#153 Oxidative Stress and Antioxidants: Protect Your Cells and DNA

The information provided in this podcast is educational and not intended to diagnose or treat medical conditions.

Dr. Donnie Wilson struggled for decades to solve her numerous health issues and heal her body. But with focused determination, she healed herself and in doing so, she discovered the Dr. Donnie stress recovery Protocol. On this show, you're going to hear from doctors, nutritionists and Experts along with Dr. Donnie, who will give practical advice and wisdom to help heal your body. This is how humans heal.

Hi and welcome to how humans heal. I'm Dr. Donnie Wilson, and today the topic is oxidative stress. I'm really looking forward to diving into this topic with all of you so that you really become experts in understanding your body and why oxidative stress and antioxidants are so important to your health. So here's the things I'm going to cover in this episode. I want you to understand what is oxidative stress? How do we notice the signs that this might be an issue for you in your health? What are the reasons we would even want to be thinking about oxidative stress? And in for that matter, how do we measure our level of oxidative stress or our need for antioxidants in our bodies? And then let's understand what are the antioxidants? How do we get them? How do we choose them in our diet and our supplements, how to know how much to take, when to take them. And I think that about covers it. I'm happy to answer any other questions though, so if while listening to this episode you have questions, please don't hesitate to reach out and let me know your questions. I will also be putting links to other resources blog articles that I have regarding oxidative stress, including my book Master your Stress Reset your House where I cover oxidative stress in detail. And I may be sharing some from the book with you in this episode. Because ultimately this book is called Master your stress. That doesn't just mean your stress from your external world or sometimes when we think of stress, we only think of emotional stress. But when it comes down to it, and we are, from a scientific perspective, we talk about stress and even trauma on our bodies. It's not just coming in from an emotional direction, it's also coming in in terms of toxins that we're exposed to in our environment, which become a toxic stress. And we can be. We can end up having imbalances inside our body like in our digestion and in our cells. And these imbalances increase what I refer to as internal stress or oxidative stress in our Cells and that's what we want to be paying attention to here. So it's helping to broaden your understanding and your observation of how stress affects you as a human and understanding what you can do about it. Because so much of the time we figure, oh, there's stress, but there's nothing I can do about it. And that's a myth. There's so much you can do to help your body recover from stress. Every moment of every day. There's so much we can do to counteract stress. It doesn't mean that we're going to go out and try to expose ourselves to more stress because we know how to counterbalance it necessarily. But it does mean that being human means we're going to do things that are challenging for us, that inspire us, that and in things that are just part of being human, that are going to involve some stress. So the problem is too much of the time we lack the stress recovery, the anti stress. And that's why this topic about oxidative stress and antioxidants is so important, is to really understand about the balance. Even when it comes to oxidative stress, it's about imbalance. What happens is our bodies naturally have oxidation happening all the time. Every day, all day long we have oxidation happening again. It's not about avoiding all stress, it's not about trying to avoid all oxidation. But what we need to try to do is balance it with the opposite anti oxidation, right? That's what we call them antioxidants. So it's again about how do we become more aware. So we know when things are out of balance and we know what to choose to get it back in balance literally what's happening. And this is getting into a bit of the science of it, but I feel like that's important for you to really be able to understand what's happening in your bodies. It's really like looking at biochemistry and we understand that really we have biochemistry chemical reactions happening within us, inside our cells constantly. That's what runs a human body is the chemical reactions from different substances, from.

