Detox Without Making Yourself Worse with Dr. Doni Wilson | How Humans Heal Podcast

Hi.

I am Dr. Donnie, by the way, and I wanted to come in live today and talk with you about how to detox safely and effectively. So here's the thing. I'm going to be doing a couple different I'm going to do today and a second video so that I can really cover all of this information about detoxification. So it's actually this, this time of year, a lot of people start to think about a cleanse or a detox. And really you can do a cleanse or detox any time of year. So this information is helpful no matter when you're listening to this video. And at the same time, I really want to help you to be have the answers you need, the information you need in order to be able to choose the right way to support your body to detoxify. So first off, why do we even, what is this even concept of detox? And why are we toxic in the first place? Right? So I'm going to talk about that today. Why do we need to detox? How does our bodies naturally detoxify? And what are ways that you can support your body to detoxify without making yourself feel worse? Then we're going to talk about dietary support. As I continue into the next conversation and the next video about this, we're going to talk about different supplements and herbs and approaches you can take to help your body to detoxify, but again, without stressing yourself out more. Because that's the thing is anytime we make changes, even if they're with the intention of something good and healthy, if we make too drastic of changes or sometimes introduce new substances, even if that's a nutrient or an herb, if it's too much for your body too soon, there's the possibility that you could feel worse. My strategy with detoxification is always to be able to support your body through it without stressing your body more. As a lot of you know, I really love to think about stress and how stress affects us. Ultimately. That's the reason why we wanted to detox in the first place. So let's start there. We know that as humans living on Earth, there's a lot of stresses and let alone toxins that we're exposed to day in and day out. That includes toxins in the air, toxins in the water, toxins in our homes or buildings. There's toxins from our furniture, a lot of times in our foods, in the form of pesticides, in our personal care products, like everything from soap, shampoo, lotion, you name it, everything we put on our Skin. And the thing is that we can absorb toxins through our skin. So if we put something on our skin that has toxins in it, it could get in through our skin. If we breathe it, the toxins can get in through what we're breath. If we can't see it, even if we can't smell it. A lot of times we can't smell the toxins, but they're still coming in through our lungs. They can come in through something we ingest, like water or food. And so that's how we're getting exposed to these toxins. We could also get exposed to different toxins from maybe something that even from a medication or substance that we swallow or that might be injected into us. So there's a lot of different ways that we end up with substances inside our body. And our bodies are built to detoxify most everything, really. We have, especially our liver. The liver's job has. The liver has a bunch of enzymes and processes, and their job is to process toxins of various types. Even if we think of alcohol, right? If we drink alcohol, alcohol goes through the liver, and there's a metabolic process to detoxify the alcohol and get it out of our body. So same thing with whether we're exposed to different hormones or different.

Plastics or anything in our environment, even flame retardants or.

Exhaust fumes. It comes into our body, goes into our circulation, into our bloodstream, and eventually goes through the liver. And the liver has two phases. We call that phase one and phase two of liver detoxification. And then the toxins that are being at least partially detoxified, that this is the thing is, if toxins go through phase one of detoxification, but maybe your phase two of detoxification isn't working well, then the toxins might not be fully detoxified. And now you have a still toxic substance circulating in your body. Or maybe they get through phase two of detoxification, but then they have to go into the bile, which then goes into our intestines, and then the toxins can go out through the stool. But if you have constipation and those toxins are not getting all the way out through your digestion on a regular basis, then they could get reabsorbed from your intestines and recirculate again. So these are some of the ways where even though we might be exposed to toxins, and even though we have our liver and detoxification processes to help us out, if things can get stuck and when they're not doing well or if our body's overwhelmed, if we have a large quantity of toxin exposure, more than our body's able to handle over time, then that can lead to higher toxin levels in the body. And so that's the reason why we want to support our bodies to detoxify and to, in some cases, if a person's experiencing a lot of different health issues, we may need to do some testing to identify which toxins are too high so that we can be way more targeted and specific about our detoxification approach. Because some toxins, they go through, we can actually see which processes they go through in our bodies and which nutrients and which techniques would be most helpful to help get those toxins out. So we actually have quite a lot of information to help us to detoxify successfully. Now, this is. As a naturopathic doctor, detoxification is something I learned and was trained in in my naturopathic medical program and degree. And so this is something that is just part of becoming a naturopathic doctor is understanding how our bodies naturally detoxify and how to promote detoxification. And so I also have gone through many different types of detoxifications of myself over the years. So I've gained a lot of personal knowledge about this and understanding how to successfully help my body to detoxify, let alone all the patients I've worked with. We also at Bastyr University, where I trained now, that was starting over 25 years ago. I also trained in what they call environmental medicine program, which is environmental medicine is a way of talking about how to help people to detoxify. So it's often referred to as environmental medicine. And so if you're wanting to learn more, that's what you would search for, is understanding it's our environment. Right. And how to help people to be healthy in our environment. So that's some of my background. And I have also my own personal health history has to do with a lot of allergies and migraines and.

