Your Body’s Detox Plan and 5 Tips to Help

The Detox Confusion

• There seems to be a lot of noise out there when considering all the different ways to detox and cleanse our bodies.  My personal belief is that there is so much money to be made by different industries that want to take advantage of this niche.  Let me be the rare voice to let you know that you need nothing more than your body’s internal wisdom.  I am NOT talking about Hocus-pokus or Voo-Doo here.  I am saying that your body has innate mechanisms in place that are working around the clock to rid your body of toxins.  In other words, your body already knows how to detoxify itself.  It does not need you to ingest that black drink, or that green drink, or whatever concoction is in that newly branded bottle with a flashy label (unless you want to pretend that you like the taste of that stuff).  Your body simply needs you to understand that it can do its job when you feed it the required nutrients to continue doing its job effectively.

Why Are There Toxins in our Bodies?

• Our bodies are subject to two sources of toxins.  From outside our bodies and inside our bodies.  We are exposed to them in our every day lives.  Smoking and alcohol are obvious offenders.  But non-stick pots and pans, preservatives in our food, chemical sealers on furniture or plastics are more sneaky in finding their way into our bodies.  We can breath in, eat, or absorb toxins through our skin from our environment without even knowing it!  Within our bodies, simple metabolism produces things like ammonia and urea that is absolutely toxic to our nervous systems.  These must be excreted through urine before building up to dangerous levels and causing encephalopathy (a fancy word to describe a compromised brain).  Oxygen free radicals must be neutralized.  Peroxidases must be broken down.  These are just a few examples.  However they drive home the understanding that our bodies need to be well-adept at handling and eliminating toxins from so many sources.  So, how do our bodies do that?

How Does the Body Eliminate Toxins?

• When Doctors prescribe a medication, we need to be aware of how the medication will get cleared by the body so that levels do not become toxic.  We are mindful of two main ways that the body can remove medications.  The same is true for toxic substances.  Either we do #1 or #2 in the bathroom (Other methods of excretion include exhaling and sweating to a lesser extent).  But the body needs to process toxins first.  This way, they are LESS toxic and therefore safer to transport and dump into the urine or feces for elimination from the body.  This processing is called Detoxification.  No surprise there!  Detoxification mostly occurs in the liver.  Every liver cell has a smooth endoplasmic reticulum which works hard to render any toxic molecule as harmless as possible.  The all-star in this transformation is glutathione.

What is Glutathione?

• Many people simply say that Glutathione is an antioxidant.  But if you relegate this molecule to the long list of popular antioxidants, then what makes THIS molecule so special?  Why do our livers actually expend energy and resources just to keep this stuff in stock?
• Glutathione is a PROTEIN.  Unlike most antioxidants you’ve heard of, your liver actually BUILDS this one with amino acids (These are the basic building blocks of protein).  Glutathione is built with amino acids (Glutamate + Cysteine + Glycine = Glutathione).  Where is the antioxidant action in this protein?  The Cysteine contains an atom of Sulfur.  This sulfur attracts and sticks to whatever toxin it encounters and prevents that toxin from oxidizing (and therefore damaging) other tissues in our body.  Basically, Glutathione sacrifices itself and gets oxidized by the toxin!  This altruism spares other tissues from the grizzly fate that the toxin brings!
• Although Glutathione took one for the team, we can revive it!  More on that later.

What Happens When Glutathione is Overloaded?

• When we are first exposed to toxins, the body’s natural response is to increase production of Glutathione.  This should indicate the sheer importance of this protein in our bodies!  But what if the body cannot produce enough?  There are a couple reasons for this: 1) There are simply too many toxins, or 2) Our body does not have enough resources (aka, nutrition) to meet demand.
• In either circumstance, we feel the symptoms.  We are tired, sluggish, fatigued, get sick more often, chronic diseases emerge, we feel pain, zapped of vitality, reluctant to get out of bed and face the day.  The list goes on.  Why?  We can’t quite put our finger on it.  But we KNOW something is just not right!  We FEEL it in ourselves!

What Can We Do to Replenish and Maintain Our Levels?

