Is Detoxification Necessary?
People frequently ask me if I think that “detoxing” is necessary. My simple answer “Yes”. It is important to realize that your body is already designed to eliminate substances that are “toxic” to it. If these substances were allowed to remain they would impede the normal cellular functions in your body, ultimately leading to poor health, premature aging and death. In recent years there has been a lot of emphasis on toxins that we absorb from the outside through food, water, and air exposure.
Many of these are industrial pollutants and food additives that our ancestors never encountered and have been shown to impede body function. Thus they do indeed need to be escorted out before they cause health problems. But equally important are the toxins that are produced within our own body. These substances are the waste products that are regularly produced as a part of normal metabolism. As body parts wear out they are replaced cell by cell on a constant basis. The breakdown of the old cells releases substances that have to get out of your body so that the new cells can function properly. If they can’t get out efficiently they remain as “toxins”, clogging up normal cell function. Similarly, the burning of fats or sugars for fuel in our cells creates metabolic waste. This waste is similar to the exhaust gasses that come out of a car’s tailpipe or a factory smokestack. If you block your car’s tailpipe while it is running the motor will soon stop due to the buildup of waste products. Likewise, if the metabolic toxins in your body build up it will not run well (aka, chronic illness) and will eventually stop.
Thus the degree of health you experience is fundamentally dependent on how well you can eliminate these toxic waste products. Although other organs play a part in your body’s detoxification pathways, the liver is by far the most important organ in the detoxification process. Your liver is to your body what your car’s oil filter is to its engine. All of your blood circulates through your liver many times during the day. It is way more sophisticated than a car oil filter but it essentially serves the same purpose, filtering out harmful substances. Unlike your car oil filter, the liver is self-cleaning and dumps the toxins out by way of your urine and bowel movement. However, if the load of toxins is too much for the liver to process at one time, it just sends them back into the blood to circulate until it has the capacity to deal with them. Unfortunately, our current diets of processed foods, along with the dramatic increase in industrial pollutants, has overwhelmed the detoxification process for most of us. We now all have measurable levels of industrial pollutants in our bodies. The current hype around detoxification leads many well-meaning people to go on crash detoxification programs. This approach often serves to rapidly pull large quantities of toxins out of your body’s “safe storage” areas. This can overwhelm the liver, resulting in a large amount of toxins back into general circulation. This is the origin of so called “detox reactions”. Thus, rapid detoxification programs can contribute to more problems than they resolve.
In summary, detoxification is important to your health. However, to be safe it needs to be done slowly while giving the liver the nutrients necessary to properly carry out this process. If you are interested in learning how to safely and effectively detoxify your body (and you should be) please contact our office to schedule a time where we can set up a program that is right for your body.
