Forget The Detox Plan

Just about now, millions of people who have indulged over Christmas and new year will be spending their hard-earnt cash on detox diets of all shapes and sizes. Yet most diet kits contain diuretics -- which has a certain irony, as the alcohol you consumed over the holiday season has already acted as a supercharged diuretic -- which is exactly why you feel so lousy! So someone has a sense of humor.

Diuretics dehydrate the body by increasing the flow of urine. So, whilst one can understand the logic of a diuretic to flush out all the toxins you've accumulated over the past week or so, this is blinkered logic, which ignores the diuretic effect of all that partying.

So the first thing you need to do is reverse that dehydration. So, drink at least a glass or two of clean water during the morning and some again after lunch and during the evening. That will assist your liver and kidneys to work at their best and your liver and kidneys will do all the detoxifying you need for free!

By the way, drinking a reasonable quantity of clean, pure water, which has not been filtered through tea bags, coffee beans or beer hops is a good first step on improving your general well being, anyway -- so why not make it part of your new year resolutions?

Then you need to take a stroll in the park and get some fresh air, after that, you might find your appetite has returned so you can sit down to a great home cooked meal. You'll find some great healthy cooking recipes elsewhere on this site.

My detox plan has found favor with at least one distinguished scientist: Dr Andrew Wadge of the UK Government's Food Standards Agency, who advises doing just what I have advocated, although I must confess to taking issue on one point. He says drinking tap water is fine. I advocate drinking bottled water, which is free of heavy metals and the like.

You can try Donald Trump's Trump Ice, drawn from springs in the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains in north eastern Pennsylvania from what was originally an ice-age glacier.

You can also try Evian, which comes from the French Alps in Europe in an area totally devoid of any industry or pollution and where the water takes 15 years to filter through the rocks.

Another good water from the Auvergne Mountains, in central France, is Volvic -- although that is rather higher in sodium than Evian, which is why I drink Evian -- although I love the taste of Volvic!

The big advantage of drinking French water is that the quality control for bottled water is one of the strictest in the world and few brands get the awarded the coveted "Eau Minererale Naturelle", for consistency and quality, but the two I've mentioned do.

© copyright 2010 Paul Hooper-Kelly and FoodPhysician.com all rights reserved reproduction forbidden.