• You cannot simply take Glutathione in a pill.  Your body will simply digest the protein for amino acids to be used somewhere else!  So you will not get any of the benefits!  The smart thing is to give our body the building blocks necessary to create it!
• If Glutathione in bottles already have the building blocks, can’t we just take those pills even though our bodies will break it down?  Can our bodies just put them back together once the amino acids are inside?
  • Yes and no.  This logic fails to recognize the complex physiology and biochemistry of our bodies.  A multitude of body functions need the amino acids that Glutathione provides.  Therefore, the amino acid might go to repairing skin tissue, or it could be used in building muscle, or it could find itself in your blood cells.  It all depends on how the body decides to allocate its resources in that moment to keep you alive!
  • Also, there are enzymes and cofactors that are required to help build this protein from the ground up.  A pill in a bottle might not provide you with these essential nutrients.  So even if you have the amino acids available, the liver could not put them together because the enzymes are not functioning.  It’s like trying to build a brick wall.  You have the bricks and you have the mortar.  But they are not going to build themselves into a wall!  YOU need to be the enzyme to facilitate that reaction.  And as the enzyme, you need the help of a spatula to get the mortar on the bricks so they can stick together the right way.  Otherwise, you will only have a pile of bricks and mortar with no wall.
• So what can we do?  Pay attention to nutrition.  Drink your water.  Get your exercise.  Get your sleep.  Minimize toxins where possible.

Tips for Success

#1 Attention to Nutrition

• As I mentioned earlier, you need to provide your liver with the building blocks via nutrition.  Not only that;  The pathways involved in creating Glutathione rely on enzymes that ALSO need their nutrients in the form of Vitamins and Minerals.  Eating WHOLE foods (not just supplements in a pill) will provide you with well rounded nutrition and support all the elements that go into making Glutathione.  So what do we need to eat?
  • To make Glutathione: Cysteine is in short supply because it is in high demand by many systems of the body.You can find Cysteine in foods like:

    • Animal proteins:

      • Beef and lamb
      • Poultry like chicken and turkey
      • Eggs
      • Pork
      • Fish and seafood

    • Plant proteins:

      • Seeds or nuts like pumpkin seeds or walnuts
      • Legumes like lentils and chick peas
      • Cruciferous vegetables like broccoli
      • Garlic and onions (you know that pungent smell and strong taste they produce?  That is the smell and taste of sulfur containing proteins that you need to produce glutathione).
  • Please be aware of how you prepare these foods.
    • The pots or pans could leech chemicals into your food while cooking.  I always assume that the material of my pots and pans will end up in my food.  Therefore I prefer using cast iron pots and pans.  This way, I know that I will get my iron from the foods that I eat (and therefore do not need as much beef for that mineral).
    • Also, high temperatures and fast cooking times can char, burn, and oxidize the food; forcing your body to use up its glutathione stores.  This method of cooking also might damage the cysteine we need.  In light of this, I love to use a slow cooker.  If not, I try my best to steam or bake things to maximize the nutrients my body will absorb.

#2 Drink Your Water

• You have surely heard this advice before for many reasons.  Let me tell you that drinking water is NOT an option, IT IS ESSENTIAL!  Why?  I don’t care that your body is made up of 90% water (or whatever number you heard recently).  I care about your physiology and biochemistry here.  What do I mean?  There are 3 reasons I want you to focus on:
  1. Every single reaction on a biochemical level takes place in water!  EVERY SINGLE ONE!!!  It does NOT take place in your favorite soda; Nor does it take place in wine or beer or your favorite alcoholic beverage; It does NOT take place in milk or juice or anything else you can think of EXCEPT WATER.  When you drink or eat anything, your body does its absolute best to extract all the water from that beverage or food.  But many times, there is NO WATER in these drinks or foods.  So… drink WATER!  Tea is a viable option that I prefer.  Coffee is ok sometimes, but the caffeine can dehydrate you.
  2. Water actually participates in the reaction itself!  There are many reactions where water (H2O) is used as a substrate that reacts with another molecule.  H2O-water can also be created as a product of other reactions!
  3. Water is mandatory to clear out toxins from your cells and throw them into urine for elimination.  Like taking a shower, every cell in your body needs enough water to cleanse itself and wash away the dirt and grime that has built up.  Therefore water is used to clean and clear away the waste products that our cells produce with its normal activities throughout the day.