Various different pain syndromes. And so I was very motivated to figure that out. And that's why I kept coming back to how do we detoxify? Because I also, many years back when I was trying different types of detoxification, many times I would feel worse in the process. I'd be, you know, following the procedure that many other people follow, but I actually would be the person who felt worse. And so I had to be like, okay, what's going on? Why do I feel worse? What do I need to do to help myself through this so that I don't feel worse. And what I later found out was that I have, one of the things is that I have the MTHFR gene variations, maybe some of you have that as well. And MTHFR is involved in the activation of folic acid to folate, but it's also involved in detoxification and liver, the liver processes. If methylation is not working well, then you're going to be more likely to experience negative effects from detoxification. Especially if any of you have mthfr, then it's especially important to be able to think through, hey, what can I do to really help myself through this detoxification process so that you can be most successful? This also includes detoxification from metals. If some of you are wondering about also metal detoxification like lead and mercury, which we can get exposed to through amalgam, dental fillings and many other sources like even eating tuna too often. And sometimes in our dishware or our homes we can get exposed to lead, mercury and other metals. And so that was part of my training is how to successfully help detoxify the metals without causing the person to feel worse or have negative effects from that detoxification process. And so I really want to encourage you because sometimes you'll hear about all different kind of a detox or a cleanse. And I just want to warn you to really that it's important to know your body and your current state of health because sometimes right when you're feeling like you need a detox is when your body is most run down and most toxic. You want to be able to think through and have support to go about it in a careful way so that you don't end up making yourself worse in the process. The other piece is that the adrenal glands are involved. Adrenals are our main stress responders. When we're toxic from say chemicals and other toxins are in our environment, that's also a stress to our adrenal glands which make cortisol and adrenaline. And so if your cortisol and adrenaline is out of balance, not optimized, it's all stressed out, then that's also going to affect your detoxification process. And so I really find that it makes a big difference to do some preparation. Give yourself some preparation time before you go into a cleanse or detoxification so that you can make sure your adrenals are supported as possible. Help really establish where you can set aside the stress, get out of stress mode as much as possible and really create a space and time for you to be Able to pay attention and give yourself the care you need to support yourself through the cleanse or detoxification and to really think through what are you going to need as a support in the process. And then to whatever detoxification or cleanse you're planning to do, go about it in a gradual way. Start off with a few changes and notice how you're feeling. And then you can gradually add in or go a little bit further or a little bit more in depth with your detoxification as you learn how your body's responding. So again, it's a matter of doing it in a way where you're not going to stress yourself out more and actually get the most benefit out of it. Because if you just do a quick try to get a quick fix detox, you're actually not going to get that much benefit out of it if you're not really thinking it through from this big picture view. So I hope that helps. Just to start off going, hey, if you're thinking you want to do a detox or cleanse, really think it through, make a plan and set it into your schedule. You know, say, hey, this is a time period where I'm going to really be communicating with the people around me and setting up my schedule so that I can be most successful and with this process. And that process might be a week long, it might be three weeks long, it might be three months long. It really depends on you and what your needs are. And I'm going to talk more about this, but I would encourage you to, whenever you're thinking of doing a detox or a cleanse, to not just think of the physical level of your body, but also use this as an opportunity to do almost a cleanse of some on a emotional, spiritual level as well. Because we know that our bodies are all interconnected. And anytime that you're going to go through a process of reflection and change and shifting and really noticing and observing your body and giving your body what it needs, what you're going to find is that there's going to be shifts not just on a physical level, but on an emotional, spiritual level as well. And so you want to go into it prepared for that. You know, to give yourself the space and the support for whatever might come up, because it might be something that comes up on a physical level, or could be something on an emotional, spiritual level. And you want to be able to combine that. Which is why if you look at various forms of fasting or detoxification back in history or even in religions, you'll See that, that a cleanse or detoxification is a lot of times there's a dietary part of it, but there's also a psycho emotional and spiritual level of it as well.

