Why Detoxing is The Answer to Aching Joints
Do you find that winter is affecting the way your hands and feet feel in the morning? Are they swollen and sore when you first wake up but after moving around, they feel a little better as the morning progresses?
You could be showing the beginning symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis. This is the inflammatory type of arthritis that is actually a sign of inflammation in the whole system. It’s considered an auto-immune disease as the condition starts to degenerate the tissues around the joint and the joint itself over time.
Not to mention, it can restrict your movements and feelings of vitality right in the prime of mid-life.
Both Western herbal medicine and Ayurveda recognise rheumatoid arthritis as a sign the body needs some deep cleansing - or detoxing - to find relief and get back to optimum health.
Symptoms of Rheumatoid Arthritis (Systemic Inflammation)
Morning stiffness
Gradual onset of pain over time as condition worsens
Improves with movement
Joints can become weaker
Needs ACTIVITY
What Causes Aching Joints?
The pain of the joint is actually caused by the inflammation in the tissue surrounding the sore knee. When the body needs to cleanse a wound (or a toxin-loaded knee), it sends extra fluid to the cells to help the repair process.
The extra fluid cleanses any toxins, bacteria, or debris from the wound and this fluid also allows for improved delivery of plasma, blood flow, nutrients, and repairing tissue.
The problem with the extra fluid in the cells is that when the cells are plumped with too much fluid, it starts to push against the cell walls and it starts to hurt.
So while the inflammation is actually a part of the body’s natural healing process, the extra fluid and the volume of it can hurt and cause pain.
Why Would My Joints Contain Toxins?
Your body has to process all of the toxins coming into our bodies - things like weird food chemicals and preservatives in processed food, household chemicals, alcohol, extra sugar, and even prescription medicines.
Everything that’s not natural and doesn’t have a prescribed job in your body is potentially a toxin and in Ayurveda is known as “ama”. And while toxin removal is part of your body’s job, big problems occur when toxins build up.
In Western society, we take in a huge amount of toxins - and often don’t have great elimination (regular bowel movements, sweat, etc.) to then get rid of the toxins.
These toxins accumulate in the gut, seep through to the tissues and bloodstream, and become deposited around the body.
Your body tries to keep these dangerous toxins away from your major organs like heart and lungs as much as possible. And one of the places it tries to hide them is in your joints like fingers, toes, knees, elbows, etc..
It’s now common for Western people to suffer from swollen achy joints in their forties and fifties due to diet and lifestyle factors.
Detoxing is NOT a Myth
Regular cleansing or detoxing appears in all natural medicine traditions - except Western medicine - which is such a shame because we absolutely need it the most!
Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Western herbal medicine, Balinese medicine, Persian medicine….. If you look into all natural medicine, they all deeply respect and prescribe regular cleansing to maintain a healthy body and keep it free from ill-health and chronic disease.
Detoxing with Ayurveda
Ayurvedic medicine goes one step further and says that all poorly digested food can become “ama” or toxin in the body.
This means that if you overeat, eat at random times, eat poor quality food, or have poor digestion - these toxins will accumulate in your gut and seep into your body’s tissues causing ill-health.
Western medicine is starting to catch up because they are just starting to link gut health with overall health - and indeed poor digestion of food has finally been flagged.
However, Ayurveda has been talking about ama and digestion as the path to overall health since 3000 B.C. Yes, that’s 3000 years before the birth of Jesus. They’ve been using detoxing to restore health for 5000 years now.
3 Helpful Steps to Better Joints:
10-Day Cleansing Herbal Detox:
Take cleansing herbs to remove toxins from the body for a minimum of 10 days but up to 1 month. You can get the 10-Day Cleansing Herbal Tea from Green’s Health which includes:
Birch Leaf - for joint cleansing
Dandelion Leaf - to cleanse the liver
Juniper - to cleanse the kidneys
Red Clover - to cleanse the lymph
Simply drink 2x a day for 10 days for an effective overall cleanse. This Cleansing Herbal Detox from our Dunsborough clinic costs $32 for 50g.
Or, you may prefer a personal herbal tincture tailored to you and your symptoms which may include other joint cleansing herbs like Turmeric, Licorice, Celandine or Devil’s Claw.
2. Abhayanga - Self-Massage
Use self massage on the affected joint with natural oils like sesame, almond oil, avocado oil, or coconut oil every day. (Only use natural oil, you would be happy to eat.) If you can, use the oil and massage your whole body yourself 10 minutes before a shower to lubricate your whole body and free up toxin removal.
Regular oil massage will help the oil seep into your body’s tissues through the skin and the oil helps to lubricate the cells and this frees up the toxins from the cells and aids effective removal of the toxins.
The massage also improves blood flow to the area which helps remove toxins and deliver the nutrients you need to heal.
3. Adopt A Cleaner Diet
Swollen joints shouldn't be ignored. It's a sign your body is struggling with toxin build up and you don't want these toxins swirling in your system and settling in other areas of your body.
Here are some tips to help your digestion:
Adopt regular eating times (7:30am, 12:30pm, and 6:30pm is ideal).
Stop snacking between meals (your digestion can’t metabolise all of the food properly and some is left to become toxins).
Stop eating processed food.
Reduce alcohol, coffee, and cigarettes.
Stop drinking cold water and take it tepid (cold water turns down digestion).