Detoxification for joint pain relief and to look younger!

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What is Detoxification?
For many of us, when we hear the “detoxification” it can conjure up images of people sitting in infrared saunas ‘sweating it out’, drinking only natural freshly juiced vegetables and fruits, colonics therapy, and even fasting. While all of these methods can certainly help us detoxify our tissues, there are additional tools that we need when detoxifying our body at the level of our cells, where all chemical reactions take place.

The primary way that our body detoxifies, or eliminates toxic debris from our tissues, is via the skin (via sweat), the bowels, urine, tears, and earwax. During acute phases of toxicity, we can eliminate toxins via our mucous membranes such as when we have a runny nose (think allergies).

Body functions that help us to detoxify
Many of us have been taught that the primary way to detoxify is to “sweat it out” via exercise. Although our skin is one of the largest organs in our body covering a large surface area, by itself it cannot handle today’s heavy toxic burden brought about by the typical American diet and lifestyle. It is our bowels that are best equipped to quickly eliminate our heavy toxic burden with the greatest efficiency.  While exercising is still good for us, before we are able to eliminate toxins from our body, it must go through two phases of detoxification.

Phase I detoxification
This is the first line of defense that removes environmental toxins, including pesticides, pollutants, solvents, pharmaceuticals, heavy metals, and many of our body’s own waste products including steroid hormones and excess hormones.   Phase I can be thought of as the process where a toxin is plucked from a tissue, and sent off for further ‘packaging’ to be expelled from the body.

Phase II detoxification
This involves many enzymes, commonly located in the liver and kidney, that transforms and packages these harmful chemicals that have been removed from our tissues into more neutral, water-soluble chemicals, ready for elimination. The enzymes involved in this process are the Cytochrome P-450 series enzymes, COMT enzymes, Glutathione S-Transferase enzymes, and Superoxide Dismutase enzymes to name a few. These enzymes can only do their job in the presence of adequate amounts of key nutrients.

What happens when the body can’t detoxify properly?
We can experience a number of problems. These can include hormone imbalance and mood swings caused by inadequate neurotransmitters that help our brain feel sharp and free of depression. We also open ourselves up to many opportunistic gut infections such as parasitic bacterial overgrowth and candida yeast.

Energy Poverty
The inability to adequately detoxify not only creates immune system deficiencies, but hinders our ability to have adequate amounts of energy. “Energy poverty” is an epidemic today in America, and we see the effects as many Americans require poorly made, and woefully non-nutritious quick energy drinks such as 5-Hour energy, Monster, Rock-Star, or a dependency on a morning cup of coffee “just to get going”.

We age faster and  gain weight and get “fatter”
We also age more quickly as a result of toxic buildup in our body. When toxins store in our body, they accelerate aging on many levels, which also shows up in the quality of our skin. Premature wrinkles, skin tags, moles, and the appearance of being overly red (a “ruddy complexion”), or appearing overly pale (due to inadequate blood building nutrients and antioxidants) are all indicators of toxic buildups. Inflamed red capillaries build up in our skin as a result of toxic exposure. Toxic buildup also congests our joints, speeding up their degeneration which is felt as joint pain and stiffness. Because fat has the ability to store toxins, it also accumulates in our body as a result of toxic buildup.

We use a simple, yet highly comprehensive and specific test that you can perform in the comfort of your home by Genova Diagnostics that measures your body’s overall ability to detoxify itself and run efficiently. It is called the TRIAD Blood spot, and it is used to help identify this, and other functions essential to good health: determining parasitic bacteria and yeast overgrowth, leaky gut, neurotransmitter status, food sensitivities, energy production, nutrient status and more.

Call us today to find out how well your body is detoxifying, and how we can help you today.

References
The EPA’s National Human Adipose Tissue Survey (NHATS), established by the U.S. Public Health Service in 1967, measured human adipose (fat) tissue for the presence of toxic chemicals. In 1982 and 1987 it analyzed the fat samples from human cadavers looking at the types of toxins that accumulate in fat tissue.
http://cfpub.epa.gov/ncea/cfm/recordisplay.cfm?deid=55204.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1614818/?pageindex=1#page