Blog Dis
Flush the detox...
2026-03-24
Ever give yourself a detox, to cleanse your body? It is officially Spring and to prepare for the months ahead, this is typically the time of year when some elect to self-administer a detox, to cleanse themselves of the build-up of toxins that have accumulated from the year prior. And when I use the word cleanse, I mean purging toxins out of your body. It all sounds on the surface to be a reasonable endeavor, and potentially one that might only represent the purchase of a single detox cleanse kit that runs for seven days, at the cost of $100 or more.
Don't for a second believe that Detox Kits will rid your body over the weekend or even over a 7-day period of every pesticide or other toxic chemical that's been deposited in your bodily tissues. Cleanse kits are dubious at best. Periodic fasting will also not clean out toxins from your body. A fast, too, will merely drive your body to tap its fat stores for energy and will to a degree improve your blood pressure and resting heartrate. Some believe that a fast will boost your memory, though there’s not a lot of scientific evidence to support this claim. A periodic fast is great for feeling like you’ve dropped some pounds. I am only deviating from the subject matter of this post to state that you already fast every day, incidentally, when you go to sleep at night, and by the time you wake up in the morning, assuming you stopped eating after 7 pm.
When it comes to detoxifying your body, this is the sole purpose of your liver and kidneys; what they're designed to do, to filter out toxins. Having friends in the healthcare industry with decades of experience, some of whom studied chemistry and graduated with human nutrition and dietetics degrees, these friends pointedly corrected me that detox kits are all about the industry cashing in on your gullibility. Just think about it, for a moment. You eat what you eat, day in and day out, year after year, and go about your life unknowingly being exposed to pollution, like car fumes, and other heavy metals, or chemicals and herbicides present in the food you buy, as well as the pervasive presence of micro-nano plastics in the environment, like drinking water (yes; hate to tell ya) and somehow your body is going to be cleansed in one week or a weekend, and because you shelled out the money for a Detox Kit?
Best practice, as I’ve been schooled by my learned friends, is to eat a balanced diet 80% of the time that is rich in the type of foods that your liver and kidneys love: seaweed, kale, spinach, broccoli, romaine and other green leafy veggies, and to avoid seed oils, to instead place emphasis on olive oil. Eat antioxidant rich foods like blueberries, berries, dark chocolate, tomatoes, nuts and seeds. Avoid processed foods, and this means lay off refined sugars and while you’re at it, go easy on alcohol (loaded w/ sugar) plus ignore cigarettes altogether. Get enough rest, drink plenty of water, ease up on salt, meditate (to alleviate stress) and exercise!
Your liver and kidneys work best by not overtaxing them with junk food, carcinogenic substances, and other pharmaceutical medications like opioids and over-the-counter pain medication (OTCs). One Advil or Tylenol a day won’t kill you but some people take up to 6-8 every day to manage chronic pain! So, it might interest you to know that a man in his late 20s had conducted a test on himself. He never drank alcohol in his life nor did he smoke or take pharmaceutical medication but when his blood was tested, there were over 23 pesticides present. He was horrified as was I when I read the article. This says a great deal about our sick and polluted environment.
As I type these words of insight, what would I like to be doing? Why, I’m hankering for some Sweet Chili-heat Doritos! You’ve got to let your hair down occasionally, and when I do this, I dive into a bag of sin-food.
Remember, the goal is to strive for a diet that is 80% healthy, which means 20% of your meals can veer off the skids, the mid-point range between junk and healthy (choose a brown rice or chickpea pasta rather than wheat pasta made with refined flour, which your body converts to sugar). Or do as I’ve done in the past and leap straight off the cliff to clogged arteries-land because Doritos are loaded with hydrogenated fats, which probably explains why I love them. In one week, most of us will eat three meals a day or 21 meals per week. To simplify, round off this number to 20 meals. This means that if you apply the 8/10 principle, four meals out of 20 in your week can fall in the mid-range, while 16 meals should put emphasis on eating right. (A mid-range healthy meal for me is half an organic spelt bagel with a nut butter and a smear of red-pepper jelly or eating one slice of pizza).
