Body Cleanse Hub

I found this profoundly interesting because it affects me personally all the time and thought I’d pass the info along.  I’ve always been aware that there are hundreds of harmful food additives that get pumped into our food supply all the time, most of the time without our knowledge.  A good body cleanse is a useful way to counter-act these toxins by flushing them out but you can’t beat prevention as a means of treatment!  Avoiding toxins in the first place is the best body cleanse method, by far!

So as I was doing some reading about additives, I was struck by a pretty well-known culprit:  Monosodium Glutamate or “MSG.”  Turns out some of the most notable symptoms for those sensitive to its effects are headaches and an aching in the back of the neck and shoulders.  Sometimes this spreads to the forearms and palms and can cause irritation in addition to nausea, dizziness and a general poor mood or disposition.  Wow!  I notice those symptoms pretty often and usually assume them to be dehydration.  But now I’m concerned that it may be more akin to MSG side effects.

What is MSG?

Many know it as the “chinese restaurant syndrome” because MSG has long been a staple among Asian restaurants as a flavor enhancer.  MSG isn’t a completely man-made poison.  In fact, it’s natural form isn’t quite so harmful, as it bonds with other amino acids, forming a protein molecule.  However, when MSG is synthesized in a lab and sprinkled artificially onto your food, it isn’t bonded but rather a “free” molecule.  This unnatural separation from the protein provides the punch to the taste buds but also floods the body with unbound acids that don’t help to do anything nutritional.   This causes the side effects I mentioned.

The interesting thing about MSG is that everyone’s reaction is unique.  Some people are considered “MSG Sensitive” and their reactions go beyond the aforementioned into the realm of increased anxiety, cramps, skin rashes, confusion, heart palpitations, and even seizures.  Of course, these more extreme reactions are akin to any other food allergy and pertain to a small percentage or people.  Still, the flood of unbound acid molecules into the body over-stimulates the brain enough to warrant caution from anyone.  It simply isn’t nutritious and should be avoided.

As always, check your labels.  MSG is in lots of processed and packaged foods, especially those with high sodium content.  And, of course, always check with your Asian cuisine chef to make sure no artificial MSG is used in your Orange Chicken.

A curious debate is now playing out at the federal level about irradiating your produce.  Meat has been going through the zapper for a while now to get rid of the more harmful salmonella and e coli that tend to frequent the meat coming out of the big, nasty slaughterhouses.  However, this is the first time the FDA is considering allowing fresh produce to take the jolts.

While conventional science and institutions see nothing wrong with the irradiation of any food, considering the relatively “low risk” of the process, the process isn’t what you might think.  Essentially the food is passed through micro-waves that zap unwanted micro-organisms that can cause illness.  The food, however, is not fundamentally changed at the chemical level.   According to the reports from Idaho State University, the results are similar to what happens when you freeze, cook, or microwave your food. 

Doesn’t seem so bad, right?  Unless you prefer your food to be raw and in its original state.  The degradation of essential enzymes that occurs when food is exposed to extreme heat or cold has spawned the raw food movement and shouldn’t be so easily written off.  Just because the effect of blasting our foods with radiation seems negligible, does that mean we should do it?

Perhaps we should spend more time and resource management on cleaning up our food practices, rather than taking extreme measures like irradiation to kill off the e coli that ends up on our broccoli because we don’t harvest and ship it appropriately.   Just a thought.

I can always tell when it’s been too long since my last detox.  In truth, I go through periods of laziness and my diet and lifestyle take on uber-toxic proportions.  Living in the modern world, especially in an urban setting, it’s easy to fall into this trap of toxicity and less-than-optimal health practices.  But then I start getting the signals from my body and I acknowledge that it’s time to make a change.  So how does my body let me know that it’s time to detox.

Body Signals Requesting a Detox

For starters, I usually start to feel weak and achy. My muscles are tense, my joints are tight, and no amount of stretching quite takes care of the sense of tightness in my body.

My neck and shoulders get tense and I get mild headaches.  This is usually a sign of dehydration and I try to cut out beverages that aren’t plain water.  It’s amazing how easy it is to avoid drinking plain old water in our culture.  There are literally thousands of beverage options throughout the day, which are all nice and tasty but, let’s face it, humans survived on regular old water for thousands of years before Coca Cola came along.

I’m tired all the time and, usually, depressed.  Now, granted, I go into bouts of depression for lots of reasons ranging from the reduced sunlight in the winter months to reading too much mainstream media, but there is a distinct feeling that accompanies depression caused by an overly-toxic body.   If you pay close enough attention, you begin to learn your own body’s “language” and can discern its cries for attention.  For me, when I go through the period where I don’t want to sleep but I’m tired, where I feel like I need to be productive but I don’t want to do anything, and when I want to be happy but I just feel like crap… I know my body needs a hose-down from the inside-out.

Nothing sounds good to eat, especially healthy food.  When my cravings are all for salty grains or heavy foods, and I just can’t get up the desire to feast on fruit or vegetables, it’s a clear sign that the body is bogged down with too much crap.  Heavy foods are somewhat addictive to the body because they produce opiate-like chemical floods in the brain.  Chocoloate and sugar are major culprits, which is why they make us feel so good when we bite down.  It’s only later that we realize, as with any addiction, that the immediate benefits don’t outweigh the longterm effects of toxicity.   When I get in this “downward spiral” of eating in unhealthy ways, it’s clear that the reward circuits of my brain are overloaded and need to be detoxed.

Where to Go from Here

While I recognize that it’s time to clean things out, I don’t have time in my life right now to do a full-blown Master Cleanse, which requires some serious time and energy set aside to outlast its intense detoxing effects.  Instead, I’ll start by cutting out the more harmful things I’m taking in, like sugary drinks and heavy carbs, in favor of more fruits and veggies.  This way I can ease out of the slump and then, say next week, I can get into a more strict body cleanse.