Activated charcoal is a powerful and universal antidote to use for your health. The benefits are numberous including whitening your teeth, lowering your cholesterol, and removing toxins from your body. Even wonderful to remove blackheads and acne!
At first, I was skeptical and could only think about my dirty barbecue charcoals. After hearing about all the benefits, I must admit, I’ve been on the bandwagon for several years. Make sure that you choose a good brand, without many filler products. There are literally hundreds of products and brands to choose from. So make sure you get something that is natural, organic, and doesn’t contain any cheap fillers for optimal health.
Before we get started, use precaution when using activated charcoal, this black powder can stain some surfaces or clothes it comes into contact with.
What is Activated Charcoal?
Charcoal is a fine black power that is primarily made from coconut shells, bamboo, sawdust, coal, shells, or peat.
The reason we call charcoal “activated” is because it has been processed at a very high temperature. Once subjected to these really high temperatures it changes the function and structure of the charcoal.
Activated charcoal should not be confused with the regular charcoal that you would use in your barbecue. The difference is that normal charcoal has not been activated or processed at the high temperatures, so it has a completely different internal structure and difference of surface area.
Furthermore, the barbecue charcoal has toxins that are dangerous for humans. Not too sure why we would cook with something that is toxic for us, but that’s another topic.
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How does Activated Charcoal Work?
Activated charcoal is primarily used to remove some contaminanation from a product, or to refine, purify or otherwise concentrate the desired product.
Activated charcoal works by refining, purifying, or removing a containment, a drug, or toxin from a desired product. It’s unique enough that it makes you want to understand the scientific reasons why to use it. Basically, it’s because of its negative cell charge.
This negative charge of the activated charcoal attracts positive molecities and traps them in your body preventing them from absorption. Those positive molecities are toxins, drugs, poisons, gases and other bad things. Your body is not able to absorb activated charcoal. The toxins that it absorbs is discardarded with your feces and liquids. This is why activated charcoal is often used in drug overdosing.
In real terms, activated charcoal is great for removing and filtering bad stuff from your body. There’s a number of ways to use activated charcoal to do this. And the benefits of removing toxins from your body is huge as detoxing can be a difficult thing to achieve. Activated charcoal is even used in industrial capacifies such as filtering air or water.
10 Uses of Activated Charcoal
Activated charcoal is great for the oral health of your entire mouth. It prevents cavities, cleanses your mouth, prevents gum disease, and is even wonderful for teeth whitening. It may seem weird rubbing black charcoal powder on your teeth to make them whiter. It binds to the surface stains and plaque on the teeeth to remove some of those old yellow teeth stains. And does so naturally.
For teeth whitening, it’s surprisingly an easy process and can be done in less than 5 minutes. It can be done daily until desired effect is reached and then followed as a maintenance treatment.
There are Charcoal Toothpastes on the market, but I prefer to use it with a tablet or powder form. Simple grind up 1-2 tablets into a fine dust, and use just enough water to make it a paste. No special tooth brush is required, but you will need a toothbrush dedicated to this. Afterwards apply it gently to your teeth and leave to sit for approx 3 minutes before thoroughly rinsing. Here is the activated charcoal teeth whitening instructions to read to ensure that you are educated about precautions to take so you don’t damage your teeth.
As someone who has suffered from acne for years, I can attest for the positive changes charcoal has made for me and how it impacted my skin. It draws out bacteria, chemicals, and cleans the pores of the skin flushing out all the impurities. Make it into a mask, or use it as a spot treatment to focus on the blackheads and zits. Activated charcoal has no chemicals in it so it can even be used with people with very sensitive skin. Here’s my favorite activated charcoal clay mask recipe.
3. General Detoxing
We encounter toxins and environmental pollutions in our daily lives. It’s is important to do a general detox to help eliminate as many of them as possible. Long term exposure to these toxins increase aging, allergic reactions and contributes to a weakened immune system and create cellular damage.
In addition to a healthy lifestyle, activated charcoal is used as a part of a detox program paired with black lemonade and detox juice as part of this regiment. As you are ingesting this into your body, make sure that the charcoal you are buying is food grade quality. It’s not suggested to consume daily.
One of my favorite nutrition experts, Dave Asprey from Bulletproof coffee suggests that if you lead a very clean diet and lifestyle that you take activated charcoal when ingesting lower quality food.