Incidentally, I should take a moment to highlight two kinds of unwanted fat: Subcutaneous, the variety of fat stored around your hips, thighs, butt and belly, and for some behind the neck, back or the underside of your upper arms. This fat can be taken care of through exercise and eating right, to eat fat-burning fatty-foods like salmon, sardines, mackerel, coffee and eggs, as some examples. Then there is Visceral fat, caused by eating more calories than you burn. Visceral fat is the destructive fat that wraps itself around vital organs like your heart, liver and kidneys, when we indulge in saturated hydrogenated fats, and other foods laden with the wrong oils, like canola, soybean and corn.
There was a story of one mountain bike racer whose lean muscle to fat ratio was perfect. He rode his bike every day for hours and had zero fat visible on the outside of his body but he died of a heart attack at age 29 despite being lean — his diet was pure garbage. Remember visceral fat isn’t something that'll bulge on the outside; the visceral fat literally choked his heart.
Of course, none of us gets out of this game of life alive, but while we're alive, why not give yourself a quality of life that is better than coping with one of the many varieties of chronic illness? Our bodies also cannot create essential fatty acids, so it means we need to add them into our diet, because EFAs help our bodies to break down bad fats. This is the reason why I add a teaspoon of whole flaxseed to my protein shakes in the morning before I work out. Ground flaxseed isn't the same as whole flaxseed. Whole flaxseed helps to purge the build up of food particles trapped in your colon; literally clogging the lining of your colon, and this blocks the passage of waste. I learned this from a colon cancer surgeon who had noted that by the time he sees most patients, it's too late for them. He recommended ensuring that whole flaxseed is part of your diet.
I get my daily dose of kale by adding three heaping tablespoons of frozen kale to my protein shakes. Kale as we know is notoriously hard to digest. Kale gives new meaning to the word ruffage. When it’s frozen, and blended, it gets chopped up into pieces. I also add raspberries and one banana, to include one heaping scoop of a probiotic protein powder loaded with enzymes to aid in digestion; it has zero grams of sugar. I drink about 700 ml of water in my protein shake, that has a dollop of non-dairy milk alternative to give it creaminess.
Getting plenty of fluids early in the day will start you off on the right track.
Incidentally, one of the best activities to feed your brain is to actively read, daily, just as you’ve done now, getting to the end of this long-winded post. You may be wondering, does this woman ever shut it? On some rare occasions, I'm actually capable of being quiet. 😆I meditate too. No, not the variety of complicated meditation, sitting only one way, breathing exercises and all that. I remember the words of a Thai meditative master. “Westerners complicate everything. To meditate, sit upright. Place your feet flat on the floor, your arms/hands resting on your legs, palms open, facing upward. Close your eyes. Just sit. Be still. Don’t think. Don’t speak. Just sit still! This is the meditation method that I observe and with practice, you'll reach a stage where even five minutes will quiet your mind. I have fallen asleep sitting upright.
Our fruits and vegetables, coming off the trucks, after their long haul of being transported across border, were picked prior to reaching their ripeness stage. So now I understand to put emphasis on eating and using frozen fruits in my protein shake because these fruits were given enough time to ripen, and therefore you're getting a fuller range of nutrients. Apparently this applies to frozen veggies as well.
I can only assure you that putting emphasis on green leafy vegetables won't be a waste of your time or money. Studies on dementia and Alzheimer's have shown that green leafy vegetables feed the brain, to help mitigate these issues, along with Omega-3 fatty acids, derived from plants, not always or necessarily derived from fish. After all, fish stocks in the oceans and lakes are being rapidly depleted.
As well, place emphasis on challenging your brain, which... you guessed it, leads me back to encouraging you to read more! I know. I know. E-books are hugely popular. I get why many listen to them while in their car, to cope with their long commute. But eBooks are not the same as reading words on a page. How many of you can read a book while driving? It's not just about detoxing your body but we all need to consider how to detox our brains too.
