Detoxification for Women's Health

By Suzanne Fenske, MD, FACOG, ABOIM, MSCP

Detoxification for Women's Health

Detoxification is more than a wellness trend; it’s an essential body process. Your body is constantly detoxifying and clearing what’s harmful, but the modern environment contains more toxins than ever. When the toxic burden exceeds the body’s capacity for detoxification, circulating toxins contribute to inflammation, hormone imbalances, and disease processes. Sometimes, your detox systems need a little help.

Today’s article will discuss how to support detoxification as an integrative medicine foundation for women’s health. But we’re not talking about juice cleanses, fasting, or detox fads. We’ll be divining into the science and bringing you actionable ways to improve detoxification and, therefore, your health and hormones.

Keep reading as we explore:

• What is detoxification?
• Why detoxification is essential for women’s health
• Nutrient requirements for liver detoxification
• Everyday detox strategies

What is Detoxification?

Detoxification includes all the pathways and processes that transform cellular waste and toxins and remove them from the body. Your body is detoxifying right now without you having to think about it.

Waste and toxins come from natural cellular processes, but they are increasingly coming from the environment. Pesticides, microplastics, heavy metals, endocrine disruptors, air pollution, and water pollution contribute to the total body burden.

Toxins enter the body through the skin, digestive system, and lungs. The liver is the primary organ that transforms toxic substances into water-soluble molecules for excretion. The liver requires abundant nutrients, including amino acids, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants, to support the detoxification pathways (biotransformation). Then, toxins leave through the colon, kidneys, lungs, or skin.

While these systems are in place, toxins can build up when the body’s burden outpaces its resources and capacity to transform and eliminate toxins.

Detoxification – Women’s Health Connection

In some cases, you might not know you have high levels of toxic chemicals in your body unless you found them from testing. In other cases, you may experience symptoms such as:

• Brain fog
• Mood changes
• Headaches and migraines
• Changes in the menstrual cycle
• Estrogen dominance
• Weight gain

Endocrine-disrupting chemicals affect hormone levels and function in the body. Some toxins act like estrogen and contribute to an estrogen dominance state, which can exacerbate symptoms of PCOS, endometriosis, and early perimenopause. Endocrine disruptors affect fertility, bone health, gut health, and more. The chemicals even affect epigenetics (gene expression), which is passed on through generations.

Further, endocrine-disrupting chemicals, microplastics, and other environmental toxins are considered obesogens because they alter metabolic signals and energy regulation, contributing to obesity. If you have difficulty losing weight, toxins could be one root cause.

Overall, toxins place unnecessary physical stress on the body, and lessening the load improves health in many ways.

Exposure to chemicals is only one part of the equation. The other part is how effectively an individual can detoxify and clear the toxins, playing a role in many women’s health concerns.

Liver Detoxification Pathways and Nutrients

Most toxins pass through the liver, where they undergo biotransformation into compounds that can be excreted (often via the colon and kidneys). Molecules made by the body, including estrogen, also go through these pathways before excretion.

Liver detoxification is divided into two phases: Phase 1 and Phase 2. Both steps are required to turn fat-soluble toxins and molecules into water-soluble ones. Phase 1 uses cytochrome P450 enzymes. The byproducts after phase 1 are often far more toxic than the original compounds. Luckily, phase 2 detoxification neutralizes the intermediates through pathways that include glucuronidation, glutathione conjugation, and sulfation.

The point is that the liver requires a lot of nutrition to do its job. Here are just some of the nutrients required for Phase 1, Phase 2, and to protect the liver from intermediate compounds:

• Vitamin B2
• Vitamin B3
• Vitamin B6
• Folate
• Vitamin B12
• Magnesium
• Zinc
• Selenium
• Choline
• Glutathione
• Glycine, taurine, glutamine, cysteine, and branched-chain amino acids
• Resveratrol
• Flavonoids
• DIM/I3C
• Sulforaphane
• Magnesium
• Zinc
• Vitamin C
• Carotenoids

Optimal nutrition to support detoxification requires a whole food, nutrient-dense diet, and possibly supportive supplements to provide the necessary vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and phytonutrients. While a juice cleanse or fast might give the digestive system a break, it does not provide the nutrition necessary for biotransformation in the liver.

Nutrition and Lifestyle for Everyday Detox Support

The first lifestyle goal is to reduce environmental toxin exposure as much as possible. You’ll never eliminate everything, and it’s not worth stressing about what you can’t control. But there are many things you can control. Some simple strategies that significantly reduce toxins include:

• Filtering drinking and cooking water
• Filtering indoor air
• Choosing non-toxic cleaning and household products
• Choosing non-toxic personal care products and cosmetics
• Eating organic food; reducing ultra-processed food
• Reducing plastic use

For more ideas and resources, read Environmental Toxins and Women’s Health.

The second part of the equation includes supporting the body’s detoxification and elimination systems. Many simple lifestyle habits can help ensure toxins can leave the body instead of recirculating. These include:

• Having a daily bowel movement
• Staying hydrated and urinating regularly
• Breathing deeply and fully
• Sweating regularly actively through exercise or passively via hot baths or saunas
• Supporting circulation and lymph flow with movement, massage, and other tools

Opening these elimination pathways is foundational and can be part of your daily routine for optimal wellness. When you push liver detoxification, but the toxins can’t get out of the body, you may feel worse. If you need support in these areas, including optimizing digestive health and regularity, talk with your TārāMD provider.

As discussed, liver detoxification requires abundant nutrients, so nutrition becomes a critical tool for helping the body detox daily. Sure, you can get away with some treats or bad days here or there, but most of the time, eating nutrient-dense meals with plenty of protein and plant foods allows the liver to work its magic.

Some specific foods to include most days are:

• Cruciferous vegetables (rich in DIM/I3C, sulforaphane, carotenoids) – Broccoli, broccoli sprouts, cauliflower, bok choy, arugula, brussels sprouts, cabbage, collards, daikon, kale, etc.

• Antioxidant and flavonoid-rich foods – Berries, green tea, apples, onions, cacao, turmeric, brightly colored produce, spices, etc.

• Dark leafy greens (rich in carotenoids, folate, minerals) – Spinach, kale, collards, arugula, chard, dandelion greens, etc.

• Bitter foods – Bitter greens, sunchokes, citrus fruits and zest, endive, radicchio, coffee, cranberries, tahini/sesame seeds, etc.

• Protein-rich foods (rich in amino acids, B vitamins, choline) – Wild fish, seafood, eggs, grass-fed dairy, organ meats, muscle meats, etc.

• Nuts and seeds (rich in minerals, vitamins, healthy fats) – Walnuts, Brazil nuts, almonds, pumpkin seeds, hemp seeds, etc.

Nutritional supplements and herbs can supplement a healthy diet when you need more detox support because of increased exposure, genetics, or other reasons. Your TārāMD team offers custom protocols to help you meet your detox, hormone, and overall health goals.

If you want clear skin, healthy digestion, solid energy, mental clarity, and happy hormones, don’t overlook the role of environmental toxins and optimizing detoxification pathways. Improving the body’s detoxification capacity with nutrition and lifestyle strategies helps address various women’s health challenges and promotes optimal wellness and longevity.

References

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