Let’s face it, sometimes we just don’t know our limits. A heavy, carb-loaded meal with a side of sugary treats may sound great but before you know it, you end up overeating. As a result, you get bloated, sluggish, and sleepy. If you keep this habit going, you will grow bigger, heavier, overweight, and become more susceptible to medical conditions like sleep apnea and cardiac arrest.
Sure, you can always go to the gym. However, we should also face the fact that the gym is not exactly for everyone. Some just don’t have the time, while some find the gym too intense. Exercising is great but the reality is, going to a gym is hard to maintain.
Fortunately, there are other ways to stay healthy without necessarily involving intense, sweaty, and muscle-tearing action. One of those is through a gut detox. Read on and learn why a lot of people have started doing this.
What is A Gut Detox?
A gut detox is, by the very nature of the word, the detoxification of your digestive system and its parts, particularly the stomach. This is the process of removing any harmful substances left in your stomach. Naturally, your body can detoxify itself, thanks to a normal functioning digestive system. A primary example is how your liver filters and removes toxins from the body through enzymes and amino acids.
However, some proteins and toxins may still escape and enter the bloodstream. Consequently, they will stay in your body and bring adverse effects. When you go through this type of detox, you are lining your intestines with an organic barrier called the gut epithelium. This barrier detoxifies your body by ensuring that everything you ingested is carried all the way through the twists and turns of your intestines until they are ready to be expelled.
When all is normal and healthy, the gut epithelium should be able to detoxify your body efficiently. However, substances can still escape this barrier and cause you to contract a leaky gut or as it’s professionally called, intestinal permeability. This condition can cause you great discomfort and affect your overall gut health. Leaky gut is tied to a number of conditions and diseases such as:
- Coeliac Disease
- Obesity
- Food Allergies
- Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)
- Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS)
- Lupus
- Multiple Sclerosis
- Type 1 Diabetes
- Dysbiosis
Reasons to Go through A Gut Detox
A gut detox, also known as colon cleansing, can help you avoid diseases and boost the function of your liver and digestive system. If you want to know why you should go through this purification process, below are 5 reasons why you might want to consider it.
1. Relieve Stomach Ailments
If you’re feeling digestive disturbances like bloating, constipation, diarrhea, and heartburn, you should seriously think about doing a detox. These symptoms are heavily influenced by the condition of your gut. When you experience these discomforts, gut cleansing can help.
A regular detox is also recommended for people that have chronic digestive issues as this can help alleviate the symptoms. Of course, you still have to consult your doctor to ensure that the cleanse won’t exacerbate the problem.
2. Regulate Your Hormones
Stabilizing your gut can help balance your hormones. The gut-brain connection shows that the condition of your digestive system influences the performance of your brain, the command center of the body. This implies a direct correlation between your stomach health and hormones.
Recent studies have shown how your gut microbiome can significantly influence estrogen regulation. Thus, poor stomach health can increase your risk of developing estrogen-related diseases like polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), endometriosis, and breast cancer.
3. Eliminate Food Sensitivities
Food intolerances are different from allergies, which pertains to an immune system response to specific foods. The former, on the other hand, entails difficulty in digesting certain kinds of food.
This type of sensitivity includes the likes of lactose and gluten intolerance. This condition also stems from poor gut microbiome, making it difficult for your digestive system to break down the food. They can lead to uncomfortable symptoms such as bloating, diarrhea, nausea, gas, and abdominal pain.
4. Lose Weight
This is one primary reason why people would want to detox. Toxins and any leftover sugars can make it hard for the body to burn fat. When any food in your system isn’t being digested properly, you’ll find that it takes much longer for you to fit in those jeans. After a detox, you’ll soon notice how your pants and clothes will start to fit better. Over time, you will feel that you’re losing slow but healthy amounts of weight.
5. Curb Food Cravings
If you find yourself raiding the fridge at midnight looking for that one kind of food that would satisfy your cravings, chances are you might want to detox your body. Food addictions and cravings are easily linked to an unhealthy gut because your body is needing a specific kind of nutrient. What happens then is that you may tend to overeat and store fat more after. This is the worst way to gain weight.
Sugar, flour, and carbs in general are highly addictive and they could lead to you eating more than your body could properly digest. After a detox, the cravings should stop and you won’t be worrying so much about unhealthy midnight snacks anymore.
Conclusion
Staying fit and healthy is not always about working out or going to the gym. It’s also about taking care of our gut health and flushing out toxins from the body. Going through a gut detox regularly can help you keep your digestive system in tip-top shape. The process entails cleansing the stomach, whether through water or other liquids, to regulate microbiomes and improve digestive function.
Some of the reasons why you should go through a gut detox include relieving stomach ailments, regulating your hormones, and reducing food sensitivities. Additionally, colon cleansing can also help you lose weight safely and curb food addiction. There are several ways to do a gut detox and the two most effective ways are drinking plenty of water and maintaining a high-fiber diet.
