Avoid Detox Insanity: How Constipation Interferes with Detox

It’s said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.

This can happen with detox too!

📖 The definition of detox insanity is pushing the body to detox while constipated.

If you’re constipated, excreted toxins that hang around too long can more easily absorb back into your system. The toxins are delivered again to your liver, which has to process and package them all over again. This process can happen with the same toxin multiple times. Processing the same toxin over and over again and expecting detox results? That’s detox insanity!

This is why, before even considering a binder, I make sure my patients are pooping. If they aren’t, we use pre-binders first.

What are pre-binders? These are the things that induce digestive function and secretions. Eating in a relaxed state, smelling food before eating it, hydrating between meals but not during the meal, bitters with meals, cholagogues (herbs that make and move bile), phosphatidylcholine, bile movers, ox bile, and sometimes betaine HCl.

For chronic constipation, we often also add things that work lower down in the gut, which are called laxatives. High dose vitamin C, magnesium, or the herb senna for instance.

Do what you need to do to go poo before considering a binder, so you don’t put your liver into a state of detox insanity.

Transcript

Do you know the definition of detox insanity? It’s trying to detox while you’re constipated.

You know insanity, the definition of that is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Same thing goes for detox. If you’re constipated, all of those toxins that are wrapped up in the bile get carried right back to the liver and the liver has to reprocess them over and over and over again. That’s why binders for me are not an automatic. I assess my patient first to see if they can go poop. And if they can’t, if they’re constipated, if you add a binder and it makes them constipated, you’re now asking their liver for detox insanity.

So first start with regulating the bowels, getting the bowels moving with things that start the tube high up. Things that are bitter in flavor, ox bile and things that move bile like cholagogues. I talk about them a lot because I don’t want my patients’ livers to have to go through detox insanity. So they can break the mold and take back their health!

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