To many, the word detox is just one of today's buzzwords--not a means to gain health. Others think of detoxing as a form of starvation. Nothing could be further from the truth--not if you do it right.

We live in a world filled with chemicals. They are in our water, in our air, and in nearly everything we touch. Too many of us bathe and shampoo with products laced with chemicals, then use chemical laden products to shave, to smell good, to soften our skin, to treat our blemishes, and more. Our skin soaks up these chemicals every day.

We pick up parasites from our food and our surroundings that take up residence in our bodies. Our bodies store mercury, lead, and other heavy metals.

All of these foreign materials tax our body's resources and interfere with optimum health. The purpose of a detox is to cleanse the body of these foreign substances along with accumulated waste in order to optimize healthy bodily functions and healing.

We've been taught to regard our brain as the center of our universe. It would be more accurate to give this place of honor to our gut. If our gut is not working well, we do not assimilate vitamins, minerals, fats, carbohydrates or proteins. The focus of a detox is to clean up the gut first, and follow with cleaning out the storage bins (stored fat), the organs, the blood and the lymph.

Cleaning out the gut involves moving out debris while giving the body maximum nutrition that does not require the digestive system to do a lot of work. At the same time, we want to fill our gut with prebiotics, probiotics, and easy to digest foods. This is the reason detox plans ask you to eliminate animal protein (or most animal protein) during a detox. It is hard to digest.