From Stress To Rest: 7 Phases of Detox

Introduction to Detox and Guest Background 0:00

Proper detoxification is important. Any functional medicine doctor will tell you that you aren't what you eat, you're more what your absorb, and you really are what don't detoxify. So if you don' eat it out of your body, it's harboring somewhere, somewhere in the extracellular spaces or within the cells, when it can lay there and do nothing until you are 120 years old. This is Dr. Talks. Welcome to another episode of Environmental Toxicans, Autoimmunity and Chronic Disease. My name is Dr. Ed Levitan, MD, and we've had the huge privilege of having Dr Kevin Connors.

He's a clinical director at the Conners Institute, or Conner's Clinic, an alternative cancer coaching center. In addition, he has doctorates in the AMF fellowship, which certified in anti-aging, regenerative, and functional medicine, botanical medicine and is board certified in integrative and cancer therapy. Welcome Dr. Connors. Hey, good afternoon. It's a pleasure to be here. I know I've missed a lot. So can you fill in a little bit about yourself and your background? Well, I started getting into the realm of helping people with a cancer diagnosis back in the late 90s.

So that is really how God led my path to where I am today. A person came in with bilateral breast cancer and needed help from a nutritional standpoint. That's how I got into using some of the therapies that we use today and that's we got in to some the subjects we're going to talk about today with detoxification. Okay, cool. I guess let's get into it because that's pretty awesome too. To link actually cancer to detox and let us talk about the connections and you have, you talked about seven phases of detox.

So can you say a little bit, talk a bit more about that? Well, first cancer, to me is intimately tied to the detoxification because by definition cancer is something that is interrupting. a single cell's nucleus to cause rapid replication, and those cells that are rapidly replicating now have that damaged nucleus that is rapidly replicated. So something got inside that cell originally that was the cause of the cancer, quote unquote, meaning the causes of rapid replications. Many times it's a toxic substance.

It could be a biotoxin, but many times, it is a pollutant of some sort. So proper detoxification is important. You know, any, functional medicine doctor will tell you that, you know you aren't what you eat. you're more what your absorb and you really are what, don't detoxify. So you don' eat it out of your body. It's harboring somewhere, somewhere in the extracellular spaces or within the cells.

Why Detox Matters for Cancer and Toxic Exposure 3:06

When it can lay there and do nothing, for, until you're 120 years old, but often it can interrupt mitochondrial function, it could interrupt other functions in the cytoplasm and transport of nutrients and other immune functions, and worst case scenario, that can interupt the nucleus and the replication cycle and be a cause of cancer. So working on detoxification constantly is a necessity for all of us. Yeah. I mean, we live in such a toxic world that people coming in and saying, oh, I eat well, why do I have this?

Or what's happening here? Well, have you lived on this earth? And how many years and what have been exposed to? So it's a lot. Where are the sources of toxins? What are main sources? Where do we mostly get them? Well, they are ubiquitous, like you said. They're everywhere. Even if people do say, how do I get cancer? I've been eating organic for 20 years. Well even eating organics, you're still exposed to GMO toxins and pollutants and chemicals in your food sources. Food is not the only source of toxic exposure.

I mean, any avenue that you could get poisons into your body is a source. So, fastest way to get something in is to inject it. Second fastest is, to breathe it in. Things go across your alveolar spaces and your lungs much easier than they cross your gut. So you're pumping gas and you are breathing in poisons and, you know, this carpet in my office here is new a few years ago, it's still probably off gassing chemicals that I'm breathing on a daily basis. You know we live in closed buildings where we're exposed to mold, mycotoxin exposure.

They're just everywhere. This shirt is not, It's not dyed with blackberries, you know, it's chemicals and there's a chemicals everywhere. So we absorb them through our skin. We absorb through them our lungs. we absorbed them to our gut. Any barrier that these things can cross, now it is the responsibility of our entire detox pathways to get rid of them. It's a, it's an endeavor that we all face. Yeah. No, I, think you were talking about organic foods and when we do a detox panel, one thing that comes up relatively often is thallium and people ask where does it come from?

And I tell them, do you want the good news or the bad news? Because the Good news is they're probably eating a lot of organic vegetables. The bad news is a lot of cruciferous vegetables like broccoli and cauliflower and kale come from California where the soil is loaded with allium. And we still haven't eat it, but knowing that there is toxins even in the organic foods. Right. Well, yeah. So even if you're not putting... pollutants on the vegetables themselves trying to kill pesticides and herbicides.