And there may be also supplements or supporting of liver and digestion. So you have this combination of factors because then you're really allowing yourself to be supported on all levels, not just one level, not just a physical level. For example. You really want to look at it as your whole body, your whole system, and really giving yourself that support to get through that. And with this in mind, in through the processes over the years, this is actually really how I designed what I call the Stress Remedy Program. Because the Stress Remedy Program is all about helping us to become more aware of stress and how stress affects us and how we can then recover from it and support our bodies to heal. This is in terms of stress of all types stress, in terms of psycho emotional stress, physical stress, also stress from toxins. Because that's ultimately what it is, is that toxins function as a stress on our bodies.

The Stress Remedy program is really designed to help you in this way to be able to.

Help your body recover from toxins and other types of stress, but in a gentle, supportive way that's not going to stress you more. So I'll share some more about the Stress Remedy Program or you can also find a link here, or you can find it on my website@drzani.com.

Let'S think a little bit more about how our bodies naturally detoxify, because these are things that you could do even ultimately on a daily basis. If we think about it, we're exposed to toxins all the time. So we really want to be, well, avoiding those toxins as much as possible. So definitely listen in to the other podcast episodes where I talk with experts about the toxins we're exposed to and how we can avoid them. Like how can we avoid toxins from our personal care products and from our cleaning products in our homes, for example. That's a podcast with Emma. And then also look for the podcast with Dr. Jill Christa where I talk about toxins from mold and how common it is for us to be exposed to mold toxins in our environment. And you wouldn't know it because you don't these. Are these mold toxins? Yes, they're coming out of the mold along with the mold spores. But we don't realize we're getting exposed to the mold toxins because they don't smell. They just start to make us feel awful. Right. So if you're having symptoms of, and this is true of any toxin exposure. If you're getting headaches or brain fog or fatigue or even weight gain or skin rashes or autoimmunity or many other symptoms, it could be everything from anxiety and depression and sleep issues to digestive issues to immune system not working as well, or more allergies, more sensitivities, especially if you're having a lot of histamine reactions. So if you're thinking, oh my gosh, do I have mast cell activation syndrome or histamine? And you're getting asthma or hives, that tells us that your system's overwhelmed, that there's got to be not just allergens, but also probably toxins that are throwing off and triggering your immune system and setting you into this high reactivity mode. And that's how we start to know that there's probably a lot of toxins in your system and in your environment. So we want to clean up your environment. If there's mold, we got to get the mold out. If there's toxins in your foods, we got to get to organic foods. If there's toxins in your home, we got to figure out where those are and gradually start to get those toxins out of your environment. But then we want to help get the toxins out of your body. And that's where the detoxification comes in. So some of the ways that our bodies just naturally detoxify all the time is one through our breath. So actually, as you breathe out, you're breathing out some of the toxins. And so breath work can be very important part of a detoxification, and I would say, actually important part of your daily life. Right? Just, of course we breathe all the time, but being able to stop and take some deep breaths and do maybe intentional breath work when we do them, deep breathing, or even breathing outside, it can really help us with the process of detoxification. Also, sweating, we can get toxins out through our sweat. And they've studied this quite a lot. Whether you're just sweating when you're exercising or outside in warm temperatures or using a sauna, you can use sauna therapy, such as infrared sauna therapy, to purposely create a sweat by raising your body temperature. And we can get toxins out that way. Of course, then you need to make sure you stay hydrated, keep your electrolytes up, because if you're sweating, you're also losing fluid from your body and electrolytes. So it's really important. Overall, with detoxification, one of the top things is to make sure you stay hydrated, including your electrolytes. But especially if you are going to go intentionally sweat, like with a sauna, we got to make sure we keep an eye on your electrolytes and your fluid balance. And you also are going to be taking a shower after you get out of the sauna to make sure you shower off those toxins before they can be reabsorbed. But infrared sauna for between 10 minutes and 30 minutes a couple times a week. Especially you want to get a sauna that doesn't have more toxins in it. We need to have the sauna built with materials that are non toxic. If it's a toxic sauna, it's not going to help you out with getting rid of toxins. I can share with you some.

One of my favorite non toxic saunas in case you want to get one. There's a lot of times you can get even a single person sauna or a larger sauna. So saunas don't have to be giant. They can fit in your home. So you can do sauna therapy from home.

