For All Smokers: How to Make a Detox Elixir To Cleanse Your Lungs

Everyone knows that smoking is terrible for your health, yet many people still indulge in this bad habit.

If you’re a former smoker or find yourself often around second hand smoke, it’s a good idea to detox your lungs to get rid of chemical build-up.

If you haven’t stopped smoking yet, this recipe can help you support your lungs as you try to quit. You can even use it as a cough syrup during cold season!

Lung Detox Recipe

Use this recipe to speed the healing process as you’re quitting your smoking habit.

Ingredients:

• 14 oz /400 g, roughly chopped onions
• 34 oz /1 liter of water
• 5 tablespoons of organic honey
• 2 tablespoons of freshly grated turmeric
• 1 teaspoon of freshly grated ginger

Instructions:

1. Pour water into a small saucepan over medium heat.
2. Add the onion, ginger and turmeric.
3. Just before it boils, reduce the heat and let it simmer.
4. Let the liquid reduce by half.
5. Remove from heat and let it cool slightly.
6. Add honey and stir.
7. Strain into a glass jar with a lid.
8. Once completely cooled, store in the refrigerator.
9. To use, take two tablespoons in the morning, on an empty stomach and two in the evening, two hours after a meal.

Ingredient Breakdown

1. Ginger

Ginger is often used to treat and prevent allergy symptoms, which can can be quite similar to the side effects of smoking.

Many natural aids to stop smoking include ginger ingredients because of its ability to help ease nausea. Nausea is one of the top symptoms of nicotine withdrawal. In fact, ginger has been used to help headaches and nausea for more than 2,000 years.

Ginger extract can also help ease inflammation, which tends to affect the lining of a smoker’s lungs. It’s even been compared to pharmaceutical drugs like indomathacin.

2. Onion

Onions contain phenolics, flavonoids and quercetin which are anti-inflammatory, anti-viral and possess antioxidant properties.

Onions also contain allicin, the same powerful compound as garlic. Both bulbs have been found to fight oral, esophageal, colon, rectal, laryngeal, breast, ovary, renal, and prostate cancers. Alliin slows cancer by supressing the formation of nitrosamine compounds, which are carcinogenetic.

Besides lung cancer, tobacco use also increases the risk for cancers of the mouth, lips, nose and sinuses, larynx (voice box), pharynx (throat), esophagus (swallowing tube), stomach, pancreas, kidney, bladder, uterus, cervix, colon/rectum, ovary (mucinous), and acute myeloid leukemia. (source)

3. Honey

A 2007 study in the journal Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine found that honey, when taken by the tablespoon, actually rivaled most commercial cough syrups in terms of effectiveness in easing coughs.

Since dry cough and heaving are two of the most common side effects of smoking, a sweet spoon of honey is what the throats of smokers crave.

You can also use honey wraps to help ease coughing and remove excess mucus from the chest.

4. Turmeric

Cigarette smoking causes 90% of all lung cancers and is thought to do so primarily by inducing DNA mutation.

Chronic inflammation of the lung tissue exposed to cigarette smoke also contributes to the development of the disease.

A recent study concluded that curcumin, the active compound in turmeric, suppresses the progression of K-ras-induced lung cancer in mice by inhibiting intrinsic and extrinsic inflammation and by direct anti-tumoral effects.

These findings suggested that curcumin could be used to prevent lung cancer in high-risk COPD  (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) patients.

Researcher have also found that the spice can suppress tumor initiation, promotion and metastasis (, suggesting that it may be therapeutic for cancer patients as well.