It’s become super popular. Hollywood starlets do it. Why should we all be doing a morning detox? Or is it a waste of time? THE CASE FOR THE DETOX When we wake up in the morning, we’ve just had 6-8 hours of fasting while we’ve slept so it’s important to start the day with the right food. What we eat first thing in the morning can have a massive effect on our health and performance throughout the day. Ideally, we want to consume something that is going to help clear out all the toxins and kick start the body for the day. A large number of people will have a morning coffee to kick start them for the day but what if we could have something that provides more health benefits. This is where the idea of having a morning detox comes in. THE MORNING DETOX COMES IN MANY FORMS. SOME OF THE MORE POPULAR ONES ARE LISTED BELOW: LEMON WATER One of the simplest detox drinks is the simple lemon water one. There are many documented benefits that you can get from drinking lemon water, including benefits to the liver and digestion. Quite simply, this is squeezing half a lemon into 12oz water. Ideally, the water should be warm to get the best benefits. APPLE CIDER VINEGAR Although the scientific results aren’t conclusive, it’s believed that drinking apple cider vinegar (ACV) mixed with water can help people to lose weight, cleanse toxins, aid digestion and improve bowel movements. There are a couple of ways to have ACV, simply 1 Tbsp mixed into your lemon water or 1 Tbsp mixed in with green tea. The former is thought to provide the additional effects of ACV combined with the benefits of lemon water so it gives the best of both worlds. The green tea mix is thought to help boost your metabolism and help to burn fat faster. GREEN TEA DETOX Green tea has been well-known in fitness circles as a fat burner. So, by using this in detox you’ll get the added benefit of fat loss but it’s also chock full of antioxidants and vitamins. It’s also thought to boost your immunity meaning you should get sick less often when having green tea. One type of green tea that is particularly beneficial is Matcha Tea. This is simply a Japanese version of green tea grown under shade which increases the chlorophyll content. It’s these chlorophyll-rich leaves that are harvested into the tea as a finely ground powder. So rather than soaking the leaves in a bag into your tea, you’re actually eating the entire leaves dissolved into the water. This means you are ingesting the entire leaf, consuming all the benefits. A WORD OF WARNING A lot of extravagant claims get made about their benefits of a detox and how they can “undo” many months or years of bad and excessive eating. The truth is that many of the health benefits of some of the detox drinks you see mentioned have been exaggerated or are not scientifically proven. That’s not to say a detox cannot help, just be aware that a detox isn’t necessarily the miracle cure that people are claiming it to be; a detox is simply a method you can use to increase your health by changing your eating habits.
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