What To Eat And Do To Promote Detoxification

Coming up on this episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy.

We use foods as medicine to upregulate these pathways. And you just mentioned the broccoli family, but any of those foods, broccoli, cabbage, kohlrabi, Brussels sprouts, watercress, arugula, you know, those are all foods which actually upregulate these pathways. Green tea does also. And you need those. And I find those, for me, are a staple in my daily diet. I eat those every single day because they're so important. Hey everyone, it's Dr. Mark. My main goal with diet is to use food as medicine. But even when we eat super well, most of us are missing out on certain essential nutrients. Our soils have become depleted and our digestive tracts just aren't working so great. They're compromised by stress and toxins and they just can't absorb nutrients as efficiently as they should. And that's why I always use, and I recommend to my patients, a multivitamin mineral as nutritional insurance. It covers the basics, for all our day-to-day body functions, all the things that we need that our food might be missing. But there are so many products out there I wouldn't go near because they contain artificial fillers or inactive ingredients, and you have to be pretty picky. The one I trust and take myself is Athletic Greens. They use high quality, highly absorbable forms of vitamins and nutrients from real whole foods. Athletic Greens comes in a powder that tastes great and mixes easily with water or smoothies, and specifically supports my gut health, immunity, energy, and recovery. And it's not just vitamins and minerals. It has phytonutrient-rich superfoods, and adaptogens, and pre and probiotics, and even digestive enzymes. I love that they add the digestive support in their powder, since so much of our immune strength and overall wellness starts in the gut. It's really one supplement that covers so many bases, and you'd be hard-pressed to find something else in this comprehensive form in any single other product. I use Athletic Greens in the morning as part of my daily routine, and I love having it with me whenever I travel. I also love that it's diet friendly, whether you're vegan, paleo, keto, dairy-free, or gluten-free. Right now, Athletic Greens is offering my audience a full year's supply of their Vitamin D3K2 liquid formula free with your first purchase. Now, these two nutrients are also so vital for a strong immune system and strong bones, and many of us are not getting enough of them. I use the Athletic Greens powder and their D3K2 formula to make sure I get extra nutrients that complement my diet. They're also going to give you five free travel packs as well. Just go to athleticgreens.com/hymen to get your free year's supply of vitamin D3 and K2 and five free travel packs with your first purchase. You'll get it delivered straight to your door, and I promise you'll feel the difference Athletic Greens can make in your daily wellness routine. Again, that's Athletic Greens .com/Heiman. Now let's get back to this week's episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy.

Hi, I'm Kaya, one of the producers of the Doctor's Pharmacy. When you hear the word detoxification, you might think of highly structured programs that have become popular in the wellness industry. In reality, our body has natural detoxification systems that can be supported with diet and lifestyle. Dr. Heiman has explored how to use food and lifestyle practices to promote detoxification with several of his colleagues at the Ultra Wellness Center. Here he is in conversation with nutritionist Maggie Ward.

So, Maggie, tell us a little bit about this first patient that you've had that you wanted to share a little bit about what they're struggling with.

Sure. So this is a 48-year-old woman. She had a very long history of being overweight, started pretty young. When I met with her, she was at least about 80 pounds overweight and a strong family history for obesity as well as diabetes. She had a fair amount of joint pain. and her ankles and her knees, she often would get joint pain and her doctor had said she had some osteoarthritis. She had a very high stress job, I want to say she was a lawyer, I think, so just working a lot and pretty intense. And she would drink alcohol, even smoke a little bit occasionally, kind of just as a social smoker for her stress outlet. And she also did a lot of exercise, which is typically, you know, we think of as a good thing, but she liked those really high intense, you know, like spin classes and things like that. And I think, you know, maybe that was setting you're up to have a little bit more inflammation and joint pain. But our genetic testing was really, really interesting. A few things really stood out. She needed a lot of support with detoxification. And, you know, in this day and age, I'm really focusing on detox support with everyone, but some of the people we see are, from a genetic standpoint, have a lot more of an impact from those toxins in the environment. And it's an area you really want to focus on because they can cause weight gain. And, you know, as women and our hormones and our estrogens and we do carry more fat in general, you know, we have, I think, more of that impact from these toxins. So I really shifted my focus over to her, really thinking about foods and other things we could do to support detox, moving those bowels well, I mean, sweating, you know, why your exercise is good, but, you know, we can do saunas and things like that.

So Maggie, two things. One, you know, there's a whole class of, of these compounds that we're identifying that are obesogens. They're environmental chemicals that come from our water, from air, from plastics, from cosmetics, from pesticides. These are compounds that seem to interrupt metabolism. So toxins cause weight gain. I did write about this because I was seeing this in my patients, and then the literature is just increasingly abundant about how these environmental toxins are driving obesity and diabetes. So the fact that you found this on this patient allowed you to really customize your diet. So what were the specific foods that you recommended that help the detoxification pathways for this patient? Right, plants.