Still, what's falling from the sky, that's in the soil already, and what do plants do? They take nutrients and chemicals out of the air. All right. So how do we get rid of them? I guess, how did we create a clean sense, clean or as clean body as we can in this world? How do. We move, we detoxify. Well, it's important to know that everybody is detoxifying, you know, praise God, or you would be dead. If I'm not detoxified, I would just. fill up with poisons and die, you know, quite quickly. So the idea though, is to try to support these pathways even more so, so that our rate of detoxification can exceed our rates of toxification.

That's such a word. So we're being poisoned from every avenue. We try to mitigate that poison by eating right and trying to stop using chemicals in our home and live in a clean home, in clean environment. But our rate of toxification is still there because we live a poisoned world. So, we want our rates of detoxification to exceed the rate our exposure. I got into writing about the seven phases of detoxification a few years ago, actually, when I was just doing a lecture. I asked to do a detoxifying lecture and somebody asked a question about detoxing.

Liver Detox Phases 1 to 3 8:18

And I started talking about what we learned in school, phase one and phase two and three that's occurring in the liver. And then I said, well, you know, but the biggest mistake that people make is that, that they're just supporting the liver detoxification pathways without supporting what's happening downstream from there. So my mind works quite simply. I think in terms of cartoons, maybe it's from watching all the Saturday morning television I did it. when I was a child, but if you're not moving this stream and there's a backup anywhere, it's going to back up.

And toxins are going to back up, poisons are gonna back. So I started, I just started saying, well, really there's a phase four that has to do with bile function and gallbladder function, and bio flow. Hold on one second. Before we go to phase 4, let's talk about phase 1, 2, & 3 because just as a background for people. Do you want to go through that or? Yeah, just two. And we don't need to, go too far because probably. Other people in the summit are going to talk more about that, but I just want to make sure that we're all on the same page, talking the language, because every person has a slightly different band.

Right. Like I said, we learned in school, phase one is basically your cytochrome T450 pathway in your liver. Right. And phase two are your NAT pathways and your PON1 pathways in you liver, so those are very specific, very researched, and very detailed pathways, how your livers takes chemicals from your blood, poisons, not biotoxins, but different chemicals that you have to get rid of. And it changes their shape and their constitution so that they're water soluble or fat soluable so you can get of them.

That's phase one and phase two. It gets very complicated what's taking place biochemically. And then in phase three in the liver has been described as your body's ability to make bile and take the end products from phase two in a liver and get those end-products into the bile. And the has multiple functions. The bile itself, once it's in the small intestines, can help with digestion and breakdown of fats, but it largely functions as a transport vehicle to take the end products from phase two into the small intestine.

So ultimately the whole purpose of the liver is to take poisons that are in your body, get them into a form that you can dump them in to the smaller intestine that then they can transfer through 30 feet of intestinal into the toilet. So the goal of the liver is to get things in that toilet so phase one and phase two and three have been well documented and written about and that's kind of what we learned in medical school and such. That's where we go into next phases. When you say it's research, I really want to underscore how researched it is.

It's when new chemicals, new to nature chemicals i.e. medicines come out, we always look at how they're processed through the liver and which cytokine and things like that. Cytochromes, they are processed and the interactions, et cetera. So this really is a very standard Western model and well-researched as you said. Things are first detoxed, phase one and two, they're phase 1 they become free radicals, then you get rid of them, you make them soluble. Phase 3 you go into the gallbladder. What's phase 4? Well, so phase four was...

I just made that up actually. So it was, what I was doing in this lecture was like, well, then you have to make sure that your bile is not too viscous so that it is, it has slowed through the common bile duct and that you end up with. you know, conglomeration of garbage, you could say, in the gallbladder, which could lead to gallstone formation and just sluggish bile. So, to me, phase four is to try to keep the bile flowing smoothly. So that's just how I started saying that, you know, if, If you have black back up in the gallbladder, You could have a really healthy phase one and phase two and Phase three pathway to the liver.

The liver is just doing a Jim Dandy job. But if the Gallbladder is all sluggish and backed up. Well then, now you have a dam in the river, and it's going to affect the function of, you know, a damn of the gallbladder that's gonna affect that function in a liver. It can also affect a function the pancreas, because the Pancreas releases all of its enzymes for digestion through that same duct. And that could be leading to the increased incidence of pancreatic cancer that we're seeing. So we want to make sure all of life is about flow.