Here's the recipe for my morning protein shake, which I only take during the week, Mon-Fri:
* Three heaping tablespoons of frozen kale
* One cube of spinach
* Two heaping tablespoons of frozen blueberries
* Two heaping tablespoons of frozen raspberries
* one whole banana, peeled
* Two scoops of protein powder, plant-based
* Half teaspoon of turmeric powder
* One heaping teaspoon of whole flax-seed
* One tablespoon of white vinegar
* Dollop of soy milk (women) or almond milk
* One teaspoon of Fry's cocoa
Blend well! You don't need to add ice, which is why I use frozen fruit.
Finally, a note about carbs. I read far too many posts online where nutritional experts are slamming 'carbs' without providing context. I guess it's easy to trot out a blanket word like 'carbs' but this is misleading. There are complex carbs and there are simple carbs. Limit your intake of simple carbs or none at all, whereas complex carbs should be part of your diet. Once in a while won't derail your carefully constructed meals, if you indulge in simple carbs because again when you deny yourself sin-foods it can sometimes result in binging out of control. Allow yourself some wiggle room.
And, if you're the kind of person who regularly skips meals, know that you're doing damage to your body and brain-power without realizing it. Your blood sugar levels will drop, leading to extreme mood swings, and your body will go into starvation mode, to store the next meal as fat, to protect itself. Our bodies love automation. Eat at regular intervals, if you can, as well as sleep at regular intervals, though I fully appreciate that those working shift-work can't always manage a regular eating or sleeping routine.
There is every likelihood that by the time you reach your mid-point in life (38, based on average lifespan) you will deal with a health-related issue. I am a cancer survivor myself which was the result of impact trauma that had caused damage on a cellular level, and it took a decade for the cancer to metastasize. Luckily I had an excellent plastic surgeon. As a result of this cancer diagnosis, I learned an invaluable lesson that kale is regarded as a super-cancer food, along with seaweed, and this is the reason why I ensure that frozen kale is part of my daily diet... well at least five days a week. I also eat romaine salads seven days a week, without fail, and I use an olive oil dressing that has a teaspoon of gourmet mustard for a dash of flavor. Many will opt instead for a balsamic vinaigrette and these too are yummy but regrettably for me they don't agree with my body.
Happy healthy eating to you, my friends!
Don't for a second believe that Detox Kits will rid your body over the weekend or even over a 7-day period of every pesticide or other toxic chemical that's been deposited in your bodily tissues. Cleanse kits are dubious at best. Periodic fasting will also not clean out toxins from your body. A fast, too, will merely drive your body to tap its fat stores for energy and will to a degree improve your blood pressure and resting heartrate. Some believe that a fast will boost your memory, though there’s not a lot of scientific evidence to support this claim. A periodic fast is great for feeling like you’ve dropped some pounds. I am only deviating from the subject matter of this post to state that you already fast every day, incidentally, when you go to sleep at night, and by the time you wake up in the morning, assuming you stopped eating after 7 pm.
When it comes to detoxifying your body, this is the sole purpose of your liver and kidneys; what they're designed to do, to filter out toxins. Having friends in the healthcare industry with decades of experience, some of whom studied chemistry and graduated with human nutrition and dietetics degrees, these friends pointedly corrected me that detox kits are all about the industry cashing in on your gullibility. Just think about it, for a moment. You eat what you eat, day in and day out, year after year, and go about your life unknowingly being exposed to pollution, like car fumes, and other heavy metals, or chemicals and herbicides present in the food you buy, as well as the pervasive presence of micro-nano plastics in the environment, like drinking water (yes; hate to tell ya) and somehow your body is going to be cleansed in one week or a weekend, and because you shelled out the money for a Detox Kit?
Best practice, as I’ve been schooled by my learned friends, is to eat a balanced diet 80% of the time that is rich in the type of foods that your liver and kidneys love: seaweed, kale, spinach, broccoli, romaine and other green leafy veggies, and to avoid seed oils, to instead place emphasis on olive oil. Eat antioxidant rich foods like blueberries, berries, dark chocolate, tomatoes, nuts and seeds. Avoid processed foods, and this means lay off refined sugars and while you’re at it, go easy on alcohol (loaded w/ sugar) plus ignore cigarettes altogether. Get enough rest, drink plenty of water, ease up on salt, meditate (to alleviate stress) and exercise!
