Liver Detoxification: Phase 1 of my detox

I'm working with a doctor this year supporting a group of patients through a 3-week detox.  So I've been brushing up on the subject of liver detoxification and making educational material.  Both Dr. Drew and I are doing the detox along with the group, so it should be fun.

A 'detox' is a really interesting process.  If you do your own research, you'll find many different approaches.  A classic approach is a fast.  Some people just drink juices.  Some use meal replacements. But anyone can do a detox and understanding how it works helps you know how you should approach it.

Detoxification is something our bodies do every day.  We process and eliminate 'toxins' from our body.  Toxins can be what we usually think of toxins... chemicals we inhale from exhaust and hairspray.  Pesticides on our food.  Chemicals in body care products.  Heavy metals.  But there are also waste products that need to be removed.  Old hormones like estrogen and testosterone need to go.  In the course of a day, we have natural cycles of detoxification.  In between meals, if we allow ourselves adequate time without eating, we do a little detoxification.  Once our liver is done dealing with our meal it can get down to doing other things like detoxification with more gusto.  Night time is when it does the most.  You are fasting from dinner to breakfast and sleeping, so the body's detoxification systems really start to work to eliminate the old and make way for the new.

The liver does a lot of this work.  It uses different vitamins and minerals to chemically alter substances so that we can eliminate them from the body.  Then we can pee them out or poop them out, breathe them out, sweat them out.  It's a great system, along as it's working.  But it needs enough of the vitamins and minerals to process the toxins, it needs enough water to pee things out, you need to be pooping enough to poop it out (which means plenty of healthy fiber, healthy fats and water), and you need to be moving your body enough to pump all your body lymph around.  Finally, you need to not put more toxins in your body than it can deal with and stop eating long enough, frequently enough to give it time to do its job.

You might have noticed that in this world, life isn't fair.  Some people who have smoked for DECADES never seem to get cancer.  But your friend who doesn't smoke and rides her bike to work is struggling with cancer right now.  Well, we all have different abilities to deal with toxins.  Some of it is genetic.  Like, some people have detoxification enzymes that just don't work as well as others. But even with that, we can certainly optimize our detoxification abilities.  By doing this, we really help our bodies to be self-healing.  We clear out all the old junk and give it what it needs to do its job.  Then when we do encounter a carcinogen, there is a really good chance that we can detoxify it and get rid of it before it does us any lasting harm.

Look at this picture.  See how many vitamins are needed in just the phase 1?  All those B vitamins?  And all those amino acids in phase II, not to mention glutathione in both of them.  You need sulfur-based amino acids and vitamin C to make glutathione.  Then in the middle, you can see the term 'intermediary metabolites'.  That's where the products of the phase 1 reactions sit in this sort of detox bardos state waiting for further processing.  In the meantime, they're super-reactive and can damage the liver cells.  So we use our antioxidants to protect the liver and stabilize those compounds until they can move on to their after-lives, and be excreted.  Some of those unlucky people have slow phase II enzymes (or not enough of the nutrients needed) and end up with a bunch of the nasty ntermediary metabolites hanging out causing trouble.

I used to do a regular 24-36 hour fast a few times a month.  But then I had kids and I was either pregnant, nursing, trying to recover from all that or just too busy.  I've worked hard over the years to figure out the best way for me to eat so that I could be healthy, be economical and all that.  And I have pretty good health with a stable, healthy weight.  I've always valued food for healing and never went in for the supplements much.  But I figured if I was going to bring along a group with products I wasn't familiar with, I'd better jump in body and soul and see what it was all about.  Boy was I in for a surprise.

I'm keeping a brief diary of how the whole thing went.  I'll post that as soon as I've brought it all together.  The next entry: http://ripplfamilyfarm.blogspot.com/2013/03/my-detox-phase-ii.html  explains the process further.