Are you waking up in the middle of the night? Perhaps consistently, between 2-4 a.m.? Are you experiencing acne and other inflammatory skin conditions? Are you constipated and having trouble with maintaining consistent bowel movements? Are you experiencing irregular periods and other hormonal imbalances? Have you recently come off the birth control pill?
Let’s talk detoxification, and why it matters for skin health and overall health and wellness. We all want to feel our best with magical glowing skin. Detox has become one of the most popular and misunderstood processes. It’s used for marketing products, cleanses, and a plethora of restrictive diets. Many of these cleanses promise glowing skin, but often only succeed in delivering acne flare ups and aggravating other symptoms.
Let’s clear things up for flowing detox pathways and glowing skin.
Detoxification: An ongoing magical process
Drainage and detoxification are foundational for happy hormones and skin. When the body is unable to perform these effectively, it can often lead to or aggravate hormonal imbalances and acne breakouts. Sluggish drainage and detox pathways create a humid and moist environment, and this excess dampness is where acne and inflammation thrive. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, damp heat and acne are often closely linked, and internal dampness is thought to be caused by sluggish drainage and detox pathways.
Detoxification is a natural physiologic process the body does every second of every day to eliminate excess hormones, toxins, and other natural wastes. When supported and nourished properly, it functions perfectly fine all on its own. The problem is that most of us aren’t giving our detox organs everything they need all the time. Add environmental toxin exposure to our already sluggish detox organs, and you’ve got a recipe for under-functioning detoxification.
When struggling with acne, our first instinct may be ramp up detox as fast as possible. But detoxing isn’t something that our bodies do a few times a year with the support of a cleanse or a restrictive diet, and our best intentions can actually end up leading to more breakouts, leaving us feeling worse than when we started. But not to worry—we can still support those hardworking detox organs and get that glow we so badly want!
Our goal here is to support the body’s natural detox pathways to rid excess heat and hormones and reduce stagnant blood.
The drainage funnel
Our bodies have the amazing ability to remove toxins through the movement of fluids. Picture your body as a giant drainage funnel: all waste and toxins swirl and swirl down from the large opening at the top all the way to the tiny little spigot at the other end. When the drainage funnel is working efficiently, everything flows just as it should in a consistent motion. But when we’re not supporting our drainage pathways, the funnel starts to get blocked up, a little bit here and there, slowly impeding the flow, until the whole funnel is all gummed up!
Having a healthy detoxification system means setting a solid foundation for that drainage funnel. The liver works hard to package toxins and excess hormones for disposal, but without regular, healthy bowel movements, these toxins can’t get excreted, and instead are reabsorbed into the body and recirculated. In order for detoxification to take place, toxins must be successfully metabolized and repackaged by the liver, and excreted through the colon. When this drainage doesn’t take place, acne symptoms can be aggravated. To get to the top, we must start from the bottom.
Support healthy bowel movements
Restoring daily bowel movements is the first step to opening the drainage funnel. Ideally, we would like to poop 2-3 times daily, with a well-formed bowel movement.
Hydrate
Ensure adequate water intake. Consider 2-3L of filtered or purified water to keep things flowing. The more you can invest in your water by getting a filter or purifier the less work your liver has to do by sorting through excess toxins and waste found in most municipal tap water.
Level Up
Replenish mineral levels (potassium and magnesium) with electrolytes. My favourite are trace minerals that you can easily add to drinking water.
Fibre Full
Bump up fibre intake with colourful vegetables, like cabbage, celery, broccoli, collards, root vegetables, and leafy greens. They’re rich in insoluble fibre, which helps to recycle bile and cholesterol to improve bowel regularity.
Move More
Incorporate daily movement.
Support the liver
The liver is the house of metabolic detoxification. It plays a major role in blood sugar balance, cholesterol formation, and conversion of thyroid hormone into its active form, and helps to regulate hormone levels. Metabolic detox is a series of phases that takes non-water-soluble toxins (such as the pill, other pharmaceuticals, hormones, fat-soluble vitamins, most environmental toxins, alcohol) and breaks them down, packaging them up into nontoxic compounds that are eliminated through the stool and urine. When this pathway becomes overloaded and sluggish, these toxins and excess hormones get recirculated, which contributes to inflammation, hormonal imbalances, and acne.
Phase It In
The liver is working 24/7 to process and re-package harmful wastes, toxins, and excess hormones to leave the body. During the liver’s metabolic detoxification process, some materials are made more toxic before they can be excreted, which makes it really important to work with a practitioner you trust.
Liver Lift
The detoxification process is often explained as having two steps, or phases. To support the liver (and, in turn, the skin) we must ensure we are supporting both phases. Support for phase 1 detoxification can include B complex vitamins, Vitamin C, and glutathione, while support for Phase 2 detoxification includes glycine, N-acetyl cysteine (NAC), curcumin, and B vitamins.
Daily Bread
Nourishing detoxification by supporting the liver on a daily basis is foundational to long-term clear skin. The liver’s ideal fuel source is carbohydrates, making prioritizing adequate carbohydrates key to ensuring the liver does its best work. Consider adding a bedtime snack into your routine to give the liver extra support throughout the night, which is when metabolic detoxification occurs. Sulphur-rich foods such as broccoli, kale, brussels sprouts, onions, and garlic and detoxifying foods like radicchio, parsley, and celery juice are all great options.
Sleep Well
Since detoxification occurs at night when we’re sleeping, it’s important to ensure that you’re getting enough quality sleep:
- Sleep in total darkness to help balance hormones, especially important if you have recently come off the pill
- Take an Epsom salt bath (also a great mineral magnesium boost) if you struggle with constipation. Magnesium is best absorbed through the skin and has been shown to support healthy bowel movements
- Include a bedtime snack, a balance of all three macros (carbs, fat, and protein), to support balanced blood sugar. This is especially helpful if you find you consistently wake up between 2-3 a.m.
Whether it’s the years of medication (i.e., the pill, antibiotics, etc.) we’ve taken or the toxic burden of our modern world that may be to blame, most of us have overworked livers. In order to clear acne naturally and get our hormones back in balance, we need to support the body’s detoxification organs. Flowing detoxification supports glowing skin from the inside out. So start from the bottom and work upwards to find your inner glow.
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