How many daily bowel movements are optimal?

There seems to be a fair amount of controversy around detoxification protocols and whether or not they’re necessary or even safe.  While it might be true that too much has been made of them being the answer to everything health-wise, it’s also true that we are exposed to many more toxins in our modern world, than in previous times.

Couple this with very poor eating, drinking and lifestyle habits, and there seems to be a need for supporting overworked detoxification organs such as the liver, lungs, bowels, skin and kidneys.

Cleaning out your house

One of the largest elimination organs, the bowels, should ideally have a ‘movement’ between one and three times daily.

The average person can go sometimes two or three days without a movement.  This means that toxins which were previously ready for elimination after a meal was digested and assimilated, are given the opportunity to be reabsorbed, with the potential to cause ill-health.

Before you go on a detox programme

There are some very sound and helpful detoxification protocols available to the public, but they should be done under supervision and not as a first port of call when looking to improve your health.  In fact, they can make you very sick if you’re not in a state of health to deal with the consequences of releasing toxins back into circulation.

Generally speaking, before you look at any kind of detoxification programme, you should already be:

• Eating good quality, unprocessed food
• Aiming to eat a good percentage of your food raw
• Drinking clean, filtered water regularly
• Having regular bowel movements (at least 1 x daily)
• Exercising in some form daily

Detoxification programmes worth their salt will require you to be doing all of the above, as well as taking good quality supplements or doing fasts, specific to the particular organ you’re looking to cleanse.

There are many old, tried and trusted techniques and therapies that have a very important place alongside a healthy diet and lifestyle.

Options

These include colonic irrigation, which can help rid the colon of any impacted fecal matter, resulting in better nutrient absorption through the colon wall.

In addition, coffee enemas (easily self-administered) are believed to be useful in aiding the liver in its processes of detoxification, as well as assisting the colon in its activities of elimination.

Protocols for bowel, kidney, skin, cell, liver and gall-bladder cleanses can all aid the body by allowing detoxification and elimination organs a well-deserved break and an opportunity to improve in function, leaving you healthier and more energised.

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Tanya Wyatt

Owner at The Happy Body

Tanya started out as a professional ballet dancer. Swopping her pointe shoes for takkies, she decided being a hip hop dancer was way cooler, so chopped off her bun and joined a street dance company. For many years, she also taught dance and fitness classes in Cape Town before deciding that nutrition and lifestyle coaching was the way to help people change their state of health for the better. So, while writing two health and fitness books, she moved to London to study and began her ‘real life’ – that as a health and lifestyle coach. She’s been in private practice for 10 years now, is a mom of a 7-year old pig-tailed ball of energy, writes for various national and local health publications and is a health presenter when the occasion arises. Oh – and once a dancer, always a dancer – she’s also taken up ballet pole dancing 🙂 Click here to contact Tanya.

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