It's about movement. Our muscles need to move, our lymph needs to, move our blood needs. Well, so does all our detox pathways. We need that ample motion that's taking place. So if we have a sluggish gallbladder, I termed that phase four detoxification, we wanna help and support the gallbladder and you can do that through multiple means. So how would one know they had a sluggish gall bladder? What are some signs or what are somethings that one can determine? Well, that's very difficult because usually you won't know until you have more signs of gallstones where you're on pain underneath your right rib cage and you'll have pain and difficulty digesting fats because you are not releasing adequate amount of bile into your duodenum, your first part of your small intestine when you do eat a fatty meal.

Those are more late stage symptoms.

Gallbladder Flow and Phase 4 15:00

We don't want to wait till we have more late stage symptoms of gallstones and that they're, it's invisible on an ultrasound. We just kind of have to assume some things that because we're so exposed to so many toxins, even though I'm trying to mitigate exposure as best as possible, we had to assumed that I want a support my liver pathway. So I wanna support phase one, two, and three. And we'd have assumed, that boy, you know, I'm susceptible to sluggish gallbladder. So I want to do things to support it.

You don't want it to become so evil about this that you're spending three hours a day working on your detox pathways. But if you are healthy, there are certain things that, simple things, that could be beneficial to help decrease that viscosity, get the gall bladder moving, help support liver function. There's just some simple thing that's you want do. So I was thinking, as you're talking, I'm thinking is it better to go through all the phases and then talk about what to do about them? Or do we talk them now?

Probably it's better go to all phases. And talk through everything and go back and talk what we can do to support all these phases? Sure, we could do that. Alright, so then if we're going to go that way, let's do phase five. So phase 5 is the difficulty that people have once their liver does do all the work of pulling chemicals out of their blood. gets it into the bile. The bile does the work of getting it to the small intestine. That other issue that people have is they reabsorb things in their intestinal tract.

So these poisons now conjugated in a way that they're trying to get them into the toilet. If you have a very slow intestinal transit time, if you had leaky gut issues, you could easily reabsorb these toxins back into your blood. So now, okay, remember I said, the whole idea of detoxification is to increase your rate of detoxification above the level of toxification. But you have the other issue that you're re-toxifying yourself by reabsorbing them. So let's say if we could put some sort of quantitative number on this, let say I'm exposed to 8 out of 10 toxicants on a daily basis, but I detoxify it at 10 out 10, so therefore I am going to stay fairly healthy.

But then if I re absorbing 3 out Now I'm in a critical state again. So you want to be doing things dietarily, like fiber and things, or taking supplements that are called binders that will grab on to things in your gut that typically will mainly stay in the gut. You don't absorb them. That will just bind onto things so that it will basically escort it into the toilet so you don' reabsorb these things. So, making sure, let me make sure I got this right. So once it's in the bile, we want to make that when it gets into the large intestine, small intestine into, the gut I'm going to say.

and the intestines, we need to make it move quicker out so we can poop it out and not reabsorb it. Is that correct? That's correct. All right, cool. I'm following along. Okay, I got this so far. We got phase one, grabbing stuff out of the blood in the liver. through phase two, changing its chemical makeup through, phase three, putting it into bile through. Phase four, moving it through the bile ducts into the gallbladder and then getting it to the small intestine. It goes into first part of the smaller intestines from the from gall bladder.

And then it's got to go through 30 feet of intestinal tract to get to toilet. You want to make sure that that's what I call phase five, that you're not reabsorbing those things. And then moving to phase six, which is the ultimate phase of elimination. So some people will be working on a detoxification program, but they're constipated. Meaning, well, I do have a small bowel movement every day, so kind of every, but they're not really emptying their bowels every. Or I've talked to people where they are only eliminating once a week.

That's normal, isn't it? Come on. It's pretty scary, huh? So phase six, the final phase is elimination. Okay. So what, let's, we're talking about pooping, right? Sorry. That's a good medical term, Right? So, what's normal and what what normal, and, maybe let us talk about what is optimal for when you're trying to detox. Because you may be in the normal range, but you might need to go more when your detoxifying because you need eliminate all those things. Or remember, we're always detoxifying. So to me, detoxification isn't a detoxication program that I'm doing.