Hydrogen, oxygen, right. It's like when you think about it, our bodies are made up with all kinds of. If you look at the periodic table, right, even if you think of sodium, potassium, water is H2O, right. These are all, well, are referred to as biochemicals. It's different than when we refer to chemicals that are like man made toxins. What I'm referring to is the natural substances that make up human body and human cellular processes. So what can happen is Something called free radicals or what sometimes is referred to as reactive oxygen species. You see, in, in chemistry, you want, there needs to be balance in every chemical reaction and every chemical substance. If there's a balance, then there's no free radical. There's nothing sort of left hanging. And what can happen though is in some metabolic processes, there'll be sort of an empty spot. There'll be a, something that's left hanging open. And that's what's referred to as a reactive oxygen species or free radical, meaning it's, it's sitting there kind of waiting for something else to bind to it. And when that happens, that's where it's, you know, an antioxidant could bind. And now it's counteracting that free radical. But if we don't have enough antioxidants to bind to the free radicals, if there's not enough antioxidants floating in your cells, in your body, and there's a lot of reactive oxygen species or free radicals, those free radicals will want to bind onto something. And that's the issue because they start to cause damage in your cells, in your DNA. So these free radicals, they're like sort of like left there hanging, like, okay, I gotta bind to something and it ends up binding. And when it does that, it causes damage in your cells. So that's what we call oxidative stress is the damage from these unbound free radicals. And so some of that is still considered normal and healthy. In fact, when we are exposed to stress, even emotional stress or physical trauma crisis, it, our, it signals to our cells the stress messages going into our cells and telling even our mitochondria that there's a stress going on. And what happens then? The mitochondria get the signal, oh, she's stressed, she needs more antioxidants, she needs more help to counteract this stress. And oxidative stress. This is something in the research referred to as mitochondrial hormesis or mitohormesis. Hormesis is what happens when we, we're just outside of our comfort zone and we pushed into this unknown territory, right? And this could be like even if you just exercise a little more than usual, or you fast a little longer than usual, or you have a little higher stress load in your life than usual, your body's going to notice it and try to help you adapt. And so these mitochondria start to help you adapt to it. It increases the mitochondrial function, increases antioxidants, and increases detoxification. So our bodies have this protective mechanism when it notices we're stressed, it's going to try to help protect us. However, here's the opposite side of the coin. This is kind of this, almost this. I call it a paradox, because we would like to think that when we're under more and more stress and more and more toxin exposure, we would hope our bodies can keep on helping protect us, right? Just like I talked about with this. Mitochondrial hormesis, in a healthy way, is going to help help protect you. But what can happen is when our bodies are overwhelmed. So now we've pushed beyond a healthy hormesis. We've pushed into the danger zone where the stress levels are so high, the. The toxin levels are so high, that now it's like the mitochondria are too overwhelmed. They can't create this protective mechanism. And it actually ends up even being worse than that. It's like, then we're producing less antioxidants, and our mitochondria become so overwhelmed, they can't protect us. And this is why sometimes when we're under this much stress for this long a time or this much toxin exposure, we just feel worse and worse and worse because our bodies just can't. And our mitochondria can't catch up. They're just so far behind, and they get more and more behind. So sometimes people feel like, why am I feeling worse and worse? Even though I'm trying to improve, I just feel worse. Or I'm adding more and more conditions to my list because it's slipping back. And it doesn't mean we can't recover it. It just means we need to acknowledge it and start strategizing to help you get back on track again. But that's why sometimes people just start to feel worse and worse and worse because their bodies are like, I can't. I can't help you any. I'm getting overwhelmed and I can't catch back up again. Now, the other example, when, like, say we get a virus, catch a virus, any kind of cold, virus, flu, virus, you name it, virus, COVID virus, what happens is our bodies notice that there's an infection, and our bodies create more oxidative stress to help kill the virus. So sometimes when we have an infection and we feel worse and we're like, why is there so much inflammation? Why do I feel so achy and tired and yucky? And it's because your body's trying to protect you from the virus. And so it's creating more oxidative stress and inflammation as a way to protect you. But it ends up Sometimes that goes too far too. And then we have this residual remaining inflammation, which is what we're learning is like post Covid, long haul symptoms. For example, is this where the immune system got overwhelmed too far out of its comfort zone and isn't able to pull back after the infection's gone? The immune system's now in this high histamine, high cytokines, high inflammatory state and we need to help it rein its back self back in again. And we do that a lot with antioxidants. Right. So it's again, it's about understanding balance. It's about understanding that we're gonna, we're gonna get exposed to viruses. We want our body to protect us, but we also need to be observing and noticing. Is my body too overwhelmed? Does it need more help recovering? And that's where, you know, as a naturopathic doctor, this is where I, I specialize is helping you to understand how to help you be as healthy as you can be and in balance as you can be. So that when something comes along, a virus comes along, or other viruses too, let's say HPV virus or Epstein Barr virus or herpes virus, you name it, we're going to get exposed to viruses as humans. But how do we have as much balance and health as we can so that when that happens, we're ready to respond and recover? Um, that's really the key, and I think that's what gets missed in the conversation about stress is we don't, we think it's like this all or nothing, and it's really not. It's about how do we create balance. Which is why I named the book master your stress, not manage your stress. It's how do we master this whole balancing act. The other thing I wanted to mention related to oxidative stress is the liver. Because our liver is our main organ for helping us to manage toxins in our environment. So if we think about toxin exposure in the air or water or food, pesticides, for example, insecticides, flame retardants, which is in a lot of our clothing and furniture.

