Detoxification

Don't you find it interesting how old things come back in new ways and then we reinvent them and they're suddenly like really topical? Well, in our field of nutrition that certainly is the case. We see these waves come through and one that is really popular now that's been around probably for hundreds of years, but certainly in the 30 years that I've been involved in the field, we've seen it come through several times is the concept of detoxification. What does detoxification mean? It's an interesting question, isn't it? I mean, we live in this world that's confronting us with all sorts of interesting exposures that were not here in the world 200 years ago. Literally tens of thousands of new chemicals have been introduced into the environment at low levels. And we might say, well, but they're so low level that they shouldn't really have any effect on health. But now we recognize it, low doesn't necessarily mean no effect. That these things might have very interesting low level effects as signaling substances. They modulate the way cells function by attaching to antennae that are on the surface of cells that we call receptors. And signaling subtly messages through the cell that's called intracellular signal transduction. That then modifies actually how that cell functions and how it sees its environment and whether it's seeming like it's in an alarm state because it recognizes this foreigner on board. So detoxification from a more contemporary 21st century perspective is trying to get the body to effectively process these small materials that are influencing cellular signaling and eliminate them from the body. In a non toxic state, this would be elimination obviously through the lungs by breath, or through the skin by perspiration, or through the urinary tract or fecal excretion. And the way that the body does that is by converting these substances that are potentially able to be concentrated. We call them lipophilic or fat soluble. So they reside and store in the fatty tissues of our body. We convert them into water soluble like substances so they can be excreted out of the blood, which is principally water, or the urine water, or the feces. And that conversion is the process of detoxification. And our body has this very adept system to do that through what are called phase one, phase two and phase three enzymes. These are enzymes that nibble on, chew on, foreign molecules and convert them into substances that can be more readily transported out of the body. I'm not going to go into the details of what phase one, phase two and three mean other than to suffice it to say that what's being recognized is that the activation of these processes, or let's call it the normalization of those processes that are associated with detoxification are in part related to our diet and that there are principles within our diet that would support proper detoxification. So we've heard that individuals that eat more cruciferous vegetables, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts and cabbage, that those particular foods have specific phytochemicals in them. These brassica vegetables, those phytochemicals are called glucosinolates. And those glucosinolates in those particular foods have been found to activate and support the activity of various detoxifying enzymes. And historically, people have used, through cultural history, sauerkraut or cabbage or broccoli or Brussels sprouts as detoxifying foods. And now we start to see from more modern studies that they actually have chemicals in those foods that are developed by the plant in its own growing. These are called the secondary metabolites or phytochemicals in those products that then activate our own body's ability to participate in proper detoxification. We know that berries do this. We know that green tea with a class of chemicals called epigallocatechin gallates do this as well. So there are a variety of different food principles that have been associated with detoxification. That's kind of the contrast to foods that add toxicity to the body, that add foreign molecules, that deliver pesticides or herbicides, or fat soluble chemicals that are foreign to the body, or maybe even things like rancid fats, that is a toxic form of substances or antioxidants, anti rancidity agents, or even things that we use in packaging material like phthalates or bisphenol A that gets into our body and can be the other side of the equation that can induce toxicity by modifying cellular function in such a way as to produce alarm. So I find it very interesting that we're restudying now the concept of detoxification in a much more modern way to develop a more precise and personalized way to intervene with specific nutrition. So one talks about clean foods, organic foods. They talk about the appropriate food, phytochemical rich foods, the broccoli, brussels sprout, cauliflower, cabbage, apples with pectin. We talk about garlic, we talk about the allium family of which garlic and onions are part of that. We talk about citrus with naringen and other flavonoids that are important for detoxification. We talk about the appropriate, as I said green tea components. We talk about grapes and peanuts with resveratrol. We talk about hops based materials from the hops plant that also activate detoxification. These are all part of our emerging understanding of how to tailor this construct of detoxification into a scientifically based program to lower the things like fatigue and headaches and low energy and muscle pain and sleep disturbances that are often the early clinical signs of toxicity. So here we are, relearning old things in new ways. Pretty exciting field to be in.