January Detox Time!

This month Cancer research UK is promoting an event for January called the Dryathlon. The idea of it is for people to give up alcohol and raise money for charity, but also to benefit people’s health. 

Reducing or eliminating alcohol from the human diet is highly recommended by all healthcare professionals and has a seemingly endless list of potential benefits to health and wellbeing. With all of those reasons considered, one of the most important reasons to jump on the wagon is to aid your body’s detoxification efforts.



Toxins come from everywhere in our world. There is no sanctuary, not even in the arctic hundreds of miles from civilisation, or deep in the amazon rainforest. The only reason why we’re still alive is because our body has a sophisticated detoxification system that prevents these toxins from getting to our vital tissues. This system served the original purpose of removing the toxins in our body which are naturally produced by metabolism, hormonal fluctuations and diet. But in the modern world our bodies are running at capacity, there is an overwhelming amount of work for it to do and it can’t keep up. So as a result, because our bodies are incredibly resilient, the toxins are stored into inert fat mass.

When we are healthy, natural detoxification occurs in three phases;

Phase 1 – Retox
This is the phase where toxins are pulled out of our fat mass and enter the blood stream. This has to happen for the toxin to be metabolised, because the necessary detox molecules are not fat soluble.

Phase 2 – Detox
In this phase, molecules bind to the toxins altering their structure making them easier to be removed from the system, a process called conjugation. The resulting toxin conjugates are often more volatile than original toxins and many produce free radicals. The master molecule in this case is glutathione, which is primarily an antioxidant derived from the amino acid glutamine. This molecule helps conjugate the toxins and clear the free radicals. During a detox it is vital that glutathione is in ample supply, which is why I recommend a glutamine supplement along with a high protein diet.

Phase 3 – Freetox
The toxin conjugates are now removed from the blood stream by the kidneys provided hydration levels are good and lots of veg is being eaten.

Poorly constructed detox diets, such as juice diets, have low a calorie and protein intake which reduces the effectiveness of phase 2, which is energy and amino acid dependent. Often the necessary amino acids have to be drawn from lean tissue, which is exactly what we don’t want.

The reason to go through all of this bother other than to reduce the chance of chronic illness, is that toxins within the body encourage fat to stay. As fat is mobilised the toxins within are mobilised too, if toxicity within adipose tissue is too high then to avoid the toxic load the body will alternate its source of energy from fat to protein and carbohydrate.

References
Rogers, S (2002). Detoxify or Die. Sarasota: Sandy Key Inc.
Poliquin, C. (2011). The Three-Step Approach to Complete Detoxification.


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