What does detoxification mean to you? Is it getting rid of animal foods and drinking juices ? Is it fasting for days? Ask yourself what is your goal and somewhere in that answer should be to be healthier. An important part of being healthier is to keep as much muscle and lose excess fat. That is measured through very accurate and safe, non-invasive bio-electrical impedance. The risk of losing muscle in a juicing or low protein fast or detox is high. Ensure you are not losing muscle no matter what detox you do.
The liver has always been the center of attention when it came to detoxification and now with our current knowledge of biochemistry and the study of our liver detoxification system known as the Cytochrome P450 system. This is the same system that the warning not to mix grapefruit juice with certain medications like cholesterol drugs known as statins. It turns out this system is the way we detox. The system is in 2 phases, phase 1 and phase 2. There is also a phase 3 which is elimination of the toxins or byproducts of metabolism that need to be removed from our bodies or otherwise build up in our body and contribute to disease.
Remember what is important in detoxification is to give your body the nutrients that turn on phase 1, and then turn on phase 2 and to make sure you also have phase 3 as part of the detox, which is elimination, which can be bile, kidney, intestine involvement. A very important health consideration is if you turn on phase 1 without working on phase 2 , that can be more hazardous due to more toxic metabolites that form in between the 2 phases, phase 1 and phase 2.
Ask yourself if your detox program is working on those 3 phases and at the same time preserving your muscle and losing excess fat.
This is our program at South Florida Integrative Health Center.