Detoxification
“You are what you eat” is a phrase most of us have heard since childhood.
To understand our health status, we must also consider this: “You are what you don’t eliminate.” In other words, “What goes in must come out.”
In discussing detoxification, both eating and eliminating must be considered to maximize the body’s natural detoxification potential. Today we will discuss three elements of detoxification:
- What detoxification is,
- The origins of toxins, and
- What is meant by toxic load, detoxification reserve and autotoxicity.
Finally, we will focus on the role our liver and bowel plays in processing, neutralizing and eliminating toxins from our body and what we can do to enhance natural detoxification potential. Detoxification is simply the process by which potentially harmful substances are neutralized and removed from the body. Decreased detoxification potential could lead to many health- related problems such as low energy, chronic fatigue, hormonal imbalances, inflammatory arthritic conditions, chronic pain, skin disorders and autoimmune disorders such as lupus.
Toxins are poisons to the body that
come from either external or internal sources.
External toxins come from the environment
outside of our body: air we breathe, foods we
eat, and chemicals we choose to put into our
bodies such as food preservatives, additives,
artificial sweeteners, medications and
recreational drugs such as alcohol.
Internal toxins come from the
environment inside of our body: hormones,
metabolic waste products such as lactic acid our
muscles form and chemicals given off from
internal “hidden” infections.
The sum of all external and internal
toxins is known as toxic load. Clinically, a
person’s toxic load is assessed through a
combination of laboratory tests involving
bioelectrical impedance analysis, blood, saliva,
urinalysis and kinesiologic testing.
The amount of toxins that can be
successfully processed by the body is known as
detoxification reserve. Each one of us has a
different capacity to detoxify poisonous toxic
exposure from the body.
Our bodies toxic load is like a giant rain barrel. The capacity for the giant rain barrel to hold poisonous water is the detoxification reserve. The amount of poisonous water is toxic load. On a very wet and rainy year, the barrel gets full. This situation is similar to a person exposed to high levels of toxins. The more toxins a person is exposed to over time the greater the toxic load. Once full, it only takes one more drop of poisonous water to cause the rain barrel to overflow. Comparatively, when the body’s detoxification reserve reaches its maximum it only takes a few extra toxins to overburden its detoxification potential.