The Link Between Cleansing, Circulation and Weight Loss
You probably give a lot more thought to maintaining your weight than your circulation. But if you’re interested in preventing disease and cleansing your body of toxins, pollutants, additives and chemicals, your circulatory system is your friend — and it needs your help to stay strong.
Imagine your circulatory system as a network of tubular highways reaching every part of your body. Now imagine a traffic jam on one of those highways, with massive delays, excess pollution and a high risk of accidents.
To keep your circulation moving right along, you need to know these basics about circulation and the most effective ways to keep yours pumping.
The two types of circulation
The circulatory system actually consists of two distinct systems that work in tandem: the cardiovascular circulatory system and the lymphatic circulatory system.
As nutrient-rich blood travels away from your heart, it progresses through smaller and smaller tubes, called capillaries. In nearby tissue cells, nutrients and waste are exchanged. Fluid squeezed from the blood, called interstitial fluid or “lymph,” transports waste to your lymph nodes (via a series of vessels similar to veins) where the fluid is neutralized, filtered and eventually returned to the bloodstream.
1. Cardiovascular circulation
Your heart is the power behind your cardiovascular circulatory system, pumping blood through your blood vessels, supplying every part of your body with the oxygen and nutrients it needs for proper functioning. With poor circulation, not only is your blood flow impaired, compromising that blood supply, but your heart is unduly taxed. Both have negative consequences and can lead to a variety of health problems.
Poor circulation can lead directly to heart attack, stroke, eye disease, kidney disease, and claudication (leg muscle pain or weakness that comes and goes after an activity like walking. But poor circulation also plays a role in almost every disease, from dementia to diabetes, influenza to cirrhosis.
2. Lymphatic flow
Your lymphatic circulatory system works directly with your cardiovascular circulatory system to keep blood and lymphatic fluid levels in balance and flush toxins out of the body. It also carries immune cells throughout the body to help defend against infections.
But your lymphatic system isn’t lucky enough to have a powerful organ like the heart to keep fluid flowing. The lymph system is stimulated by gravity, muscle contraction (exercise), hydrotherapy (alternating hot and cold water on the skin), breathing, lymph drainage therapy and massage.
If your lymphatic circulation slows or stagnates, toxins will accumulate and immune cells won’t be delivered to the areas of the body where they’re needed, causing a variety of ailments, the very least of which are aches, pains and swelling (lymph edema). This can also cause deterioration of your thymus gland, tonsils and spleen – key components of your immune system — and weaken your body’s ability to fight infection and disease.
You probably give a lot more thought to maintaining your weight than your circulation. But if you’re interested in preventing disease and cleansing your body of toxins, pollutants, additives and chemicals, your circulatory system is your friend — and it needs your help to stay strong.
There are a number of easy and effective ways to improve the health of both your cardiovascular and lymphatic circulatory systems:
1. Drink plenty of water
2. Exercise regularly (both cardio and strength training)
3. Eat healthy
4. Get a massage
5. Try manual lymph drainage therapy
6. Shake it up with vibration and rebounding therapies
7. Dry skin brushing
8. Hydrotherapy: alternating hot/cold shower