For the next few months, we will be providing you with tips and strategies to help you clear toxins from your body.
Peeing and pooping regularly play a crucial role in the process of detoxification, a crucial component of your body's daily work in helping improve how you can move histamine out.
Improving your trips to the loo also go far in supporting a reduction of what could potentially be contributing to your mast cell mediated troubles.
In fact, it is the first step you should take towards clearing toxins.
What is elimination?
Peeing and pooping regularly are all part of healthy elimination. These bodily functions that most people take for granted, are the final phase of your body's detoxification work.
Even though your trips to the toilet make up the final phase of detoxification, it's important to address proper elimination first. When you look after this step first, toxins don’t get backed up further upstream in the body.
Imagine constipation as a dam in a river.
When the dam gets built, water backs up.
It’s the same with poop: if you aren’t eliminating regularly, toxins and metabolites get backed up. Release the dam and the river starts flowing.
Work on improving regular daily bowel movements, and now the toxins start flowing.
Your liver's role here
Your liver is the main organ of detoxification. We’ll be talking a lot about it in coming weeks. For now, understand that once your liver has done its magic, peeing and pooping are the main pathways of elimination. Elimination means getting those terrible toxins out of your body once and for all.
There are 3 phases of detoxification.
Phase 1
Phase one is mainly about oxidation, though there are other types of chemical reactions involved as well.
Oxidation creates a lot of free radical damage, also known as oxidative damage (hence the name of the pathway). Free radicals can do a lot of damage to your body. You have likely heard how important it is to eat foods rich in antioxidants. Antioxidants will combat the damage done by free radicals.
Tip: Blueberries, blackberries, cranberries, red cabbage, and red beets are good sources of antioxidants (1) that are low in histamine.
Phase 2
Phase 2 is about conjugation. There are 6 different conjugation pathways where the toxins or metabolites that have been oxidized in Phase 1 get a conjugate added to them. This process makes them water soluble so that they can be removed in pee and poop.
The 6 pathways include methylation, acetylation, sulfation, glucuronidation, amino acid conjugation, and glutathione conjugation.
Tip: Eating good quality animal protein along with cruciferous vegetables will support these pathways.
Phase 3
Now we’re getting into the main topic of this post. Phase 3 is all about moving Phase 2 conjugates out of your body. Conjugates will get transported to your kidneys where you’ll pee them out, or to your bile which eventually goes into the small intestine, where you’ll poop it out.
Supporting your kidneys requires adequate hydration. Histamine conjugates are largely excreted through urine. (2) Hydration is important for clearing both toxins and histamine.
Supporting your intestines is a bit more complicated. A high fibre diet, having a healthy intestinal barrier and heathy gut microbiome all play a role in normal motility to push poop through your intestines.
Tip: this is where a low histamine Meat Stock comes in, and including nourishing fats like ghee and olive oil will be of benefit in helping maintain a healthy intestinal barrier.
What to look for
Your poop should be shaped like a banana (smooth with tapered ends) or like a log (smooth with or without cracks and rounded ends).
If your log is lumpy, your stools are too hard. If your log is falling apart or can’t hold its shape, your stools are too soft.
If you struggle with MCAS, the inflammatory chemical mediators from your mast cells can be released into your GI tract and can disrupt normal barrier function (3) and motility (4), impacting healthy pooping.
Our Shopping List is designed to address the complexity of gut health to support normal pooping when histamine or mast cells are involved.
The food you eat can support gut health to get you pooping better, and the fibre in food can also act as a binder.
Tip: Eat foods from our Shopping List with a focus on vegetables.
On Binders
Binders are non-absorbable substance that bind to toxins in the GI tract so that they can’t be reabsorbed into the body and recirculated. Fibre in foods is one example of a binder, but you may need additional support for detoxification.
Activated charcoal, bentonite clay, zeolite (pictured here on the left) and chlorella are all examples of binders.
These substances are nonspecific and can also bind to nutrients or medications. For this reason, they need to be taken on an empty stomach away from food, supplements, or medications.
Taking a binder means that toxins that you are moving out through your poop, stay in your poop.
3 Simple Steps to get you started
1. Stay hydrated
Drink water and herbal teas like tulsi, ginger or chamomile. If you need a reminder to hydrate, set an alarm. Water not only increases your urine output, but also keeps poop soft.
2. Eat your veggies and animal protein!
Choose a large selection of vegetables from our Shopping List. Make sure you have antioxidant rich veggies or berries, and cruciferous veggies likes broccoli, cauliflower, or Brussels sprouts. Filling your plate with these vegetables or berries at meals will give you the nutrients you need to support Phase 1 and Phase 2, plus loads of fibre and water to help with Phase 3 peeing and pooping.
Adding an animal protein to your plate will support Phase 2.
3. Add a binder
After you are pooping well with daily banana or log-shaped stools, add a binder.
Caution needs to be used with MCAS when adding a binder. Start with a very small dose and slowly increase it. Add a binder ONLY after you are pooping regularly.
Chlorella can act as a histamine liberator. Tolerance is unique to everyone, so testing with small doses is important.
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