#3 Get Your Exercise

• Exercise is another key element in boosting Glutathione levels.  BUT too much exercise can cause oxygen free radicals to build up.  Can you guess what needs to neutralize all those dangerous by-products?  That’s right!  GLUTATHIONE.  So while exercise can increase levels, you want to do MODERATE exercise to get the benefits of more Glutathione without depleting them in the process!
• Moderate exercise is different from one person to the next.  According to the Mayo Clinic, you will know when you are exercising moderately when:
  • You are breathing a little quicker than normal without losing your breath
  • You are still able to talk to your exercise buddy
  • Sweating after a few minutes of activity

#4 Get Your Sleep

• We have heard this piece of advice so many times, it’s EXHAUSTING!  I bring up sleep because studies have shown that sleep deprivation actually decrease glutathione levels.  But we already know that we need more sleep.  We also know that sleep is good for you in more ways than scientists have yet discovered!  So… How do we get more of this magical and life-saving activity?  My own solution is to go to bed just 5 minutes early for a week.  I tack on 5 minutes in the evening because hitting the snooze button when I need to get up for work is not often an option!
• For example, I used to go to bed at midnight.  Waking up by 6AM was mandatory.  I knew that I needed 8 hours of sleep.  So I counted back from 6AM and set 10PM as my ultimate goal to be in bed.  I set little goals at first to get in bed 5 minutes earlier for a week.  Therefore I made sure to be in bed by 11:55PM.  What’s 5 minutes?  I can still get everything done before then.  By the end of the week, it felt just as natural as going to bed at midnight.  So I took off ANOTHER 5 minutes.  Bedtime at 11:50PM also felt quite natural.  I realized that I am going to bed 10 minutes earlier than before.  So I adjusted my weekly goal and decided to shave off another 10 minutes.  Going to bed at 11:40PM hardly seemed like a big leap.  And so I continued in this way.
• My point is that I needed to set small goals along the way to my ultimate goal.  Small enough that they do not present a challenge in my everyday life, but big enough to lead me to my ultimate goal.  Be careful!  Although I had a goal in mind, I really set HABITS.  Why?  Because I can ONLY control my habits.  And if I set the right habits, they will lead me to my goal.

#5 Minimize Toxins

• Take a good, hard look at the things around you.  Then think about how often you come into physical contact with these items.  The clothes you wear; The soaps you use to wash your hands, face, body, and hair; the cleaning products under your sink; perfumes and deodorants; cosmetics; plastic containers; cookware; the list goes on.
  • Read the ingredients of your favorite soap or detergent.  If you don’t know an ingredient, look it up!  Please see my Top 10 Tips to Reading the Ingredients List!  I wrote that article with food in mind, but the same principles can be applied here as well.
  • Or go through the ingredients of your deodorants or cosmetics.
  • What number is in that triangle on the bottom of your plastic water bottle?  Get online and find out what that number means for your health!
  • What is the brand of your cookware?  Do they tell you what materials are used in the making of your pots and pans?  What are they?
• My point is this:  Start asking questions about your everyday items.  When you do, you will build up your knowledge of things.  And when you build more knowledge, you can make choices that better suit your health.  You may have to dig deep to get the information you are looking for.  But if you cannot find information about a product in your house, that is ALSO quite informative (and makes ME less inclined to buy that product again!)

The Last Thing You Need to Know about Your Body’s Detox Plan

• Your body knows its plan to detoxify your system and keep it running clean.  Unfortunately we live in a world where becoming inundated with toxins is very easy!  BUT if you follow the 5 Tips I listed above, you can support your body’s ability to clear itself of these products and minimize disease.
• If you liked this article, please comment and share it with your friends and family!  If you have any questions or would like to suggest topics that you would like to read about, please post them in the comments below and I will read them!