Insecticides that are used in buildings and on, and pesticides that are used on or you know, on like golf courses to prevent weeds, there's, you name it. There's so many toxins we're exposed to, including gasoline and, and radiation, let alone EMFs and mold toxins. So many people I see, we figure out that they've been exposed to mold in a water damaged building. Mold releases toxins. So it's not just the exposure to mold. It's not just an allergy to mold. It's actually that the mold is spewing out toxins that go into. They get right through our skin, right into our bodies and they stick there. And we could have mold toxins in our bodies for years. Same with other toxins. We have a. We can have toxins we're exposed to 30 years ago that are still in our bodies. They get stuck in the tissue. Now if it's circulating through the bloodstream, it's going to go through the liver. And the liver's job is to help detoxify the toxins, including things like alcohol. Right. And other chemical substance like medications that we consume have to go through the liver. And the liver's job is to manage to. To detoxify it. Now the liver has two phases we call phase one and phase two of liver detoxification. And it has to go through phase one first and then through phase two. And these are all enzymes in the liver then have different jobs. I mean, it's amazing when you think about it actually that our human body has these enzymes that have the capability to detoxify for us, even substances that are new and maybe we've as humans never, not much been exposed to, but our liver knows how for the most part to process them. Now the thing is, is that we also always have genetic variations, including in our ability to detoxify different substances. So depending on your genetic variations, you may or may not have as good of a ability to even detoxify estrogens, for example, or other toxins that you might be exposed to. And this is all information we can get from. If you're ever interested in doing more with understanding your genetics, let me know. I can also do another episode about genetic variations. I'd love to talk about that. But the key here is to understand that you are a unique individual when it comes to your liver detoxification. You're a unique individual in terms of how your body responds to stresses, viruses, toxins. You are a unique individual. So it's. I look at it as. It's our job, each one of us, it's our job to understand our body best as we can. So we know how to support our body in its unique needs to counteract stresses of various types. And so we, when it comes to the liver detoxification, it's especially phase two of the liver detoxification that involves antioxidants. In particular, the one that is the most prevalent in the human body called glutathione. Glutathione is an antioxidant that our body makes a lot of antioxidants we can make inside our bodies. Some of them we cannot make inside of our bodies. And we need to get it from an external source, like vitamin C humans need to get from an external source. So glutathione, though, we can make inside our bodies. If we have the right precursor nutrients, our body can make it. So at the same time, we might want to add more, right? If we feel like our body's not able to keep up with the glutathione needs, or the glutathione got depleted, we might want to add the precursor nutrients in through supplements or actually take glutathione to increase our glutathione levels. So think of antioxidants like glutathione as cell protectors. That's what I call them. They're the cell protectors. I almost think of like a superhero, right? They're the ones protecting our cells and our DNA from damage from oxidative stress. And so examples of our cell protectors or antioxidants, if you think of the name, it's antioxidants, right? It's just like I say, anti stress, we can do anti, we have anti stress hormones like oxytocin. We can do anti stress activities like deep breathing. And when it comes to antioxidants, we can get them also from nutrients and from our food. So vitamin C I mentioned, is such a simple basic nutrient, right? We can get it from many colorful fruits and vegetables, contain vitamin C. And you can also get vitamin C in a supplement, whether it's a capsule or powder or a liquid, you can get vitamin C. And the main thing is like, I mean, there's research on really high doses of vitamin C. You can even get IV vitamin C. You're going to want to work with a practitioner for that. But sometimes we use that, right? Higher doses of vitamin C as a super duper antioxidant. And the only thing with oral vitamin C is at some point it could cause loose stool. So you kind of need to know your body if you have, if you swallow too much at once and you end up with diarrhea, you just know you had too much and you back off for the next dose. Also when we swallow vitamin C and it goes through our circulation and goes then eventually goes through the kidneys, our. All of our blood eventually goes through the kidneys and is filtered there. So really, from a nutrition perspective, what, what we know is that our body can take in about 500mg sometimes I can think it can go to a hundred, a thousand milligrams at once. But I would say it doesn't really make sense to swallow more than a thousand milligrams in one sitting because your body and your cells can't even take it in and. And benefit from it. Um, so there's no really, no need to take like 5,000 at once. And it probably would cause diarrhea anyway. So with vitamin C, it's always better