Ways to help your body detox

What do the healthiest people have in common? For starters, they limit the junk that enters their body. But even if you don't eat perfectly 24/7, you can do simple things to help the liver — your body's natural filter — do its job. Forget "cleansing." Instead use these simple tricks to boost your natural filtration system.

Wake up with lemon: As soon as you wake up, drink a glass of warm water with fresh lemon squeezed in. Lemon juice helps your liver produce more enzymes, which aid digestion and prompt the liver to purge toxins.

Get bendy: Twisting yoga poses — think, a Seated Spinal (or Torso) Twist — helps with the detox process by stimulating digestion and elimination. By releasing gripping and holding in the belly and taking deep calming breaths, we can relax the muscles and diaphragm, allowing the GI system to do a better job.

Eat your broccoli: Reduce chronic inflammation — which has been linked to heart disease, diabetes, and cancer — by filling your plate with sulfur-rich foods, such as onions, garlic, and cruciferous vegetables including broccoli, kale, collard greens, Brussels sprouts, cabbage and cauliflower.

Brush your body: A few days a week before your bath or shower, dry brush your skin with a soft-bristled brush. Dry brushing has two main benefits: It helps your skin slough off old cells and debris, unclogging pores and enabling the skin to perspire freely. It also stimulates the circulation beneath your skin, which helps promotes cellular renewal and vitality.

Sip tea: Teas may boost liver function, helping to decrease the build-up of toxins in the tissues. A word of warning though: Avoid "detoxing" teas that also promise to curb appetite or rev metabolism because they can be laced with herbs delivering unwanted side effects such as agitation and headache.