4. Hangovers
Activated Charcoal is one thing that really works for hangovers! Let’s face it, as much fun as some wild nights our partying are, alcohol is a poison that has a large affect on your body. Activated Charcoal may not absorb alcohol, but does remove toxins from the body that contribute to the hangover days and make you feel better.
Make sure to get some portable activated charcoal capsules to leave with you just in case. Again only consume food grade activated charcoal. If you only have powdered charcoal, you can easily add it to vegetable capsules to make your own.
5. Activated Charcoal Shampoo
Very similar to the benefits of using activate charcoal masks for your face, it also does wonders for your hair. It can pull out bad oils, dirt, toxins, for longer healthier hair. Becuase it aids in the health of your folicles, it can also improve hair growth and health.
Not only does it affect your scalp health, but it will not leave the typical residue shampoo leaves, giving your hair more volume. For this you can look for some special activated charcoal shampoo, or add empty a capsule or tea spoon into a regular shampoo bottle.
6. Activated Charcoal Water Filters
Activated Charcoal Water filters are both used in large scale factories, as well as in your own home. When used in a water filter their superior absorption properties. When the water passes through it absorbs the impurities from the water making it pure and contaminant-free like nature intendant.
6. Activated Charcoal Water Filters
Activated Charcoal Water filters are both used in large scale factories, as well as in your own home. When used in a water filter their superior absorption properties. When the water passes through it absorbs the impurities from the water making it pure and contaminant-free like nature intendant.
7. Mold Cleansing
Activated charcoal does more then just get rid of the toxins and gases in your body or water, it can also remove mold from the air! Mold is just a common fungus that spread by spores as it releases in the air. Activated charcoal binds to these spores and traps them, so they are not able to spread. Add some of the activated charcoal to a plastic container (like an ice-cream bucket), and poke holes in the container. Let in the room for 3-7 days and watch as it attacks the mold from the inside.
8. Insect Bites and Bee Stings
Activated charcoal powder is effective in drawing out the toxics substances from the body because of insect bites or beet stings. It can also be used to treat minor wounds, skin irritations, and infections. For this you will need to mix the charcoal with baking powder (or coconut oil) and apply to the affected area with a cloth wrap. Apply this wrap for a few hours, before rinsing and repeating, until you feel noticeable better. For any severe cases, make sure seek medical attention.
9. Aid in Stomach Disfunctions
For anything bloating and gas related, charcoal may be the solution to your problem! We have already spoken about all the benefits of how it removes gases, toxins, and positions from our bod, but it can also soak up harmful acids that acclimates in your stomach. This is a natural way to provide relief from upset, bloated, or acid reflux.
10. Lower Cholesterol
High cholesterol is never a good sign, and is caused by the narrowing of our arteries that make it harder for blood to flow through leading to heart attack or strokes. Activated Charcoal helps with this by attaching to cholerines and stomach acids in the intestines and guts preventing them from absorption. This leads to your liver and stomach functioning better increasing the cholesterol by the liver, which lowers your cholesterol.
When taking charcoal for cholesterol, or any other reason, remember it is important not to take it within 2 hours of any other prescriptions, medication or supplements., This is because it may attach and block them preventing them from proper absorption and doing their job.
Where do you buy activated Charcoal?
Before you run off and buy some charcoal, it is important to make sure that you are getting it from a reliable source and in the right form. You can purchase activated charcoal in a couple different forms, powders, pills, toothpaste or face mask. You can easily order some of the powder and use it for every use by simple mixing with water for a face mask or toothpaste. Or put in capsule format with some vegetable capsules.
When purchasing any products, know that some of the cheap products on the market might contain with fillers, and are not the organic. If possible, I recommend always buying organic to get the purest ingredients.
Even though many of us swear by the results, I should say in case any lawyers are out there, heart health and living longer claims have not been backed by studies. Now that has been said, you should also know that you will it may make you dehydrated so take with plenty of water. Do not take any medications or supplements within 2 hours of taking any charcoal, or 1 hour of eating a meal. Most importantly, this is an antidote and is very effective, but should not be taken daily.
The 10+ Healthy Benefits and Practical Uses of Activated Charcoal
Summary
Call us a charcolholics! We use Activated Charcoal for teeth whitening, toothpaste, face masks, clay masks, hangovers, and many more health benefits and uses.
