Dos and Don’ts of Detox

Hey, it's J.J. here. You know, I've been talking about environmental toxins forever, and laundry detergent is a sneaky one. A lot of them contain harsh chemicals like dyes, preservatives, and even UV brighteners. Those brighteners don't actually clean anything. They just coat fabric so your eyes think things look whiter or brighter. That's more chemicals I don't want on my family sheets or skin. And. And if you've got sensitive skin or allergies around the house, this can be a big problem. That's what got my attention about Earth Breeze. It looks like a dryer sheet, but it's actually laundry detergent. You toss one in the washer and that's it. No pouring, no mess, and no heavy plastic jug. Their packaging is lightweight cardboard, which helps reduce plastic waste. And if you choose the fragrance free option, it's gentle, hypoallergenic, non irritating, and non sensitizing. I really like how simple it is and how fresh and clean everything comes out without those unnecessary chemicals. Right now you can try Earth Breeze for up to 40% off with free gifts@earthbreeze.com virgin that's earthbreeze.com virgin for up to 40% off plus free gifts on your first order. Hey, JJ here. Can you believe how fast the holidays are knocking at the door this year? One minute it's pumpkin spice season, the next you're getting your guest room ready and wondering where their wrapping paper went. And that's when I turned to Wayfair. From bedding and towels to holiday decor and last minute stocking stuffers, Wayfair has everything you need to get your home and holidays together fast. And for way less. With Wayfair, I know I can refresh my guest room in no time. Maybe I'll add a soft new comforter or a few holiday throw pillows. With Wayfair, it's so easy and everything arrives super fast. Plus, there's free shipping for any order over $35 easy and total peace of mind. So whether you're hosting, gifting, or just adding those final festive touches, Wayfair has your back. And when the holidays wind down, Wayfair has everything you need to tuck it all neatly away. Smart storage solutions for every room from the kitchen to the closet. Get organized, refreshed, and ready for the holidays. For way less, head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home. Wayfair. Every style, every home that's W a Y F A I R.com Some people.

Think nature is like this. But actually it's like this.

That's why Columbia engineers everything we make.

For anything nature can throw at you. Columbia engineered for whatever. Hey, this is JJ Virgin. Thanks so much for joining me. This is Ask the Health Expert. In each episode, I put the power of health in your hands and share ways to get healthy, lose weight, heal your gut, detox, and lots more so you can look and feel better fast.

If you'd rather watch the video. Hey, hey.

I did put on my makeup and.

Do my hair, so check it out.

On my YouTube channel.

Hey, it's J.J. here. Now, let's be honest. The holidays are basically a financial ambush. Travel, hosting gifts, surprise holiday, school, things. Suddenly you're wondering how December turned into a spending spree. If you want to keep your finances under control this holiday season, you need to be using Monarch. It's rated the Wall Street Journal's best budgeting app of 2025. Monarch is the all in one personal finance tool that brings your entire financial life together in one clean interface on your laptop or your phone. What really grabbed my attention is how fast those little holiday expenses pile up with Monarch. Seeing everything in one place makes it a lot harder to accidentally overspend. And honestly, I appreciate anything that keeps me from starting January with a money hangover. You'll love exploring the holiday spending category. Imagine how good it will feel to actually see what's happening before your credit card statement does that whole dramatic reveal thing. Monarch basically shows you exactly where the money is going in real time.

And.

And that level of clarity could change everything, right? Don't let financial opportunity slip through the cracks. Use the code virgin@monarch.com in your browser for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year. @monarch.com with code Virgin, the holidays are all about family.

But at the Chrysler Wrap of the year sales event, it's all about you. Enjoy every mile in the most awarded minivan in America. The Chrysler Pacifica, with the most standard safety features in its class, Available Stow n go seating, and the available Stow and back built in vacuum. Make the most of the holidays with a great deal at the Chrysler Pacifica Wrap up the year sales event based on Ward's small van segment. Based upon the latest available competitor information, Chrysler is a registered trademark of FCA US llc.

