You are nervous, tense and exhausted all the time. In addition, you have recently gained a few unnecessary kilos. So you are wondering whether or not to follow a cleansing diet. However, you do not know if such a detox is safe? We will try to answer this question.
How to get motivated and stay motivated?
Five common eating habits that can result in atherosclerosis
Cleansing diets (detox diets) are popular dietary strategies aimed at expelling toxins from the body and obtaining better well-being. They are eagerly used, for example, after winter (spring detox – Emilia Gnybek-Ciosek wrote about it in the article “Spring weight loss. Get rid of ballast and toxins after winter”), after Christmas, after parties, just to cleanse, and also to get lost a few kilos.
Lemon detox
There are several types of detox diets, however, the most popular is the lemon detox. It involves drinking for 7-10 days of a special drink made from lemon juice, an organic syrup maple and palm syrup. There is also a version of this drink with the addition of water and Cayenne pepper. Such a mixture is supposed to remove all toxins from the body and help in the loss of a few kilos.
In one of the versions, after 2 days of drinking such a drink into the diet you can introduce fruit as part of lunch and vegetables as part of dinner, in turn in for another version, it is recommended to introduce food only after 7 days.
Scientists became interested in this diet, and after researching 84 women have shown that it can not only reduce body fat, but also lower insulin resistance and risk of disease cardiovascular (for those interested – the results of the study were published in Nutrition Research in May 2015).
The downside of such a diet is certainly its low value energetic. although this diet is short, it is very restrictive assumptions can contribute to e.g.
- worse well-being, general weakness
- dizziness, fainting, unconsciousness
- metabolism disorders
Often lost kilos after its completion are coming back, so the yo-yo effect is another downside.
It is worth noting that the scientists only studied the period itself the use of a diet (exactly 11 days – 7 days with lemon juice and 4 days with including food) and did not refer to the post-completion period in the studies diet and what then happens with the body.
This diet can only be used by healthy people and should always be consulted with a doctor. It is absolutely forbidden for:
- children and adolescents
- pregnant and lactating women
- women during menstruation
- elderly people
- people who are underweight or severely overweight and obese
- people who train intensively or have hard work physical
- sick people
So, is it possible to follow cleansing diets?
The answer is yes, but only if you are completely healthy and does not belong to any of the above-mentioned groups. In addition, the initiation of such treatment should always be discussed with your doctor and preceded by research (for example with ordinary morphology, as well as a level test thyroid hormones).
It is also worth starting your adventure with cleansing diets from shorter treatments, e.g. 1-day treatments. Then we will reduce the risk of occurrence negative symptoms (e.g. fainting).
One-day treatments include, for example, a juice treatment. Recommends you drink 6 juices a day, every 2-3 hours. It is important that vegetables and the fruit on the basis of which the juices will be prepared came from crops organic – otherwise detoxification will not make sense. Down of the following juices, you can add water, you can also drink it between juices.
Sample recipes:
- Apple, cucumber, celery, lemon juice, and a handful of spinach
- Apple, pineapple, mint
- Apple, carrots, beetroot, celery
- Apple, tomato, lemon juice
- Kale, fennel, lemon juice, apple, a few blueberries
- Parsley (parsley + root), beetroot, lemon juice
A cleansing diet is always risky. After all, it is a very low calorie diet, low in protein, complex carbohydrates, and fat. It should not be used for a long time. It should be discontinued if unwanted symptoms occur, such as hand tremors, palpitations, headaches or dizziness, visual disturbances, etc. Constant fatigue and worse well-being should first prompt you to visit your doctor and perform the tests recommended by him, and only when it turns out that all parameters are normal, you can start considering a cleansing diet.
Main photo is from: Photo credit: Damien Pollet via Foter.com / CC BY-SA
- Comments
Marta Tomaszewska Dietician
Dietitian, nutritional educator, co-author of the e-book on nutrition for children “Every bite makes sense”. I am particularly interested in the nutrition of infants and children, especially in the context of eating disorders, as well as the influence of the gut microbiota on health. Privately, I love traveling, mountain climbing, cycling and walking in the woods.
Other author’s entries