Summer is upon us, and spring-cleaning of your body may be long overdue.

As many Japanese stray from their long tradition of using diet to promote good health, cure sicknesses and induce longevity, and adopt a more Western diet, more than a few Japanese have started using alternative ways of cleansing the body.

Detoxification has existed in India for thousands of years and has been a fringe interest in America for about 50 years. Over the past decade, this method of cleansing the body to speed up healing processes has been gaining momentum through an array of detox diet kits, books, Web sites and programs.