to space it out through the day, like morning and night or, you know, at least four or five hours apart. There's also other antioxidants, which I think when you hear them, you're gonna be like, oh, of course they. These are the ones we hear about all the time. This is what's in your multivitamin, probably like vitamin E and zinc and selenium, even vitamin beta carotene and vitamin A. Right. These are, like, things we normally think of as good for us. Why are they good for us? Because they're cell protectors and they are used in so many metabolic processes in our bodies. Remember I talked about how our liver alone has all these enzymatic processes to help us detoxify toxins, and these nutrients are required for these detoxification processes, let alone all the processes that help us metabolize our protein, carbs and fats into energy and the processes that help our mitochondria make energy. It all is using these nutrients. That's the whole point of our nutrients. So when you think about antioxidants, I encourage you to pull out your multivitamin and see how much of these antioxidants are you already getting in your multi. Or maybe you're taking a separate antioxidant supplement. Or you could start to think about, do I need a separate antioxidant supplement? Because. Because, yes, you can get it also from your diet. In the diet, antioxidants mostly come from colorful fruits and vegetables. That's the best way to identify something that has antioxidants in it. So if it's green, like asparagus, broccoli, spinach, avocados, these are known to be higher in glutathione. For example, um, if you eating a fruit or vegetable that's red or blue, like berries, or even white, it contains antioxidants. So the antioxidants often give the food a color. And this is why fruits and vegetables are emphasized in our diet. Not that you need to. It's not necessarily that more is better, because, again, you always have to keep in Mind that whatever you eat, you're going to need to digest and absorb. So it's not necessarily that good to have a huge amount of fruits and vegetables all at once. I hear people doing a smoothie with so much in one. You know, berries and, and spinach and you name it, even seeds and nuts. And you can put in a huge, put the whole refrigerator into your smoothie. But then you still have to digest and absorb it. And you're not going to be able to digest and absorb all of that at once. You, your digestion is just going to hit its limit. So the key is, how do we consume just enough so that we can get some antioxidants in our diet, but without overfeeding ourselves calories or overfeeding our gut bacteria? Right, we want to feed our gut bacteria, but we don't want to overfeed them. So it's all about learning how much can I consume at one time, how much can I get antioxidants from my diet? And of course, the more nutrient dense your foods, the better. And at the same time, you still might need more antioxidants, which is when taking a supplement would be beneficial. Or if you're doing a detox, like say you're doing a detox for a week or two weeks, then you might, for a period of time add in more antioxidants. In that situation, we might even add some of the other antioxidants that you might not be as aware of, like lipoic acid. Alpha lipoic acid is an antioxidant. So is N. Acetylcysteine, also known as NAC. NAC.

Called Q10, is another antioxidant that helps protect our cells and our mitochondria. So you see, there's these other nutrient antioxidants that you might want to also add in.

You can get some from your food, but you, if you want, if you feel like you need to help get this back into balance, you might say, hey, if my oxidative stress is too high and I need to reuse my antioxidants, then you might be choosing some of these. Especially if, you know you've been under a lot of stress or had a big viral infection, right? Then you're like, oh boy, things are out of balance. I'm not feeling good. Let's talk about that here in a second. What are the symptoms? But if things are out of balance, you're like, I need more antioxidants to bring it back in balance and protect my cells. Then you're going to Want to not only get antioxidants from your diet, but you're also going to want to get antioxidants from nutrients. And also there's clear substances that have antioxidants. For example, green tea. It's well known that green tea contains antioxidants. So does turmeric or curcumin. So good at bringing in antioxidants. Same with resveratrol. So there's natural substances from plants that contain antioxidants. And so that's why sometimes we will take supplements or add these. Drink. You can drink green tea. You could put turmeric in your food. Right. You can get these substances in different ways and they contain, among other things, usually these plant substances also are anti inflammatory and multiple other positive things that they're doing. But one of the benefits is antioxidants. Okay, so let's go back and ask, how do you know if you need this? Right. How do you know if this is important for you? Well, one of the ways that we know that we have high level of oxidative stress. Right. This imbalance, high oxidative stress and not enough antioxidants, is the signs of aging. You know what we would usually think of as aging, like wrinkles on our skin, gray hair. Even when you're you. Yeah. If you just notice your skin is changing, is aging. Also your memory would be signs of oxidative stress in your brain. Right. Or let's see some other signs. Definitely if you have.