We're exposed to toxins every day and you know, even the sound of that's kind of gross. But there's not really a lot you can do about exposure. Because no matter where you live, I mean, even if it's paradise, there's toxins in the air and the water. They're flowing everywhere. They build up, and they can cause all sorts of stuff when they do. Weight gain, autoimmune disease, et cetera. Now, before this gets too depressing, there's good news. You can detox and feel great again. And when you get healthy and detox, you're probably going to lose some weight, too. But there's a right way to do this and a wrong way to do this. So make sure you're armed with my nine top do's and don'ts. Coming up on this channel, I share a lot of information, tools, and tips about ways to get healthy, feel better fast, and lose weight. So hit like and subscribe to make sure you don't miss any of the good intel. And since we're talking about getting healthy, we have to talk about toxins. In today's world, there's really no escaping them. We're even born with some of them already in our little bodies. So right out of the gate, it's like, here we go. Even if you're doing everything you possibly can to reduce your toxic exposure, you're still getting bombarded with thousands of toxins our bodies were never designed to deal with. I mean, do you clean your house or use makeup or do the laundry? And no, I'm not saying don't do the laundry. Although that does sound a little good, right? So, yeah, you just can't dodge this bullet. But you can do something about it. I look at it this way. Your body isn't a bank account. It's a chemistry lab. And toxins can have a really bad impact on your chemistry lab. We have to be our own personal health detectives and take our health into our own hands to figure out what's going on with our chemistry lab and what's impacting it. When you get exposed to toxins, your body tries to get them out of circulation so they aren't wreaking havoc. So where do they go? They get stored in your fat, so your metabolism slows. So you hold on to this fat to protect you from the toxins. And if you start to lose the fat, bam. They end up back in your bloodstream. And it's like catch 22 because you want to lose the weight. But when the toxins are freed up, they create a whole lot of problems, especially in your metabolism. They can make you insulin resistant, which is the pathway to diabetes and cardiovascular risk. This toxic load can impair your thyroid function, which then lowers your metabolism. They can affect your hunger hormones, so it can actually make you hungrier and also make it harder for you to ever feel full and satisfied. And they can also increase inflammation and oxidative stress. And when it comes to toxins in the environment, there are specific chemicals called obesogens that you'll want to be aware of, because obesogens are chemicals that can prevent you from losing weight and may even cause you to gain weight. They can change your gut microbiome to make it more glucose intolerant, to make you better at storing fat and worse at burning it off. And unfortunately, they're pretty common and in everything from water bottles to microwave popcorn. Do not even get me started on that. So my goal is to give you tools in your toolkit, simple, actionable steps that will help you detox and feel better and lose weight in the process. Now, the first thing I'm going to have you do is take my toxicity quotient quiz, and you can get that@jjvirgin.com tq and I'm going to put the link to that below. Now, this isn't to check if you're carrying toxins, because you are. It will help you figure out where you're getting exposure and what you're doing every day to reduce your exposure and to detox. Because in a perfect world, you're detoxing every day. We all need to detox often. Even if you're eating clean, healthy, and organic, the real question is, how do you do it right? So first, let's get out of the way how not to do it right, because that's usually the first thing you're going to try. And by that I mean when I say detox, the first thing you probably think of is a juice cleanse. Am I right? Or guzzling down maple syrup, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper. Okay, not only is that nasty, that is the worst thing that you can do. Even if you manage to get through it and lose some weight, you'll only lose a very specific kind of weight loss, the kind that comes right back. You know what I'm talking about? And that's on top of the fact that they're going to leave you starving. So your metabolism is slowing down as it tries to hang on to fat to survive. So you're hungry, you're cranky, you're exhausted, and it doesn't work. So what is the point? Honestly, Juice cleanses do more harm than good. Juice is just liquid sugar. It spikes and then crashes your blood sugar and raises your stress hormones in addition to the hit to Your blood sugar. The bigger thing with these juice cleanses is that they're missing one of the most important ingredients for detoxifying, and that is protein. Protein is needed to move toxins out of your body through your liver and kidneys and supports these detoxification pathways. So when you skip it to save calories or keep the detox pure, you're not detoxifying, you're actually making things worse. You're freeing up toxins in your body, but you aren't getting them out because protein is the toxin escort service. When you juice cleanse, you could