The Best Natural Digestive Detox for Stomach & Colon Cleanse

There’s a saying that goes, “You are what you eat”. If you’re fond of eating chemical-packed processed food, sugar-filled drinks, and alcohol, then basically you are a walking toxins bin.

What happens when your body is stuffed with toxins? Well, that means your bodily functions aren’t going to work well. Your insides will be inflamed, your immune system will be weak, and no matter what supplemental vitamins you’re taking, your cells are too cramped with toxins that it’ll be incapable of proper nutrient absorption.

Since our body’s toxins population is highly affected by things we ingest, we should start cleaning our gut first. An unhealthy gut will bring about gastrointestinal issues like indigestion, acid reflux, bloating, and bowel movement problems like constipation. It can also acutely affect your mental and emotional state!

Don’t want an unhealthy GI tract ruin your life? Save yourself the trouble! Get a stomach cleanse and a colon cleanse and sweep your bowels clean!

You don’t have to starve yourself for days in order to cleanse your stomach. However, if your eating habits resemble the one described earlier – basically a parade of chemicals disguised as food – you’d have to change it to something much cleaner.

At this stage, it’s best to eat a lot of dietary fiber-rich food like green leafy vegetables. The roughage will help sweep out the bigger things stuck inside your digestive system. Elimination is, after all, one form of detoxification.

The stomach cleanse and colon cleanse come next. Roughage can only do so much. It simply acts as a giant broom, but it doesn’t address the digestive issues caused by too much body toxins. Supplemental stomach cleanse and colon cleanse are necessary to get your digestive system back on track.

Doing it all at once is going to cause more harm than good. For the sake of your stomach, a milder transition will make the change smoother. What you can do is slowly cut out processed food and refined sugar from your diet. If you can, take it further and consume only fibrous fruits and vegetables for a couple of days to sweep your bowels clean. Then start with the digestive cleanse supplements like our L-Glutamine, at the same time begin a clean diet of only whole foods.

When you’re anxious about something, nervous before a presentation, or dreading your credit card bill, have you ever wondered why you get knots in your stomach? Similarly, when you’re excited about going on a trip or anticipating something romantic, why do you get butterflies in your gut?

You may feel like you’re going to throw up, or sometimes you get indigestion when eating before a big test or business meeting. If you think about it, the issue is all in your head. You’re stressed about something. But why is it your stomach that’s doing the flip-flop?

As with everything in your body, your brain and your digestive system are linked. Actually, these two share a stronger bond than other combinations. There’s something called the gut-brain connection, and this is a two-way street with stress from the mind affecting your digestive functions or gut problems putting you in a foul mood.

This is why doing a colon cleanse and a stomach cleanse are necessary!

As part of our 21 Day Body Cleanse Program, L-Glutamine is an integral puzzle piece in this holistic system. It’s the official stomach cleanse and colon cleanse of the group, and it does its part in removing body toxins.

We built our 21 Day full body detox system with the aim of addressing all aspects of being healthy. The components of this system work together to target specific problem areas. Our supplements take care of internal cleansing, while the free exercise videos, meal plan, fitness ebooks, and expert support are there to compliment the cleansing.

Just because you’re undergoing a stomach cleanse, or a colon cleanse doesn’t mean you’ll automatically be healthy. If you retain your bad eating habits, if you don’t work out and sweat, if you don’t know how to stay motivated, cleansing will mean nothing. That’s why we built this complete detox system.

Increased Intestinal Permeability – aka “Leaky Gut”

Commonly referred to as “leaky gut,” increased intestinal permeability can play a negative role in autoimmune and inflammatory diseases.2 Clinical studies show that a lack of glutamine in the small intestine, whether from insufficient intake or increased needs by other tissues due to illness, injury, or intense exercise, can lead to decreased thickness of the small intestinal lining and a resultant increase in intestinal permeability.3

Leaky gut can also be a concern for athletes. Increased exercise intensity causes the demand for glutamine by skeletal muscles to increase, decreasing the available glutamine in the body’s total amino acid pool and leaving the intestines and other glutamine-dependent tissues to compete for what remains.

With high-intensity endurance exercise, like distance running, the diversion of blood flow to skeletal muscles and to essential organs like the brain and heart leads to a lack of blood and oxygen in the intestines. This can also be a cause of damage to the gut barrier, leading to increased intestinal permeability and accompanying adverse gastrointestinal symptoms.4

Glutamine and Gut Immune Function

Glutamine also plays a role in immune function and inflammatory response in the gut.* Approximately 70-80 percent of immune cells reside in the GI tract, and many immune cells – like fibroblasts, lymphocytes, and macrophages – use glutamine as metabolic fuel. Glutamine helps regulate inflammatory signaling pathways, including nuclear factor kappa beta (NF-kβ), which can increase production of inflammatory cytokines – namely IL-6 and TNF-α – and over-stimulate the immune response.1

Glutamine can positively affect the gut microbiome as well.* A 2015 clinical trial tested whether supplementation with L-glutamine could alter the gut microbiome in adults with overweight and obesity issues. The experimental group received glutamine daily for 14 days while the control group received the amino acid alanine. The group who received glutamine experienced a statistically significant reduction in the ratio of Firmicutes-to-Bacteroidetes bacterial species while the ratio increased in the alanine group. A higher ratio is associated with obesity and is considered a less desirable microbial composition for health.5

Dietary Sources of Glutamine

By now you might be wondering, “Where does glutamine come from?” Glutamine is classified as a “conditionally-essential” amino acid, meaning your body can make the glutamine it needs under normal conditions, but increased demands, such as with illness, exercise, or stress, make the body dependent on external sources to maintain its glutamine pool. Food sources of glutamine are often those that are high in protein, like beef, chicken, fish, eggs, and dairy products. Bone broth is an easy-to-digest source of glutamine that is also high in vitamins, minerals, and essential fatty acids. Plants are good sources of glutamine, too. Beans, beets, cabbage, spinach, carrots, kale, and whole grains all provide dietary glutamine.

In supplement form, L-glutamine is available as a powder or in capsules. Gut health-supportive formulas, like Thorne’s EnteroMend and Perma-Clear, provide multi-nutrient support for a healthy intestinal lining, normal inflammatory response, and immune function in the GI tract.* If you’re interested in learning more about your gut microbiome and its role in your overall health, then check out Thorne’s Gut Health Test with Microbiome Wipe.