Your liver and kidneys work best by not overtaxing them with junk food, carcinogenic substances, and other pharmaceutical medications like opioids and over-the-counter pain medication (OTCs). One Advil or Tylenol a day won’t kill you but some people take up to 6-8 every day to manage chronic pain! So, it might interest you to know that a man in his late 20s had conducted a test on himself. He never drank alcohol in his life nor did he smoke or take pharmaceutical medication but when his blood was tested, there were over 23 pesticides present. He was horrified as was I when I read the article. This says a great deal about our sick and polluted environment.
As I type these words of insight, what would I like to be doing? Why, I’m hankering for some Sweet Chili-heat Doritos! You’ve got to let your hair down occasionally, and when I do this, I dive into a bag of sin-food.
Remember, the goal is to strive for a diet that is 80% healthy, which means 20% of your meals can veer off the skids, the mid-point range between junk and healthy (choose a brown rice or chickpea pasta rather than wheat pasta made with refined flour, which your body converts to sugar). Or do as I’ve done in the past and leap straight off the cliff to clogged arteries-land because Doritos are loaded with hydrogenated fats, which probably explains why I love them. In one week, most of us will eat three meals a day or 21 meals per week. To simplify, round off this number to 20 meals. This means that if you apply the 8/10 principle, four meals out of 20 in your week can fall in the mid-range, while 16 meals should put emphasis on eating right. (A mid-range healthy meal for me is half an organic spelt bagel with a nut butter and a smear of red-pepper jelly or eating one slice of pizza).
Incidentally, I should take a moment to highlight two kinds of unwanted fat: Subcutaneous, the variety of fat stored around your hips, thighs, butt and belly, and for some behind the neck, back or the underside of your upper arms. This fat can be taken care of through exercise and eating right, to eat fat-burning fatty-foods like salmon, sardines, mackerel, coffee and eggs, as some examples. Then there is Visceral fat, caused by eating more calories than you burn. Visceral fat is the destructive fat that wraps itself around vital organs like your heart, liver and kidneys, when we indulge in saturated hydrogenated fats, and other foods laden with the wrong oils, like canola, soybean and corn.
There was a story of one mountain bike racer whose lean muscle to fat ratio was perfect. He rode his bike every day for hours and had zero fat visible on the outside of his body but he died of a heart attack at age 29 despite being lean — his diet was pure garbage. Remember visceral fat isn’t something that'll bulge on the outside; the visceral fat literally choked his heart.
Of course, none of us gets out of this game of life alive, but while we're alive, why not give yourself a quality of life that is better than coping with one of the many varieties of chronic illness? Our bodies also cannot create essential fatty acids, so it means we need to add them into our diet, because EFAs help our bodies to break down bad fats. This is the reason why I add a teaspoon of whole flaxseed to my protein shakes in the morning before I work out. Ground flaxseed isn't the same as whole flaxseed. Whole flaxseed helps to purge the build up of food particles trapped in your colon; literally clogging the lining of your colon, and this blocks the passage of waste. I learned this from a colon cancer surgeon who had noted that by the time he sees most patients, it's too late for them. He recommended ensuring that whole flaxseed is part of your diet.
I get my daily dose of kale by adding three heaping tablespoons of frozen kale to my protein shakes. Kale as we know is notoriously hard to digest. Kale gives new meaning to the word ruffage. When it’s frozen, and blended, it gets chopped up into pieces. I also add raspberries and one banana, to include one heaping scoop of a probiotic protein powder loaded with enzymes to aid in digestion; it has zero grams of sugar. I drink about 700 ml of water in my protein shake, that has a dollop of non-dairy milk alternative to give it creaminess.
Getting plenty of fluids early in the day will start you off on the right track.
