 First up, you should know that most detoxing diets are actually causing or releasing toxicity into the body. Say, what? How could a detox diet toxify you? Well, in many ways. Let's start with number one. With traditional detoxing diets, you're either on a low calorie or a fruit juice diet or a vegetable juice diet. And one of the purposes is to lose weight. Now, what most people don't know is that we store our heavy metals and what are called organopesticides, all these herbicides, pesticides, biosides in our fat cells. An example of that is heavy metals. A swordfish or a big tuna is full of mercury, clearly not exactly a healthy component of the tuna. But that big tuna or swordfish is a thousand pounds of muscle and that mercury or whatever is not bothering that animal. That's because that animal stores it in its fat where it's harmless. But what happens when we go on a fast, a water fast or a detox diet? We start using the fat from our fat cells. And as that fat is used, heavy metals and pesticides are released into your blood stream. They go to the liver. The liver has two sets of detoxifying enzymes, phase one and phase two detoxifying enzymes. Unfortunately, most of us don't have those enzymes very activated. If we're on a traditional American diet, then those enzymes have been working overload and are pretty much spent. And so we can't handle any additional load. On top of that, the liver has no system for detoxifying heavy metals. So the liver says, well, I don't want these. I can't treat them. I'm going to dump them into the bile. The bile will leave the liver and I'll wash my hands of it. And that's exactly what happens. Only one problem. The bile then goes into our intestines and those heavy metals get reabsorbed right back into our bloodstream, where they obviously don't belong. And the longer you do this detoxification diet, the more toxic heavy metals accumulate in your bloodstream and your kidneys can't filter them out fast enough. So I see a number of patients who have tried a detoxing diet where we've actually measured their heavy metals before and after the detoxification diet and their heavy metals are much higher than when they started. The second thing about detoxing diet is that people say, well, I'm going to only eat anti-inflammatory foods and that will stop my inflammation. As you've seen from my books, particularly in gut check, inflammation is our body's response to leaky gut. Inflammation does not occur because you're eating inflammatory foods. It occurs because they're causing leaky gut. So treating inflammation by eating anti-inflammatory foods is like here in California fighting a forest fire with a guard nose. It's completely insufficient. What you've got to do is eliminate the foods that are causing leaky gut. And of course, that's where the yes and no list come from from my website. The more you take leaky gut making foods like grains, like beans, like the nightshade family, like cashews, like peanuts out of your diet, then you're truly repairing your leaky gut and then quulching inflammation. It's not the other way around. I see people who are eating turmeric smoothies every day of their lives who have massive amounts of inflammation. And it's not these anti-inflammatory foods that are doing anything for them because they're still eating healthy things like whole wheat bread or brown rice. Just yesterday, I saw one of my patients who were treating for rheumatoid arthritis and lupus and leaky gut, and while we're making a little progress, it's certainly not as fast as I was anticipated because she's very motivated. And with someone like that, I certainly always go through, okay, what's the typical days eating for you? And the first thing out of her mouth, she said, well, I start every morning with my detox shake and I buy it on the internet. It's really famous and I won't tell you the name. And I said, you're kidding me. And she said, no, no, it's really healthy. And I said, have you ever actually looked at the ingredients and she said, well, no, it's really healthy, full of adaptogens and all this really good organic stuff. So I pulled up on the internet the package. I said, well, if you think that pea protein and brown rice and I went down the list and it's this giant lectin bomb with actually very few good things in it. And she said, well, but this is a health detox drink. And I said, no, it's a toxification drink and your blood work shows it. So it's that example that we often think we're doing the right thing, but we're actually causing more leaky gut than tamping down inflammation. Okay, well, why don't we just do a juice cleanse? The problem with juices, I'll say it over and over again. Fruit juice is mostly fructose. Fructose was really good way back when when we ate fruit whole and it was really good for weight gain, great apes only gain weight during fruit season. And fruit season only occurs once a year, even in the jungle. We convert fructose, which is a mitochondrial toxin. I'll say it again, fructose is a mitochondrial toxin. We detoxify fructose in the liver. Into triglycerides, which is a fat, and into uric acid. I'll say that again, we detoxify fructose in our liver. That doesn't sound like a detox diet if what we're drinking is a toxin. So what happens? Triglycerides raise our cholesterol, raise our fat content. These things are created or turned into another fat called a ceramide. For those of you who are interested, there's a wonderful paper to read on the internet published in PubMed, Death by Ceramides. And if you wanna know how to poison your mitochondria, to poison your heart, please read Death by Ceramides. Put it on your browser, you'll be shocked. That's what fructose does to us. Finally, I can't tell you the number of patients who came to see me after a fruit juice cleanse who developed acute gout. Why? Because they rapidly raise their uric acid. And uric acid is what causes gout. So here they are detoxing and actually causing a toxic gout crystal formation in their big toe. All because they are eating anti-inflammatory foods. And I can tell you, if you wanna experience inflammation, I have a case of gout. Well, so are there any effective detox solutions? Well, first of all, eating a plant-based diet that's low calorie, that's lectin-free, is one of the better ways to do this. But the object of the game is not to lose weight quickly. Number one, as I've always said, weight off fast will never last. Weight off slow, you're good to go. Dr. Volter Longo, my colleague at USC, has shown that five days of eating a low protein, vegan diet dramatically improves our immune system's function for the entire month, even if you only eat it five days a month. He's also shown that it actually improves insulin resistance, improves markers of prediabetes, but you only do it for a limited time period. You don't do it for all month. You can enhance your liver's phase one and phase two detoxification enzymes. And there's many compounds that do this. The most famous is probably milk thistle, artichoke extract, which is a cousin. Artichokes are cousins of milk thistle, they're a thistle plant, is another really good detoxification trick. I like D-lemonine, which is sometimes advertised as orange peel extract. And this is a compound that, in my way of thinking, takes milk thistle and artichoke extract to the next level. And I even make a product with those in mind. Sometimes milk thistle is really great, sometimes it's not enough and you have to add D-lemonine for extra boost. Now what about all those heavy metals that are gonna come out of the fat when you're doing a detoxification diet? Well, again, the problem is that heavy metals are reabsorbed once they're put out into bio. So what you gotta do is capture the heavy metals in your gut. And there's several compounds that have been shown to be very effective. The first is cracked chlorella. Chlorella binds heavy metals and won't allow them to be reabsorbed. The same is true with activated charcoal. It will bind heavy metals and will prevent it from being reabsorbed. Now, chlorella you can take fairly constantly. Activated charcoal on the other hand, you don't wanna continuously take it day in and day at night because it will actually bind other minerals that you need. But when you combine that with a proper diet, that's a way to get heavy metals out of your system. And we've had really good success using chlorella and heavy metals to get mercury and lead out of our patients, even quite high levels without chelation. More amazing episodes just like this one, watch now. You should have an avocado every day. Studies have shown that people who eat avocado every day lose weight compared to people who don't eat avocados.