The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
166. How to Detox Your Body Naturally and Feel Energized FAST!
15 May 2025
Chapter 1: What is detoxification and why is it important?
The modern world has introduced tens of thousands of new chemicals into our air, our water, food, and most of which our ancestors never even encountered. Today, we're breaking down one of the most misunderstood, controversial, and essential topics in all of health optimization. Detoxification.
Detoxification is a critical biological process that your body's doing right now every second of the day. It's your body identifying, neutralizing, and eliminating harmful substances. But if you want to thrive in this modern world, you need to actively support it. Detox isn't some radical cleanse. It's not living off lemon juice and cayenne pepper. Real detox requires a strategy.
Detoxing isn't a trend, it's biology. And it's right now. Your body is dealing with more biological noise, more toxins, more disruption than at any other point in human history. And when your body can't eliminate them fast enough, Welcome back to The Ultimate Human.
I'm your host, human biologist, Gary Brekka, and today we're breaking down one of the most misunderstood, controversial, and essential topics in all of health optimization, detoxification. Now, before you tune out and think, oh, detoxing, it's just a wellness buzzword. I'm here to tell you, you've never heard detox like this.
We're gonna dive deep into the science, the history and the why behind detox. We'll talk about who needs detox, what we're detoxing from in today's world and how to do it effectively. And most importantly, how to know when your body is screaming for it. Because detoxing isn't a trend, it's biology. And it's right now.
Your body is dealing with more biological noise, more toxins, more disruption, more internal chaos than at any other point in human history. So let's get started. What is detoxification really? Detox isn't some radical cleanse. It's not starving yourself. It's not living off lemon juice and cayenne pepper.
Detoxification is a critical biological process that your body's doing right now, every second of the day. It's your body identifying, neutralizing, and eliminating harmful substances, chemicals, heavy metals, molds, toxins, pesticides, plastics, pollutants, even metabolic waste. The organs involved? Your liver, kidneys, gut, skin, lungs, and your lymphatic system.
These are your built-in purification plants. But here's the problem. We weren't designed for the toxic burden we're under today. So who needs detox? The short answer? everyone. But here's how you know your body is asking for detox.
You wake up tired even after a full night's sleep, or you have brain fog or short-term memory issues, or you have chronic skin conditions like eczema, acne, or even psoriasis, hormonal imbalances like irregular menstrual cycles or a low libido, or you have digestive issues that are unexplained like bloating, constipation, diarrhea, cramping, and irritability, or even increased food sensitivities.
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Chapter 2: How does the modern world increase toxic burden on the body?
Chapter 3: Which organs are involved in the detox process?
Detoxification is a critical biological process that your body's doing right now, every second of the day. It's your body identifying, neutralizing, and eliminating harmful substances, chemicals, heavy metals, molds, toxins, pesticides, plastics, pollutants, even metabolic waste. The organs involved? Your liver, kidneys, gut, skin, lungs, and your lymphatic system.
Chapter 4: Who needs detox and what are the signs your body requires it?
These are your built-in purification plants. But here's the problem. We weren't designed for the toxic burden we're under today. So who needs detox? The short answer? everyone. But here's how you know your body is asking for detox.
You wake up tired even after a full night's sleep, or you have brain fog or short-term memory issues, or you have chronic skin conditions like eczema, acne, or even psoriasis, hormonal imbalances like irregular menstrual cycles or a low libido, or you have digestive issues that are unexplained like bloating, constipation, diarrhea, cramping, and irritability, or even increased food sensitivities.
Chapter 5: Why is detoxing more critical now than ever before?
or you're suffering from anxiety, irritability, or mood swings. If you have joint pain or inflammation, or even swelling in random areas of your body, these are not random. They're signals your body is waving the white flag, telling you it's overwhelmed. Why detoxing is more important now than ever before. Here's the truth. We're living in a toxic soup.
We are bathing our cellular biology in this toxic soup. The modern world has introduced tens of thousands of new chemicals into our air, our water, our food, even our environment, and most of which our ancestors never even encountered. So let me break it down.
