You have survived the holidays and now it is time to get back on track.

If you are thinking about a detox to reduce the burden and drain on our energy that the buildup of toxins causes, then consider these three levels.

1. Avoiding continued exposure should always be part of any plan.
2. Get your downstream organs of detoxification supported.
3. Go as far upstream as you can go to detox at the cellular level and beyond the blood brain barrier

Stop letting them in.

Our modern life is filled with more sources of toxins than ever before.

We can’t avoid some of them, but many are getting into our body through OUR HANDS putting things in OUR MOUTHS!

The unavoidable ones: can’t hold your breath when you go outside! And then there are the ones we were given by our mothers while we were in utero. Did you know that the era of leaded gas and paints lives on?  These heavy metal  toxins were deposited into our mothers where their bodies tried to safely store them in their bones.  When it is time to build a new baby, mothers will pull building blocks from their own bones and there is a direct correlation of the amount of lead in a mother and the amount found in their offspring.

The other tricky ones are the ones you don’t know about! Personal care products, cleaning products and hidden toxins in processed foods are the most common ones that are overlooked. The Environmental Working Group is a great resource for identifying common personal care products and their toxic loads. They also keep a list of the produce with the most and least pesticides called the Dirty Dozen and the Clean Fifteen. http://www.ewg.org/foodnews/.  Look for my workshop on Chemical Stress here to educate and empower yourself in this category. .https://www.wellspringcls.com/empowermentseries/

And then there are the toxins that somehow we let get in. Remember, a chemical stress is anything you put in or ON your body that is not a nutrient. Never put anything on your skin that you wouldn’t eat. That means there may be foods/substances that have actual toxins in them, or they may be inflammatory foods that will cause the cell membranes to become inflamed making it more difficult for the cell to remove toxins.

If you find yourself knowingly and willingly putting unhealthy foods into your body, then I suggest you look more closely at your hidden beliefs about them. Comfort foods are the most common culprits: foods that we have memories of being comforted with or being “treated to” if we were “good kids”, usually in the form of carbs, sugars and unhealthy fats. When we are stressed, we will stop using the smart part of our brains that can consider long term consequences of our actions, and go directly to our reptilian brains that are seeking pleasure and avoiding pain to simply allow us to survive the next moment. Guess what will easily pass the ‘gatekeeper on duty’ in stress mode? Yup, donuts, Christmas candy, cookies, pies, alcoholic beverages, breads, pastas... Unless you change your belief about these situations, under stress, our mere will power eventually loses every time. Over the years, in my pursuit of learning as much as I could on natural healing approaches, I have changed my belief around these foods, so that I see them for the poisons they are and now consider it a victory winning over the wicked witch trying to poison Snow White with that delicious shiny apple, the way the marketing departments of toxic/inflammatory foods try to convince us of how much better our lives will be if we eat their poisoning products.

Some good books that may help you shift your beliefs around foods you may have noticed you seem to have trouble avoiding (dare I say are ‘addicted’ to?) include Sugar Blues, Grain Brain, Wheat Belly, and  Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us

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Downstream Organs of Detoxification

 Now that you have a plan for lowering your toxic burden, it is time to start moving the toxins that are already there out. The organs that do this for us are our liver, lungs, lymph, large intestines, kidneys, and skin. Your liver has 2 stages of detoxing but will get backed up if you don’t have clear avenues for getting the toxins out of the body through the bowels and other detox pathways. Kidneys filter the blood. The lymph carries toxins dumped from the cells to your blood where they can be filtered out. Lungs release carbon dioxide and your skin is the largest detox organ through sweating and sloughing off of dead skin cells.

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Daily Protocols

It is a good idea in our modern world to have daily detox be part of your healthy lifestyle protocols including:

• Probiotic foods like yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, kimchi, apple cider vinegar, kombucha and others
• Fresh fruits and vegetables like lemons, apples, kiwis and green leafy veg like spinach
• Green smoothies
• Herbs like cilantro and turmeric
• Removing inflammatory foods such as gluten, dairy, soy, corn, eggs, sugar, alcohol.

