Friday Night Detox Bath!

Friday Afternoon: Pre-bath

What are my plans for this oh-so-gorgeous Friday evening? I am taking a detox bath.

Here's what I'll be putting into my detox bath. All of which cost me $5.67 (aside from the water.)

1. Water (as hot as I can stand it)
2. 2 Cups Epsom Salts (magnesium sulfate)
3. 2 Tablespoons Ground Ginger
4. 1 Cup Baking Soda

Then I just swish it all around and sit down. I've heard to stay in at least 20 minutes, up to 40 minutes. I've heard get out after a half hour. I've heard your body will work so hard detoxifying, you will be light-headed when you get out. I've also heard that for 10 minutes afterwards, you will be red from the ginger because it heats your body. YIKES! Is it worth it? Let's look at the supposed benefits.

According to some of my research on this, most people are running really low on magnesium. What the heck do I need magnesium for? Well. What drew me to this whole thing in the first place is that magnesium is good at healing joint pain. I (at 28 years old and being in overall good health) suffer from joint pain (especially in my lower body) every morning. It goes away after a couple of hours, but still. Upon more research, I found that magnesium helps in digestion (who doesn't want to digest better?!), lowers stress (um, yes, take it away), and helps with fatigue.

As for the baking soda, it apparently is very cleansing and makes your skin really soft, so why not throw that into the mix, too? Wikihow told me to in their simple, step-by-step guide on how to do a detox bath so why not. After all, baking soda is 69 cents a box.

Okay. So really. Does doing this seem like a no-brainer to anyone other than myself? So here's my plan. I'm going to save the draft of this post and come back in a couple hours to write about how it all went. Then, if I'm feeling like a new woman tomorrow, I'll write about it then, too.

Friday Evening: Post-bath

Here's what I've noticed so far. My bathroom reeks of ginger. I just sweat a WHOLE LOT. Sweating in water is always super-strange to me. I'm kind of dizzy still (it's been about 10 minutes since I got out) but not dizzy in a bad way... More like the kind of dizzy two glasses of wine might do to you... So not entirely terrible. The greatest thing about it so far: I can breathe more deeply. If you know me, you know that since, well, since forever, I've had congestion problems. So this is really GREAT. Breathing with less congestion. If this is all that comes of this, I'm a happy gal.

I'm excited to see how my ankle joints feel when I wake up tomorrow.

Verdict: It was worth it and I will totally do this again. Maybe once a month?

Here are a couple of the sites that I found really helpful and to-the-point:

http://www.care2.com/greenliving/health-benefits-of-epsom-salt-baths.html?page=1

http://www.wikihow.com/Take-a-Detox-Bath