That's another way we detoxify is through our sweat. We also detoxify through urine and stool as I was mentioning. So we want to make sure that your bowels are moving. If you're constipated. That's going to be your top goal right away is how do we get your bowels moving. This is why a lot of times when you look at a detoxification program, it's going to include some sort of fiber. The fiber is going to help get your bowels moving. Or sometimes you'll see in addition to say psyllium, which is a fiber, then they might include some more laxative herbs because they're trying to help get the bowels moving. Now if you have regular bowel movements, you might not need very much support to get your bowels moving because it's already happening for you. So you want to be able to know your body again and modify so that you are getting the right support. If you do tend to be more constipated. Like say if you're not having a bowel movement at least once or twice a day, then that's going to be a high priority for you. Let's, let's get your bowels moving before we do anything else. Before you try to detoxify, we have to have some the stool moving out or else we're going to be moving toxins into your gut and it's just going to be sitting there. So we need to be having the bowels moving. You don't have to be having diarrhea. See, that's the thing. You don't need to stress your system. We just want to help create regularity. So that may be different for different people. For some people, that might just be using magnesium citrate or magnesium oxide at a dose that keeps your bowels moving. Other people that might be using different kinds of fiber. The other purpose that fiber serves is if fiber can grab onto the toxins that come through the digestive tract, including mold toxins.

And other forms of toxins can get bound by the fiber. So when you have fiber regular in your diet, like even from fruits and vegetables or nuts and seeds. Seeds, Part of the role it has for you is it is helping you to bind onto those toxins and get them out through your stool. And when you go through a cleanse or detoxification process, you might actually want to increase your fiber. And there's different kinds of fiber, including. We tend to focus on insoluble fiber so that we can really help to bind onto toxins. And that could be even ground flaxseeds. It could be chia seeds. Those are some favorites. Some people prefer psyllium. I also like to use sun fiber is a type of fiber that's less likely to see. The thing is, some people, if you put in more fiber, it ends up overfeeding the bacteria, and so then you end up with more bloating and gas because of the fiber. So you want to know your body, which types of fiber are best for you. And sun fiber is one that can help get the bowels moving, but doesn't tend to overfeed the bacteria. So it's been a really great resource for people to be able to use sun fiber. By the way, one thing is that I have a lot of blog posts on these different topics. So if you're wondering and wanting to learn more about fiber, for example, I definitely encourage you to check out my blog post. I have a blog post on fiber. And also@drdhanni.com, you can always go into the online store. And there I always post products that I've reviewed, that I've tried, that my patients have tried, that have worked well for people. And so if you're wondering, okay, what product should I be thinking about, what's the best product to choose? Then one place to go check it out would be@drdani.com in the store, because you can search for fiber, for example, and then you can see what are some of the best options out there and choose what you think would be best for you. Or say if you want to try magnesium oxide or citrate to keep your bowels moving, you can find that there too.

Something a lot of people don't know is that too much stress can actually create an abundance of health problems like high blood pressure, high blood sugar, anxiety, migraines, insomnia, even fertility issues. This is because high stress puts your adrenal glands on overload. They release cortisol and adrenaline, which controls your digestion, hormones, immune system, energy, focus and even your emotional response. So how can you beat stress when you don't know where to start? That's why we have a free seven day stress reset program. It's designed to help support support weight loss, digestive healing and hormone balancing. It includes support for integrating self care. Daily tips come to you by email and video. Gluten free dairy free meal plans as well as grocery shopping lists, journal pages and more. This free program will help you beat stress and put you on the path to wholeness in your body. Get your plan now for free@drdonnie.com.

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So this is some of the key initial pieces of detoxification. Again, even on a daily basis. Just think of it as that we should be thinking about how to avoid toxins and help our bodies to detoxify all the time, right? And so then when you might choose to do a more intensive detox over a short period of time, you already have these things going. You already have plenty of water that you're drinking and with electrolytes that you can find in the store as well, some of my favorite electrolyte powders. But actually one of the best things you can do is drink your filtered water, right? So you don't want to be drinking water that has more toxins. You want to get water that's filtered optimally. A reverse osmosis filter, because that's going to take the most toxins out. But then when you do a reverse osmosis water filter, not only does it take out all the toxins, but it takes out all the minerals. And so now you need to add the minerals back in because minerals are the same as our electrolytes. And that's what keeps our water balance in our body where we want it to be, right? We want to have some water in our bloodstream, we want to have some water in our tissue. But if there's an imbalance of electrolytes, then the water can either get stuck, usually gets stuck in the tissue and then you Tend to be more puffy. Or if we don't have good electrolyte balance, you might be experiencing more fatigue or headaches or.

