Poisons, poisons everywhere. I have written many articles on the huge variety of poisons in our food, water, air, and living environments. We have considered diet changes, water purification, air cleaners, and a host of replacement products for the toxic ones sold at the stores to clean our houses and selves with. But the truth is, no matter how much we do, we will still be sucking up some level of poison into our body every day. So what can we do about this? The best shot we have is some sort of periodic detoxification process to push the poisons out of our system. Just like we have to wash our clothes and vacuum the rugs, we need to clean out our metabolic system every so often.
Why do we need to do this? Obviously since I am writing an article about this subject, it will be a real bother to do. If all it took was standing in the shower for a few minutes with magic shampoo, I would be selling said shampoo for big bucks and folks would be beating a path to my door to buy it. Poisons are one of the main reasons our health is failing us and why we hurt and don’t feel well. There are so many types of poisons it boggles the mind. It would be impossible to address all of them individually even if we could. Fortunately our body has some pretty powerful methods to remove poisons already on board.
Our main detoxification organs are our lungs, kidneys, skin, and liver. The lungs and kidneys work 24/7 pushing certain poisons out of the body with every breath and bathroom run. The lungs constantly expel the toxic byproduct of metabolism CO2. The kidneys filter out water soluble toxins from our blood and dump them into our urine. The most important information we need to take into account here is to keep our lungs and kidneys healthy by avoiding damaging them with behaviors like smoking and taking drugs like pain killers that damage them. I believe I have emphasized in the past to everyone that ibuprofen, Tylenol, aspirin, and such medications are all toxic to the kidney. Occasional use for a day or two a few times a year is not a big issue, but regular use is.
Detoxification through the skin is another terrific way to rid the body of poisons. The skin has sweat glands which pull fluid from your body that may contain toxins. I say may because it depends on how toxic you are and the process you are using to induce sweating. Sweat is mostly there to cool your body down when it gets too hot. But if your kidneys and liver are overloaded with toxin removal, the skin pitches in to help out. Also the use of near infrared light as found in afternoon sun, red light therapy, and near infrared saunas penetrate much deeper into the body than normal heat and mobilizes the release of fat cell stored toxins which can then come out in our sweat. Sweat has been found to release toxic
phthalates found in plastics, cosmetics, and paints, bisphenol (BPA), and heavy metals like lead, cadmium, arsenic, and mercury. So working up a good sweat in the afternoon sun helps your body dump bits of toxic garbage from your system.
The main organ for toxin removal is the liver. It has multiple pathways for dealing with many different kinds of poison. Keeping these pathways working is the biggest key to toxin removal from the body. There are several steps in this process. First the liver grabs a poison floating around in the bloodstream and breaks it into two pieces. This is called phase 1 detoxification. Then it combines one of several small chemicals to the halves to turn it into something that is both less toxic and water soluble. This is phase 2 detoxification. Then it secretes the new water soluble pieces into the bile fluid to be excreted into the intestines. This is phase 3 detoxification. Lastly these toxic excretions have to bind to fibers or other carriers so the won’t be reabsorbed into the bloodstream further down, but are instead eliminated in the stool.
This whole liver system for toxin elimination sounds really good, but the reality is it is messed up in most of us for a variety of reasons. The biggest reason is that the liver can only do so much. It is responsible for over 800
different metabolic processes. The biggest and most important is that it metabolizes our food. The first stop for most of what we eat after it passes through our gut is straight up to the liver for processing. When the liver is busy processing our food, it can not expend any energy on detoxifying our body. So from the first bite of food you eat in the morning until about eight hours after your last bite, your liver is busy processing food – not detoxifying. So if you start eating early and finish late, you might not leave the liver any time at all to do its detoxifying work. This is why it is so important that you allow at least 12 to 16 hours between your last food of the day and your first in the morning. That gives the liver 4 to 8 hours without having to be working on food processing so it can be doing other essential things like neutralizing and dumping poisons.
Another big area of trouble is in the phase 2 process of detoxification. We have to have an abundance of the little chemical pieces to attach to the poison halves. That means we have to be eating the foods that provide those pieces. We need sulfur containing foods like egg yolks, Cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower), and onions. We need the specific amino acids glycine, glutamine, taurine, cysteine, and carnitine. We also need all the vitamins A through E plus calcium and bioflavonoids. Proper liver detoxification uses a lot of nutrients, so we must have these all on board if we want to do any detoxification. Also very critical is consuming enough soluble and insoluble fiber plus things like charcoal, chitosan, chlorella, and cilantro. Each of these grabs different poisons to carry them out of the body. Most people these days do not eat anywhere enough fiber which makes getting rid of poisons very difficult.
What happens if you do not eliminate a poison as soon as you are exposed to it? It is dangerous and causes damage to our delicate biological systems, so the body has to do something with it until it can get rid of it. Most poisons end up getting stored in our fat cells. This becomes a big issue when we are trying to lose weight. If we are dieting and fat cells are getting smaller, then the poisons are being dumped back into the circulation once again. We are getting poisoned all over again. This can make it seem like old illnesses are flaring up. If your detoxification pathways are not working at max, then your body will try to stuff these poisons back into the fat cells along with more fat to keep them in there.
I have experienced this when I have done water fasts in the past. As I write this article I am on day 12 of a detoxification fast. Instead of only consuming water, I am taking detox supporting supplements, drinking a slimy detox drink filled with fiber, charcoal, chitosan, and chlorella, and eating a bowl of Cruciferous vegetables in the middle of the day. Things are feeling pretty darn good on this protocol. I expect I will wind this fast up around day 14 or 15. For those of you not personally familiar with fasting, there is no hunger as my brain and body are well fed from my fat stores. The fat loss is the reason I am focused on detoxification, as it meanstoxins are being dumped into my blood the entire time I am on the fast. Any diet that actually works to produce fat loss will have the same issue.
There are a lot of supplements and products out there that claim they will detoxify you, and most of them are bogus. That is not to say that they might not support detoxification if you are doing the things necessary to promote liver and kidney elimination and all the rest, but this is seriously a multi-factor process. There is no simple way to detoxify. The exposure levels are simply too high these days. Adopting a lifestyle of getting your eating all done within an 8 to 10 hour window, eating a ton of fiber, drinking pure water, and getting exercise out in the sun are the best ways to keep the pathways running that clean you out. But if you find you are having symptoms, more serious detoxification may be the answer for you.