Recently, I’ve been watching an anime called Kusuriya-no-hitorigoto.
Set in an ancient Chinese-inspired imperial palace, the story follows a young girl who uses her knowledge of medicine and pharmacology to solve various mysteries.
The other day, while watching the anime, I suddenly thought, “Wait, this might give me some ideas for managing chemical sensitivity!”
So I wanted to share it with you!
＊＊＊＊ Spoiler alert from here on! ＊＊＊＊
At one point, one of the emperor’s consorts becomes mysteriously ill and is in danger of losing her life.
The young protagonist notices something.
The sick consort has white powder makeup on her skin…
The consorts and court ladies liked to use this powder because it made their skin look beautifully pale.
But the powder contained a substance that was harmful to the body.
The girl becomes convinced that this is the cause and has the use of the powder prohibited.
Next, she changes the consort’s diet.
Until then, everyone had been giving her elaborate, nutritious meals because they thought, “She needs to get plenty of nourishment.”
But if the body isn’t able to absorb food properly, even nutrition can become a burden rather than a benefit.
So they start with very thin rice porridge and gradually make it thicker as the consort regains her strength.
They also give her tea frequently to encourage urination.
Then they have a steam-filled room built, similar to a sauna, so that she can sweat.
Little by little, the consort, who had become weak and lifeless, regains her vitality and returns to her beautiful self. ✨
After watching this episode, I immediately started drinking a cup of tea every day.
I also started making sure to sweat when I take a bath.
I became more careful not to eat too much animal-based food, either.
And I felt my body become a little lighter.
These are all methods I’d known about for years as classic approaches to “detox,” but for some reason, I’d completely forgotten about them.
It gave me a good opportunity to go back to basics and try them again.
So, to summarize:
Classic Detox Approaches
1. First, keep unwanted substances out of your body.
Stop using them or distance yourself from the source.
2. Keep your meals light and reduce the burden on your body.
In particular, eat less animal-based food.
3. Drink tea to support elimination.
Brown rice and miso are also traditionally considered foods that can support detoxification.
4. Sweat.
Take a bath or do some gentle exercise, according to your physical condition and without overdoing it.
When it comes to managing chemical sensitivity, I think of the basic approach as:
“Don’t let it in.”
“Help it out.”
“Take care of your body’s foundation.”
I felt that these three ideas were beautifully illustrated in the anime I watched this time.
First, the use of the white powder was stopped.
→ Don’t let it in.
Next, her meals were made lighter, and tea and the sauna were used to help with elimination.
→ Help it out.
Then, the rice porridge was gradually made richer to help her regain her strength.
→ Take care of the foundation.
That said, I also feel that too much “detoxing” could put a burden on the body.
In the past, I felt really good when I was following a whole-food diet centered around brown rice.
However, when I continued it for too long, I became somewhat anemic.
I wondered whether the strong detoxifying effect I associated with brown rice might have also caused some of the minerals my body needed to be lost.
So I don’t think detox is necessarily good simply because you’re doing more of it.
It seems important to listen carefully to your body and find a balance between “letting things out” and “putting things in.”
I also think different types of tea can work differently for different people.
I used to drink dokudami-cha (Houttuynia cordata tea) regularly for a long time.
I learned that it may help with the elimination of fats, but because my diet is already relatively low in fat, I found that I tended to feel a little colder when I drank it regularly.
So I stopped drinking it during the colder months.
After I did that, I suddenly stopped waking up at night to go to the bathroom.
These days, I feel good when I have one cup of black tea a day.
I’ll continue adjusting things while listening to what my body is telling me.
Everyone is different—our age, sex, constitution, and lifestyle are all different.
So I think it’s best to find what works for you by trying different approaches and paying attention to how your own body responds.
I hope this article gives you even a small idea that might be helpful. 😊
Thank you so much for reading all the way to the end!