Dizziness. So you want to. If you start to feel off, you know, then you first thing to think is, did I drink enough water? Do I have enough electrolytes? Another of my favorite ways to get enough electrolytes is just to use sea salt. Like, you can get your favorite of Celtic or Himalayan sea salt and put a pinch in your glass of filtered water, because sea salt has a lot of minerals in it. So you just put a little pinch of sea salt of sea salt in your water. Or you could put a teaspoon of sea salt in a gallon of water and drink that water gradually over time. A lot of people end up wanting to guzzle a whole bunch of water at once. But what I find is it's much better for our bodies if we're sort of trickling the water through the day. So as best you can have water handy or stop by your faucet every hour or so and get a drink of water gradually over time. Because this way, as your body uses this water for all the different purposes, right? Our body needs water to detoxify, to make bile, to help our digestion work, to help create urine in the kidneys. All of that, everything requires water. Where our bodies are mostly made of water. So we have to be constantly aware of, hey, let's put water in electrolytes to give our bodies what they need to move these toxins through. And that actually is true. That actually is how our bodies work. So sometimes that's where you start. Like, if you've been noticing, oh, my gosh, I've barely been drinking any water, or if you drink a lot of coffee and tea, which are actually diuretics, diuretic means that it causes your body to.

Lose more fluid than you're adding in. So if you drink a cup of coffee or tea, you really should drink an equivalent cup of water to replace the water that that tea or coffee caused you to lose. And so then you still need to have the extra fluid to keep your body ahead of this fluid game. Right. So just keeping in mind, and which is, I think, also why a lot of times with a detoxification or cleanse, it's encouraged to. To decrease your caffeine intake, which, believe me, I know that can seem really difficult if you've been relying on caffeine to help you through your day. You know, like, if you didn't have caffeine, maybe you would feel Too tired. It would be hard to get your mind working and your body working for you. And we become reliant on caffeine because caffeine.

Is a stimulant to the adrenal glands. So it gives us a boost of adrenaline for a period of time. So it gives us that energy and oomph from adrenaline. But if we start to rely on it more and more now we're having more and more caffeine in order to keep up with our life, in order to get some more adrenaline response. And we start to realize, oh, my gosh, what am I doing? I'm just completely functioning based on this caffeine pushing me.

When you do a cleanse or detoxification, a lot of times it'll say or encourage you to decrease your caffeine intake. Now, depending on your situation, I might encourage you to decrease slowly because if you just pull the caffeine overnight, you're likely to have withdrawal symptoms. Withdrawal from caffeine is going to also make you feel awful. It's going to make you have headaches and fatigue and brain fog, because again, the body becomes dependent on it. So if you take it away, your body's going to be like, where did the caffeine go? So it's better if you can, in your preparation process, start to gradually decrease your caffeine intake over time. Maybe you can go down by three quarters and then give that a couple days, and then go down to half the amount of caffeine and do that for a few days, and then go down to a quarter and do that for a few days. So you can be gradually decreasing your caffeine intake while you also make sure you're getting more.

