Episode# 028: Living All Natural + Detoxing Your Body
It’s funny how our struggles can ultimately be some of our greatest gifts…
It was my own personal battles with health that led me down a path of seeking, researching, trial and error and ultimately setting a completely new standard for how I live and how I raise my family.
On this episode, I’m finally answering some of the questions I so often some of the natural and non-conventional ways our family is detoxing and eliminating toxins from our day to day as best we can.
Take what works for you, maybe learn from why it’s worth researching and take it all one step at a time!
You get to set your own standards in life, and your health and the health of your family should be a place where you lead boldly from the front.
I’m sharing the things that we’ve done as a family to help our bodies detoxify and how we are eliminating as many toxins and chemicals as we can from our environment. I talk all the time about how I’m not passionate about nutrition or fitness, I’m exceedingly passionate about body optimization for both peak performance and quality of life.
I talk all the time about how I’m not passionate about nutrition or fitness, I’m exceedingly passionate about body optimization for both peak performance and quality of life.
You can be a stay at home mama listening to this, an athlete or a top level executive, CEO or influencer and benefit from this episode.
Because to me, we are limited when we aren’t tapping into what our bodies can do. Our minds can’t be as sharp, our energy is low, our digestion is off, our weight affects our moods or confidence, we can’t be fully engaged in our relationships, when our bodies or our guts are out of whack our brain suffers, and worst of all, our time here making our impact, leading or raising our families can be cut way too short.
So every so often you will hear me speak about things I’ve learned and applied in my own health and the power behind them not because I care about your waistline or how you might look in a bathing suit, but because I’m increasingly aware that people like us - go-getters who are scaling up their lives - NEED our bodies to support our missions. And if our body feels like it’s working against us, we lose momentum and live beneath what’s possible.
I’m also not a doctor. This is stuff that I’ve researched heavily and from many sources and people who are far better versed in this stuff than I, and I’m sharing what has worked for me. No ads. No sponsors. Just the stuff that’s continually helping me tap into my purpose and potential and help other people do the same.
For years, in addition to not really knowing how to take care of myself, I was experiencing extreme fatigue, brain fog, digestive issues and pain, inflammation, headaches, reoccuring sickness… and I was always able to justify it based on what was going on in my life at the time.
College - not getting enough, not enough access to healthy foods
Post college - sitting at a desk all day
As an entrepreneur - Working crazy hours and stressed out
Pregnant - oh, just how everyone feels
Postpartum - Not sleeping and BF
But the reality is that when our bodies are in sync, we shouldn’t need caffeine, we shouldn’t experience brain fog, we shouldn’t be exhausted all the time, we shouldn’t be getting sick often, and we shouldn’t have trouble with digestion. ALL of those things ultimately affect more than just our physical.
So in addition to sharing what I do, this is also a PSA to check yourself, people!
Grade your health. Grade your level of energy. Grade your digestion. I promise you, if at some point you really do want to go next level in ANYTHING, don’t skip this step.
And if you feel like you’re doing fine yourself, consider your family. Their gut health affects their brain health. They are exposed daily to toxins that can lead to different diseases, conditions and symptoms that could limit the potential of their lives. AND - we aren’t going into this today, but their genes, yes, their actual DNA,, the genes that can lead to diseases like Alzheimers and Parkinsons or conditions like obesity, propensity to diabetes, and even just deterioration, can actually turned on or OFF by what we eat and are exposed to. So if that’s not motivation to become obsessed with this, I don’t know what is!
And in this episode I want to share some of the things we, as a family, have done to both detox and avoid toxins in the few environments that we can control. Some of these things are easier than others to adopt while others are more of an investment in either time or money, but all have impacted us positively.
Our bodies can naturally detox itself of toxins and chemicals, but most of our bodies are overwhelmed with toxins beyond what we can eliminate on our own.
Excess toxins and waste in the body can lead to depression, lack of energy, skin conditions, weight gain, joint pain, headaches, muscle-aches, chronic fatigue, allergies, gastrointestinal distress, and irritability. In addition to symptoms of toxin overload, there are chronic disease states that are correlated with high levels of toxins in the body including: Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, MS, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Lupus, autoimmune conditions, ADHD, Autism, Cancer, and Diabetes.
I get flack all the time from people when I talk about approaching things naturally first - I’m fine with that. Those probably aren’t the people who will open their minds enough to research for themselves.
But the all-too-common truth is that conventional medicine too often looks at things from only one angle and seeks to treat the symptom not the root cause. That’s a problem. Yes, medication is often needed. But certainly not as often as it’s prescribed.
I lose faith in some of the authority figures I was turning to when they’re recommend things like Pedia-Sure to help kids grow (look at the 1st few ingredients ) or to put my child on a steroid when they haven’t asked about what he eats or his environment first, or when I share my symptoms and either “it’s all in my head” or I’m prescribed a pill that is loaded with toxins.
When it comes to starting to eliminate toxins from our environments, we have to take it in stride.
This is something that a choice you make for your life, for your family’s life… it’s not how we typically operate for the short term gain. This isn’t about the immediate gratification.
And that’s why I know only true high achievers and people who think long term will really stick with me on this episode, because I know people want things NOW. We have to stop approaching things from a shallow angle - for just vanity’s sake, or because it feels good today or because it gets us attention right now…
This is the long play for LIFE.
It’s the same way we can justify things like using a tanning bed - because we aren’t going to get cancer in today’s tanning session. Or why we can justify skipping the workout or spending the money - because it’s not today that is being ruined by those choices.