It's, I've just supported all these phases, so I better do it on a daily basis. To me what's optimal during detoxifications or what is just optimal is the same thing. Optimally, you're having several bowel movements a day.

Gut Reabsorption and Elimination Phases 5 to 6 20:30

And really, optimally, you feel like you're emptying yourself. You're getting yourself cleaned out. So some people could do that in one bowel movement a day, and they feel they have this great big bowel movements that they don't. They feel like they got everything out. I'd say that might be optimal for that person. Some people have a bowel movement after each meal. It's, you know, when you move to the opposite side of optimal of that spectrum, You know you could have very loose stools and you have to run to bathroom after meal, that's not optimal.

So then we're not, our intestinal transit time is too quick and we are not absorbing nutrients from our food. So there's that healthy balance. But certainly if you're saying, I might be having one a day, but I don't feel like I'm emptying myself, then you have a problem with phase six. Or if are going less than once a days, like it's usually once day but sometimes, some days I go, that's not optimal. That's definitely a problems with Phase six, so supporting the Phase 6 pathway in supporting optimal bowel movements is important for that person.

Yeah. I think a lot of people are still in the general population, at least maybe not our practices, but in general populations still think every bowel movement every two or three days is okay. And it's a lots of education to say, let's talk about that. And that might be the, you know, to me this might the most important thing about health, period, is if you aren't getting out what's on the inside, it's going to become a part of you, and that will lead to, as many different names of diagnosis as you can imagine.

So, we have to be expelling our poisons. Yeah. Okay. So let's move on to phase the last phase, phase seven. Phase seven, we have to go backwards because it's actually phase zero. We had to put in an order, so phase six is elimination. Where's the seventh phase then? The seventh is what I think is the most dangerous phase because its in people's minds where they always want to start. They might hear a lecture about, let say, mercury toxicity. Oh my gosh, I had mercury fillings as a child. I should be doing a mercury detox or they did some hair analysis or some other blood tests or urinary excretion test and it showed high, you know, whatever, heavy metal toxicity.

So I want to get a chelator or something to pull mercury out of my tissue. To me, phase zero is pulling it out to the tissues. If we go in order of a stream or a river, You know, things do come out of our tissues and then they circulate in our blood and they go through the liver. So normally if I'm exposed to some chemical, so I breathe in, let's say, petroleum fumes, whatever chemical is in that, because I just filled my gas. I think there's like six or seven chemicals. It's not just one. So let's say I breathe it in and it goes through my ovular spaces and goes into my capillaries and into the bloodstream.

it is circulating around my blood stream and its going to pass through the liver. If my liver has space, think of it as like a hotel room. It's like, oh yeah, we have space. Come on in here. We can get rid of you right now. And it'll take whatever it can, but there's limitations and blockages in each pathway. So if my, let's say I have a lot of, pretend to have lot a genetic defects in my cytochrome P450 pathways in liver, that's phase one. I already have sluggish phase of one, so that it might go, hey, So it might be a hotel that only has 50 rooms instead of 100 rooms.

So, it says, hey, we have no vacancy, so those poisons from the gasoline smell circulate around my body again. They come back to the liver and if it's still full, circulates again and again, and I don't know how many times it is different for everybody all the time, but it will eventually get pushed out of the bloodstream into the extracellular spaces. to be stored to hopefully detox some other time. And that's when we just get poisoned. So now we all think, well, I want to get these poisons out of my extracellular spaces, out in my cells.

I wanna pull them out, but you can't pull about. faster than your liver can take them in or any other phase downstream. If phase two is a problem, that's going to back up on my liver, can't take it. if my gallbladder is stuck and sluggish, well then that that is putting a back-up on your all the way downstream. So really you have to think of it like that river and we need to work on all these phases really concurrently. I don't have any constipation problems so I feel like I'm really empty in my gut.

Well, I don't really know about my gallbladder and I, don' t take any binders and i don t eat very much vegetables and salads and stuff. So maybe I should start taking a binder. Maybe I could start putting a hot pack on my Gallbladder and liver every night that will help with my Galblader. Just try to use common sense things of looking at your body this way, as this river trying to get rid of junk and walk back through these steps. And then you can start pulling stuff out of the tissues. Well, speaking of liver, one thing is you were talking about space in the liver.

