The focus of this article is to explain “detoxification”. This is such a buzzword and the issue is that everyone has a different definition of what it means to detox. Some people say detox and they just mean that they aren’t drinking alcohol for a month. Other people say detox and they mean they are only drinking smoothies for a week. And to some people detox means they buy a kit with some supplements that give them diarrhea. We are going to be using the medical (and therefore most correct) definition of “detoxification”.
In order to understand detoxification, we first have to understand the “toxification” part of that. Think about all the chemicals you consumed today. Did you use chapstick, toothpaste, a cough drop, lipstick, anything that touches your mouth? Check the label and see if there are any chemicals. I guarantee if you used lipstick today then you ate that lipstick today as well.
Did you put anything on your skin? Any lotion or deodorant? Perfume? What about your clothes? What did you wash them in? Do they smell like fabric softener? Scents can transfer to your skin and you can also inhale them.
We all think about the obvious chemicals like cleaning products or industrial chemicals, but it’s the every day exposures for most of us that are the issue. But it’s not just chemicals we need to detoxify. It’s also any drugs we take, essential oils, and our own hormones, to name a few. Essentially anything our body wants to get rid of we have to detoxify it.
Detoxification is the process by which our liver, and to a lesser extent our kidneys, process all of this “stuff” for removal from the body. This stuff includes endogenous and exogenous chemicals, everything from our own hormones to any medicines or drugs we take, the pesticides we eat, and anything we absorb through our skin.
The way we detoxify is through the liver. Our liver takes the toxins out of the blood stream and packages them up for removal via the bile. This bile is secreted into our intestines and becomes part of our stool. Minor routes of elimination include being processed by the kidneys and excreted via urine, sweating, and exhalation. So this means we have a limited rate at which we can get rid of stuff from our body.
Imaging a bucket with a hole in the bottom. If you put water in the bucket, it will drain out slowly until the bucket is empty. That’s just like our body. If we get a big exposure, our body will clear this exposure steadily until we are back to normal. However, an issue arises when the bucket fills up faster than it can drain. Water starts to flow over the sides of the bucket. This is just like when our body cannot clear stuff from the blood stream fast enough, then we “flow over” and begin to have symptoms.
The obvious solution here is to make a bigger hole in the bottom of the bucket, or to stop putting so much water into the bucket. The same translates to us: either get better at detoxifying or stop the exposures.
Most of us realize that we should clean up our environment: stop wearing perfume (it’s a neurotoxin anyways), use natural cleaning products and natural body care. Don’t use air fresheners; they’re toxic. This is the easier part of the detoxification equation.
But how do you improve your body’s detoxification rate? Now that takes some science. Your liver has two steps to packaging up waste products for removal, aptly named phase one and phase two detoxification. Each phase needs certain ingredients to work. So you can start by making sure these things are replete.
There are herbs that are good for the liver and will provide these ingredients as well as encourage the liver to work better. All brassica vegetables, onions, garlic, dandelion, burdock, milk thistle, and nettles are all great liver support.
Some people are really slow at phase two detoxification. These people tend to be the sensitive ones that get a headache from strong smells or that react to everything or that need only half the dose of a medication. There are certain herbs that will actually speed up their phase detoxification process. But you have to be careful because if you push this process too fast you’ll end up feeling worse.
I did that to a patient once. I correctly identified that she needed to detox, but we went too fast and she felt terrible. Big black circles around her eyes, body aches, the whole 9 yards. So we stopped for a week to let her recover and then we started detoxing again at a fraction of the speed and she was able to tolerate this much better. Within a few months she was feeling markedly improved and was super stoked to have her energy back. I never made that mistake again.
Now, let’s say we have the liver working great, but remember, stuff leaves the body through bile and the stool. These systems have to also be in good working order to detoxify the body. If you are constipated, you are not detoxifying well. In fact, if you have any digestive issues at all, you might not be detoxifying your body well because your microbiome, the bacteria that live in you, might be dysbiotic. Dysbiotic flora will sit and undo all that hard work your liver did to package stuff up, and then your intestines reabsorb whatever is not packaged and flagged for removal.
One last aspect that many people overlook is the bile. Bile needs to be in sufficient quantities for detoxification to be efficient. If your stool is not dark brown, you may not be secreting enough bile, which means you are not getting stuff out of your body, and likely not absorbing your fats very well either. Again you need to have the right ingredients to make bile, and there are also some herbs that help, like artichoke and chionanthus.
So to recap, to clear toxins your bowels must be moving and you need to be secreting enough bile. Your liver must have all the proper ingredients to process stuff for removal and needs to be functioning at a reasonable speed. If any of these is not in place, the body won’t be detoxifying very well, and there will be a build up of toxins eventually leading to symptoms.
When I say someone needs to detoxify, I mean that they need to get stuff out of their body better. We evaluate this entire process trying to determine where the weak link is and address the issue accordingly. Additionally, I recommend everyone do a proper detox once or twice a year. This is a period of time where you place extra emphasis on optimizing this process to make sure your toxic burden doesn’t build up to the point where you are suffering from it.