I think it’s important to know how detoxification actually works, because there’s so many potions and teas and programs out there, it gets confusing in the real world. What works, what doesn’t, and why? So, if you’re not intimately familiar with how detoxification in the body works, I’ll put it as simply and clearly as I can.
There are 2 main phases of detoxification. The first phase uses what’s called P450 enzymes in your liver, and these enzymes create free radical molecules (more on these in a moment) out of toxins or natural metabolic waste products. These P450 enzymes rely on certain nutrients to function properly: Vitamin B2, Vitamin B3, magnesium, iron, and certain indoles which can be found in abundance in cruciferous vegetables, especially raw ones.
In the second phase of detoxification, liver cells basically add a sulfur-based substance to the free radical molecules produced in phase 1, which renders them less harmful AND, here’s the important part, makes them water soluble.
You see, the kinds of toxins that take our body a lot of work to deal with are fat-soluble toxins – we can’t easily excrete those; we can’t pee out fat, or sweat out fat, or breathe out fat, so we’ve got to make them water soluble first. That’s what the liver does through this phase 1 / phase 2 detoxification system.
The unfortunately reality here is that our bodies are dealing with way more fat soluble toxins than they’ve had to throughout evolution. There’s a reason for that too, think about water-soluble pesticides; they’d just wash off in the rain. Think of water-soluble fabric protectants; they’d just wash off in the washing machine, most of these modern chemicals that are made to last, are not water soluble. Now, think for a second about high quality properly raised animal products. Why might they be important? Just like us, when animals have more toxins than their livers can process (like they might from eating pesticide laden corn all day), they get stored in the fat cells, and when we eat those animals, we’ve got to then deal with all those extra fat soluble toxins as well.
So, phase two of detoxification is highly dependent on sulfur, and sulfur based molecules. The amino acids methionine, cysteine, taurine, glycine, and glutamine, as well as the b-vitamin like compounds choline, and inositol are all sulphur based molecules and are required nutrients for phase 2 detoxification.
Now, let’s talk about a third phase of detoxification, which is just as important as the first two phases, and an issue for so many people. The third phase, after your body has created free-radicals from toxins in the first phase, bound them to sulfur containing molecules in the second phase, is elimination!
Now if search online about detoxification, you’ll see a lot of images like this one:
Which unfortunately falls short in explaining the elimination part, and in fact, we now know does not include some of the most critical elimination pathways.
What are these missing pathways? First, the lungs. You might be suprised to know just how much stuff your body eliminates when you exhale (hint, it’s not just CO2). The second missing pathway is sweat! That’s right, studies in the last 10 years have found that we eliminate quite a lot of toxins, especially heavy metals and pthalates (plastics) preferentially through sweat. Meaning they’ve been finding these toxic compounds not being exreted in urine or stool, but in significant quantities in sweat.
Now, let’s be honestsd. If you’re sedentary are you likely to be doing a lot of deep breathing? Are you sweating much?
What you want to do is attack these things in reverse order, to make sure you’re not doing yourself any harm when trying to detox. First, make sure you’re sweating, breathing, hydrating, and pooping regularly. Then, make sure you’re getting everything your body needs for phase two. Sulfur based foods and sulfur based amino acids. And then go after the phase one stuff Vitamin B2, Vitamin B3, magnesium, iron, and those indoles from cruciferous veg.
Just before I dive into some cool research on sweat, and it’s importance for detoxification, let’s go over a practical list of foods and best practices to aid in detoxification:
Foods that are very helpful for making detoxification pathways work properly include:
- Beets
- Dandelion greens
- Cruciferous veg
- Egg yolks
- Other leafy greens
- Artichokes
- Radishes
- Onions
- Garlic
- Animal proteins from healthy animals
- Medicinal mushrooms – reishi, turkey tail
- Milk Thistle – one of the few things that’s really super for both 1 and 2
Other practices to help your detoxification pathways:
- Exercise!
Exercise gets all the critical elimination pathways going at once. It makes you sweat, which is critical for detox. It ramps up your thirst so you say nice and hydrated, critical for elimination through urine. It forces you to breath more deeply (you might be surprised at how much stuff the body eliminates through the lungs), and it’s extraordinary at keeping you pooping regularly (thought stimulating peristalsis). You literally can’t detox well without it!
I always try to look at health through a lens of evolutionary biology. I want to share with you some perspective i gained when researching this aspect of detoxification some time ago.
Humans are in fact quite unique in our ability to thermoregulate effectively through sweating. We seemed to have evolved this ability when we lost our fur – back around the time that Africa was turning from a rainforest into a savannah. The development of thermoregulatory sweating gave us the ability to do mid-day persistence hunting. You can check out wikipedia’s article on persistence hunting in human evolution for more info, but the jist is that thermoregulation via sweating gave us a huge advantage over prey during mid-day heat in the African savanna – we used to literally run animals to exhaustion in 40 degree heat. And we could do that because we could sweat, while our pray couldn’t and therefore couldn’t thermoregulate as well as us.
I want you to imagine for a second that this was likely a very common practice throughout our evolution, running animals to exhaustion in midday heat, and imagine for a moment how much we must have sweat during this practice. Now, with that in mind, let’s talk about some studies.
First, there was a groundbreaking 2011 study published in the Archives of Environmental and Contamination Toxicology found that “Many toxic elements appeared to be preferentially excreted through sweat.” Key word being preferentially. Our liver is typically thought of as our most important detoxification organ, but this study brings that into question, finding that more toxic elements leave the body through sweat, than urine. Amazing.
These findings were confirmed a year later in a 2012 meta-analysis published in the Journal of Public and Environmental Health. The study is called “Arsenic, cadmium, lead and mercury in sweat: a systematic review” and was based on a review of 24 studies. The researchers had four main take-aways:
- In people with high levels of toxicity, concentrations of toxins in sweat generally exceeded blood or urine levels.
- Cadmium, which is a toxic heavy metal, was more concentrated in sweat than in blood plasma
- Sweat excreted higher levels of high-molecular-weight molecules (ie, heavy metals) compared to urine
- And amazingly, mercury levels in the body normalized after regular and repeated sessions of intense sweating
If that’s not enough for you, two additional studies both published in 2012, found that sweating enhances the elimination of petrochemicals such as BPA and pthalates, a group of chemicals to which our daily exposure is massive (perfume, hair spray, soap, shampoo, deodorant, laundry detergent, nail polish, moisturizers, etc), which are not only considered “reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen” by the national Toxicology Program, but are considered by the National Institute of Health to be endocrine disruptors – this is, chemicals that interfere with our hormones.
The first study found that BPA was excreted through sweat even in individuals with no BPA detected in their serum or urine samples. Strong evidence that sweating is the best way to get this known carcinogen out of your system.
The second study found phthalates present in concentrations twice as high in sweat, compared to urine, and in several people found significant amounts in their sweat but none in their urine or blood plasma, suggesting not only do these things accumulate in our body, but are preferentially excreted by sweat.
Pretty cool stuff. So, obviously exercise is a great way to sweat, and the other thing that really does it, at least in my experience, and well, pretty much everyone elses I think, is using FAR infrared saunas. They’re much much more effective than traditional sauna’s, and a great option for your rest days 🙂