actually becoming more toxic. Plus you're also not getting the fiber you need to help move those toxins out of your body, nor are you getting healthy fats. And healthy fats assist with the process and also support your liver. So if you're going to do a juice cleanse, which again I do not recommend, you need to offset that sugar spike by adding protein, fat and fiber as well. I guess we kind of turned it into a non juice cleanse and at least throw some chia seeds in there or something similar and get rid of the fruit juices too, so they don't get the big fruit fructose sugar bomb they provide. And I hope generally hearing this, that we can all agree. Juice cleanse bad. All right, now what's good? Now for the right way. Here are the seven things I recommend to detox the right way, starting with my number one. You're probably not surprised because I mentioned it already. And that is protein clean, lean protein. It stabilizes your blood sugar and suppresses your hunger hormones. So you're feeling full, you're eating delicious meals, there's no starving, there's no crashing blood sugar, there's no cratered energy and no, shall we say, mood issues. Now I'm harping on protein because your body cannot detoxify without it. I know the message about eating clean usually hammers you to eat more fruits and vegetables, but all the fruits and veggies in the world cannot detox you if you don't have the right amino acids from protein on board. The protein is also going to help you burn fat, build muscle, and have great energy during and after your detox. Now, the critical thing here is that it is clean, lean protein, not factory cows or chickens, not farm raised fish. Because remember, you are what you eat, ate. And if your protein sources are being fed GMO feed, antibiotics and more, then so are you. And that means you got even more to detoxify from. So to make it super easy, just make Detoxing part of the way, you'd start your day anyway and do a loaded smoothie. I've got green smoothie cleanse. That's the equivalent of a full detoxing meal. So you can start there. It's got 18 grams of vegan friendly protein, plus amazing nutrition from organic greens. So throw it in your smoothie or add it to coconut milk and boom, you're done. Plus, it's yummy. It's strawberry vanilla flavored. So it's not like drinking green sludge, which is. I know what you think of. At least I do. When you think of a detox drink, I like to use it as a quick detox jumpstart. But it can also help you form a daily habit of detoxifying because again, this is something that you've got to add into your daily routine. Now, if you want to speed things up, you can do a loaded smoothie in place of two meals a day. And honestly, I do this a lot. I like to get ahead of it rather than let toxins build up until I feel like crap because then I'm also having a harder time dropping pounds. I have brain fog. You know how it is. So it makes the most sense to me to be supporting detox every single day or at least more often than a couple times a year. So make it the lifestyle choice that you're doing to be covered detoxifying on a daily basis for a good defense. All right, on to the rest. Number two, my number two detox tip. Get in more foods with sulfur. These are non starchy veggies like broccoli, brussels sprouts, cauliflower and cabbage, plus onions and garlic. The sulfur in them helps you release toxins. Now, if you don't have food intolerances, pastured eggs are also great here too. I love to steam some organic broccoli with some onions and garlic and a little ghee or coconut oil. It's super tasty and a big sulfur hit. And I actually eat at least one of these non starchy veggies every single day. Right now I sneak cauliflower rice in pretty much to everything. So you can get creative here. All right, number three, more deep green organic leafies. Now, the deep green leafies have compounds in them that help you detoxify. So this is, you know, a lot of sounds. But you can also be on your salad. You can sneak them into your loaded smoothie or of course, add in a little bit of green smoothie cleanse because we've got greens in there as well. And if you can find a place to put cilantro, maybe in some of your salsa. That's great too because it can pull out naturally. Chelate heavy metals. Okay, number four, fiber. You gotta move those toxins out and fiber is critical for this. So you can up your fiber with more plant foods. Lentils and other legumes are great, slow roasted or dehydrated. Nuts and seeds, berries, avocados and really important. Here you're not looking getting just one type of fiber. You want both soluble and insoluble because the soluble is like a sponge. That helps you soak up all those toxins. Obviously, really important and insoluble helps move them through your digestive system and out. So you want both. Now I've got a product called Extra fiber that's got 12 different types of fiber that you can add to your loaded smoothies to make it super easy to get that 50 grams of fiber or more that I want you to have a day. Right? So important. Now when you eat by the plate, you're going to have numbers 2, 3 and 4 covered. Plus you won't just eat dark green leafies, you're going to eat a rainbow of veggies, which is really important because they're antioxidant rich and detoxification is a nutrient dense process. You need a lot of nutrients because the toxins free up all sorts of problems in your body and the nutrients