Sauna, steam room, and hot yoga are all over the place in the USA and many other countries. Many people think that sweating is the best way to detoxify alcohol, liver, skin, and heavy metal in the body. Sweating can bring out impurity and toxins or sweat itself can be considered toxins. But they do not realize that detoxification by sweating can be unsafe!
- A yoga teacher often perspired at the yoga studio, believing that it can discharge the toxins accumulated from eating modern food grown from chemical fertilizers. At the beginning, she felt great from the sweat and maybe less toxins in her body. But later, her heart was weakened. Every winter, she caught bad colds, needed to stay in bed, and missed her work. And of course, she got a severe covid infection and needed to stay in hospital.
- A movie star enjoyed steam baths several times a week. She didn’t realize that over-sweating caused her fatigue and many other health problems until the Traditional Chinese medical doctor told her on the China Central TV health program.
Proper sweating, sweat naturally and a little, is detoxification, as well as helping the body with its circulation and keeping the body temperature in normal range. But if you perspire too often or too much, it is not detoxification but straining the body.
Traditional Chinese Medicine believes that sweat is the fluid of the heart and comes from blood. Too much sweat wastes blood and hurts the heart. If there is insufficient blood to nourish the heart, the heart loses its vigor to keep beating at a normal speed and rhythm, leading to heart palpitation, arrhythmia, and other heart problems.
If you sweat too much and too often (either from detox or not), you need to rebuild blood and strengthen your heart.
How to achieve this?
Keeping calm, meditating often, and eating pork hearts will aid in refurnishing the blood and strengthening the heart.
There is an herbal formula from Simiao Sun (孙思邈, 581—682), who is named herbal king in China, for building blood and strengthening your heart. It is called Sheng-Mai Yin (生脉饮), which consists of ginseng and other herbs. Visit an herbalist or a TCM doctor to get a formula that is customized to and fits your health condition.
For good health, never sweat too much or too often as well as do not use extreme sweating to detox.
Learn more on detoxification and cleansing, check out my other posts on detox: