I’ve been going to see the lymphatic drainage guru that is Sally Hew for an hour a week for about six months now. I first wrote about her here; she’s amazingly skilled at detoxing your system, clearing your skin and really making a difference to how you feel (and, as an added bonus, how you look).

She regularly scolds me for various things each week (in fact this week’s scolding is coming up this evening) including drinking too much red wine, not drinking enough water, not getting enough sleep and so on. Rather annoyingly she does seem to be able to tell. Instantly.

Sally’s given me a list of relatively cheap and easy things we should all be doing each day to help rebalance our bodies and clear out toxins. I probably only manage to do about half, but she swears by them all and as such, I thought they were worth sharing.

What’s more, they are everyday ingredients:

Every evening, just before bed take 1 teaspoon of the highest grade Manuka Honey that you can find (don’t eat it with a metal spoon; this apparently spoils something in the honey although I have no idea what – use china or plastic or, in my case, an old medicine spoon).

Each night, (nicer to take after the honey) we should also all be having 1 tablespoon of quality balsamic vinegar (failing that you can buy Japanese vinegar which is as good, apparently, and cheaper too). Don’t gulp this down in one go – you can’t anyway, it’s too strong – just sip it.  I used to be force-fed vinegar by my mother as a child when I had hiccups, it’s actually a great cure, and have now, weirdly, come to quite like it.

Drink fresh carrot & apple juice twice a week, using three apples and three carrots per helping. This clears out the large and small intestine apparently.

Drink lots of water – warm not cold/iced.  There’s nothing surprising in this as a detox recommendation, but I’m particularly bad at drinking enough of it.

Last but not least…and my least favourite: top and tail and clean 10 organic okra/ladies fingers and boil them up in five cups of water for one hour exactly.  Drink their cooking water within an hour (throw the okra away).  Apparently it’s packed full of collagen and great for the skin. Do this twice a week.

Here’s to hoping it all helps…but even if it doesn’t, it’s stuff you probably already have at home.  I’m a big fan of the idea that basic kitchen ingredients can improve your health and beauty!