Hi ,

Newsletter before last I presented the unsavory subject of toxic exposures.  As an ongoing answer, the only suitable answer is to avoid these exposures as much as possible.  But what do you do about the impact of old exposures?  How do we get the poisons out of our system once they are already inside us?  While we are busy changing our diet and replacing our sources of toxic chemicals in our homes and areas of daily exposure, how do we toss out the poisonous stuff that our body has sequestered away in our fat cells and bones?

This topic has to be approached carefully.  Many detoxification methods actually do more harm than good.  Removing mercury from our body is a good example of this danger.  Different tissues in our body have different sensitivities to mercury.  The brain is particularly sensitive as mercury literally burns away the connections between nerve cells.  A certain amount of damage happens when we are exposed to mercury until our body manages get it out of our general circulation and store the mercury in fat and bone cells.  To get it out of the body means we once again have to release this mercury back into the blood stream so that it can be eliminated through whatever detoxification process you are using.  Many people have had their brains fried by the dump of this stored mercury back into the blood stream during a detox protocol.  It re-injures the brain on its way out simply because the levels of mercury are pushed up so high during the process of removal.

For this reason I recommend a very slow detoxification processes for things like heavy metals.  Because of a chemical process called a diffusion gradient, no poison is ever completely stored away.  Some of it is always leaking back into the blood stream from wherever the body has stored it.  The detoxification trick is to bind the poison to another chemical that will be carried out of the body slowly.  The most common route for this type of removal is our liver’s production of bile.  Some of the poison will be filtered into the bile and dumped into the intestines.  Normally it will simply be reabsorbed further down in the intestines, but if you have something in your diet that will grab the poison and prevent it from being reabsorbed, then it will be eliminated from your body in your feces.  My favorite substance for this purpose is chlorella.  

Chlorella is a green fresh water algae used as a food supplement.  It contains molecules in it that act like little cages to trap and hold heavy metal poisons.  I take it every day in my morning smoothie to gradually trap and remove mercury, cadmium, lead, and the like.  Other similar poison traps are activated charcoal (commonly used more for acute poisonings), zeolite, and pectins.  A super powerful binding agent I have not tried yet is micro-silica made by Quicksilver Scientific – a company that specializes in heavy metal detoxification.

We have four organs for detoxification – the liver, kidneys, lungs, and skin.  The liver detoxifies the body by breaking down and binding poisons and then excreting them in the bile out through the digestive tract.  The kidneys are able to filter water soluble poisons directly out in the urine.  Our lungs eliminate toxic gases formed during metabolic processes, like carbon dioxide, out with each breath we blow out.  And our skin excretes small amounts of poisons in our sweat, which is why regular sweating is good for us.

Of these systems of detoxification, the liver is the organ we can support the most to enhance the clearance of toxins from our bodies.  The primary way the liver works is to break a chemical poison apart into two smaller poisons (called phase 1 detoxification) and then combine the smaller pieces with things that make them water soluble so they can be flushed out of the body in the bile (called phase 2 detoxification).  These steps are all accomplished by various enzymes and their co-factors, which are very sensitive to interference from things like heavy metals or vitamin/mineral deficiencies.  For instance certain things like BHA, BHT, licorice, and ginseng speed up phase 1 processing while grapefruit, oregano oil, and niacinamide slow it down.  This becomes important if your phase 2 processes are slowed down, because the breakdown products of phase 1 are usually much more toxic than the original poisons.  If phase 2 is slowed down, these worse poisons will back up into your body creating havoc.

It is very important to support the Phase 2 step (called conjugation) by making sure we have all the things to combine with the poisons.  There are seven pathways available in phase 2, as only certain things will combine with each poison.  These seven things are the amino acids glycine and taurine, and the little molecules of sulfur, acetyl, glucose, methyl, and glutathione.  Of these seven, the glutathione pathway is the most frequently deficient.  Certain genetic factors like the MTHFR gene mess up this pathway.  Deficiencies in certain methyl donating nutrients and vitamins (folic acid) also inhibit the proper formation of glutathione.  This is where taking various glutathione nutrients, like Glutathione Recycler or taking acety-glutathione, directly can help detoxification significantly.  I take acetyl-glutathione every night.  I also take both glycine and taurine in my morning smoothie and eat plenty of sulfur contain foods from the cabbage family like cauliflower, broccoli, and Brussels Sprouts, plus onions and garlic.   All these support my daily detoxification pathways.

In researching this article I came across a couple interesting tidbits – if you are sensitive to sulfur containing foods, it indicates heavy metal toxicity and if you have multiple chemical sensitivities, like trouble with perfumes, it suggests your phase 2 pathways are too slow and you are spilling over too many poison breakdown parts into your system.  This is where you might want to use niacinamide and grapefruit juice to slow down phase 1 pathways while you straighten out the phase 2 problems.

Lifestyle factors for detoxification are making sure you are getting all the factors your body needs to do its detoxification job.  Important nutrients are magnesium, alpha lipoic acid, vitamin C & B, zinc, nascent iodine, B 12, molybdenum, acety-glutathione if needed, high sulfur vegetables if not sensitive, chlorella, and cilantro.

What factors induce the body to dump toxins?  Detoxification is a normal process all the time, but certain factors increase this tremendously.  The biggest detox trigger is fasting.  When you do not eat for more than 8 to 10 hours, the liver switches into detox mode.  This is why you want to have a daily period of at least 12 hours without food, 16 is even better.  Because of the bile excretion of poisons, I always recommend using fibers to keep the intestines eliminating during longer fasts – 3 days to 3 weeks.  We detox late at night and in the early morning for this reason.  Heat shock triggers detox – so sauna and vigorous exercise both help our body eliminate toxins.  Just the heat and exercise alone stimulate a cell turnover called autophagy, which releases toxins to be eliminated.  Both of these also stimulate sweating, which gives our body an extra way to excrete poisons.  Interestingly, extreme cold also stimulates autophagy, so ice baths are another detox support.

Clinical detoxification protocols for industrial toxin exposure include combinations of dry sauna and vigorous exercise for up to 7 hours a day for a couple weeks, combined with specific nutrients to help flush out the toxins.  In certain extreme acute exposures, chelating agents will actually be dripped into the bloodstream to bind up the poisons. But this is a dangerous process as these chelating agents are toxic to the liver and often damage the kidneys.

The best route to a toxin free life is obviously to avoid them in the first place.  Second best is to eat a good organic diet with no sugar (sugar shuts down many detox pathways) and include regular exercise and induce some sweating like in a sauna.  Following a 16/8 eating schedule to give the body a few hours every day to do its own detox thing is also very advisable.  If necessary various supplements can be used to support this process.

Take care,

David
   

Ellen update:   

In a couple weeks we are going to my sister's wedding.  We don't get out much so Ellen had to buy a new blouse for the occasion.  To make it extra special Ellen commissioned her Monday at home exercise therapist, Toni Mounts (motorcyclegirl2@att.net), to make her a necklace to go with her new blouse.  Toni has taken first place for her beadwork at the state fair two years running.  So now Ellen can wear some art to the wedding.