Water and electrolytes. Along those lines, a lot of times a cleanse or detoxification involves avoiding alcohol, because as I mentioned earlier, alcohol is something that our liver has to detoxify. So it's giving work to your liver. And so if you want to allow your liver to do a better job of getting rid of toxins, then you're going to want to remove the alcohol so that your liver has more capacity to deal with the toxins. And so it's like giving your liver a break. A lot of times, the way we actually cleanse or detoxify is by just making it easier for our bodies before we even actually add anything. It's a matter of taking things away. So we take away the toxins in our environment, we add in water to help our body process the toxins, we get our bowels moving, and we Remove things like caffeine and alcohol so that it's just less burden on your system. And it's amazing how even just making those changes can make a difference in how you feel. And again, you might do that over a few days or a few weeks. I actually am one of these people where I'm very sensitive to caffeine, so I can't drink coffee because I'll actually get a headache from it. Maybe some of you are like me, where you're that sensitive to caffeine, but I do drink black tea. Black tea has less caffeine than coffee. But when I'm going to do a cleanse, like I'm just starting in to do more intense cleanse myself, I'm going to actually gradually decrease my black tea intake to zero so that I can give my body a chance to function with zero caffeine and zero alcohol for a period of time and give my body that opportunity and see what happens, see how I feel. So I'm going to decrease even though I'm just drinking black tea, for me, I'm going to feel it if I just stopped. So I'm going to decrease gradually over several days until I'm ready to completely stop the caffeine. Another would be chocolate, for example. I'm a chocolate lover. And so a lot of times on a cleanse, I might say chocolate's okay, a little bit of dark chocolate. You want to choose chocolate that doesn't have a bunch of sugar. Oh, I'll come back to sugar. You want to choose a chocolate that doesn't have dairy or other things in it that you don't really want. You want to choose like an organic dark chocolate. You could do that and figure, hey, this is the antioxidants from the dark chocolate without all that other stuff in the chocolate. But it's also important to keep in mind that chocolate itself has some caffeine and other substances that actually could be considered somewhat of a toxin to your body. So this time when I'm doing my cleanse, I'm actually going to also eliminate the chocolate for several weeks and see what happens. I always look at it as. With curiosity. I look at it as, hey, let me just see what comes up. How do I feel without chocolate? It's not the end of the world. I know I'm going to be able to go back and eat chocolate again later, but let me just see how it feels. And you might think that way too, if some of you are really counting on. People tell me they count on alcohol to help them with their stress at the end of the day. So if you're like, oh, my gosh, this alcohol, I need it, because it's the only thing that helps me calm down and go to sleep. Well, what we want to do with a detoxification or cleanse is we want to say, wait a minute, do I really want to be depending on this substance, this alcohol, to get me to sleep? Because alcohol also has negative effects. We know that having alcohol every day increases risk of cancer and diabetes and dementia and many other health issues. So we don't want to do something that can have a potentially negative effect on us. And so we want to say, hey, maybe instead of relying on the alcohol to get you to de stress and go to sleep, maybe we can understand what does your body really need in order to get out of stress and go to sleep naturally. So similarly with the chocolate or anything else that you might really find, hey, you're really attached to it. For some people, it's cheese. It's like, oh, my gosh, I can't imagine not having cheese. Right? I'm a cheese lover too, so I get it. But cheese is a dairy product, and dairy can be inflammatory for a lot of people. Same with gluten. Gluten is inflammatory for a lot of people. And so in your cleanse, you might be thinking, hey, I want to decrease my inflammation in my body. That could mean you want to decrease your exposure to things in foods that are inflammatory, and that includes sugar. So a lot of times a cleanser detoxification will also involve avoiding sugar. Sugar in, like, the main sources, not so much fruit. Although some cleanses will have you decrease your fruit intake. But for the most part, we're talking about like a spoonful of sugar. Or on the package, if it says as an ingredient sugar. Even if it says organic sugar, it's still sugar.

Sugar, we know it can disrupt our gut bacteria, it can disrupt our blood sugar levels. It can increase inflammation in the body. It can be damaging to our tissue, our eyes, our brain. So to be able to take a break from sugar really gives your body a chance to reset. And there again, we can become very addicted to sugar. Like, we're craving it, we want it. It feels like you can't do your day without. And so the thing with sugar is, again, you may find it's better to decrease gradually. Like, you might want to give yourself a week where you just start to notice, hey, maybe you need to cut out the processed foods, because so many processed foods have sugar and other substances in there that would be considered toxins. A lot of processed foods, they put in natural flavors which could include something that would be a toxin to your body. They might include.

