Ever since my teen years I’ve always been in pretty good health. I don’t get ill, and colds and viruses never seem to latch on to me – or at least not that lasted longer than about 12 hours. So it came as a bit of a surprise when I started feeling run down and tired all the time, and I was even finding it hard to get up in the morning. I’d been to see the doctor on many occasions, and had undergone several test, but they all came back negatve.

As luck would have it, not long after I met up with a naturopath who intimated that I could do with going on a detox diet, and take some time to learn how to detox and understand the impact of toxins on my health. It looked like detoxing had a lot of health benefits, so I spent a few weeks doing some research to learn all about it, and get to grips with what is really involved and why the natural health industry advocate doing a detox and suggest getting started with the 7 day detox diet so avidly.

Another thing she suggested to me was to try a foot detox. I now use a foot spa about twice a week, but if you don’t have one of those, the detox foot pads can be just as good – but with the patches you don’t get a relaxing foot massage at the same time

Here’s some healthy detox diet tips I discovered.

Herbal teas and water and plenty of both

Making sure you take in plenty of fluids is very important while you are following a detoxification diet as it helps to eliminate water-soluble toxins from your body. It also helps to prevent constipation, helps your internal organs function more efficiently, and helps reduce the signs of aging by plumping up your skin. Your goal should be to drink about 8 glasses (or 2 liters) of water each day, and a good bit more in hot weather or on your exercise days.

As a rough guide, for every hour that your exercise each day, drink an extra 2 glasses of water. Filtered or bottled water is best as tap water contain chlorine and other toxins. Ideally drink water that is at room temperature. If you don’t always fancy water, herbal teas – loose leaf is better than tea bags as it hasn’t been processed as much. Green tea, horsetail, camomile and roibosch (or redbush) are especially great in a detox as their hidden ingredients help the detox process. Green tea and redbush has other health benefits too as it is a rich source of natural antioxidants.

Should You Go Organic

You do not need to switch to a totally organic diet on a detox diet, because organic is usually much more expensive, but if you can afford to stretch to buying a few organic products it will be a great help.

If you can’t buy many organic foods, don’t worry. It’s more important that you eat plentiful amounts of fresh foods, whether they are organic or not, rather than not get enough of them. Nonetheless, there’s a lot of health benefits to going organic on a healthy detox diet.

Organic foods are produced without the use of artificial pesticides and fertilizers, and therefore they are much healthier being free from toxins and man made chemicals. Although it’s a controversial area, there is mounting evidence that the cumulative impact of pesticide residues may be related to a lot of the serious health issues we face today.

Organic foods undergo minimal processing. That means they contain no hydrogenated fats, artificial additives, preservatives or genetically modified organisms (GMOs). And you may notice that organic foods also taste better and have much deeper flavors.