Sleep:

• When we get good sleep, it reboots our hormones and is when a lot of healing occurs.
• It is also when our brain cells shrink and allows the cerebral spinal fluid to flush toxins out from between the brain cells.
• This happens only in deep sleep and is most pronounced after we have 5 ½ hours of sleep.

Fasting:

• Intermittent fasting is a great way to give the body a rest from digesting so it can put more energy into detoxing. The simplest way to do this is not to eat less, but to eat less often. Ideally compressing the time you eat to 6-8 hours a day is what works best, meaning whenever you have your first meal, you would eat your last meal of the day within 6-8 hours. For example, if your first meal of the day is 11 am, your last meal would be done by 5 to 7 pm. Start by doing this one day per week and try adding more days.
• Diet variation also adds robustness and adaptability so consider shooting for a 5-1-1 rhythm of 5 days per week intermittent fasting, one day doing a 24 hour or more fast and one day feasting!

When we fast, our body is able to scavenge and devour the old sick bad cells called ‘autophagy’ and it leaves the healthy strong cells to continue to reproduce. This is especially powerful after a 4 day block fast.

Here are ways to support your organs of detoxification on a daily basis.

Skin:  

• dry brushing stimulates lymph and removes dead skin;
• heat from saunas, Epsom salt baths or vigorous exercise causes you to sweat;
• alternating the heat with cold showers pumps the circulatory system to move toxins along;
• Bentonite clay has been used for centuries as a gentle detox for the skin and internally.

Lungs:

• breathing exhales CO2, a waste product from cellular metabolism
• vigorous exercise has you panting in fresh air
• good posture holds your chest open… watch out for Tech Neck postures!

Kidneys:

• drink plenty of water!
• And diuretic foods and herbs like watermelon, cucumber, and parsley.

Lymph:

• exercise for the required movement of our muscles to pump the lymph fluid through the passive lymphatic system
• Also dry brushing the skin from the feet up to the heart helps to move the lymph

Large Intestines or Colon:

• whole food fiber from root vegetables, berries, apples, almonds, avocados and other high fiber foods
• psyllium husks to keep things moving

Liver:

• turmeric, avocados
• cruciferous vegetables like kale and broccoli

At least once a year and preferable 2-4 times a year, it is a good idea to do a deeper downstream detox. I like the Standard Process 10 and 28 day cleanses. They are simple and effective.

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Cellular Detox

If you have concerns about heavy metal toxicities or the need to do deeper cellular and brain level detoxing, I would suggest the True Cellular Detox program as the most robust program. It has three phases to it, the Prep Phase, the Body Phase and the Brain Phase. These will get you started, but you must understand it is a long process to truly address this safely and effectively. This program uses supplements that target each phase and includes binders that carry the toxins all the way out of the body and don’t allow them to be reabsorbed into the body again from the large intestines. Zeolite is one of these true binders.

Aluminum toxicity is best addressed through natural silica infused waters like Fiji or Volvic brand bottled water.

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Your Nervous System

All the functions of detoxification revolve around how well your nervous system is controlling the organs and tissues involved. Detoxification can be stalled from stress.

Each time the nervous system encounters stresses that are overloading, we can cause short circuits in our spine, causing or perpetuating what are known as vertebral subluxations, misalignments that interfere in the flow of messages between our brain and our body that then reduces our adaptability because it interferes with the proper function of our cells.

Chiropractic adjustments have been shown to turn the stress switch off in the brain which allows us to get back to detoxing!

Adjustments can also correct any nerve interference that may be affecting how well your brain can control any of your detox organs.

Start your detox protocols today!

1. Remove sources of toxins.
2. Clear your downstream detox pathways.
3. Detox your cells and brain.
4. Get your spine checked regularly.

Get back on track and start the year strong!