Binge Eating During Festivals? 11 Detox Drinks That Will Cleanse Your Gut

To make detoxing easy for you, below are 11 effective detox drinks that can cleanse your insides efficiently.

Detoxing is simply a systematic approach to assisting your body in removing the toxins stored in its tissues.

It is the assisted cleaning of your liver, blood, and gut. The body has its own natural healing system set up to deal with the chemicals that it doesn't want, and to excrete them. Sometimes though, toxins don't leave our body – they hang around unless we do a timely detoxification. Right now is one such time.

Too many festive meals call for regular detoxing side by side. If you wait for the long festive season – from now till end of the year – then the body will get saddled with multiple toxins, thanks to junk eating and low activity.

To make detoxing really easy for you, below are 11 detox drinks that can cleanse your insides effectively. Pick the ones you like or have them all by rotation.

Green Smoothie

Blend 50 ml of lemon juice, one kiwi, 30 g walnuts, one ripe banana, half a bunch of parsley, a handful of young spinach leaves, 150 ml of water, and have this green smoothie. Spinach is both a diuretic (facilitates removal of the excess water from the body and a laxative (helps in emptying of bowels). And banana delivers loads of the much needed potassium, needed to balance out the excess sodium we eat (in junk food).

Coconut Water With A Twist

Juice half an inch of ginger and one lemon. Mix these two with a cup of coconut water. Add a bit of honey if you want, and sip this anti inflammatory, alkaline, hydrating, and digestion tamer drink.

Papaya Juice

Blend 2 cups sarda/papaya with a pinch of cardamom and salt, add half a teaspoon lime juice, and one tablespoon soaked (for two hours) sabja seeds. This is a super cleansing cravings cutter drink.

Rose Milk Smoothie

Have a rose milk smoothie. Blend one cup of any plant-based milk with half a tablespoon of roofafza. Chill and add one tablespoon soaked sabja seeds on top. Sabja seeds are great to get your digestion back in order quickly.

Turmeric & Coconut Water

Add half a tsp of pure turmeric or grated turmeric root, and the juice of one lemon to a cup of coconut water. Add a pinch of black pepper and half a teaspoon of coconut oil. Turmeric is anti-inflammatory, anti viral, immunity boosting, and a mood stabiliser. And when you combine it with coconut water and lemon, the benefits multiply.

Almond Banana Smoothie

Have an almond banana smoothie. Blend one medium ripe banana, 1½ cup unsweetened almond milk, two tablespoons rolled oats, one cup of ice, and enjoy! It is a filling drink and the extra dose of potassium from the banana will help detox the body and also work as a diuretic.

Herbal Drink

Drink this herbal concoction – boil some cumin, coriander, and fennel in boiling water – after every meal. It’ll get your gut back in order and working efficiently again, and also help flush out excess fluids from the body, detox, purge out toxins.

Amla Juice With Karela

Have one tablespoon of amla juice, mixed with one cup of bitter gourd juice in the morning. Bitter gourd (karela) is hypoglycemic, which helps lower the blood and urine sugar levels, and amla has a very high vitamin C content that too helps keep the blood sugar levels stable.

Apple Cucumber Juice

Juice half a cucumber and churn half an apple (with the pulp), and mix them up with some water and sip. The enzymes in cucumber and the soluble fibre pectin in apples when combined make this drink a perfect hydrating and detox drink.

Barley Smoothie

Add barley (powdered) to water with a little lemon, salt, cumin (bhuna jira), and black salt (kala namak), and sip. Or just boil one tablespoon barley in water for 10 minutes, strain, cool, add lemon juice, and sip. This drink is great to cleanse our kidneys and keep urinary tract infections (UTI) away.

Pear Mint Juice

Blend one cup pear, cored and chopped, 1/4th cup mint (pudina), half an inch ginger, the juice of one lemon, a pinch of black salt, and 1/4th cup water together. Chill and drink. Mint is a super diuretic, and ginger adds the necessary antioxidants the diet. Also, pears are a great Vitamin C food, and C is an effective antioxidant that helps prevent free radical damage that pollution and eating too much junk food may lead to.

(Kavita is a nutritionist, weight management consultant, and health writer based in Delhi. She is the author of Don’t Diet! 50 Habits of Thin People (Jaico), Ultimate Grandmother Hacks: 50 Kickass Traditional Habits for a Fitter You (Rupa), and Fix it With Foods.)