How Exercise Helps You Detox

The circulatory system, the lymphatic system and the digestive system are all in charge of moving toxins out of the body, and you’ll need to stimulate all three to truly detox. While the air you breath and the food you eat have a big impact on these three systems, exercise may be your most efficient and most powerful tool for a cleaner body and disease-free life.  

How exactly does exercise detoxify?

The detox process rests on a  few aspects of exercise, namely circulation, sweat and oxygen intake. First off, moving your muscles encourages circulation: your heart pumps more nutrient-rich blood through your veins, which will help repair damaged cells, and your lymphatic fluid carries the impurities extracted from the cells to your major organs (like the kidneys and liver) to be eliminated from the body. All of this circulation leaves your body replenished, with each cell functioning at its best to protect you from illness and damage even after you finish exercising. Kind of makes you want to jump up and get moving, doesn’t it?

But better circulation is just one part of the process. Your oxygen intake spikes during aerobic exercise, which helps you detox with each breath: as you breathe in more deeply, you feed every cell in your body with life-giving oxygen, and as you breathe out forcefully, you expel toxic carbon dioxide more efficiently. Finally, when you sweat you push out toxins through your pores, leaving your skin cleaner, more radiant and more elastic. As you can see, there are a few levels of detoxification, from your vital fluids to skin cell activity; it follows that you will need to incorporate a few types of exercise to get the total body-cleansing benefit.

What exercises are best?

As mentioned earlier, aerobic exercise that gets your blood pumping and your skin sweating is ideal for detoxifying everything from the blood to your pores, plus it’s a surefire way to burn excess fat that can hold all sorts of toxins. Moreover, aerobic exercise stimulates the abdominal muscles to move food through the digestive system, and that’s an area of the body with a clear and powerful role to play in waste removal.  A 20 to 30 minute workout, three to five times each week, should be sufficient for detoxifying benefits, whether it’s biking, jogging, swimming, rowing or another favourite activity.

But while a good run will go far in your quest for a cleaner body, consider working in some slower — though  still immensely rewarding — workouts. Yoga and pilates have made waves in exercise regimens everywhere, but when it comes to the benefits they bring, muscle strengthening and better balance are only the beginning. Yoga poses stretch and compress various parts of the body, and according to experts, these alternating movements release toxins from the internal organs. A well-rounded yoga routine will take each part of the body through this detoxifying process, and as New York City yoga teacher Witold Fitz-Simon points out, “This facilitates the removal of waste products such as carbon dioxide, lactic acid and lymphatic fluid from the deep tissues and extremities of the body that a jog or bike ride just don’t reach.”

It’s no secret that fitness is an important part of life, but it’s amazing just how deeply exercise can affect our mental and physical health. And just like a balanced diet, a well-rounded fitness routine can multiply the benefits that any one activity will provide. In the end, a wholesome diet full of naturally detoxifying foods plus a great exercise regimen that sparks your internal cleaning mechanisms is your best bet for great health. The lesson here is to keep balance a priority, for it’s that balance that improves quality and fulfillment in all areas of life!