Isn't drinking like a glass of wine or two or three like great for your body and makes you live longer? Well drinking a class of white or 2 or 3 might have resveratrol, which could be helpful for a lot of things, but alcohol. is just another thing that your liver has to deal with. So if you suspect at all that you have issues with any of these pathways, you want to mitigate your exposure to all sorts of toxins, including alcohol. Not against drinking some alcohol, but it's a matter of you're putting more burden on an organ that you are trying to help unburden.

Yeah, obviously that was a little bit of a setup. But the idea, the resveratrol I think is equivalent to just having some grapes also. Alcohol is obviously hard on the liver and if anybody has any genetic predisposition, That's not helping at all.

Phase 7, Chelation, and Detox Risks 27:30

It's, it's quite doing the opposite. All right. So before we get into kind of, first I want, I wanna find out a little bit about binders, but before, we got there and before. Can this be dangerous? Like can detoxing actually be a problem if you try to detox and if it can, like what, what's what can happen? What are the bad outcomes if, if there are bad. Well, the solicitors could understand what we've talked about so far. But it's easy to understand that if I use some product like a chelator, so a keelater is just a word that means to grab on to, but in terms of nutrition, it means typically something that's gonna grab onto something in the tissues to pull it out into the blood so that your liver can get rid of it.

So if you're trying to detox heavy metals, you would use a chelating agent that would grab onto the heavy metal to pull it out of the tissues so that it can go through the liver pathways first. But if have blockage in the livers pathways or anywhere therefore downstream, then it's not going to go out the lever. So where's it going go? It's going just transport around the blood, around, the, blood around. The blood. If the river keeps saying, Hey, I'm full. I can't take it. It's going to end up just getting deposited somewhere else.

So if you pulled it out of the tissues around your thyroid gland, pretend, and you have blockage anywhere, it's just going end somewhere and cause another issue. Yeah, so it can be dangerous. That's why I think, you know, trying to start at phase zero is the most dangerous thing, but that's really where everybody wants to. I want to do a detox, so I'm going to take some chelators. That's not the right thing to, nor should you even do box detox that is supporting phase one, two, and three in your liver.

If you're constipated and you have a very slow intestinal transit time, you are just reabsorbing all this stuff again. One of my pet peeves is If the people are trying to do it on their own, and unfortunately, even some providers try to go a little faster than I might think is appropriate, people feel like junk. they don't get any better. And instead of supporting, it's quite the opposite. So I've unfortunately run into people that were enthusiastic, let's say. Well, and I have seen people where they end up with a cute gallbladder attack and it is after they started a detox program.

That's exactly a perfect example of that. Okay. We have to watch out. How would one know if they're ready and what are the So let's say somebody at home wants to say, doesn't want, isn't ready to see a provider, but wants do some kind of gentle detox and making sure that as you were saying, we're detoxing all the time. What are the first three to five steps that you would take to make sure, that that person is ready, to do a more extensive detox or phase seven slash zero. because that's where people want to start.

I agree with you. So it sounds like you might want work backwards almost. Yes, exactly right. You really want a work backward. Do you want ask yourself some questions? Okay, how's my elimination? And if the answer to that question is I go several times a day, I feel like I really cleaned myself out, then I don't think that is a problem. Okay. Let's go to the next phase. Is your diet consist of things that are natural binders that is fiber you have a lot of fiber in your Diet that would be a natural binder from your food And if your answer is, yeah, I'm kind of a meat and potatoes person.

I don't like, you know, lettuce, and I'll like salads. Okay. Well, then consider adding a nutritional binder. There's a lot of them on the market, different bentonite clays and sodium alginate and fumeic and humic acids. And there's lot a different binders that are commercial bindings on market that you could take as a supplement. Even, like you said, fibers by itself, you just take good quality fiber, that'll start the process. That will be, for many people, an adequate binder. So if you have a good intestinal transit time, then that's the next phase.

They're like, okay, well, it's easy to do. And these things can be done concurrently. And then, okay, I don't feel like I have any gallbladder issues. Well, maybe you don' t. Do you have issues digesting fats? No, not at all. But if the person is like, well, like... I do not feel I digest fats really well. I get a lot really gassy and stuff. Then there are some specific nutrients that can help with the gall bladder, but just simply putting a hot pack over your liver and gall bladder. Especially as the winter comes, every night you could do that for 10-15 minutes.