Pre cancer or been diagnosed with cancer, because cancer is very much associated with oxidative stress. We know that when humans have higher oxidative stress, we're at higher risk for cancer of all kinds. So if you already know you are, you either had cancer or your, your body's having showing signs of abnormal cells, such as those of you who had a Pap smear that showed abnormal cells on your cervix or vaginal cells, then that tells us your body's in this pre cancerous state. And likely you have high oxidative stress compared to antioxidants. So this is the time to work on that balance. Okay. Also, I would say many other symptoms too, that you may not even realize, like neurological symptoms, whether if you might be having tingling, numbness, nerve pain, head pain, migraines, those all indicate to me that there can be some oxidative stress happening in your nervous system. Even anxiety, depression have been associated with oxidative stress. Um, also, if you know you have high blood sugar levels, like not even a diagnosis of diabetes, but if your hemoglobin A1C is, let's say, over 5.4. Like, say it's 565758. It's not diabetes yet, but it is high blood sugar levels. High blood sugar increases oxidative stress. So we know there's gotta be higher oxidative stress in your body, which is why higher blood sugar levels are associated with cancer risk, dementia risk, heart disease risk. Oh, that's. The other place where oxidative stress happens is in your blood vessels. So if you're worried about heart disease risk when it comes, you know, for so long, we were always taught, oh, it's about these plaques and the blood vessels. Yes, it's about the plaques and the blood vessels, but it's not just about the cholesterol. We have to ask, why is the cholesterol in our blood vessels in the first place? Well, the cholesterol's in your blood vessels because there was inflammation and oxidative stress in your blood vessels first. And because of the inflammation and oxidative stress in the blood vessels, the body put cholesterol and then calcium to try to squelch this oxidative stress. And it ends up that. That cholesterol and calcium in your blood vessels blocks the blood flow. But the real original cause, and there's so much research on this, is from inflammation and oxidative stress in the blood vessels. So when you start worrying, you see, you know, like a lot of times it's a parent. You know, if your parent had heart disease or a heart attack or blood vessels, and you're like, oh, my gosh, I don't want that either. Or dementia, I don't want that. Or cancer, I don't want that. What do I do? Ultimately, it comes back to your oxidative stress level and how we can counteract that. And there are tests now to. Because whenever I'm helping patients, make patients who work with me on an annual basis to help them prevent all these conditions, we order specific blood tests, not just cholesterol and lipid levels. We do tests to measure myeloperoxidase, for example, which is a measure of oxidative stress in the blood vessels. So these tests are available. Some of them are even covered by insurance. And now you really know how your blood vessels are doing and you know what to do to correct it. Okay, the other test we can do, because if we want to know, well, how do we know if we have. If this is a problem? Right. Maybe you don't already have a health issue, but you're one you want to prevent it, right? You want to prevent health issues and you want to know where you are at this point in time. So, yes, you could measure antioxidants in blood. Although most labs and most blood tests don't really do a great job of measuring things like vitamin C and glutathione. It's not going to be happening in your regular blood work. If we want to do that, we need to go to specialty labs. These specialty labs do exist and they can do, for example, a micronutrient panel. A micronutrient panel essentially tells you from A to Z how are your nutrients and how are your minerals and how are your antioxidant levels. So this is a test that I can order for patients and it's generally an out of pocket cost, but for a couple hundred dollars, you get to know how are you doing with all your nutrient levels and your antioxidant levels. And so it can be really eye opening if you're like, oh, okay, I'm doing good with vitamin C and selenium, but I, I'm low on, on Coq 10, for example. And then we know to add that in because it doesn't. I mean, it can be costly to just decide to take all of these not knowing if you really need them. Maybe you're getting enough in your diet, maybe you don't need more. So I'd rather test instead of guess. So we know when you're taking a supplement that we're addressing a deficiency. Again, it's different for everybody. Also, there's a test called 8oHDG, which is a urine test. It's not considered standard yet, like in a standard lab, although they, I think some labs can run the 8oHDG. I usually get it from the Precision Analytical Urine Hormone Panel because it's included in their complete hormone panel. It shows us your 8oHDG, 8 hydroxy D O. Let's see, deoxyguanosine. So don't try. You don't have to know all of that. You can just know about 8o h d g. And it's a metabolite that gives us a sense of your oxidative stress level. So we use it to assess the rate of stress in the body. It's been shown that when the 8o h d g is higher, it's known to be related to having higher oxidative stress. So then we know we gotta start figuring out where is all this oxidative stress coming from and how do we counteract it.

