Key Tips for Supporting Your Body with Detoxification
Featuring Nikki Fowler, NP & Dr. Elizabeth Sierakowski
Transcript:
Dr. Elizabeth Sierakowski:
Hello, HER Health Collective. Nikki Fowler, nurse practitioner and Dr. Elizabeth Serakowski. And we’re going to keep this one short and sweet about detoxification. And we get many, many, many questions about do I need this or that or that other product for detox, and we’d like to explain what detox is, how you can support it on your own, and then when to seek professional help.
Do you want to get us started? Or shall I talk about liver first?
Nikki Fowler:
Oh, let’s hit liver. Gotta start with the liver.
So what we want is a proper system for breaking down the waste into tolerable places, and then a flow for evacuation outwards, and there are in fact, many.
Detoxification Using the Body's Natural Processes
Dr. Elizabeth Sierakowski:
What is a toxin?
So that’s always number one, because it can be misleading out in the world and over marketed for sure. But there is, yes what comes at us from the outside environment: pollutants, phospho, chemicals, BPA, allergens, anything of that nature. But we also make our own toxins, metabolic end product. So cellular waste products, things that happen from the natural chemical processes of being alive, along with our bacteria have their own waste products.
There’s a lot of waste to be dealt with and that’s normal. So what we want is a proper system for breaking down the waste into tolerable places, and then a flow for evacuation outwards. And there are in fact, many. This is about more than bowel movements, although we will definitely ask you about how you poop. This is important!
Nikki Fowler:
I think very much here at Essential Health and just in general, the world that we are in, the functional world are always talking about how can we use our bodies for us, and how can we utilize what we have. And so there’s just really three big mainstays for detoxification of your body’s own natural processes.
So first one is going to be lymph. We hear about the lymphatic system very much tied with immune system as well. But proper lymphatic drainage is needed overall, for proper detoxification. How do we do this?
So a lot of this has to do with just good old sweating, sauna if you can, but really exercise which we promote anyways, and it’s a great thing to be doing, especially as weather warms up. So sweating, this is one source and yes, if you can do sauna, that’s an added bonus, but not have to.
Massage, even a self massage or you know, significant other massage and hitting some of those pressure points and just releasing. Think of this as a release. Drybrushing is so amazing, so relaxing, and beneficial for lymphatic drainage.
So another way we excrete toxins and use our body’s own natural processes would be just urinating, right? I think we as women, and as moms can sometimes get into a touchy place of dehydration. Especially as weather warms up, we want you to be hydrating properly. That’s just a big basic thing, you ideally should be urinating every two to three hours.
We don’t want all that to be in the morning. We don’t want all that to be in the evening. We should be drinking and avoiding throughout the day.
And then our last and final favorite mom topic, bowel movements. So I think we know enough about bowel movements, it’s important that is a main process and mainstay of detoxification.
So you should be having at least one to two soft formed bowel movements a day. I think a lot of times in our schedules that can seem like well, “my body, that’s just not how my body works, this isn’t feasible for me,” because we have to sometimes take that that time to relax. And we have to allow ourselves the time for our body to get into that state and be able to have a proper bowel movement.
So that’s really important that you’re doing that. And like it’s not just the coffee and making you do that or that sort of thing. So what else would you have to add?
Using Nutrition to Support Detoxification
Dr. Elizabeth Sierakowski:
Nourishment. So understanding that toxins come in and we make them we need base nourishment for our liver to do the job of breaking that down.
So if it comes in as either water or fat soluble, and the liver is able to convert one into the other in order for these things to come and actually leave the body. We need protein to do that. Good clean protein.
We need sulfur which you get in your cruciferous vegetables, and anybody has come here they know that we will tell them to eat cabbage and broccoli and cauliflower and kale and Brussels sprouts and all those tasty stinky vegetables.
Glutathione is the master antioxidant in the body. And the easiest way to think about liver detox is that it starts in two phases. Phase one is like blast mining. It takes your toxins as they exist and blows them into tiny pieces, which are even more dangerous or volatile than when they when they started.
So phase two is the key. And that’s the place where most of us don’t have enough of our amino acids from good protein, glutathione and sulfur which are necessary to package and bind those little free radical volatile particles in order to get them out of there. And then it’s everything that Nikki just talked about, including breath.
So we think about exit forms for the body. It’s how we breathe, it’s sweating. It’s bowel movements, and it’s pee and those are profound. The lymph is part of sweating and it doesn’t have its own pump. That’s why physical massage or physical exercise are so important.
Breath: Wim Hoff would be a really great activity that you could do on your own. Again, free and it helps with acid base balance and everything else.
This can get far more complicated. So if you have questions about detoxification or questions about “I’ve done all those things, I don’t think my body is doing it very well.” We can go down deep with you or your other functional health practitioner can look at genetics can look at methylation can look at your ability to Glucuronidate and utilize glutathione and antioxidants.
We can also talk about when to use a kit and when not to so basically when to use a kit is is when this all feels like too much. So does everybody need a kit? No.
Can you do this? If you don’t “poison yourself on purpose,” which is a love phrase that I like to say. So limit the alcohol, don’t use the Glade plugins, limit the other poisons that you know are in your environment. Wash your vegetables and produce if you can’t get organic, peel it, do your best with what you’ve got where you are and from there if you need help, ask for help.
You can do this! You are doing this!
Nikki Fowler is a Family Nurse Practitioner at Essential Health located in Raleigh, NC. She emphasizes collaborative goal setting and building trusting and supportive relationships. Her areas of special interest are women’s health, regenerative medicine, hormones, gut health, overall health optimization, and aesthetics. Nikki’s areas of focus at Essential Health include hormone balancing, thyroid management, peri-menopause and menopausal health, gut health, health optimization for longevity, and aesthetics.
Dr. Elizabeth Sierakowski owns and practices at the Essential Health – Raleigh, NC location. She is triple-trained in family medicine, integrative medicine, and functional medicine and has practiced from coast to coast. She joined the Essential Family with the opening of the Raleigh location in 2017. Her clinical focuses are advanced lifestyle medicine, cellular nutrition, gut health, hormone balancing, chemical-free anti-aging, adrenal and stress health, and thyroid imbalances.
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