Wellbeing

Ways to Rejuvenate Your Body

Rejuvenating your body can be thought of as detoxing. When thinking of detoxing, often people think of harsh detox or elimination diets that use special diets or products such as laxatives to remove harmful toxins from the body. But the body is well-equipped to naturally detoxify itself when you implement some small but significant lifestyle changes.

1. Reduce alcohol intake

The liver is the body’s natural detoxifier and drinking too much alcohol lowers its ability to work effectively. Excessive alcohol use leads to a build up of fat in the organ as well as inflammation and scarring.

That’s why reducing alcohol or removing it from your diet completely can help to keep your liver fit and healthy. Simply abstaining can be difficult especially in social situations but cutting down on your alcohol intake and having alcohol free days are also beneficial.

2. Stay hydrated

You guessed it increasing your water intake is not only great for quenching your thirst but for many of the processes going on inside your body. Water has important roles in:

  • regulating body temperature
  • lubricating joints
  • regulating blood pressure
  • detoxification
  • aiding digestion.

How can you increase your water intake and be assured you’re drinking enough? With one of our tracker water bottle, of course. Each of our water bottles has time measurements and motivating messages printed on them. Simply reach the hourly hydration targets and you’ll know you’re getting enough fluid throughout the day.

3. Sleep

Sleep is so important and often overrated, especially when we’re younger. However, getting the right amount of sleep is key to promoting good health and supporting the body’s natural detox system.

Sleeping is important for refreshing your brain as it enables the body to remove toxic products that have built up during the day. A lack of sleep can have both long and short term effects on health, including:

  • Anxiety
  • Type 2 diabetes
  • Obesity
  • Stress
  • High blood pressure

Research shows that adults need 7-9 hours of sleep per night. Sleeping for less than 7 hours regularly can lead to adverse health consequences as well as increase the risk of mistakes and accidents.

4. Exercise

Regularly being active is associated with a longer life expectancy because it lowers the risk of many chronic illnesses, including:

  • obesity
  • type 2 diabetes
  • cardiovascular disease
  • high blood pressure
  • some cancers.

A key factor in these health benefits is the ability of exercise to lower inflammation levels throughout the body. You may think of inflammation as a factor that helps the body to heal after an injury or illness, and that is true, but too much can also lead to disease.

It is recommended that adults in the UK complete at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise each week or 75 minutes of vigorous activity.

5. Diet

The importance of the diet for rejuvenating the body could fill a blog post (and more), so we’ll highlight some of the key areas of the diet for a healthy body.

Sugar and processed foods are major contributors to inflammation in the body and are partly responsible for many of the metabolic diseases that are present in the Western society. They can harm the liver, in much the same way that alcohol does by enhancing the build up of fat in the organ.

So, what can you do to improve your diet?

  • increase your intake of fruit and vegetables – aim to get your 5-a-day
  • reduce your salt intake – less than 6g per day
  • reduce your processed meat and food intake
  • cook from scratch
  • be daring – try new foods and cuisines
  • swap white carbs for wholegrain versions

Summary

Detoxifying the body doesn’t need to mean following strict and potentially harmful diets. Instead, it is possible to enhance the body’s own natural detoxification system by making small changes to your lifestyle.

At the same time, these changes can improve many other aspects of your health, too.

Sources

Eugene, A, R and Masiak, J. (2015). The Neuroprotective Aspects of Sleep. MEDtubeSci: 3(1), pp 35-40.

National Health Service. (2019). Exercise. Available at: https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/exercise/

Suk, K,T and Kim, D, J. (2015). Staging of Liver Fibrosis or Cirrhosis: The Role of Hepatic Venous Pressure Gradient Measurement. World J Hepatol: 7(3), pp 607-615.

Watson, N, F et al. (2015). Recommended Amount of Sleep for a Healthy Adult: A Joint Consensus Statement of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and Sleep Research Society: 38(6), pp 843-844.

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