Every day we are bombarded by toxins from our food, air, water, and environment.
All of these chemicals need to be processed by the body and eliminated in a safe manner. The trouble is that our body becomes over loaded and toxins build up in the liver and digestive system. This leads to weight gain, hormone imbalances, and loss of energy. You can tell someone is “sick with toxins” when they come to the office and have bags under their eyes, they hurt all over, and they have put on weight without doing anything different. The frustration and stress of how they feel leads to even more weight gain and eventually they are diagnosed with some type of disease.
This does not have to be the case. You can restore your health through ridding the body of the toxins, cleaning up your environment, and eating foods that nourish the health of the gut and liver.
It has long been said that “all disease starts in the gut” so it only makes sense to start the healing there. Toxins build up causing gas, bloating, heart burn, constipation/diarrhea, and inflammation. The damage done by these toxins create a leaky gut which allows toxins to enter the blood stream and get to wherever they want in the body.
Ways in which these toxins cause diseases and weight gain are:
- Production of inflammatory chemicals
- Taking your good nutrients and making them into toxins
- Creating more sugars in the gut leading to more fat storage and weight gain
- Poisoning of mitochondria (cells that generate energy)
- Slowing the liver detoxification process leading to fatty liver and weight gain
You need to stop the damage and clean up the gut to make sure you are eliminating toxins properly through the stool.
First, eliminate things like Tylenol, ibuprofen, and naproxen as the use causes inflammation and leaky gut. Next, limit or stop alcohol for two weeks. Lastly, stop eating High Fructose Corn Syrup. Anything that is not real food needs to be eliminated for two weeks. I often have patients eat a bland diet as there are many food allergens. By sticking to a limited diet of meats, veggies, and berries works well and takes the thought process out of it.
During the two weeks of changing your diet, work on sealing up the gut and addressing any underlying infections. The “bad bugs” cause inability to lose weight and reduce energy. I suggest using one or two different bug killers, as I like to call them, while sealing up the gut and removing the weeds in the gut. Adding fiber is crucial to the elimination process of gut toxins. Without fiber most people will not be able to eliminate. Historically, our diet used to consist of eating over 75 grams of fiber per day and now we eat only 5 grams!!
Lastly we look to plant good bugs and feed them so the gut can work for us and not against us. I like to use a shake that is designed for this purpose. Using specific probiotics to help with weight loss is also in this step. The more we can feed them the better.
Why your liver is important!
Once the gut is working better, we want to restore the liver. Did you know that at night the liver requires a large amount of blood flow to it to work? It makes sense as this is when you are “washing” the toxins away to wake up and eliminate them through urine and stool.
Supporting the liver requires many different nutrients making it hard to get them all in from your diet. I suggest a 2 week detoxification program for the liver to improve the gut function. It is easy to accomplish with effort. Elimination of toxins allows the body to speed up your metabolism through having good bugs in your gut and improved mitochondrial function in the cells.
By following these guidelines, not only do you lose weight, but you have more energy. Your skin can clear up, your hormones function better leading to better sex drive, an increase in muscle gains, and better sleep.
Lastly we need to clean up the products we use in the house. Personal hygiene products, house hold cleaners, water filters, and air purifiers are all ways to get less toxins into the body. Download the Healthy Living App from EWG.org and you can start to clean up the environment around you.
-Dr. Brian Opp, Chiropractor