But mostly cruciferous vegetables. We know a lot of the compounds in there like sulfur or sulforaphane push these pathways known as sulfation through the liver. It's a really important pathway to support. And that was a genetic marker that came up is that she had issues with sulfation. So what are these cruciferous vegetables you're talking about?

So your broccoli and your cauliflower, cabbage.

Kale, there's quite a bit. And I always- Brussels sprouts.

Kohlrabi.

Brussels sprouts, broccoli, actually broccoli sprouts too is some of the richest sources. You can get these sprouts too. And I think, yes, you can take this in a pill, and I did actually recommend it for her, a form of sulforaphane, but I'm sure there are compounds in our food that we have not discovered and work synergistically. So I never want to say take a pill over food. It's food, and then if you can add in a pill. So we really ramped that up. We did more allium foods, which are your garlic, onions, leeks, scallions, there's quite a bit in that family. A lot of reasons why they're good for you, but they're high in sulfur, so they support the sulfation pathways. And again, also getting enough protein. I think many people that we see because they're needing more support with detox or their immune system's compromised, everything's built from these amino acids. We talk so much about glutathione being this really powerful detox molecule that we make in our body, and it's a tripeptide, it's three amino acids. So, when you have more of those building blocks, you can support those detoxes.

And can you get those from plant proteins or is it more animal protein?

You can. I mean, I do a combination and it really depends, I think, on each person and what diet they feel comfortable with. So we fine tune it. But whatever amount of protein I'm recommending, I find a way to get them up to that based off what they feel they do best with.

Yeah, it's interesting. Whey protein has been traditionally recommended to help boost glutathione and these detoxification pathways, but people often don't tolerate it. but I found there's a goat whey protein, which some patients do a lot better with. So you can, you know, kind of hack the system a little bit.

Right, right. And yeah, I mean, whey, as you know, has so much research on it behind not just detox support, but athletic performance, Cachexia that you see a lot in, you know, when you get that wasting of the muscle and things like cancer. So I do recommend it. And often, you know, around those workouts, too, again, getting enough protein after you exercise to support repair and muscle growth. So, yes, whey. right way can be an excellent source of these proteins. So we really dialed in there and focused on the detox support.

Dr. Hyman also spoke with Dr. Todd LePine about how food activates our body's innate detoxification pathways.

If you look at fat registry biopsy studies where they literally took, let's say if you have a breast reconstruction, they take fat tissue and they send it to a lab or an autopsy, they'll take a bunch of fat tissue from people in the central lab. And literally everybody's a toxic waste dump. If we were food, we wouldn't be safe to eat. And if you look at the kinds of things that are in there, it's dioxin, it's DDT, it's PCBs, it's flame retardants, it's heavy metals. I mean, these are the things that are stored in us. And so traditional doctors are not trained in toxicology except for if you have an overdose of some toxin or an extreme acute exposure. But if you have a chronic exposure, over a lifetime, there's no model for how to deal with this. But the good news is with functional medicine, there is a methodology for helping people to upregulate their own detoxification system and to bind these toxins. So tell us about how do we do that in functional medicine?

You bring up a really good point, which is that fat is the storage depot. It's a toxic waste dump. And I often tell patients that if you're wanting to lose weight, you need to support detoxification.

Absolutely.

It's a critical, critical thing. So in the science of how your body detoxifies, we sort of divvy it up into phase one and phase two detoxification pathways. So phase one is the oxidation process where your body sort of activates a molecule. And phase two is what we call the conjugation pathway where we stick molecules onto them like sulfate or glutathione to detoxify them.

So the first step sort of gets it ready, the second step packages it up to get rid of it.

Yeah, so you can think of it as like taking out the garbage. So every garbage, you wrap it up in a a plastic bag or a trash bag, and then the guy comes out and takes it out.

Yeah.

And that has to be in a balance. So if you have too much of phase one and not enough of phase two, it builds up and you get these reactive species. So you have to have a balance in that phase one phase two, a part of detoxification. And glutathione is one of the, you know, great molecules that our body has, which is helps with detoxification. It's an antioxidant, and our bodies stick glutathione onto toxins. and that's one of the enzymes, one of the most important enzymes, I think, is the glutathione S-transferase. A lot of people say, well, I'll just take more glutathione. Well, it's not just taking glutathione. You've got to stick the glutathione onto the toxin. And that happens through glutathione S-transferase.

And the cruciferous vegetables upregulate that enzyme. So, a lot of foods are, we use foods as medicine to upregulate these pathways. And you just mentioned the broccoli family, but any of those foods, broccoli, cabbage, kohlrabi, Brussels sprouts, watercress, arugula, you know, those are all foods which actually upregulate these pathways, green tea does also. And, and you need those. And I find those, for me, are a staple in my daily diet. I eat those every single day because they're so important. But there's a lot of other ways to upregulate these Pathways. You write, you need various nutrients to help, like selenium and, and all the B vitamins and all these things that help these Pathways. So we really are focused on nutrition. and nutritional detoxification as the first step. And then what other kinds of things can we do to help the body to get rid of toxins?