That can be alone, all you need to do to help move the gallbladder and help to move to bile. So say more about that. Is it just really electric hot pack, hot water, anything? It doesn't matter. What kind of hot back, how long? You can certainly do a hotwater bottle. You, you know, in my book, I give a lot of examples. You could use an infrared heating pad. Anything that will add heat is going to help decrease the viscosity of the bile. And the other thing I'll say is one thing that you haven't mentioned that I'm sure you have is bitters.

using bitters to kind of move the gallbladder. So bitter herbs is also extremely useful. Yes. Move things along as a natural way to move to get the bile to contract. Yeah. The gall bladders contract Yeah, there's good supplements that are out there to help with gallbladder flow. So then, so we got the bowels moving, we've got fiber and binders to absorb any toxins so they can poop it out. You got that gall bladder. Okay, what's next? And then you've gotta look at the three phases of the liver. And there isn't a good way to look the 3 phases liver without doing a genetic workup.

So, but let's say I don't want to do a genetic workup. Well, then you could just assume that you need support in those three phases of the liver. And most of your detoxification packets that just about every good nutritional company has some sort of detox support packets or some detox-support kit. Those are the things that are going to support both phase one, phase two, and bile production in the liver. And those would be good to start adding to the protocol now too. Now, the only thing I would caution you about is, let's say, a lot of nutritional companies will have this 15-day detox thing.

Again, you want to get out, this is my opinion, of the mental idea that you're going box detox every so often and that you get into the mental habit of that, you want to support this on a regular basis. So if it's a strong, high dose supplement, package that this company's selling you, maybe take just a very smaller dose on a regular basis, so you're giving the specific nutrients that are going to help support phase one and phase two and three, but just on more gentle, regular bases. Is there any rule of thumb?

As we're talking, I'm thinking out loud. If they haven't been pooping for years, or pooped regularly or fully evacuated for How long should they, for whatever, taking fiber, drinking more water, exercising more now or regular, how long they should be regular for before you move on to the next phase?

How to Support Detox Safely 36:00

Remember that these phases are taking place to some degree in everyone. Even if someone is only having a bowel movement, you know, once a week, they're just very toxic intercellular. The rest of their cells are toxic. So they can start moving on, quite quickly. If they start having, wow, I've gotten to it for the last few days. I'm having daily bowel movements. They can. Go gently and go slowly onto the next phases right away. Okay. Because those phases are already happening or they wouldn't be living.

So you just want to now start supporting those slowly too. It's just important to go slow. That's why I'm kind of against the box detox kits that are out there. Cause they push things sometimes too quickly before you, you know, even in a healthy person could have problems. Well, they still think there's only three phases and we know there are seven, right? Exactly. Cool. So you're moving your bowels, your gallbladder is moving, you are pooping everything out appropriately. You've got your liver phase one, phase two, supported by supplements that are maybe lower dose than the 14 day wonder detox that cures everything.

When, how would one know about phase either seven, phase zero, however you want to call it, if and when they're ready, is there any kind of way to do this without a test from a physician of some kind? Or do we really want look, just say, there's no way, to really know if you have letter of mercury body burden or pesticides or herbicide load without test. Or does everybody need something? Where do you stand on that? So I stand under, there really isn't a test that you could really know. how fast your liver detox pathways are moving, the rate of those pathways.

That doesn't exist. So you do have to, again, make some assumptions. Okay, let's say, like you said, an example of this person is all the other phases they're supporting and they've been adding some nutrients for phase one, phase two, and phase three. Am I ready to start chelating things out of the tissue? How do I know if I'm ready? Well, maybe give yourself a little bit of time if you've had some issues in the past. And then you can start a chelation program, but go slow on the chelasion. You mentioned earlier in our discussion that sometimes people will use a keelator and they'll feel like they get sick.

They'll get a Herxheimer reaction of some kind. So it's, that's how you could tell you're going too fast. If you are using a key later, we hear this a lot from people, people go, Oh, I'm feeling really sick because I am detoxing. Okay, if you're feeling sick when you are detox, you have a blockage somewhere or you detox too quickly. You should not feel sick. This is a normal physiological process or a series of normal physical processes that are taking place in us. They should make us feel ill. at any time.

If you feel that way, then something is wrong. Something is either blocked or you're going faster. You're pulling stuff out of the tissue faster than your liver can take it in. And like my scenario of The Hotel, like I shared before. Yeah, no, absolutely. That's what I pretty much tell my patients. Like if you are not doing well, you've got to call immediately and we'll talk about it. Let's go through it and that being said, I do think maybe I'd love your opinion. I do have patients that are sometimes more tired.

