Detox by Rotating Plant Fibers, with Dr. Deanna Minich

So can we draw the line, or can you draw the line between the phytonutrients that you find in colorful foods and the ways in which we see that helping us clean up, clean out, and detox?

That's a big question. I know.

We only.

The short answer is yes. And let's bring it down to some practicalities. I mean, first and foremost, when you just mentioned fasting, the first thing that came to my mind, what most people don't realize is that you need food, you need energy, you need nutrients to detoxify. So a little fasting is good, but not too much, because then you start to change the activity of the enzymes that are responsible for doing a lot of that cleanup process. So what I would say it has to be a very measured form of fasting and not too extensive. You know, it sounds kind of counterintuitive, but you actually do need nutrients to drive that whole process. So plants. Let's just talk plants, phytonutrients, and color, first and foremost, they give us fiber. So if we want to avoid toxicants from coming into the body, plants are wonderful because they supply the fiber to bind the toxicants. And what I love about fiber, I mean, fiber is becoming very sexy right now. We used to know it as just roughage and help keep you regular. And now we know that there are, like, 50 shades of fiber. So so many different kinds of fibers with so many personalities, different polarities, different charges, different structures that make them bind to things like heavy metals or even estrogen or even converted biometabolites from the liver. So fiber is integral in detoxification from the point of just preventing something from even being absorbed. And that's the best case scenario, is to prevent something from being absorbed.

All right, so now that you've opened up fiber, is there a top three or five?

Well, can you screw it up? I mean, can you be like, you've got the wrong fiber or you've gotten too much fiber? Is there some way that.

As a.

Student of not wanting to screw it up, someone who's like, I want to be a good doobie, and I'm assuming some of the listeners might be like, oh, no, I have the wrong form of fiber.

All right, well, how about we compromise exactly what's good and what's too much? And where is there tell us about fiber? Because fiber, we've been using that more and more in our practice.

Good.

As a way to detox, as a way to keep the bowels moving. Yeah.

Okay, so let me tell you what I've learned clinically and also I see it in the science. First and foremost, fiber can be used incorrectly because it's such a great binding agent. It can bind up your nutrients. So if you're taking your supplements at the same time as your fiber, you might be binding up and preventing certain things from being absorbed correctly. So there's that. It's a timing issue, it's a dosing issue. The second thing, and this I saw a lot in clinical practice, is that people would get constipated and I would think, well, how are you becoming constipated with fiber? You're supposed to become more regular. Well, people were not taking water and adequately hydrating. You know, fiber only works as well as it's being hydrated. We have different kinds of fibers. We have the broom and then we have the mop. The broom fibers are the insoluble ones. They just sweep through the gut, right? They just kind of, they're kind of rough and they move things through. They create motility. Those are good, but those aren't the great binding fibers like the mops that sop things up. You know, they, they actually glom onto things because they can take moist and so then they create a gel. And those typically are the kinds of fibers that affect the gut microbiome populations and the production of things like short chain fatty acids, which then can lead to changes in mucin production, gut barrier integrity and even signal to the brain. So that's the second piece. We need hydration. And then the third piece, and this is something that I thought about later in my nutritional career, is we need to rotate fibers. This is what I was seeing. People would do the same fiber over and over again. So they would be eating a pretty plant rich diet and they would have more dietary fiber. You know, the average person gets something on the order of 11 to 15 grams of fiber in a day. And we really should be getting like 28 to 35 grams, depending on your body size, your caloric intake and all of that. So we're getting like less than half of what we should really be getting. So in terms of can you get too much, can you get too little? Well, I think we're more in the state of getting too little. And when people start to think about fiber, then they think, oh, I'm going to go get some psyllium and just start taking a lot of this supplement on top of my, my diet. Well, but if you just have the same fiber over and over again, in my mind you create what I would call a monoculture in the gut. I mean, nature's principle is diversity, which is why I like the rainbow. I like the spectrum of colors, not just one color, I like them all. And they all have their purposes, their functionality. So the same thing with fiber. So here's the key for number three, rotate your fibers. So everything from flaxseed meal to the psyllium that I mentioned, acacia fiber, you know, so many different fibers that are out there. And I do like if it's a supplemental product, of course, for people to work with their healthcare practitioners on what would be best for them. But some of the fibers are plant, they're derived directly from the plant. You have prebiotic fibers of various types like inulin. So you may experience some gastric distress, some bowel changes when you first start a supplemental fiber product. So to note that, but in having that rotation, you start to create diversity of the gut. And that diversity funnels into better immune health. And diversity in general is a protective factor for reducing your risk against these environmental toxins. I mean, just think about it. If you're rotating brands, rotating foods, you're not going to have the same concentration of the same things over and over again where they would be toxic. So all in all, diversity for fiber and diversity for everything that we're taking in, even our life experiences.

I mean, diversity is so awesome. And we always say to people, don't get in a rut and expand, try new things, rotate around. But how quickly are you talking about that rotation? Is it a three month thing or is it on Monday you do X, on Tuesday you do Y, and on Wednesday you do something yet entirely different? How quick is that?

I tend to think in three day increments and that's even how I structured my own detoxification program. We do three days for red colored foods and getting into the depth of red colored foods, not just one type, but the whole spectrum within red, you have diversity. So I think if you look at the traditional use of rotational diets, it's every three to four days you change it up. And I think that that coincides very nicely with going even to the market, going to the grocery store, replenishing our foods during that time. So I think that's good. If you look at the American gut project, one of the things that they talked about was you, you know, they looked at people that had at least 30 foods per week versus people who had less than 10 foods and they found that people who had 30 diverse foods within that week were better producers of these short chain fatty acids, which again, we get from fiber. If you look, there's another article which looked at 50 foods in seven days. 50 unique foods. So again, if you have an apple, like a Fuji apple, then the next day, if you want an apple, don't make it a Fuji. Have it be like a Golden Delicious apple or a Pink lady apple or some other variety. But you're going to get different phytochemicals. So you're creating that diversity even within one food category. So that's what I'm thinking is like, on the whole, every three days, change it up within the week, aim for about 50 foods that are unique, would be my general rule of thumb.