So when we spray our lawn with chemicals or eat foods that have been genetically modified or use makeup that’s loaded with toxins or clean our clothes with stuff that’s linked to cancer.
We can’t control every little detail of our lives, and trying to will make us as sick as the toxins we can be exposed to. I think it’s so important to remember that! Control the controllable and still choose to live.
So seeking to educate and advocate has to come with the balance of knowing that unfortunately the world has not caught up with us, yet. And to try and keep our children or ourselves out of contact with anything that could hurt us would be to limit our ability to truly live.
This has been a several year process for our family. We didn’t empty our cabinets overnight or change all of our products in a day. We are still researching and weighing what’s best for us. We don’t intend to raise bubble children or to keep them from going to their best friend’s house because their family treats their lawn differently than us.
But in our home, we seek to do things as holistically as possible, when possible.
We prioritize our health greatly and it’s, by far, our largest investment. To us, nothing should really come before it, because in the times we let other things take precedence, we feel it and we ultimately pay for it.
Let’s talk ENVIRONMENT 1st.
We now live on our dream property, but this was all a vision that sparked a few years back with the more we learned about what we’re being exposed to in our environment.
Can’t control everything, but with the more I learned about how twisted our food system is in this country and how tough it is to both give our bodies what they need and stay away from harmful chemicals, it sparked our vision of buying a farm property.
I started to picture a life where our kids could go out and get fresh air, be outside with their bare feet, where we could grow some of our own food and know where that food is coming from....
Now I know that not everyone is going to move somewhere new or start growing their own food to try and ditch toxins, so how about we talk about the more simple things in your environment that you can control!
ALL NATURAL
House cleaning supplies
Laundry detergent
Dish/dishwasher soap
Home cleaning products
Pay attention to products that use the label “natural” - need to look at the ingredients
Avoid DEA, TEA, fragrance, bleach/chlorine, phosphates
Supplies in America, does not require manufacturers to disclose any of the ingredients on the product label.
Do your research and find brands you trust
2. Beauty and self care products
Makeup
Soaps
Hair products
Lotions
3. Eat organic
Understand the way food is processed
Drink celery juice, the clustered salts in celery kill off pathogens, bacteria, viruses, fungus and help detoxify the body, specifically the liver
4. Products to look into:
Mattresses (VOC’s and formaldehyde)
Off-gassing products
Kid’s PJ’s with flame retardants
Lawn treatments
When it comes to eliminating toxins from our bodies, that’s a whole different beast that also has to be taken in stride. There are gentle, ongoing ways to detox the body that won’t completely disrupt your life. I will say, it can be a painful process, both physically and emotionally.
Think about all of the things that we’ve been exposed to and how they can often get trapped in different organs like the kidneys, liver, brain, skin… to try and undo 30 years of exposure is a real trip.
The antibiotics we received as a kid, the medications we’ve taken, the pesticides and herbicides that we have come in contact with and even ingested for years on end, the chemicals from our products, the traumas we’ve experienced, it’s all going to take time and consistency.
I’m in the midst of a very long term detoxification process and protocol right now and I’m treading lightly because I’m a breastfeeding mother. So this is not being done in an attempt to lose weight or to flush anything too aggressively that can come out through my breast milk.
Some of the things I’ve experienced have been pretty wild and unexpected!
Green sweat from aluminium
Depression
Anxiety
Insomnia
Fatigue
Joint pain
Facial numbness
Rashes on face and chest
Ways to undo + detox (THINGS I’M DOING)
Celery juice
Near infrared sauna (bass wood doesn’t off gas)
Supplementation
Dry brushing
Epsom salt baths
How we eat
I just rattled off a bunch of symptoms that sound like they suck, because they do. Here’s where I challenge you to shift your thinking in life, and this will serve you in your health journey but also in so many areas of your life.
Don’t limit what you’re capable of just because you’re facing a battle.
I’d rather a short time of these intense symptoms to rid myself of a lifetime of so many other symptoms that lead me down the wrong path (disease, limited potential, etc)
I started researching and learning about some of the things I was facing, like extreme fatigue, brain fog, ADD, anxiety…
And I realized that I was feeling like I couldn’t breakthrough to the very best version of me who contributes boldly in this life if I didn’t dig down to the roots of these problems in my life.
And even though I knew I was facing a war against so many things to get to where I ultimately want to be, I move forward completely empowered by the fact that I have this choice. I’m absolutely fascinated as my body going through this journey and I’m butted right up against what feels like a debilitating symptom, because I know it’s working. It’s like - bring it the eff on!!
I choose to face these demons. I choose to conquer them and it’s going to be a total bitch on my body and my mind so that I can breakthrough.
I was talking to a client of mine that I’ve been mentoring for a few years now who is just remarkable, and she’s facing something really tough in her life and business, something that would make a lot of people quit.
And I said to her “You are so close! Isn’t it funny life tries to derail us JUST before the magic happens? But most people give up as they are falling off the tracks never to experience all the glory!”
I’m not willing to sacrifice all the glory!
Some of the things that really help are
-be supported through the process, whether it’s cleaning out your house or your body
-use your resources -medical medium, NRT, chiropractor, naturopath, life coach, therapist, the model health show
-journal the process
-go slow
-listen to your body, but don’t quit
This is something worth becoming obsessed with in a healthy way.
We can’t live in fear, in a bubble or even in control of everything, but we can make better choices. We can invest in our lives. We can protect or families from harm that it unnecessary. We can educate ourselves so we can step into our best selves.