Well, there's also traditionally there's been the phase one, phase two parts of detoxification. There's also a phase three, which Jeff Bland got me aware of, which is the urinary excretion of toxins. And it's very important to actually have an alkaline urine. So measuring your urinary pH is important because having a pH seven or above, helps with the facilitation of detoxification. So, drinking- It's not just drinking water.

But you got to eat a diet.

That makes you more.

Right.

And eating a more plant-based diet, a heavy plant-based diet will help to alkalize your- Plant rich diet.

Yeah, plant rich diet. Yeah, plant rich diet. Exactly. So, we have to take these foods in. And then fiber also is such a critical component. You mentioned chloestyramine, but there are other.

Binders that are just naturally found in fiber that help you eliminate these toxins. oh, yeah, absolutely. And that's, that's. I call it, you know, there's phase one, phase two, phase three, which is the urinary detoxification. And then phase four is the gut. You, you know, got to poop it out. That's really, really important. So making sure that you're moving your bowels one to three times a day is very, very important. Take out your garbage.

You know, and people tell me, well, how often are you moving your about? Oh, every three days, they're like, no, you don't want to do that. Yeah. I mean, it's true.

No, it's true. I mean, and, and people, Parkinson's, we know very clearly is linked to environmental toxins.

But it's also linked to constipation.

Absolutely. In fact, one of the key things is that way before people develop Parkinson's, they actually have constipation issues. And there's a strong evidence in the literature that Parkinson's actually can begin in the gut.

Yes. Well, it may be beginning in the gut, but also if you're not eliminating what's in there, it's exposing you to more toxins over time. So we use food. We also use a lot of special nutrients to upregulate these pathways that whether they're herbs or vitamins, things like milk thistle, selenium, and acetyl cysteine, lipoic acid. So we have a whole regimen in functional medicine to help you body detoxify. And there's other things you can do, right? Sauna sweating. Sauna, sweating, right? Sweating is- Exercise. Exercise, yoga, right? All these things help to detoxify your.

Body and move things around and move your lymph and your blood around and actually helps you detoxify. Dr. Hyman also spoke with Dr. Elizabeth.

Boham about using food and lifestyle to promote environmental toxin and heavy metal detoxification.

Detoxification.

Some of us are more susceptible than others, and I personally am one of those.

Me too.

And so I'm not so good at detoxing. I don't have to make sure I kick up my system all the time. But half of us, a good half of us, don't have the genes to help us detoxify. Why? Because we weren't exposed to all this junk before this century or last century. So the last 150 years, industrialization, we've seen so much increases in in all these heavy metals and other chemicals that we've had to deal with. So one cookie may not be bad for you and give you diabetes, but if you eat 30 or 40, you're gonna get diabetes. And the same thing with these toxins. And it's not just one toxin, like you said. And these low-level toxins that were exposed to the plastic, the flame retardants, the pesticides, the BPA, phthalates, parabens, all this stuff that we're constantly exposed to does.

Put a wear and tear on our detox system.

You were mentioning earlier, we always focus on nutrition, right?

Because you need to have enough amino acids and protein to detoxify. You need to have enough phytonutrients to detoxify.

So animal protein, the reason we need animal protein is very high in sulfur containing amino acids and other amino acids that are part of these pathways that the body uses to get rid of junk, these detox pathways, acetylation, methylation, glucuronidation. glycine conjugation, and they all need these various amino acids to regulate these pathways. Your body has a built-in detox system. It's designed to help your body get rid of crap. Yep. And there are very specific ways to optimize that system. It's something that we really focus on in functional medicine, which is foods that upregulate your detox pathways. All the things we were mentioning, the right amino acids, the right mineral-rich foods, things with lots of glucosinolates and things that build glutathione in the body, fiber to help bind the metals and get them out. So we have a real strategy in addition to getting rid of the source.

You've got to get rid of the source. Absolutely. We are unfortunately living in a toxin-filled world, and toxicity can lead to a host of issues including headaches, skin issues, fatigue, brain fog, weight gain, and more. This is why supporting the detoxification system is not just important for people suffering from chronic toxicity. It's something we all need to do to support our overall health. If you'd like to learn more about any of the topics you heard in today's episode, I encourage you to check out Dr. Hyman's full-length conversations with Maggie Ward, Dr. Todd Lepine, and Dr. Elizabeth Boham. If you have people in your life who could benefit from this information, please consider sharing this episode with your community. We need each other to create a healthier us.

Until next time, thanks for tuning in. hi, everyone. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode.

Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their find a practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who's trained, who's a licensed healthcare practitioner, and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.

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