So that panel is like a $300 panel or $400 panel, I think, and then we could get that as part of it. It's not the only thing measured, although there are labs where I think I could measure just A to hdg, so, you know, you could communicate with me as a patient, and then we can get the right test ordered for you. There's also a panel called an organic acid panel. Organic acid panel is a way to assess a bunch of different metabolites in the body. It's a urine test you do at home. You send it in. It shows us signs of toxins in your body, even toxins from your gut, like from imbalanced gut bacteria and yeast in the digestion. It will show those toxins in the urine. It will also show imbalances in your metabolism, in your neurotransmitter metabolism, and in your antioxidants and detoxification. So it will show us, do you need more glutathione? Do you need more CoQ10? And so that can be a very helpful panel because it's also about, you know, depending on. When you're listening to this, I would say the price is between 300 and $400.

And because the labs change their prices every so often. So I just want to give you a sense of it. So the organic acid panel is a urine panel, and it shows all these metabolites. Like, I think there's probably over 60 metabolites in. I've been reading these panels for 15 years, and. And to me, it's. I just look at it because it's one of those things. It's like speaking another language. I can look at it and see right away where the imbalances are and be able to tell you, here's what your body needs more of. And it's unique to each person. And it depends on your toxin exposure and your gut health and so many other. Your stress level, so many other factors. Uh, so there's other, more specialized testing, if needed, like, we can measure reduced versus oxidized glutathione and special blood tests. So there's more tests we can do. But to me, it's not. We don't have to run that test on everyone because it's. Here we're adding another, like, 400. Let's just start with the essentials. Get a sense of. Is oxidative stress an issue for you? Which antioxidants do you need more of? And we can start addressing it. We don't necessarily have to do more and more tests. We just start. Need the Right. Test to give us the right information for your body. Now, this is if you're. I would say if you're really starting to struggle with symptoms like, let's say you're experiencing fatigue. That's one of the most common symptoms of oxidative stress, by the way. Is this fatigue and brain fog? And you're like, it's not getting better. Right. First, we start with essentials, like, okay, do you have anemia? Do you have low thyroid function? How's your cortisol levels? Right. If those things are all doing okay and yet you still feel tired and brain fog, we need to be like, what are we missing? Okay, have you had toxin exposure? Do we need to test for the toxins? We can test for environmental toxins. We can test for mold toxins. We can identify what it is that's a source of toxins for you. So then you can avoid those toxins. Right. It's a matter of changing the balance. How do we decrease the input of toxicity, and how do we increase your ability to counteract it? So if you have imbalanced gut biome and you have overgrowing bacteria, and they're producing toxins that are raising oxidative stress in your body, yes, you could take some antioxidants, but we need to address the overgrowing bacteria. We can use my antimicrobial protocol of herbs and other substances that help get the bacteria under control. We want the right amount of bacteria, not too many. And we can bind all those toxins and get them out of your body safely and effectively without making you feel worse. This is the thing. A lot of times when people think of detoxing, they think of feeling worse. And I think that unfortunately, a lot of times when people go through a detox, they do end up feeling worse. I think it's because maybe the practitioners just are not as trained in how to do it or they're trying to go faster. You know, sometimes as humans, we, like, want things to change, you know, more better, faster. So it's not necessarily the best way to do it, especially when we're detoxifying. It's much better to stabilize first. I'd much rather have you. Stable electrolyte levels, stable blood sugar levels, stable ability to sleep, hormones, bowel movements. Get things functioning, the basics functioning. Then we can start to add in gentle detoxification. And how do we do that? Well, how about we just give the liver the nutrients it needs to help us detoxify? And how do those toxins get out once they go through the liver? They have to go out through the stool. So we need your bowels moving. The toxins go out to our skin. So we need you sweating effectively. We need to make sure you're drinking enough water and enough electrolytes to process the toxins out of our cells. Right. So a lot of times, detoxification starts with just the basics of drinking enough water, having a bowel movement, every bowel movement every day, and, you know, making sure you have the right nutrients for these metabolic processes to happen. So when I design a detox, I. This is how I'm thinking is how do I get the basics going first? We're not going to just go in and start trying to push those toxins out or