help quench the free radicals the toxins are freeing up. And you get those from the greens and the colorful veggies. So make sure that you're getting a lot of them so that you get the toxins out of your fat into your bloodstream and then out of your body. Okay, Speaking of moving them out of your body, number five, more water. I want you to hydrate, hydrate, hydrate because you have to flush your system. The only time you want to dial this back is during meals when too much liquid can dilute the stomach enzymes that break down your protein. Otherwise I want you drinking up. So you want to start drinking lots of pure spring water first thing in the morning, then stop about a half hour before you eat, then start again about a half hour hour after your meal. The other thing you can drink that I'd love to see you doing is green tea because it is packed with polyphenols that support detox and it's also great for your gut microbiome. So this is another one that you can do and it's great thing to trade some of your coffee for. Okay, number six, you want to excrete those toxins. One of the big ways to do that is to sweat. And of course, you also want to pee and poop them out. So if you're getting enough fiber from number four and enough water and number five, peeing and pooping should take care of themselves. Now, to sweat them out, you have to get moving, get some exercise. Now, burst training is great. High intensity interval training because it blasts fat and obviously helps you sweat, but it's also great for stress and it's quick. We're not talking hours at the gym here. You can do this literally in like 15 to 20 minutes a day. So. So I'm going to put a link to some info on my burst training here, so you can give that a try. Or I want you moving, but you don't have to move at all. You can get into a sauna and you can sweat the toxins out that way. And when you sweat, you can practically feel those toxins leaving your fat. It feels so good. I have a sunlight and infrared sauna, and it is the best. So if you can get your own, definitely check out sunlight, and it's a great thing to have available. All right, number seven is sleep. Now, sleep boosts detox because it literally cleans out your brain. Now get this, your brain cells actually shrink during sleep. Seriously. Because that shrinkage creates space to flush out the toxins. So cool. So get your Z's. And then number eight is dry brushing. And this is something awesome you can do right before you get into the shower. You use a dry brush. That's literally what it is. And you brush up your arms and legs towards your heart. It helps you exfoliate and increases circulation. So it detoxifies your skin and helps with lymph drainage. Massage is another thing that can help increase circulation. That's always a treat. And then finally, number nine, take Epsom salts baths. I take one every single night. And they are amazing, not only for detox, but for stress relief, which is great because stress can also make a toxic burden worse by making you hold on to fat and by increasing cravings for high fat, high sugar foods. So a bath helps me relax and get a good night's sleep. Plus, soaking in the tub makes you feel like a queen or king. So the bottom line here is these nine tips on how to detox, right, will help you minimize your exposure to toxins while also maximizing their removal. And that's the big goal. There's no need to get crazy or do something extreme or make yourself miserable. It's not going to work anyway. Do it right. Eat foods that support detox, especially protein, fiber and fat. Then hydrate, sleep well, sweat and be good to yourself. That's the cocktail. So do whatever you can to put these habits in place and make them part of your every single day lifestyle. Because you're never not going to be hit with toxins. All you can do is keep your toxic burden as low as possible. Then I also recommend a more focused, intense cleanse two to four times a year to address any outstanding issues. And that's where you can really tune into how you feel. Notice what's resolved and take note of anything else you might need to address. But, and this is an important but, if you get tested and find out you're dealing with heavy metal toxicity, then you may have to work with a functional medicine doctor and go through chelation other deep detoxes to get rid of that level of toxicity. All right, good luck and please don't forget to hit like and subscribe and join me next time for more information on how to get and stay healthy. See you soon. For more info on this and other health topics I cover, or to rate and review, find me on Instagram, Facebook and my website, jjvirgin.com and don't forget to subscribe to my show so you won't miss a single episode. Go to subscribetojay.com thanks again for being with me this week. Foreign.

Hello listeners. This is Anne Bogle, author, blogger and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week I take all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately, and I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment, whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change, or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything. You'll learn something about yourself as a reader and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So so join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and visit our website. What Should I read next podcast.com to find out more.