What we put in our bodies matters. That’s why, once we decide to detox from drugs and alcohol, we can benefit abundantly from a holistic approach to recovery.

Holistic approaches to addiction recovery acknowledge the central role that nutrition plays in rehabilitating the body, including the brain and nervous system. Restoring nutritional deficits caused by substance abuse, as well as addressing biochemical imbalances associated with trauma and mental illness, can powerfully impact well-being.

In this post, we’ll explore the role of nutrition and self-care during detox recovery.

Why Nutrition and Self-Care Are Essential During Detox 

Nutritional healing focuses on restoring essential nutrients, vitamins, and minerals that have become depleted to suboptimal levels in the body, brain, and nervous system. There are many reasons nutritional depletion can happen, including:

• A diet composed mostly of highly-processed, GMO, non-organic foods, such as the standard American diet. The standard American diet is low in needed nutrients and high in ingredients that harm the body, such as sugar, bad fats, refined carbohydrates, dyes, additives, GMOs, pesticide residue, and preservatives
• Exposure to toxic chemicals in the environment due to living in cities, close to industrial manufacturing sites, or conventional agriculture
• Drug and alcohol use, including excessive intake of prescriptions and over the counter medicines
• Inadequate physical exercise, hydration, and time spent out of doors in green spaces
• A stressful lifestyle or life circumstances, which require being in a state of high nervous system alert, such as living in poverty, in a war zone, in an unsafe domestic situation, or other kind of ongoing danger in the environment

Given all of these possible nutritional vulnerabilities, the average person entering a drug detox program begins their recovery journey from a starting place of serious depletion. That depletion is partially responsible for the body and nervous system’s poor state of health, but it also has a strong impact on mental state. It is very hard to sustain positive body states, feelings and thoughts, without the proper levels of needed minerals and vitamins.

In addition to addressing malnutrition, nutritional support helps reduce cravings and alleviates the physical and emotional intensity of withdrawals. People who receive nutritional support are better protected against relapse. Personalized nutritional support helps regulate and stabilize each person’s unique neurobiology, based on substance abuse history and other factors.

Replenishing the Body: Nutrients That Support Recovery

There are specific vitamins and minerals which are especially helpful for recovery from the imbalances introduced by drug and alcohol abuse. These powerhouse nutritional aids include:

• Omega 3s to support restoration of brain functioning. Omega 3s are healthy, nutritious oils found in nuts, seeds and fish. Omega 3 supplementation helps stabilize mood swings. They may also be prescribed to address cognitive decline where brain damage has occurred due to drug and alcohol abuse, as may happen with excessive use of benzodiazepines (Klonopin, Xanax, etc).
• Vitamin B12 to support nervous system rehabilitation. The class of B-vitamins has positive effects on many body systems, but most of all helps with the operations of the brain and nervous system. Increasing bioavailable B-vitamin levels helps with regulating anxiety and release of excess nervous tension.
• Zinc, Selenium, and Magnesium for tissue repair and mood regulation, reducing irritability and depression
• Vitamin C and D to support the immune system and boost overall health
• Folic Acid to help with mood disorders and habits of emotional dysregulation
• Probiotics to address gut health and immunity
• Protein sources to help with neurotransmitter production
• Carbohydrates and sugar reduction to help with blood sugar stabilization
• Herbs, extracts and whole foods that support the body’s detoxification processes, such chlorella, dandelion, leafy greens, and burdock root.
• Adaptogens like ashwaganda, mushrooms, or rhodiola, to help with reorganization of neural pathways affected by addiction

Overall, nutrients help replenish needed neurotransmitters, such as dopamine and serotonin, which play an important role in mental and emotional functioning. For women, nutritional support for hormone restoration is also frequently important, due to the ways that estrogen and progesterone interplay with substance abuse and mood.

Building a Detox-Friendly Daily Self-Care Routine

Nutrition and self-care both affect mood and energy. By developing a daily self-care routine that includes a focus on nutrition, women who are detoxing from drugs and alcohol can significantly improve their recovery experience. Here are some elements of a positive daily self-care routine.

