The craze in recent times about health, weight-loss, diet, exercise, toning, ripping, whatever concepts and ideologies there are about looking and feeling good is remarkable and the theory of “detox” is no exception.
Detox is a shortened tag for detoxification and it is typically defined as the removal of toxins (harmful stuff) from a living thing. Though this is the commonest explanation, it is not accurate as it may be equated to excretion. Not to take you deep into the terms but to understand what detox really is we would have to differentiate between that and excretion. These two are dissimilar terms that are very closely related.
The human body has its natural mechanisms that enable it to remove waste and hence rid it of harmful matter. Detoxification is the conversion of harmful substances (either generated through biological functions of the body or simply put into the body through breathing, ingestion or even skin absorption) to less harmful substances. The body is then able to eliminate these things, owing to their lowered level of hazardousness, as part of biological waste. Excretion on the other hand simply refers to the output or removal of biological waste from the body. This output maybe in the form of poop, sweat and urine.
If you took your time to read these definitions, you would understand that detox helps to make toxin elimination easier whereas excretion simply does the elimination.
The main organ that is responsible for detoxification is the liver and most of the stress of its job in this regard originate from man-made chemicals: air pollutants, food pollutants and preservatives, preservatives for other things used on and in the body, medication and thousands or maybe millions of other unlisted chemicals. It is the responsibility of the liver to clean the body of them all.
The main organ that is responsible for detoxification is the liver
(photo credit: Medline Plus)
The liver secretes numerous enzymes and even manufactures molecules like serum proteins and antioxidants to break down and/or bind to toxins to make them less harmful for the body to get rid of. These are then carried in the blood to either the kidneys to be excreted through urine, the skin to be removed through sweat or sent to the gut through bile production to ultimately be removed through poop.This is just a bit of illustration of the numerous things the liver does to clean toxins out of the body. In the worst case, toxins are stored in the liver and fat (adipose) cells to protect the rest of the body. When the situation gets dire than that, the body starts to break down- the reason for a lot of cases like kidney failures, among other diseases. Also read about Toxins and the unhealthy accumulation of body fat
What then needs to be done to keep the liver, kidneys and other internal organs healthy for optimal function?
Stay tuned for the next article!
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