Why Your Body Holds On To Toxins And What To Do About It

Introduction to Recycled Toxicity 0:00

And then you have what is really interesting is the recycled toxicity. And this is where the metals and the toxic elements and all these things are just moving around in the body, but they're not leaving you. But you're basically poisoning yourself every single day with your own toxicity and a lot of people think that they were just exposed to something outside and they can't figure it out, But really it was from within. So for an example, let's say you had the mercury, Amalgam fillings or some sorts of mercury and mercury has accumulated in your liver over a number of years.

And the liver as it produces bile on a daily basis after, you know, eating, any meal, fat meal or exposed to heat or exercise or whatever it may be, the bile from the lever carries toxic elements from deliver into the small intestine. So basically, if your liver is toxic, then your bile is. Toxic. If your bio is, toxic. You're releasing toxicity into your small intestines on daily bases, basically poisoning the smaller intestine, And then the problem is that the body is designed to recycle most of its bile, so enterohepatic recirculation.

Welcome to The Functional Edge. I'm Dr. Julia Ward, and this is where science meets real-world strategies for living healthier, sharper and stronger. From uncovering hidden environmental toxins to unlocking peak performance and mental clarity, we cover it all. Ready to take control of your health and thrive? Let's dive in. Hello and welcome to the Functional Edge podcast. I'm your host, Dr.

Podcast Intro and Guest Background 1:24

Julia Ward, medical director and founder of Balanced Body Function Medicine. Today we're honored to welcome Jeff Hoyt to show. Jeff is the founder and president of Zeolite Labs and has spent over a decade in health and wellness space, developing innovative detox solutions and educating both practitioners and patients on how to effectively reduce toxic burden. In this episode, Jeff shares his insights on detoxification, the role of zeolite in binding toxins, and how modern environmental exposures may be contributing to chronic illness.

So stay tuned for an engaging conversation that will challenge conventional thinking and give you practical tools to support your health at a deeper level. Jeff, thank you so much for being here and welcome. Absolutely. I'm really looking forward to the conversation today. Thanks for having me on. So why don't we start by telling me about like why is detox support so important in today's world? Like what's changed about our environment that makes it such a critical part of modern health? Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, number one, it's just the toxic environment that we're in in the 21st century. With modern living and a lot of the conveniences that enjoy, there just unfortunately is a higher level of toxic burden. And the good news is that the body is detoxing all the time, right? The body has designed to detox. It's designed when toxic elements come in. it clears them out. The challenge is when there's more toxic elements coming in than what the body is able to deal with on a daily basis, that's where there can be potentially accumulation and issue.

So in this day and age, a lot of people are at that tipping point or have crossed the threshold where their external exposure is just greater than the what body can handle. And that, you know, environmental toxicants in the food, water, the air, there is stuff all over. Then there are also electromagnetic radiation stress and other stressors. that they're not necessarily accumulating in the body, but they are taking away from the bodies natural energy reserve that otherwise may have been used towards detox.

So when you even have emotional stress or mental stress, or physical stress any sort of stress which is anything that's making the work harder than normal just to stay balanced. The body's using up energy on that. And then when toxic elements are coming from outside into the body, the, body might not have the same level of capacity to deal with them as someone in a less stressed situation.

Why Detox Matters Today 3:36

So I think it's the combination of the external, you know, toxic stressors from manufacturing and just all the things that we're dealing with, farming and everything else, and this modern stress of 21st century living with just the fast paced lifestyle, especially in America. They're all contributing to this increased toxic burden in the Yeah, absolutely. In your experience, how do chronic health conditions contribute to the accumulation of heavy metals and other toxicants in the body? Yeah. So it's really interesting.

A lot of times you find what you test for, right? So if you have a chronic illness and you've tested for heavy metal, well sometimes you'll have false negative because they're hiding in tissue, but generally you will have high level of having metals when you're having chronic illnesses, whatever that may be. And people then generally assume, well, the heavy metals are causing the chronic illness. I found the cause, not necessarily the. Heavy metals might be a result of that chronic condition, right?

So if you had a chronic conditions for 20 years, your body is using so much energy trying to deal with that and just trying. To stay balanced. that there's less energy going towards the toxic elements that are coming in. And what the body will do is say, you know, we don't have enough energy to deal with this mercury that's coming from the fish or the amalgam fillings or whatever it may be. So let's just tuck it away into storage and deal it with it later. The natural storage bin for toxic element in the bodies is going to be fat.

So whether that's just visceral fat, whether it's organ tissue, whatever it may be, and the body just tucks it away, tux it way and says, you know, I'll try to deal with this later. Unfortunately, a lot of times it never gets to it because the buddy remains in that stress state. And then that is where you get accumulation of heavy metals and various fat soluble toxicants in tissue. So a chronic issue condition can lead to heavy metal toxicity because there's not enough energy to do with the incoming daily toxicity.

Got it. So that kind of answers my next question, which is, you know, why would the body hold on to toxins rather than eliminate them? And you're saying it's just, it' an energy issue. Yeah, It's really, its priority for the bod, right? So the bodies more focused on short term survival over long term thrive. So, for example, the body would say, you know, if there's mercury floating around, it's kind of in the bodies processing center. That's what I kind-of call level one toxicity. And when it is there, The body is actively trying to deal with it, right?

