How to Detox Your Colon — Naturally

7 Detox Food Superstars For Your Colon:

1. Lentils
2. Raspberries
3. Brown rice
4. Barley
5. Oatmeal
6. Artichokes
7. Apples

Their Role:

Constipation is one sign that your body isn’t detoxing the way it should. Getting plenty of fiber and water (which is drawn to the soluble fiber in foods like beans and oats, forming a gut-scrubbing gel) supports healthy, regular bowel movements — helping to remove waste products and other undesirable compounds from your body. “If you’re not moving things through your bowels, then you can’t get rid of that total toxic load,” says Robert Rountree, MD, family medicine doctor and faculty member at the Institute for Functional Medicine.

Both soluble and insoluble fiber play important roles: In addition to keeping the gut regular, eating a variety of fiber helps provide microbes in the gut with fuel, which helps decrease inflammation and improve immunity. (For more, check out “Fiber: Why It Matters More Than You Think.“)

Good to Know:

All-juice cleanses are devoid of insoluble fiber, so they don’t optimally support your body’s detox-elimination processes, according to Seattle-based nutritionist Riana Giusti, MS, CN. “Fiber helps remove toxic substances that can accumulate in the colon and is an integral part of our bodies’ inherent and natural detoxification systems,” she says.

For more whole foods to support your body’s innate ability to detoxify on a daily basis, see “Everyday Detox: Whole Foods to Support Your Body’s Natural Detoxification Processes” from which this article was excerpted.