Om Yoga Magazine: Spring Detox

Om Yoga Magazine is 50 issues old! In that time, it has become the UK's best-selling yoga magazine, branching out to a wide audience of women, men, parents, students and teachers of all sizes and abilities.

With April around the corner comes the cleaning up of diets and lifestyles. In Chinese Traditional Medicine (CTM), springtime is associated with the detoxification of the liver. Detox is definitely a buzzword at the moment, in terms of diet, environment and emotional health. One way to detox the liver is to increase bile production, which is crucial for digestion, and try to consume more alkalising foods. The liver takes up a lot of the body's stresses, especially emotional and dietary. Fatty, greasy foods, alcohol and stress can all make the liver congested and overworked, affecting its performance. Luckily, the liver is well-known for its rejuvenating characters and so a relatively short period of adjustment can make a difference to the liver's effect on your overall health.

Holistic nutritional therapist, Elizabeth Montgomery recommended her five tips to support liver health:

1. Get to sleep early, as key liver detoxing occurs between 1-3am each night.
2. Clean up your diet, as natural foods stress the liver far less than processed.
3. Reduce stress -yoga, of course, is perfect for this, as is mindfulness practice and meditation. See my post on my mindfulness March challenge here.
4. Don't bottle up and talk or process emotions. Exercise is a great way to release endorphins and clear your head.
5. Limit environmental toxins. Synthesised chemicals are often necessary, but using as many natural cleaning products as possible, where appropriate, reduces your exposure to toxins that could harm you and the environment.

Elizabeth also shared her key foods to support liver health, as well as a few to avoid:

For my takes on clean eating, click on my Food category in the header, or follow my Clean Eating Pinterest board. The foods listed above aren't just good for your liver; they're great for your whole body, so make sure that your cupboards are well stocked throughout the year, and not just spring.

Disclaimer: I am an Affiliated Blogger with Om Yoga Magazine. Each issue I will write a post on an article from the magazine and share it with you. Have a look here to find about the other lovely affiliated bloggers. All photos in this post taken from the Om Yoga magazine.