Incidentally, one of the best activities to feed your brain is to actively read, daily, just as you’ve done now, getting to the end of this long-winded post. You may be wondering, does this woman ever shut it? On some rare occasions, I'm actually capable of being quiet. 😆I meditate too. No, not the variety of complicated meditation, sitting only one way, breathing exercises and all that. I remember the words of a Thai meditative master. “Westerners complicate everything. To meditate, sit upright. Place your feet flat on the floor, your arms/hands resting on your legs, palms open, facing upward. Close your eyes. Just sit. Be still. Don’t think. Don’t speak. Just sit still! This is the meditation method that I observe and with practice, you'll reach a stage where even five minutes will quiet your mind. I have fallen asleep sitting upright.
Our fruits and vegetables, coming off the trucks, after their long haul of being transported across border, were picked prior to reaching their ripeness stage. So now I understand to put emphasis on eating and using frozen fruits in my protein shake because these fruits were given enough time to ripen, and therefore you're getting a fuller range of nutrients. Apparently this applies to frozen veggies as well.
I can only assure you that putting emphasis on green leafy vegetables won't be a waste of your time or money. Studies on dementia and Alzheimer's have shown that green leafy vegetables feed the brain, to help mitigate these issues, along with Omega-3 fatty acids, derived from plants, not always or necessarily derived from fish. After all, fish stocks in the oceans and lakes are being rapidly depleted.
As well, place emphasis on challenging your brain, which... you guessed it, leads me back to encouraging you to read more! I know. I know. E-books are hugely popular. I get why many listen to them while in their car, to cope with their long commute. But eBooks are not the same as reading words on a page. How many of you can read a book while driving? It's not just about detoxing your body but we all need to consider how to detox our brains too.
Here's the recipe for my morning protein shake, which I only take during the week, Mon-Fri:
* Three heaping tablespoons of frozen kale
* One cube of spinach
* Two heaping tablespoons of frozen blueberries
* Two heaping tablespoons of frozen raspberries
* one whole banana, peeled
* Two scoops of protein powder, plant-based
* Half teaspoon of turmeric powder
* One heaping teaspoon of whole flax-seed
* One tablespoon of white vinegar
* Dollop of soy milk (women) or almond milk
* One teaspoon of Fry's cocoa
Blend well! You don't need to add ice, which is why I use frozen fruit.
Finally, a note about carbs. I read far too many posts online where nutritional experts are slamming 'carbs' without providing context. I guess it's easy to trot out a blanket word like 'carbs' but this is misleading. There are complex carbs and there are simple carbs. Limit your intake of simple carbs or none at all, whereas complex carbs should be part of your diet. Once in a while won't derail your carefully constructed meals, if you indulge in simple carbs because again when you deny yourself sin-foods it can sometimes result in binging out of control. Allow yourself some wiggle room.
And, if you're the kind of person who regularly skips meals, know that you're doing damage to your body and brain-power without realizing it. Your blood sugar levels will drop, leading to extreme mood swings, and your body will go into starvation mode, to store the next meal as fat, to protect itself. Our bodies love automation. Eat at regular intervals, if you can, as well as sleep at regular intervals, though I fully appreciate that those working shift-work can't always manage a regular eating or sleeping routine.
There is every likelihood that by the time you reach your mid-point in life (38, based on average lifespan) you will deal with a health-related issue. I am a cancer survivor myself which was the result of impact trauma that had caused damage on a cellular level, and it took a decade for the cancer to metastasize. Luckily I had an excellent plastic surgeon. As a result of this cancer diagnosis, I learned an invaluable lesson that kale is regarded as a super-cancer food, along with seaweed, and this is the reason why I ensure that frozen kale is part of my daily diet... well at least five days a week. I also eat romaine salads seven days a week, without fail, and I use an olive oil dressing that has a teaspoon of gourmet mustard for a dash of flavor. Many will opt instead for a balsamic vinaigrette and these too are yummy but regrettably for me they don't agree with my body.
Happy healthy eating to you, my friends!
