Monday, April 2, 2012

Epsom Salt Bath During a Juice Fast

EDIT: Please read my Nearly 3 Years Later: 3 Broken Bones & 200+ Pounds - The Long-Term Effects of Juice Fasting update before considering juice fasting.  I hope that my experience will provide you with real-world information about long-term juicing.



One way that I have found to assist my body during the detox process is to take an Epsom salt bath.  Sounds strange, I know; but this is how I stumbled across this little gem:

When I was in middle school, I had an ingrown toenail, which was infected and generally gross.  The doctor took one look at it and said that all I needed to do was to put my foot in a bucket of warm water with Epsom salt, since the salt would "draw out any of the infection."  He was right.  It worked.   During my first fast, I thought to myself, "Since it works to pull out the infection out of my toe, I wonder if it would work for the rest of my body." 

Knowing how porous our skin is, it stands to reason that if chemicals and toxins can enter into our bodies through our skin, then perhaps the toxins can be pulled out of our bodies through our skin as well.  Plus taking baths make me sweat, which is a known form of detox.  In fact, that's why many people use saunas as a form of detox.  So it may be possible that the Epsom salt assists in pulling the toxins away from the body as they are purged through the sweat.

Whether my logic is flawed or not, I drew myself a warm bath and put about 1/4 cup of generic, inexpensive Epsom salt.  Since I associated "salt" with drying out my skin (whether correctly or not), I also added a little bit of natural bath oil.  I soaked for about 15 minutes, opened the drain of the tub, and quickly washed the oil out of my hair.

My skin looked fabulous after an Epsom salt bath! It glowed.  And my hair?  It looked lusciously healthy; it's almost as if the salt pulled all of the impurities and build-up out of it.  Despite not knowing whether the Epsom salt bath actually draws out toxins from within my body or not, I still enjoy periodically taking one to rejuvenate my skin and hair.

Warning: For some reason, only while juice fasting, I am completely nauseous soon after I stand up after taking this bath.  Sometimes I have to quickly step out of the shower and lay down on the bath mat until the nausea dissipates.  I can only speculate why this happens.  Perhaps it's because the Epsom salt "shakes" things loose as it draws the toxins out, and my standing up has basically shaken things up causing those toxins to move throughout my body.  Again, who knows?  I did warn a friend about this who was juice fasting, and he called me later to thank me for warning him.  He had the same issue when he stood up after his bath.

No comments:

Post a Comment