Health

The lights were low, the atmosphere quiet as diners enjoyed their meals and wine, and waiters weaved through the restaurant bringing platters of food. In front of us were decadent flourless chocolate cakes, topped with gently sweetened whipped cream and berries. My husband and I savored forkfuls of rich cake, and laughed and talked. 

And I remembered to be grateful. To be alive. To be healthy enough to enjoy such moments again. To be healthy enough for dates and cakes. 

In a way, nothing yet everything has changed how I view food and how I eat. 

Perhaps the most accurate way to describe it, would be everything I believed before – the benefits of eating well, the joy of food, and the joy of hospitality – is heightened now. 

Serious health issues changes your perspective on life in many ways, and makes you reexamine both the big issues in your life, but also the small ones. I don’t feel it would be honest to jump back into food blogging without sharing some of the ways the last few years have changed how I eat and feed my family. 

For those who have been around for a while, you know that the last couple of years have been a whirlwind of ill-health and a gradual recovery. I have a short list of diagnoses, but mold illness and Lyme Disease were both a significant reason I got seriously ill and even had to go to the emergency room several times with very scary symptoms. (You can read more of that story here: My Lyme Disease Story and How it Changed Me.)

I won’t go into all of the details, but suffice to say, I was very sick for a while, and at one point had a page and a half of symptoms I brought to my doctor. It was brutal, and hard, and scary. I am so thankful to have improved so much in health since those early days of illness. 

When you are that ill, you certainly don’t have the energy to make elaborate meals. My husband took over making dinners, and we kept them very simple. He also went out and bought snacky foods, especially for the kids, that I had long avoided. We were just grateful for modern conveniences! 

My situation (getting ill from mold in a house and a tick bite) also underlined a concept that I always believed in – eating well is a great habit, but it doesn’t ensure health. It can be part of the solution when rebuilding your health, but it’s just one part of the puzzle. We had to look at my health from a very holistic viewpoint, and well beyond simply food. 

I’m so glad that I had changed my subtitle to my blog to be “Beautiful food made simple” because seeing the beauty in the gift of food has long been my goal when writing about this topic. 

So yes, it’s true, I often have to eat healing diets with strict guidelines. But when I had what felt like near death experiences, I gained an even greater appreciation for life, and enjoying the everyday gifts it contains. And very little is as constant as the food we eat every day! 

Now that my health is oh-so-slowly improving, I am leaning into the gift of being able to enjoy sweet ice cream with my kids, and fudging on my “healing” diet on dates with my husband. Sometimes I decided not to “fudge” on certain foods again, after I felt it bothered me too much. But usually, it was well worth enjoying. 

The reason I started this food blog was because I wanted to celebrate the beauty and gift of food – even when I’ve had to eat a more restrictive diet to avoid both my food allergies and food intolerances. 

So none of this is exactly new. But I do feel that I have a heightened sense now of how grateful we should be for food, and how we should bless it not merely for being our fuel and offering us nutrients, but for the beautiful gift it is to us for enjoyment. Savor your food. Enjoy it. It’s good to be alive. Who wants to waste their life competing to be the best food “purist” ? 

So as I continue forward in my food blogging expect the following from me: 

1. This is a food blog that embraces the beauty of food. Even for those of us, like myself, who has a fairly long list of foods she has to avoid. Let’s celebrate that beauty! 
2. I continue to have a curiosity about how food, and daily habits we have interact with how we feel and our health. For that reason, I continue to read research and books on the topic, looking for what I can glean for myself. At some point, I imagine, I may share some of that research, or more of my story. 
3. With everything on my plate, figuratively speaking, we often eat very practical and simple food. So some of my recipes will be practical and simple, because that’s how we really eat. 

Detox baths are a popular recommendation. Is this a valid practice? Here I share my own experience, what research there is, and other possible reasons they are soothing and helpful regardless of whether they are pulling toxins out of your body.

In the past, I viewed detox baths as a way to have a relaxing moment. I wasn’t particularly concerned whether they were drawing toxins from my body. When I got sick from Lyme disease and mold exposure, I found that one of the few things that seemed to give me a boost, as we started my protocol, was taking magnesium, salt, or clay baths. They were wonderfully relaxing and one of the key practices for helping me through some painful weeks and months. In fact, I’ve had a daily warm bath for the last six months. If I skip it, I don’t feel as well and also get more achy and sore.

I’ve talked to other people with similar results.

After my positive experience, I questioned why exactly I had found them so helpful. Was the warm bath simply soothing? Was it because I also was using my bath time to practice mindfulness meditation (a topic for another post)? Or was there something particular about using the Epsom salts, salt, and clay that helped make them especially healing?

Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of studies on baths and detox baths. An important aspect of research to remember is that most of our funding for research goes to developing new drugs. Over the 100 billion dollars spent annually on biomedical research, 60% of that is directly funded by pharmaceutical companies.Only a tiny amount goes to studying more natural, non-drug related options. It is therefore unsurprising that it can be hard to answer specific questions about common alternative recommendations – such as detox baths.

