Summer Special: Give your skin a natural detox with these five amazing foods!

Detoxification boosts your energy, helps with weight loss, clears your mind, promotes healthier hair, clarifies your complexion.

Zee Media Bureau/Salome Phelamei

New Delhi: Detoxification is essential because we live in a world filled with toxins and chemicals. Perhaps, we need to detoxify our body not just because it is important, but it is absolutely critical for our health. Detoxification or detoxication (detox for short) is the process of eliminating toxins from the body.

Detoxification can literally reverse the symptoms of illness and change your life. It boosts your energy, helps with weight loss, clears your mind, promotes healthier hair, clarifies your complexion.

With a large variety of fresh fruit and vegetables easily available, summer is an ideal time to detox the body. Moreover, the warm season makes it easier for the body to be in a detox process.

But, knowing the correct techniques as well as choosing the right foods is crucial for a successful detox. Here's how:

Watermelons:

Considered as the number one food for a summer detox, watermelon is packed with antioxidants you need to fight back against free radical damage and prevent inflammation. Watermelon, which is extremely alkaline-forming in the body, contains high amounts of citrulline which helps to create arginine. Arginine removes ammonia and other toxins from the body. It is also a good source of pottasium that balances the high amounts of sodium in our diets which supports your kidneys and is great when cleansing.

Cucumber:

Loaded with essential vitamins, cucumber contains contains 95% water content that helps flush toxins from your body as well as keep you hydrated.

Lemons:

Lemon juice, with its abundant vitamin C and minerals like potassium, magnesium and phosphorus, is is an ideal thirst quencher. Lemons stimulate bile production and helps cleanse the kidneys. Drinking lemon juice mixed with warm water and honey first thing in the morning helps to clear the bowels and to eliminate accumulated toxins from the body.

Green tea:

Drinking green tea is always good. And drinking it in summer in particular has additional benefits – antioxidants in green tea help protect you from the harmful UV rays. It will also help keep you hydrated in the hot summer sun.

Mint leaves:

Mint water is one of the most refreshing summer drinks. With a unique aroma, cooling sensation and other medicinal qualities, mint improves the flow of bile from the liver, to the gallbladder, to the small intestine, where it breaks down dietary fats.