Besides flavors, there might be preservatives or other substances. When you look at the ingredients, you're like, why is that in my food? Or even carrageenan. And some of these are the things that they put into the packaged product. Even if it says organic, even if it says gluten free. I pick up these products at the store and I'm like, oh my gosh, I can't believe how much sugar is in there, how much other stuff is in there that we don't really need. And so when you're doing a cleanse, this is a real opportunity to revisit the food you're choosing and the products you're choosing and look for where is the sugar? Okay, sometimes we can really drop our sugar levels just by stopping the foods where they've been adding sugar that you didn't even realize it was getting added and start to focus on what a lot of times are called whole foods. You know, actual foods like the, where you buy the actual fruit, you know, you're buying the actual berries or the actual apples, and you're buying the broccoli and you're buying the actual food or even the, you know, whatever ingredients you're going to use, the rice, you're buying that actual food and preparing it instead of having it pre prepared in a package or, or even from a restaurant. Because a lot of times from restaurants, you don't know what they're putting in there, what sauces, what, what, where do they purchase the produce, is it organic or not? And so when you're doing a cleanse, you can really think of it as an opportunity to relook at the food you're putting into your body to really see if you can decrease your toxin exposure but also decrease your exposure to foods that are more inflammatory and that are essentially more work for your body. If we eat foods that are more inflammatory, it actually creates inflammatory products that have to still go through, get processed by our liver and get through our system and through our digestion. And so some of these foods can actually become overwhelming to our bodies. And this is one of the things I learned from my own body, is that it didn't really make sense for me to dive into some even supplement or detox program until I had eliminated the foods that I was eating that were already a toxin or stress to my body. And there again in the stress remedy program, that's why I designed it that way. It encourages you to avoid sugar and alcohol as well as inflammatory foods like gluten and dairy. And you can also follow the meal plan, which is also avoiding soy and eggs, which are also two other common food allergens. And then we go through a process of balancing your blood sugar levels with this new diet that's whole foods, foods that you know where it came from and what the ingredients are. And we balance the blood sugar because when the blood sugar levels are up and down from eating sugar and eating lots of carbs and processed foods and caffeine, when our blood sugar levels are up and down, that's actually toxic to our bodies, it's very inflammatory to our systems, and it makes it difficult for our bodies to detoxify all the other toxins. So this is why a detox program can involve diet changes. But a lot of times what I'll see is detox programs that will take you all the way, let's say to just a juice cleanse or just.

Maybe just their product, maybe they have a protein shake and that's the only thing you're going to eat.

Or just completely fasting and not eating at all. Yes, those are all possibilities. But from my perspective of understanding physiology and understanding what stresses our bodies, if we go straight into a full fast, that can be a real stress to your body. So it can, from my opinion, it would be better to support yourself, to get there gradually, to get yourself to a stable place first and then see about reducing your calorie intake and eating over a shorter period of time. So you can essentially have a longer intermittent fast. Intermittent fast is when you fast overnight, so say while you're sleeping. So maybe you might have an eight hour fast when you're sleeping, but if we want to extend that to maybe 10 or 12 or 14 hours. So you're fasting before you go to bed, while you're sleeping, and when you wake up now you're giving your body more of a break from eating. And then you have a certain period of time during the day where you're eating and maybe you reduce your calorie intake and you eat in a way that helps balance your blood sugar. This is going to be a way of supporting your body to do it versus just throwing you into a full fast that can actually be more stressful to your system. And so these are the ways I think about it. Also, if you went only to a juice fast, now you're having only fruit and carbs as calories. And that could be too extreme where, yes, it might be easier. There's nothing to digest. So the thinking is, hey, let's just do a liquid diet that's easy to digest. But if it's going to disrupt your metabolism or if those juices are not organic, then you might be getting exposed to toxins from the fruit. And if, when you juice, you don't have very much fiber there, so you're, you want to make sure you add in fiber. So you see, I start to look at these various types of cleanses and I think how do we get the same goal, how do we reach the same goal but without stressing your system and with actually accomplishing more? Because the thing is, if say you do a extreme cleanse or detox and you can only do that for a period of time, whether that's a week or two weeks, and then you go back to your old way of eating, now you really have, it's only a temporary fix, right? It was only a, it's only once you go back to your usual, it's right back to the old way again. And so you're not really getting long term benefit from that. And so to me, I tend to think of it as what can we do that's actually going to help you get the most long term benefit and get the most out of it? So if you're going to do, you know, a cleanse over.

If you're going to do a cleanse over a period of time, then to me then you want to come out of it with more knowledge than you had before, more understanding of your body than you had before and be able to maintain the benefits over time so that you can not. That you have to continually avoid. Like people will say to me, why do I have to always avoid alcohol? And forever no, you can then go back to having some of these substances you avoid during the cleanse. But you're doing it in a way with knowledge now and awareness. And you're doing it instead of, because you have to like, instead of relying on these substances to survive. We actually get to a point where you just maybe choose alcohol because you feel like it in that moment as something you can enjoy, but it's not that you're reliant on it. Same with caffeine or with sugar. And so it can give you this opportunity to shift your relationship with your food, with your environment. And so that can make a really big difference in the long run. So I want to also be diving into some of the other things that we can use to assist ourselves with a cleanse or detoxification like products, supplements, herbs, what should you be thinking about in terms of products to support you in your detoxification process? And so I'm going to be covering that in the second part of this video. And so you can definitely join me for that.