A lack of evidence doesn’t mean anything other than we just haven’t thoroughly studied it yet. That is one reason that I continue basic common sense practices – like eating a clean diet, taking time to relax, and yes, even bathing in soothing mineral baths if they seem to help me feel better. Yet, there are many recommendations made in the alternative world that are made on pretty shaky ground. I questioned whether they were truly “detoxing” me, or if there was another explanation for their helpful effects.

So I wondered what studies were out there, and whether they would be helpful. This is what I found.

Warm water is soothing

We should note from the first that warm water is soothing to achy bodies and sore muscles. I do believe that a big reason why I felt so refreshed after a hot bath was the bath water itself. In fact, there is a name for it – warm water therapy. Warm water without anything added to it can help reduce pain. The biggest hospital in my area now offers tubs for birthing mothers for this very reason. (I’ve tried them. It helps.)

Warm baths make you sweat (which could be detoxing)

People argue about how significant this research is, but I found it fascinating that there is research showing that we do detox through our sweat. Many traditional societies induced sweating on a regular basis, specifically for healthier bodies. Studies have found that sweating does excrete heavy metals and chemicals. While we have other pathways that are likely more important for detoxing (via the kidneys and liver and colon), opening up another detox pathway by sweating certainly doesn’t hurt. Here is some of the research: 1, 2, 3.

I do see changes in my sweating patterns when I’m ill or after I started getting treated for mold exposure, so this was something I especially wanted to research.

(Please note, before taking hot baths, or inducing sweating, you should make sure you don’t have any health conditions that could make this unsafe for you. Anyone who sweats a lot should also be replacing electrolytes and liquids.)

Clay – For beauty or health, or both?

Clay is often used in beauty baths, and have also become popular in detox baths. It may soften our skin, but does it provide any “detoxing support?” I think that one reason that clay is considered detoxing is because it’s a traditional remedy for dealing with bacterial and toxin exposure (you can read about that here). However, it’s far different to be consuming clay than pouring some into the bath. This study doesn’t answer our question directly but did study one healing aspect of external clay. They used French green clay packs to treat a Buruli ulcer (an infectious disease with is hard to treat with antibiotics) with very positive results.

I haven’t come across any studies so far about it pulling toxins through your skin, as is so often claimed. But I did find the Buruli ulcer study of interest, as it shows how it can treat bacterial infections of the skin. Buruli ulcers are in the same family as leprosy and very serious. That clay packs could help them heal it is pretty amazing! Read the whole study for why they think it worked.

Salt water Baths

Another traditional remedy is salt water bathing. Victorians used to “take the waters” for a variety of health complaints, and I’ve heard of it being helpful for certain skin conditions. One study carried out at the University of Manchester studied external applications of salt solutions. They found that it brought inflammation down. High inflammation levels bring up your risk for many diseases, and also increases body pain.

“The team also looked at the benefits of hypertonic solutions when used outside of the body. They soaked bandages in the solution before using them on the legs of mice. They also tested bathing the inflamed area in a hypertonic solution and in both cases the inflammation was reduced.
It appears the hypertonic solution produces an osmotic gradient through the skin, which explains why hot springs, which have a hypertonic make up, can ease the pain of conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis.
Vincent Compan worked with Dr Pelegrin on this research in the Faculty of Life Sciences. He says: “This research opens up exciting opportunities for the use of hypertonic solution as a treatment for inflammatory illnesses such as arthritis. What we’ve identified has the potential to be used to help so many patients.”

I found this pretty exciting! I don’t have arthritis, but I do have inflammation issues and Lyme related aches. This could help explain why salt baths were helpful for me. I did find that my symptoms likely caused by inflammation are reduced by salt or magnesium baths.

Magnesium

Similarly, Epsom salt is a form of magnesium used in baths and has long been used to soothe sore muscles. It certainly seems to help mine. I find baths with Epsom salts in them particularly soothing when I am sore. One question is whether we absorb magnesium well through the skin. There are small studies, such as this one, that suggest that we do, at least somewhat.  However, if you read this study that looks at most of the available research so far, it’s not clear that we do absorb significant amounts of magnesium through our skin.

While I find it helpful for pain relief and sore muscles, I wouldn’t use it instead of a magnesium supplement. If you have low blood pressure, take note that magnesium can lower it even more.

Conclusion:

My honest take on detox baths? I find them soothing, helpful for reducing pain, and they give me a big boost because of that. There is some promising research, but nothing that can prove that they detox you – at least in the way often claimed. I find it an excellent addition, but not a primary treatment in itself. But as a helpful piece of the puzzle? Absolutely.

Finally, it’s important to note that any activity that helps you rest, relax, and reduces stress is a vital part of a holistic plan for a healthy life. Stress reduction is key for a healthy life and not to be scoffed at. Warm baths can certainly be healthy and helpful simply on that fact alone.

What I use:

• Clay
• Epsom salt
• Dead Sea Salt
• Also consider something like this to filter out chlorine
• I love using these activated charcoal coconut oil soaps.

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