5 Lifestyle Changes You Can Make Today to Optimize Your Detox Pathways

Disclaimer: this blog post is not to be taken as medical advice. Always consult your doctor before making changes to your supplement or medication routine. This post may also contain affiliate links. For full disclosures, click here.

Detoxing is becoming cool again — but in a MUCH healthier way. Detoxing got a bad rep from the skinny teas and the juice cleanses because it was always done with the intention of getting skinnier, which is not the point of detoxing. Removing toxic exposures and properly detoxing your body is key for long term health and vibrance, not just for looking good in a crop top (although that’s a happy side effect sometimes).

What people often fail to do before detoxing is opening their detox pathways. Your body is detoxing all the time, but that doesn’t mean it’s doing it efficiently or effectively. Stagnant detox pathways can cause a whole host of issues like acne, headaches, bloating, fatigue, and poor immune function to name a few. Before we get into how to optimize them, let’s chat about what your detox pathways actually are.

What are detox pathways?

When most people think about detox, they think about the liver and kidneys. Those are two of your main detox organs, but there are so many other organ systems at play! Your skin, lungs, lymph, and even your brain are all key players in your body’s detoxification system.

Simply speaking, your detox pathways are the route the toxins take to leave your body. Toxins take many routes out of the body, but the most common ones are through your stool, urine, and sweat.

Why do they matter?

Think about your body’s detoxification process as a 3-step cleaning process. First, you have to clean the house. You sweep the floors, dust the furniture, and wipe down the counters. In the body, this means pulling toxins, heavy metals, mold, parasites, etc. from your cells and organs where they’ve been camped out. Next, you have to bag up the garbage. After the toxins are pulled from your cells, they are bound with proteins that make them less toxic and ready for removal. Lastly, you take out the trash. The toxins are removed from your body through your detox pathways — your sweat, bowel movements, and urine.

Now imagine you cleaned your house, bagged up a bunch of dirt and garbage, and then just left it inside. It would smell, attract bugs, and cause a lot of problems. If you decide to dive head first into a detox protocol without opening your detox pathways, the “garbage” is going to circulate in your body making you feel WORSE until eventually it’s reabsorbed and you’re back where you started. We don’t want that, so let’s chat about how we can open up your detox pathways.

5 easy ways to Open your detox pathways

Dry Brushing

Your lymphatic system plays a huge role in your body’s ability to mobilize and get rid of toxins. Dry brushing helps remove dry skin and opens up the pores to allow for your body to sweat more optimally. It also stimulates blood flow, which promotes lymphatic flow and drainage. Goop has a great dry brushing tutorial for beginners.

I have sensitive skin, so I prefer to use a soft bristle brush. I have this one from Amazon and love it!

Poop every day

This one is HUGE! If you aren’t pooping at least once per day, you are constipated. When you can’t efficiently eliminate stool, your body will reabsorb tons of toxins that it intended to excrete. Optimizing your digestive system and having regular bowel movements is one of the very best ways to support your body’s natural ability to detox.

Finding yourself constipated? The best option is to get to the root cause of why you’re constipated. Are you lacking digestive enzymes? Are you dehydrated? Do you have an overgrowth of pathogens impacting your body’s ability to break down your food and slowing your intestinal motility?

You may need to work with a practitioner to discover the root cause of your issues, but if you find yourself constipated you can try the following things:

• Remove gluten, alcohol, and processed foods. These are common constipation triggers.

• Supplement with magnesium citrate or magnesium oxide (go slow…it can work too well if you know what I mean).

• Incorporate enemas or colonics into your routine.

• Make sure you are properly hydrated with electrolytes.

Hydrate, Hydrate, Hydrate!

It is estimated that over 75% of Americans are chronically dehydrated. When you don’t get enough water, your cells dry up and cannot remove toxins effectively. Your detox organs also require proper hydration to work efficiently — water helps flush the kidneys and liver, as well as keeps your intestines lubricated and flexible.

When hydrating, you cannot forget about electrolytes! Drinking plain, filtered water is not always the most optimal way to hydrate your body. In order for your body to absorb and use the water you’re drinking, it needs to be balanced with electrolytes. If you find yourself drinking a lot of water and having to use the bathroom every 20 minutes, you probably aren’t absorbing the water you’re drinking.

My favorite electrolytes are LMNT and Ultima Replenisher. If you aren’t a fan of flavored water, you can add a pinch of sea salt to your water with a squeeze of lemon to achieve the same outcome.

Sleep

Sleep is one of the most underrated ways to optimize detox pathways. SO MUCH RECOVERY HAPPENS WHEN YOU SLEEP!

Researchers only recently discovered that the human brain has its own lymphatic system called the glymphatic system. When you sleep, the space between your brain cells expands allowing for toxins to be flushed out of the brain. The brain is extremely sensitive to toxins, and yet we expose ourselves to dangerous neurotoxins regularly. Toxins like alcohol, heavy metals in beauty products and v@xx!nes, and pharmaceutical drugs all cross the blood brain barrier and cause issues with our brain health. The more you can achieve high quality sleep, the better your brain can flush out these toxins.

Aside from the brain, the liver works hard during the night as well. Research indicates that a single night of poor sleep can alter the way the liver processes glucose and produces insulin. With chronic poor sleep, metabolic diseases like non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and type II diabetes become increasingly likely. If you find yourself waking between the hours of 1-3AM — you

Sweat

Sweating is one of the best ways to eliminate toxins from your body. This one doesn’t need to be complicated!

A good sweat from a walk in the sun or a hard workout will do wonders for your detox pathways. If you aren’t a workout person or you live in a cool climate that doesn’t allow for as much sweating outside, here are some other options:

• Infrared sauna. Infrared saunas are great because they heat the body from the inside out. This allows for deeper penetration into your cells for a deeper detox. Start low and slow and work up your tolerance in the sauna. If you are interested in getting an infrared sauna for your home, my favorite brands are Clearlight Sauna and Therasage.

• Dry sauna. Dry saunas are great for a quick, hot sweat. They heat your body from the outside in, which means they are hotter and you’ll typically sweat much quicker. Dry saunas are typically easier to access, as this is likely what you’ll find at the gym or in a hotel. I got a $10/month gym membership near my house just for access to their sauna! Start with a few minutes at a time and work your way up to longer amounts of time.

• Detox baths. Add 1/2 cup of baking soda and 1/2 cup of epsom salts to a hot bath. I promise, you will be sweating in no time!

A Final Note

As you open up detox pathways, you can expect to feel some of the effects of your body detoxing more effectively. Toxins are being mobilized, and that can come with some unpleasant side effects. For this reason, binders are important! Activated charcoal is a great, inexpensive binder that will help mop up toxins and remove them from your body. Just keep in mind that charcoal will bind everything — so it’s best practice to take it away from food, supplements, and medications.