Cleaning your home feels amazing, doesn’t it?

You throw open the windows and flood your home with fresh air and sunshine. You vacuum up the cobwebs in the corners, and wash the windows until they sparkle.

When you’re done, your home smells as fresh and bright as it looks. The sunshine pours in, warming your skin and making you smile and feel glad to be alive.

That’s what it’s like when you cleanse your body, too — inside and out. Just like cleaning your home, it makes you feel great.

And just like cleaning your home, it works better if it’s done regularly. You wouldn’t just clean house once a year, would you?

There are all kinds of ways to cleanse your body, but the best ones, in my opinion, are the simple, gentle ones.

Our bodies cleanse themselves automatically all day long — that’s what our liver, kidneys, lungs, bowels, and even our skin are for — but we can help them a lot along the way.

Cleansing and detoxing on a regular basis are more important than ever today, because we’re living in a toxic soup that makes it hard for our bodies to keep up.

That’s why degenerative diseases are so much more prevalent now, and autoimmune problems are sharply on the rise as well.

Now, here are 10 ways you can help your body to stay clean, healthy, and in balance:

1. Start with lemon water

Starting your day off with a large glass of lemon water is one of the best ways to help keep your insides clean. It helps with digestion, which moves wastes out of your body. I blogged about this a while back — you can read that article here. 

I use the juice of one organic lemon in 16 oz. of purified water, first thing in the morning. Sometimes I use hot water, so it’s like a tea. Then I have my Micronized Purple Rice (MPR) powder a few minutes later.

2. Drink water throughout the day

MPR helps to speed up the healing process, and that tends to create cellular wastes. As I talked about in last week’s article, drinking a lot of water is crucial for helping the body to flush out those wastes. We recommend drinking at least half your body weight in ounces of pure water per day.

3. Take epsom salt baths

Epsom salt baths are a cheap, easy — and very pleasant! — way to detox on a regular basis. Do it once or twice a week and watch your health improve.

If you have a hard time getting in and out of the tub, there are inexpensive aids available to help with that. These include rails, lifts, steps, and benches.

Or, you can do a foot bath instead. Just add about half a cup of epsom salts to a basin of warm water and soak your feet for about 20 minutes.

Be sure to take it easy for a couple hours after that, but if you have arthritis, do some gentle movement so your joints don’t stiffen up. (Have some extra MPR, too — many people have reported that it has helped with their arthritis.) 

4. Do a parasite cleanse

Not only do we need to flush out the industrial chemicals and heavy metals that accumulate in our tissues, but often we need to get rid of parasites as well.

You can find parasite cleanse formulations at your local health food store or online. They usually contain things like black walnut, wormwood, olive leaf, oregano, grapefruit seed extract, and uva ursi leaf.

5. Do colonics and coffee enemas

When it comes to colon health, your best bet is to go to a professional, at least the first time out. My husband Charles and I regularly go to see our dear friend Bonnie, who’s a hydrotherapist. Bonnie likes to put Micronized Purple Rice powder in her colonics — she swears by it!

Coffee enemas are another option. That may sound strange, but they’re a very helpful way to keep your liver in good shape. They open up the bile ducts and cause your liver to release glutathione, which helps remove toxins from your blood.

6. Exercise! 

Another very important detox activity to do on a regular basis is to move your body. This accomplishes two things: moves the lymph and makes you sweat.

Think of a stagnant pond, where the water is not moving and becomes foul and unhealthy. That’s akin to what happens with our lymph system when we don’t move enough.

Our muscles keep the lymph moving throughout our bodies like the clear, fresh water in a mountain stream. So exercise is crucial. It’s been proven that people who exercise regularly have fewer toxins in their bodies.

When it comes to moving the lymph, rebounding on a mini-trampoline is one of the best exercises you can do. This gentle movement stimulates lymph movement throughout your body and strengthens the circulatory system.

7. Do saunas or steam baths

After a strenuous workout, doing a sauna or steam bath will make your body sweat out even more toxins, especially heavy metals.

It also helps flush out the lactic acid that forms in your muscles after a workout. This will keep your muscles from getting sore the next day.

I really like far infrared saunas, which heat up your core temperature, resulting in a deep detox at the cellular level. You can get a quality wooden one, or if cost and space are an issue, you can get a small portable FIR sauna for a couple hundred dollars.

8. Do dry brushing

This is another excellent — and very inexpensive — way to get your lymph moving, which helps to detoxify your body. Dry brushing also helps to improve circulation and reduce cellulite.

Just get a natural boar bristle brush and brush your skin with it, starting with your feet, using one-way strokes toward your heart. You can even dry brush your face if you get a separate, softer brush for that.

There are helpful videos on Youtube showing just how to do it so it’s most beneficial to your lymph and circulatory systems. A side benefit is that it makes your skin velvety soft!

9. Invest in an air purifier and a water purifier

Having pure air to breathe and pure water to drink, cook with, and bathe or shower in is a good foundation for health.

Himalayan salt lamps also help with air purification.

10. Clean up your diet

Rather than adding more toxins in the form of pesticides, herbicides, and other chemicals, it’s best to stick with organic fruits and veggies. Stick with the Clean 15 and avoid the Dirty Dozen (foods that have the most pesticides).

Sticking with a mostly whole foods plant-based diet is the way to go if you want to be really healthy. Just by eliminating processed foods, you cut the amount of toxins you’re taking in dramatically.

Keep animal protein to a minimum, if you eat it at all. Considering how horribly livestock animals are mistreated, it’s no wonder their flesh is not very good for us.

But even if the only animal products you eat are of the highest quality (grass-fed beef, pasture-raised chicken and eggs, wild fish), you are still getting at least double the toxins you’d get from eating plant foods only, because the longer an animal lives, the more toxins are concentrated in its flesh.

Eat raw for at least 51 percent of each meal. The enzymes in the raw food help your body to better digest the cooked food.

One way to get more raw foods in your diet is to do green juices or smoothies. They are loaded with enzymes, vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals that help detoxify your body naturally.

So, get moving today, and do as many cleansing/detoxing activities as you can, on a regular basis!

What kinds of things do you do to detoxify your body? Please let me know in the comments below.