Once your elimination pathways are moving (sweating, urinating, and having a bowel movement regularly (click here for more information)). There’s no concern that once we start supporting with detoxification, that these products will accumulate in your body - it is time to start working on supporting your organs of detoxification! These organs include: your liver and kidneys.
The liver is the organ in charge of metabolizing various toxins from our body, including: hormones, medication, alcohol into something that doesn’t harm our body. It does this through 2 phases of detoxification. It’s constantly working, and with the amount of chemicals we are exposed to regularly, that means our liver has to go on overtime - all the time. So how do we support our liver? We do this by limiting the amount of processed foods we eat, and eat organic, whole foods. If organic isn’t possible for every produce you consume, then avoiding the Dirty Dozen or making sure to get those organic, is a good compromise. The next thing you can do is provide the building blocks (in the form of vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients) that the liver uses in Phase 1 and 2 detoxification.
Though we often focus on supporting the liver to detoxify, we also have another organ that support detoxification - the kidneys. The kidneys filter your blood and is in charge of supporting water and electrolyte homeostasis within the body. As such, it filters through a lot of blood everyday to maintain the proper balance in our bodies. One of the best ways to support your kidneys support your cardiovascular system. This is because it’s what carries the blood to the kidney to filter, and the health of them will determine how effectively the blood is being delivered. This means, that maintaining a healthy blood pressure and supporting the mobilization and elimination of toxins and metabolites by drinking water is important. Other ways you can support you cardiovascular system is to be regularly active, and are eating a variety of vegetables and fruits to get different minerals, vitamins, and phytonutrients into your diet. These will give your body the building blocks it needs to ‘fix parts that need repair’ and protect your body from free radicals, that can cause atherosclerosis, which can lead to high blood pressure, and an increase in cardiovascular events. Also make sure you are not holding your urine, since this can cause weakness in the sphincter between the bladder and urethra and cause damage to the kidneys via increased pressure and replication of potential bacteria.
The number one cause of kidney damage is diabetes - which means that supporting a healthy insulin-glucose balance will also support your kidneys. Diabetes also increases your risk of a cardiovascular events, since it affects your body by increase inflammation and free radicals. All these systems communicate with each other, so supporting one or more systems can help other systems in your body as well.
In summary, to support your liver and kidney, you want to:
Decrease processed foods to lessen the burden of your liver and kidney
Eat colourful fruits and vegetable to provide the nutrition and building blocks to maintain a healthy body
Be regularly active to support your cardiovascular system and allow your kidneys to filter that blood more effectively
Make sure to stay hydrated - your urine should be a pale yellow - the exception to this is if you’re taking a B complex. Your urine will be neon yellow
Maintain a healthy blood pressure and insulin-glucose balance
Don’t hold your urine
~Dr. Charmagne