Support Your Detoxification Systems

In our homes, we throw away our garbage, we get rid of stuff that we don’t need, but when there is a delay, we all know how the house starts to look like: congested, smelly and not very pleasant to live in! Our body feels the same way when the detoxification systems have gone awry. We start seeing signs that we can’t make sense of. That’s our body talking to us and begging us take the toxic load off.

When I eat stuff that my body doesn’t like, I see it on my skin right away. It’s like a secret map showing evidence of what I ate on the previous days – in my case sugar, gluten and dairy. I immediately have a skin breakout, like the next day!

Does that ever happen to you? Do you ever feel like your body is objecting to your lifestyle?

Do you have any symptoms that you can’t make any sense of, such as:

• Fluid retention,
• Skin breakouts and congestion,
• Sore red or stinging eyes,
• Waking consistently between 2-4am,
• Lumpy breasts that swell with your cycle,
• PMS,
• Feeling so hungry you could eat your arm off,
• Not hungry for breakfast, craving only coffee in the morning,
• Digestive problems such as constipation and IBS,
• Increase in body fat that can’t be explained for any other reason,
• Cellulite,
• Poor energy,
• Short temper?

If yes, they might be related to your body’s detoxification systems. But good news is that YOU HAVE THE POWER to improve these symptoms.

Besides your kidneys, lungs and lymphatic system, there is another hero, your LIVER. One of the many functions of your liver is detoxification. It takes the substances that would otherwise accumulate in your body and changes them into something less harmful. You then excrete them and they’re gone from your body forever. It’s so important for this process to work very efficiently.

However, the lifestyle choices that we make can interfere with how efficiently our liver does its critical detox work.

You might say you have a pretty good lifestyle but first let me tell you about the substances that can interfere with liver function:

• Caffeine,
• Synthetic substances: such as medications, pesticides, and cosmetics, (Just like nicotine patches, what we put on our skin can have a direct route to our blood supply),
• Trans fats in processed baked goods and deep-fried food,
• The refined sugars,
• Alcohol – a liver loader (I know most of you don’t want to read any further, but stay with it till the end because your body needs you),
• Infection (viruses),
• Environmental toxins.

This superhero (the liver) also deals with substances that the body makes itself. In a healthy body, estrogen and cholesterol are changed into different forms and then excreted.

The liver has character though – it always prioritizes. The regularly overconsumed glass of wine is always first to be taken care of over the substance that was made in the body.

When the liver is congested with other toxins, cholesterol, for example, goes through its first stage of change, gets stuck in the liver and then gets released back into the blood supply. This is one mechanism through which cholesterol levels can go up (By the way, when you see your blood test results, 80% cholesterol has been made by the liver and the diet contributes only 20%).

Similarly, when there is a toxic overload in the liver, estrogen goes through its first stage of change and gets released back out into the blood. This slightly changed form of estrogen has been highly linked to women’s reproductive cancers (400x higher in women with estrogen sensitive breast cancer)!

By now, I know you understand why the LIVER needs our constant LOVE and CARE. Taking care of this precious organ can mean:

• Increased longevity
• Better energy
• Better use of body fat as a fuel

On the flipside, when the liver becomes congested, sometimes globules of fat can take over where an active liver cell was once living. Named “alcoholic fatty liver disease”, this condition was previously only seen in chronic alcoholics. But by now, “non-alcoholic fatty liver disease” is seen in teenagers who never consumed alcohol! One of the big hypotheses is that the fat is accumulating there because of the amount of processed foods these children have consumed up until that point in their lives.

So, how do we make sure we take care of this precious “cleaner upper” in our body? By minimizing the sources of liver loaders that rain on us in our world:

 Caffeine: The amount of caffeine in each drink varies and it is important to be aware of where the caffeine is and make changes that are appropriate for you. On a different note, teenagers 12-15 years old are now consuming energy drinks which are loaded with caffeine. The culprit is that 50% of adult bone mass is made in teenage years and caffeine interferes with the body’s ability to take up calcium out of the blood into the bone matrix!

 Alcohol: Alcohol can trouble not only our digestion but also the utilization and absorption of nutrients. It can mess with sex hormones and cause an imbalance for both men and women. It can lead to increased body fat, decreased liver function, dehydration, and poor-quality sleep.

Look at how caffeine and alcohol affect you. Treat yourself with the love you deserve because you are precious!

To recap, let me summarize how we can support elimination & detoxification processes in our bodies:

• Support digestive health,
• Decrease liver loaders,
• Increase nutrient density,
• Eat real food and avoid processed foods with artificial colors, flavors, preservatives,
• Use “clean” personal care products (1,700 chemicals that are banned/restricted in personal care products by the European Union are allowed in the U.S.)
• Pay attention to environmental toxins.

Now that you know a little more on detoxing, what will you get rid of in your life? What is not serving your highest self?

If you want more detailed information on detox support tools, leave a comment, DM me @melisdoglucoaching on Instagram, or e-mail me at healthy@melisdoglu.com