And at the same time, what I'd encourage you to start thinking about is if you're thinking, what can I do? What can I do? I would start thinking about next, about leaky gut. Because the thing is, is that when we're under stress and we have a lot of toxin exposure, whether that's pesticides or other forms of toxins, even mold toxins, they're all known to cause leaky gut. Leaky gut is when the intestinal cells are not as healthy as they could be. And we have these microscopic spaces in between our intestinal cells, and that allows food to leak through. It allows bacteria and toxins to get through. And so when our gut is leaky, it's like we have this even higher exposure to toxins coming into our body. So, you know, again, our first step was like, how do we get the toxins out of our environment as best we can? How do we support our body to naturally detoxify? And now we're thinking, how do we.

How did we, like, change our. Make some diet changes to make it easier for our body? We've eliminated more stresses. But if we realize that this leaky gut is leaving us vulnerable to stresses, right? Like, even if you're avoiding as many stresses as you can and changing your diet, if the leaky gut is there, you're still vulnerable to toxins because they're leak, literally leaking into your system. And so we need to fix that leaky gut. That's going to be huge. And this is also what I focus on in the stress remedy program. And this is why, because if we don't heal the leaky God, it's really going to be a temporary benefit in terms of your cleanse, because you're going to go right back to being a human in this world exposed to toxins, and it's still going to be leaking into your body and you're going to get into overload again. So we need to be thinking about healing leaky gut for that reason. And healing leaky gut involves avoiding the things that cause leaky gut. So avoid the toxins, avoid the gluten that causes leaky gut. But we also want to help bring in substances that helps our leaky gut heal. And that's where we can use digestive enzymes to help digest our food. Better. So now you're eating these healthy foods, but when you're under stress, you don't digest food well, even healthy food. So we need to help your body digest better. Yes, you can use things like bitter herbs and you know, you can do deep breathing to help signal to your vagal nerve that you're about to digest food. And I encourage you to do all of those things. Eat bitter foods like arugula.

Really promote your body to get the digestion happening. But I find that it can really help to also use pancreatic digestive enzymes because now you can be sure you're going to digest your food better. Then we also want to add in nutrients and herbs such as glutamine. Glutamine is known to help feed those intestinal cells. So help your intestinal cells recover from leaky gut. You can get glutamine by itself. And if you have really severely gut and a really sensitive system, you might need to get glutamine by itself. Or a lot of times I try to at least get some dgl, which is herbal licorice, in with the glutamine. Because DGL or licorice is an anti inflammatory herb that really helps calm down all the inflammation in the gut and starts healing that leaky gut. Also I'll include say aloe for example, or again another fiber called arabinoglactan to help get the gut bacteria balance. Get the mucosal lining in the gut building back up again. That's your protective mucosal lining. And you want to get those intestinal cells recovering. You can grow back healthy intestinal cells. It just you have to stop damaging them long enough to support your body to create new healthy ones. And so that's this important process and it takes time to heal leaky gut. But I look at it as when you're in the midst of a cleanse, either preparing for a cleanse, during a cleanse and after a cleanse is the perfect time to focus on healing leaky gut. Because now you're going to come out of this cleanse in a better place than when you started. You're going to be protected yourself from stress exposure and toxin exposure. And now you're becoming more resilient to the stresses that and the toxins were exposed to on a daily basis. Even when we're being really careful, we still get some toxin exposure. So we want to be able to help our bodies recover and maintain healthy protection to toxins and stress. So those are some of the first pieces to think about when you're thinking about a doing a cleanse or detox, but also I would say on a daily basis. And this is exactly what I put together in the stress remedy program, which you can access the stress remedy program anytime. It's a 21 day email support series with a guide, a meal plan and also products. So if you want to do the stress remedy program with say digestive enzymes, leaky gut healing, even a protein shake, if you're thinking, okay, I'm going to be avoiding some of my common proteins, like say if you want to avoid dairy and eggs, and you're thinking what am I going to have for breakfast? Then you can have this pea protein shake that gives you protein in a healthy form that you can use for your breakfast or really any time during the day, but it makes sure you get your calories in a healthy form and your protein in a healthy form so that you can maintain through this process. So that's a bit about clean eating, it's a bit about detoxification and a bit about the stress remedy program for you. And what I'm going to do, what I'm going to cover in the second part of this is more about specific nutrients and herbs that you can do to promote that liver detoxification. I spoke about the phase one, the phase two, really what should you be doing to support your detoxification processes so that you can really make sure that the toxins don't get stuck midway and end up making things worse. And so I look forward to talking that through with you all. Thanks for joining me.

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