And I say, you know what, if it's a little bit more, tired, I'm okay with that. If it a lot tired we're going too fast. Yeah. That's probably very good advice. Sometimes when you're, when your tired it, your body's trying to tell you to take a nap. Right? I think that's true in this society in general. Okay. Awesome. What else should we know about detox? What should be thinking about? thing that's helpful in understanding detox, and I go through this in my book a lot, is that we always are talking about the chemistry, that that all we're talking right here, the Chemistry of Detoxification.

We forget that, it's not just how our body's made up, we still have neurology. So the neurologic of detoxification is equally important. Our detoxication pathways in our liver plus all our peristaltic waves, meaning the control of our, you know, our muscle function around our intestines that causes a bowel movement is controlled by a part of nervous system called the parasympathetic nervous systems. So this is part of our autonomic nervous system and by that you can think automatic. So you don't have to think about it.

You don' t think of your bowel movement, you just feel like, Oh, I have t go. Because your autonomc nervous syste has been controlling that the whole time, pushing things along. through the intestinal tract and many times people have a constipation problem because of an issue with neurology, not as much an issues with chemistry. So you have to address the neurologic trying to stimulate the parasympathetic side of the autonomic nervous system. So there's, I give multiple ways on how to stimulate your parasympathetics in my book, but one great way is one that I mentioned real briefly earlier is

Neurology, Stress, and Coffee Enemas 42:00

coughing enemas. Not very many people want to talk about unless they have a serious disease, but coffee enemas can be really wonderful to stimulate both phase six, I mean, helping with constipation and phase one, two, three, four, because that's the neurology of all your liver detoxification pathways. And it's that neurologic of your gallbladder function. So any way you can stimulate the parasympathetics. Yeah, I think it's great. I guess I have two comments in that. One is just for listeners to make sure sympathetic is kind of your fight flight, run away from a tiger.

Parasympathetic is your rest, digest, have a bowel movement. So if we're constantly, if our boss is yelling at us, our kids, parental units, et cetera, are creating an internal sense of stress, we are not going to have a lot of parasympathetic movement. So we got to really make sure that, like you said, stress management, turn on parasympathy where majority of us in the Western culture are much more sympathetically driven. We are a dominant world for sure. The other part that I love coffee enemas, I think they're great.

There's kind of, what, make sure that it's organic, mold-free coffee. Right. Because you don't want to be putting in toxins. It'd be absorbing toxins that way. Um, and I know like, if you're at all caffeine sensitive, that may not be the right path for you. That's right. You've got to depend on who, who's who you are. Most people I do agree, tolerate and tolerate well. So I think it's a great way. I never thought of that as a way to, as parasympathetic stimulation, but that makes sense. So love that.

Thank you. Yeah. Anything else or where can people find you? Where can, what can learn about you and you said you have a book, tell us about the book. Yeah, so I wrote when I started talking about The Seven Phases of Detox and I thought, well, I better write this down. So that's the name of the books, The seven phases of detoxification. And it's a free download on our website. so anybody can just go to our websites, ConnorsClinicC-O-N-E-R-S Clinic.com. Most of my books, at least I get parts of them as free downloads.

All of our books are there. We have a detox course, too, that can be very helpful to walk people through this because I very much, I just feel like it's our mission to educate so that people can self-care. So they're not to be dependent on me or any doctor. They can start taking care of themselves and the more they can do that, The easier it's going to be for doctors like us to help them if they get into a crisis.

Resources, Book, and Closing Remarks 45:00

It's amazing. Thank you. And I truly learned a lot and this has been an amazing conversation. Okay. thank you again for joining us for another episode of Environmental Toxicants, Autoimmune Disease and Autoimmunity and Chronic Disease. My name is Dr. Ed Levitan and we've been talking to Dr Kevin Connors. Thank you for tuning in to Doctor Talks. We hope today's episode has enlightened and inspired you on your path to optimal health. Each day is a new opportunity to make choices that empower your well-being.

For more insights and strategies, subscribe to our podcast and visit our website, www.doctortalks dot com. Stay connected, stay healthy, and join us next time on DoctorTalks, real talks from real doctors on the issues that matter to you most.