Let’s talk about how to detoxify thousands of toxic chemicals out of your body but doing it in a way that’s very safe. There are many chemicals in our environment like Bisphenol A, PCB’s, heavy metals, certain toxic plastics, and biosolids. What you may not realize is biosolids are treated sewage sludge. It’s very interesting how certain groups use public relations to make something that is normally harmful to the environment sound as though it’s good for you. They came up with this new term ‘biosolids’ and actually redefined treated sewage sludge as a’ nutrient rich organic by-product’. Biosolids contain over 60,000 toxic substances. This is the stuff that exits your toilet, and it goes right into a sewage treatment plant where they are processing this material and actually selling it as an ingredient in your pet food, animal feeds, and in fertilizer. There’s at least 80,000, probably hundreds of thousands of different poisons or toxins called xenobiotics that we are exposed to on a daily basis.
Our bodies have a defense mechanism for these toxins. It is a series of detoxification pathways that will turn these poisons into harmless particles which is then eliminated through our waste and urine. This is called biotransformation, where you have these very powerful enzymes called cytochrome P-450 enzymes that are meant to breakdown all these poisons and keep us healthy. So, what should you be doing or eating to keep these toxins from causing disease?
Cruciferous Vegetables
There is a really interesting book called The International Agency of Research on Cancer by the World Health Organization, and it talks about cruciferous vegetables and their ability to induce biotransformation. If there is one thing you should be consuming on a regular basis it’s cruciferous vegetables like kale, broccoli, Brussel sprouts, cabbage, arugula, and bok choy.
Bile salts
Your body makes its own bile, but you can also take a bile supplement. This is very important because anytime you do a detox you should always start by taking bile salts for a few days and then do a detox because taking purified bile salts helps to start the flow through the liver. When you start to detoxify you start killing off certain pathogens that release endotoxins that then shut down the bile ducts. That’s why you might feel toxic from detoxifying. So, bile salts help you eliminate xenobiotics naturally. The chemicals from your liver should be coming out with the help of bile salts. Also, the microbes in your gut help you detoxify, and they also have the ability to make this cytochrome P-450 enzyme to help you breakdown these poisons. One recommendation is to combine cruciferous vegetables with probiotics. For example, if you were to take a prebiotic that has fiber as in cabbage and fermented it into sauerkraut then it is not just cruciferous but it’s a prebiotic and a probiotic. So, sauerkraut is a great food to help you detoxify. The great thing about doing this with food is it happens slowly so you don’t really feel it. There’s many other different vegetables and herbs that will help you detoxify such as garlic, rosemary, thyme and clove. All of these have the enzyme cytochrome P-450.
Fasting
Another thing to make note of is that a lot of these chemicals create a lot of free radical damage in the body but the foods that you eat have antioxidants. However, your body also makes antioxidants called endogenous antioxidants. This is especially true when you fast. When you’re fasting you are putting your body into state of autophagy which not only accelerates repairing the damage in the body but also the clearing out of pathogens. Fasting will help increase your endogenous antioxidant networks so you will have a lot more antioxidants. Not to mention your immune system will be stronger and the body will resist the stress from the free radical damage.
Read labels
Certified organic foods do not contain biosolids so it would be best to try and eat as much organic food as possible. It would also be a good idea to make sure when you buy pet food that you read the ingredients to make sure it does not have what’s called “nutrient rich organic by-products” because it sounds like it’s really healthy but it’s not because it’s just another name for biosolids.
As a retired registered massage therapist, I’ve always been interested in health. I grew up loving sports so that carried into my adult life in my chosen career paths and in my personal life. I now stay active with weight training, hiking and biking. My professional life has always been in health care. This has inspired me to seek out and adopt a life of natural health and wellness.