How does detoxing help your skin?

You've undoubtedly heard that detoxing is good for your skin. In fact, healthy and radiant skin is the top detox benefit reported by our cleansers. Cleansing helps give your skin that sparkly, dewy, fresh look, and it also helps ease common skin conditions such as acne, dermatitis, psoriasis and eczema. But why and how?

The role and functions of your skin

The skin is the largest organ in your body. It protects you from external pathogens, regulates temperature, facilitates vitamin D absorption, enables tactile sensation, and importantly plays an active role in detoxification.

Its detoxification function has the biggest connection with skin appearance. If you’re overloaded with toxins – playing too hard, eating too much (or too much of the wrong things) and sleeping too little – it all takes its toll on your skin. Dehydration lines, breakouts, rashes and skin irritations are all signs your skin needs some serious TLC, and your body could do with a cleanse.

Detoxing and its impact on your skin

When you detox, provided you are avoiding all the right foods (our cleanse does just that), you are naturally eliminating skin aggravators and inflammatory agents such as dairy, yeast, sugar and gluten.

Juice cleansing gives your digestive system a rest, stimulates detoxification (gently clearing out all those skin-clogging nasties), and floods your body with delicious nutrients all at the same time. It's a recipe for skin success!

If you think a juice cleanse might be for you, check out our spring/summer menu. Our Fruit & Greens and Zingy Uplifter six packs are also a perfect skin-friendly supplement to a healthy diet. More info here.

5 yoga poses to detox mind and body

We all know it. We can feel it. Spring is in the air. Here at Urban Remedy we love the change of season because it means it’s time for a good clean out.

We cleanse through three of the body's main systems. The circulatory system pumps blood throughout the body – taking oxygen to cells whilst carrying the waste away. The digestive system processes the food we eat – absorbing the nutrients we need and eliminating anything we don’t. And then we have the lymphatic system, which collects fluid from our cells and sends it to the lymph nodes to ditch any harmful bacteria.  The eliminatory organs (lower digestive system, liver, kidneys, lungs and skin) then help us to expel all of those nasty little toxins.

That’s a pretty good system when it comes to detoxing! However, over the winter season, our diet is a little heavier, we're a little less active than usual, and our eliminatory organs may be feeling a little sluggish. When Spring arrives, we often need a helping hand to assist the natural detoxification process.

We regularly give you tips on how to cleanse your body through diet. But what about exercise? This week, with the help of our Resident Health Coach, Claire Obeid (who just happens to be an amazing yoga teacher), we thought we’d share a few of our favourite cleansing yoga poses to help you banish those winter cobwebs and kickstart detoxification.

Yoga, like most forms of exercise, stimulates the three systems of cleansing, but it packs a little more punch. The systematic stretching and compressing action, coupled with calm breathing, is particularly good at enhancing waste-removal from the deep tissues and extremities (which some forms of exercises just can’t do).

Here are our 5 cleansing yoga poses:

1. Standing Forward Bend – calms the nervous system whilst gently compressing the abdomen to stimulate digestion and elimination

2. Downward Facing Dog – gently tones the belly, aids circulation of blood and lymph and stimulates digestion

3. Lunging Twist – strengthens the legs whilst deeply twisting through the abdomen to squeeze and release the digestive organs

4. Seated Twist – releases the hips whilst squeezing the abdominal organs

5. Meditation – helps you calm your breath, centre your focus and quieten your mind to reduce stress and enhance detoxification

Happy spring cleaning!