• Regular Meals. For optimal nutrient intake, it’s important to provide the body with predictability. Regular meal times and consistent amounts of food help stabilize energy levels. Energy levels affect mood and physical well-being. Energy spikes and drop offs correlate to mood swings, so keeping energy levels balanced through regular meals helps balance emotion and thoughts as well.
• Nutrient-Dense Diet. When making food choices, focus on whole, organic clean foods that will source the body with needed vitamins and minerals. If you’re not sure how to choose foods that will replenish the body, nutritional counseling (such as that provided in our program at Villa Kali Ma! https://villakalima.com/sustainable-recovery/life-skills-nutrition/) will be very helpful. Generally speaking, nutrient-dense diets limit sugar, refined carbohydrates, and caffeine. Instead, the aim is to nourish the body with lean proteins, fresh organic vegetables, nutritious oils, and whole grains.
• Adequate hydration is a necessity for the body, brain, and nervous system to function. When dehydrated, the body will drop into irritability, mood imbalances, and cravings. To help prevent that state, recovering women need to proactively replenish fluid levels with pure water, making sure to drink around eight cups of water per day (give or take, and adjusting per variations in body size and physiology). It is also important to source the body with natural sources of electrolytes, which can be found by drinking coconut water and through consuming electrolyte-rich foods like bananas, avocados, spinach, and nuts.
• It is highly beneficial for the body, mind, and emotions to have a regular exercise routine, ideally a form of fitness activity which is relatively vigorous. It’s important to find something that will help the body to sweat and to use up available energy levels, such as running, dance, high intensity interval training (HIIT), biking, or aerobics. Whatever a woman’s current fitness level, the goal is to exercise the body to the point of pleasant exhaustion and energization. This can usually be accomplished in around 20 minutes. Exercising a few times a week is ideal.
• Mindful Movement. In addition to exercise, it is good to schedule mindful movement into the day. Mindful movement is slow, gentle, and serves as a form of meditation in addition to helping the body’s energy flows. Qi gong, yoga, tai chi, and authentic movement are examples of movement practices in this genre.
• Time Outside. The more green time available, the better support for your recovery. Trees and plants help with oxygenation levels, while earth, soil, and sand help with grounding and harmonizing the body’s electromagnetic field. Sunshine, sea air, and natural aromas carried by plants and flowers are naturally medicinal in their effects, stimulating immunity and relaxation. The beauty and abundant metaphors found in natural environments are not only soothing and relaxing, but help with psychological mechanisms of process and release.
• Adequate Sleep. Keeping a regular, predictable sleep schedule is a basic self-care practice with extensive benefits for women in recovery. As possible, set a schedule that honors circadian rhythms. To do this, support the body to be awake and active during daylight hours, permitting it to rest and replenish after dark. Keeping the mind stimulated with screen time and consuming excessive entertainment media interferes with adequate sleep, so consider switching to IRL quiet time activities like reading (physical books), journaling, drawing, or crafts in the hours before bedtime.
• Personal Showering, grooming and taking care of clothes and other aspects of appearance are part of self-care. Regular attendance to the body reflects levels of care for the self. Self-neglect, sometimes visible in neglect of personal appearance, is a signal that adequate levels of care may not be being met. Attending to the body’s cleanliness helps support recovery as a regular practice.
• Keeping a journal, in which to jot down feelings and discoveries, is a helpful way to provide regular ventilation of built up emotional charge. Journaling also helps strengthen the part of us that can witness our process without over-identification with the contents of the mind. Journaling builds the capacity for self-awareness, a valuable asset on the recovery journey.
• Short Meditations and Prayers. Meditation helps induce the relaxation response, bringing greater feelings of peace and ease through calming the nervous system. Even short meditations, of around 3-7 minutes, are helpful for strengthening the ability to access inner peace through easing tension. Depending on experiences with spirituality and religion, some women will find praying helpful as well.

How Villa Kali Ma Incorporates Holistic Wellness in Detox

As an innovative, integrative program helping women recover from addiction, mental health disorders, and trauma in the most natural and effective way, Villa Kali Ma brings holistic wellness approaches into our detox program.

From the beginning of the detoxification journey onwards, we provide nutritional support for the recovery process. Our clean, plant-based diet of whole foods and nutrients is designed to optimize provision of vitamins and minerals that women need to detoxify and replenish.

We incorporate yoga, acupuncture, mindful movement, meditation, breath work, massage, and many other beneficial practices into our schedule, to help women learn healthy habits inside and out. Our holistic interventions support regeneration of tissues, pathways, and functioning of each woman’s body, brain, and nervous system. We help prepare women to be ready to tackle the emotional learning work and perspective changes to come in the next stages of the recovery journey.

If you’re looking for a safe drug detox that will help you replenish your body naturally, consider our unique program for women!