbohydrate-rich diet with rapid absorption and saturated fat, rapid weight loss, viral hepatitis, insulin resistance, elevated LDL cholesterol and triglycerides, high levels of estrogen, surgeries and sedentary lifestyle. As a nutritionist, I see in my clinic numerous cases of people who are at higher weight and are already starting to develop fatty liver.

In mild cases of steatohepatitis, the disease is asymptomatic (it does not have symptoms), with slow and gradual evolution being the most common signs and symptoms pains, fatigue, weakness, loss of appetite and increase of the liver.

The good news is that it is reversible, and the best way to treat steatohepatitis is to reduce body weight by changing eating habits, regular physical exercise and a healthy lifestyle. In other words, losing weight with quality food and changing lifestyle habits.

How to treat Non alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease?

One of the diets that have positive results in improving cases of steatohepatitis is the Mediterranean low-carb diet, which has a reduced carbohydrate content, high in antioxidants, high in fibre and a good amount of healthy fats and lean proteins. The nutritionist will be able to design a personalised meal plan for weight loss and fatty liver treatment at the same time.

There are some foods and their compounds that can help prevent and treat fatty liver disease like ginger, green tea, coffee, turmeric, broccoli, nuts, avocado, garlic, fish that contain omega 3, and citrus fruits among others.

The first step to treatment is to look for a nutritionist. The nutritionist not only will help you to understand the condition but will also guide you and support you during the treatment with the best diet approach for lasting results. Blood test checks are recommended to monitor progress.