What Happens To Your Body During a Functional Medicine Detox

A functional medicine detox isn’t a juice cleanse or a detox ‘diet’ that you see advertised in a magazine, it is so much more than that! A functional medicine reset offers TRUE detoxification. By that I mean the ‘biotransformation of a toxin’, which occurs in several phases. This means that we transform a toxin into a non-toxic substance, so that it can be excreted via a safe detox route in the body.

Why Do We Need to Do a Functional Medicine Detox?

Nowadays we are bombarded with toxins. You only need to go outside in a city, or even a reasonably populated town, to inhale toxic fumes and heavy metals. Live in the countryside? Ok, you only need to drink out of a plastic bottle to expose your body to BPA. You just need to place cosmetics on your skin or spray antiperspirant under your arm to expose your body to dangerous chemicals. 

Additionally, the average individual is using at least one form of medication during the month, which is, yep you guessed it, a toxin which needs to be broken down by the liver!

Cleaning products are absolutely packed with toxins, chemicals and fragrance that are extremely harmful. Whether you’re a full time cleaner, do the cleaning at home or just inhabit a house that is cleaned with chemicals, you will be exposed to toxins.

If you want to see how you can reduce the toxicity exposure in your environment, scroll back to my previous post ‘Toxic Products That You’ve Used This Week’.

If your drink coffee or tea or energy drinks, you will be consuming a lot of caffeine, which needs to be deactivated by the liver, which can impair its ability to work on other substances that need deactivating (e.g hormones such as estrogen).

Our weekly grocery shop is also loaded with toxins that our liver will need to detoxify, such as pesticides on fresh produce and unnatural preservatives, fillers, and thickeners in processed food.

Digestive Issues

 How is your digestion? If you struggle with digestive issues, then it is likely that you have extra toxic burden because of the fermentation that occurs during the putrefaction of rotting proteins.Simply put, this can feel like gas or bloating. 

Leaky gut also increases the burden on the liver as more waste products and toxins can spill into the bloodstream from the increased permeability of the gut lining. Remember, your liver is the poor organ that is always filtering and breaking these things down!

Luckily, you can heal your gut by following a 3-month GI protocol. However, you will still have to complete a functional medicine detox to retrospectively address the congestion in your liver.

How To Achieve True Detoxification

For true detoxification to occur, the liver needs to go through phase 1 AND phase 2 of detoxification. Phase 1 and Phase 3 liver detoxification is how your body removes pathogens, carcinogens and other harmful substances. What does this mean?

Imagine that you have an old shed that you need to get rid of – what route do you go down to complete this task? First, you need to knock it down and, in the process, you create a little bit of mess. This is phase 1. In phase 1 of detoxification, you are reacting with the toxin and, by doing so, you’re on your way to excreting it but it’s a little bit messy because free-radicals are a by-product. Free radicals cause damage to DNA, which is also called oxidative damage and implicated in Cancer and premature aging.

So, what’s phase 2? Well, for the shed, you need to get the pieces and tear them away from your garden. This is known as ‘conjugation’, which is the preparation for removing the toxicity from your body.

Phase 1

So, Phase 1 is about this biotransformation, where we take the toxin, manipulate it into a non-toxic state and make it water soluble so it can be excreted. For Phase 1, you need the main cofactors, which are the B Vitamins, but you also need other nutrients such as flavonoids. 

Additionally, you need potent antioxidants such as polyphenols, grape seed extract, curcumin, alpha lipoic acid, ginger extract, artichoke leaf, vitamin C and beta carotene to help clean up the mess made in the process.

Phase 2

Phase 2 surrounds the removal of these toxins, which is the most important part. At this stage, we need sulphur-based amino acids, such as methionine, cysteine, taurine, etc. Additionally, we need to make glutathione, which we do via N-Acetyl L Cysteine, Cysteine, Glycine, Taurine, Vitamin C and Selenium.

Remember the methylated B vitamins from Phase 1? Those, and high-quality magnesium, are also essential for phase 2, as these help conjugate the toxins and remove them via the appropriate pathways in your body.

Lots of people overuse phase 1, but forget the intermediary stage and phase 2, which results in lots of reactive and harmful free radicals in the body.

Is this as complex as it sounds?

For me, yes. I needed to do years of studying, learning and training to fully understand and then create a safe and effective functional medicine detox. For you? Absolutely not.

Toxic overload should be treated with the same seriousness as any other endemic or disease because, after all, toxic build-up can be the catalyst for so many diseases, which is why I work so hard to create awareness around the subject of toxicity.

I never create a product or protocol that isn’t of huge importance and benefit to your overall health and life! This is why I have spent hours and hours formulating and designing an in-depth plan and products which make completing phase 1 and phase 2 detoxification easy for you.

You can now shop the 21 Day Reset as a physical product, which comes with ALL the information and items that you need to complete your functional medicine detox in just 3 weeks. Apart from the supplements, it also includes an in-depth printed 21 Day Reset Guide with the instructions, nutrition guide, shopping list and a separate beautifully designed journal and planner to help you get organised and accountable! You will also get daily support communication throughout the 21 Days to help you stay committed and motivated! There is also information in the product on how to complete a 7 day reset, so you can buy one product which will serve you for 3 detoxes! I’ve worked really hard to make you sure you feel like your healthiest self and super special the moment that you open your beautiful 21 Day Reset box. It really has so much to offer!