Chapter 6: What toxins are commonly encountered in modern life?
mold toxins from water-damaged buildings and contaminated foods, heavy metals like mercury, lead, and aluminum in our water, our air, our fillings, and even our cookware, pesticides and herbicides on non-organic produce, hello, glyphosate, plastics and phthalates in our food packaging, cosmetics in our water bottles, endocrine-disrupting chemicals in personal care products and cleaning products, there's air pollutants from industrial emissions and vehicle exhaust, even EMFs from our devices, Wi-Fi and smart tech,
And when your body can't eliminate them fast enough, those toxins get stored in fat, in brain tissue, and in your organs. That's when damage begins. So let's go into the history of detoxing. Detoxing isn't new, it's ancient.
Ayurvedic medicine, one of the oldest forms of medicine known to mankind, traditional Chinese medicine, Hippocratic medicine, they all emphasize detoxing the body of impurities. Oil pulling, for example, is an ancient Ayurvedic detox for oral pathogens. Sweat ceremonies, indigenous sweat lodges to purge impurities. Fasting, used for centuries to give the body a metabolic reset.
Chapter 7: What is the history of detoxification practices?
Even Hippocrates said, illness do not come upon us out of the blue. They are developed from small daily sins against nature. And many of those sins are the toxins we're exposed to daily. Modern science has finally caught up to what ancient wisdom always knew. So now it's time for the science on detox. There are two main phases of detoxification that happen in your liver.
Phase one, your liver uses enzymes to transform toxins into intermediate metabolites. Then during phase two, those metabolites are bound to other molecules so they can be excreted safely. But if phase one outpaces phase two, your body ends up with highly reactive compounds floating around doing a lot of damage. So to support both phases, your body needs things like glutathione,
N-acetylcysteine, or called NAC, B vitamins, magnesium, amino acids, and antioxidants. If you're deficient in these, your detox system stalls. That's when the symptoms show up. That's when chronic illness kicks in. Now, what are we detoxing from today? Let's be real. We're not just detoxing from junk food or a weekend bender.
We're detoxing from mold, mycotoxins, heavy metals, mercury, lead, and aluminum, BPAs, phthalates, and microplastics, pesticides and glyphosate, the fluoride and chlorine I always talk about in our water, VOCs, which are volatile organic chemicals in paints, carpets, and air fresheners, EMFs and blue light disrupting our sleep and our circadian rhythm, our medications and our prescription residue, which is stored in our tissues,
Even stress creates metabolic waste. Cortisol leaves a byproduct load your body has to clear. And for some people, especially those with the MTHFR gene mutation I talk about all the time or sluggish detox enzymes, this toxic load builds up faster than their body can handle. Okay, so here's how to actually detox the right way. This is where most people get it wrong.
Detox isn't about going cold turkey off of caffeine or on a juice cleanse. Real detox requires a strategy. Here's the five-step process I use with private clients and elite athletes. Number one, I open the drainage pathways. You can't flush toxins unless your liver, gut, kidneys, skin, and your lymph are moving. That means hydration, movement, and daily bowel movements.
You have to support the liver and the lymph system using things like milk thistle, NAC, dandelion, and bitters. Dry brushing, rebounding, sauna therapy. These are all ways to activate your natural detox pathways. The third thing we do is we bind the toxins. You combine these with things like activated charcoal, bentonite clay, zeolite, or chlorella.
These are sponges that trap toxins and escort them out of the body. The fourth thing you can do is sweat it out. Infrared sauna and dry saunas are powerful for releasing fat stored toxins. Two, I like to hydrate and mineralize before I get into a hot sauna. Dry saunas we have centuries of data on are excellent ways to detox and activate your natural detoxification pathways.
When you sweat, you're not just losing water and sodium, you're eliminating waste. Our liver actually uses the skin as a secondary route of waste elimination. Most of us are not heating our bodies up or sweating on a regular basis, so we're not even activating our most active detox pathway. The fifth thing I do is I rebuild.
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