bind all the toxins or. Because we don't have a healthy foundation to start with. So it's so important because when you have a healthy foundation going on in your body, then we can. And we know which toxins we're trying to get out. Because when you have toxins in your body, they don't all have the same exit route. We need to know, oh, is this what type of toxin is too high? So then I can give you the right nutrients to help that toxin get out. Some toxins need more glutathione to get out. Some toxins need more bi. You know, say, certain kinds of binders. Even when it comes to binders, there's different kinds of binders. Even fiber in our diet can bind certain toxins. So can substances from plants. Like yucca root is particularly good at binding mold toxins, whereas something like charcoal is going to be different. Charcoal is better at binding to metals. So we're gonna choose the binder to bind onto the toxin based on which toxin we're trying to help move out. But we have to be careful, because anytime we even go to detoxify your body, if we push too much, even that becomes a stress. I can't tell you how many patients I see where they've been detoxifying with a clinic or practitioners, and they feel worse. They're getting diarrhea, they're getting headaches, they're getting. They're. They're getting depleted of all their nutrients because it's pushing too much. And I think we have to really be mindful of that. How do we support our bodies to detoxify in a gentle, safe way that doesn't end up causing more stress and more problems? Right. Everything has to be in balance. And that's why what I really would love for you to take away from this episode today is really our human bodies are about balance and how do we identify when things are out of balance and what, how, what can we do to help get them back in balance? And sometimes we only need the slightest tweak in order to get things back in balance. And if things are really out of balance, then we're gonna need to go more slowly. Actually, it's like the opposite of what you might think. You would think if things are really out of balance, you need to get quickly shifted back. But actually that tends to not go so well with the human body. What I find is if things are out of balance, we need to take small gradual steps to help our body guide it back into balance. So sometimes gentle and implementing little by little is better. And that's why you'll see I'm going to be teaching a detox masterclass. I'll put the link so you can sign up and when you come listen to my detox masterclass, I'm going to be teaching more about this. Like, if you're like thinking, okay, I think I need to do a detox, but I don't want to make myself feel worse, then this is the perfect class for you because you can come and we're going to be talking through how do you know if you need a detox? What's, what are the best things to include in a detox? What are the things to not do during a detox so you don't make yourself feel worse? And what are some options for supporting you through a gentle and yet effective detoxification program? So please just sign up, you can sign up for the class, it's a free class. You can come listen in. And also I'll put a link to my new, improved, my new latest developed detox program which I designed based on my experience in the Amazon ex in a really, in an extreme form of detoxification that I experienced in the Amazon in a, with a shaman, in a retreat experience, which I've done now multiple times. And I wanted to be able to bring it back to you so that you could implement a lot of this from home and experience the benefits of really getting back to taking good care of you, getting back to balance and learning how to support your body to heal in a day to, in your day to day schedule, in your day to day routine. So sometimes we might do a detox for a few days, for a week, for two weeks. But ultimately we need to be thinking about how do we maintain our health every day of the year. And a lot of that has to do with understanding the stresses and toxins that we're exposed to at different levels. And what does your body need to help you counterbalance that stress and keep up with the stress and prevent this oxidative stress? By preventing oxidative stress, you're preventing all kinds of different health issues, and you're also improving your longevity. We know this for sure that people who have been able to successfully counteract oxidative stress, they live longer, which is improved longevity. So I hope that for all of you. I'm thinking that's why you're listening in in the first place is like, how do I prevent health issues and stay as healthy as I can be for as long as possible? Well, then understanding oxidative stress and detoxification is really an important part of that. All right, well, thank you so much for listening in and joining us at How Humans Heal. I welcome you to subscribe if you haven't already, and definitely send submit a review as well. We'd love to hear from you and make sure you sign up for my newsletter so that you each week will get an email from me with the latest podcast episode and other updates. Thanks again and I'll see you soon.

Thanks for listening to How Humans Heal. If you liked this episode, leave a rating and a review and for more resources, visit drdani.com.