It's trying remove it. It is trying, to prevent it from settling in. and that's where it at its most stressful state because it inciting the immune response resulting in an inflammatory reaction, etc. And if that stays elevated for too long, that situation, the body says this is becoming too stressful, we need to tuck it away. Because when the buddy tucks the heavy metal or the tux can into tissue, it's now out of the processing center. It's out if level one it in storage. So it causing less short term issues, although it is causing more long term issue because depending on where it stuck, right?

If it was stuck in somewhere in the central nervous system it could be causing you know, central nervous system issues, neurodegeneration, that type of thing. But those issues usually don't come up for a number of years after the accumulation and after exposure, whereas you get symptoms pretty much immediately when you're first exposed. So it's all about priority for the body. If someone's at their kind of max capacity of stress load of what the buddy can handle and they're exposed to mercury, then they try to excrete what they can.

Then if it becomes too stressful, the bodies says, bam, tuck it into tissue. We think that the body is maybe not working well because we're like, why would the party possibly store these heavy metals and toxins because they're so toxic, but really it's the buddy protecting you because it is focusing on the short term, keeping you alive from day to day. And it says we'll worry about the long-term situation later. Got it. Yeah, I see that. And so for people who may be new to this conversation, what exactly is zeolite and how does it function in the body to help remove toxic elements?

Yeah. So it's a naturally occurring mineral. Zeolites is mined from the earth. The first thing to note is that it is a class of mineral So not all zeolites the same, there's, you know, a bunch of different types of naturally occurring zealites.

How Chronic Illness Drives Toxic Accumulation 7:24

They've synthesized it. There's synthetic forms of zeo lights. The all act very differently, but the natural form of Zeolite that we're talking about in this discussion is called clinoptilolight. Zeo light, clinoptilol. So that's the form that has been studied to be safe for human consumption. And it's just a lot different than the others, But it is a mineral and what makes zeolytes unique are the negative charge that they hold. so they have this cage like structure, kind of like a honeycomb lattice.

And they have a negative charge and they pull or they bind positively charged toxic elements so it's in the category of a binder so is really a binding agent so you have like generally when we talk about binders are key leaders. When we talked about synthetic agents we refer to them as key readers. And when we talk about natural binding agents, we call them binders. So activated charcoal, bentonite clays, pectins, that thing. I mean, it would be under both categories because there's synthetic versions, which would basically be chelators.

And you've got the natural versions which will be considered the bindors. What makes it unique is that most bindars and cheletors are pretty indiscriminate in what they bind to. They go in, they just start grabbing stuff. And that's very helpful in a lot of situations, especially for acute situations. So they even use, you know, activated charcoal and emergency rooms for overdoses because it just they pump this, they go into the stomach. It just grabs everything. it's not necessarily something that will be beneficial taken on a daily basis long term because you're binding to the good, the bad and the ugly, right?

Not just the toxic elements. You might be. depleting some essential nutrients. A lot of times there's other issues associated with it like constipation and other things. And sometimes taking a long term still has a net of benefit, but it just depends on the person. But with zeolites, it's a swap mechanism. It's, a selective detox. So a lot people call them a smart binder or a selected binder. because instead of just grabbing everything, because generally it's just adsorption where like with charcoals and things, things attach to the surface.

They just attach the service, they go with zeolite, there's the cage. In the case, you have potassium, sodium, calcium, magnesium, these minerals that are the positive charge minerals, and it swaps those minerals out for heavier elements. So if the zeolite cage with the magnesium comes across a vitamin or an amino acid or something else, it just leaves it alone because it already has what it prefers, which is the Magnesium. If it comes cross a heavy metal which are heavier, It'll swap it out because It prefers the heavier elements.

So that's why it can be taken and generally is not causing nutrient depletion even at higher doses because it's that selective mechanism. So, that is the main difference between it and a lot of binders. Yeah, my understanding of binder is that it is more of a static cling kind of, you know, it not a strong binding, but zeolite sounds like a little bit stronger because its got that cage in the negative charge. Yeah. So, I mean, even chelators or some people refer to them more as complexing agents where they're not always that strong and depending on the element that they are binding to.

And so you get a lot of redistribution with both synthetic cheletors and binders because things will cling to the surface, but then they'll drop a lots of them. Because sometimes you'll have something that's, you know, 10 times the weight of the chelaiding or binding agent and it'll kind of loose, it will disturb it and liberate it, But then it can't hold on to it. So when you have the zeolite cage, you're trapping something in the cage. The only way that that's, it's not going to be dropped. It's only going be swapped.

So the only rate for that thing to released again is if the Zeolites comes across something that it likes more, which is very interesting. For example, zeolate has a higher affinity to lead than mercury. Let's say you go in with the z-light, It grabs some mercury, kind of mobilizes it from wherever it was and it is not gonna drop it. But if it comes to cross lead before it exits the body, it swaps the mercury from the lead and now you have free floating mercury. And that's where we can talk later about the dosing where you want higher doses of the zeolite to prevent some of that redistribution that could occur on the micro doses.

Got it, got it. So one concept that comes up often in my practice is that some patients are like too sick to detox.

Why the Body Stores Toxins 11:24

What does that really mean and why is this happening in the body when someone falls into that category? Yeah, yeah. Basically, when somebody's considered too to be detox, they're trying detox protocols and they can't tolerate them because they are getting too many symptoms. Detox reactions or detox symptoms And ultimately a detox symptom or detox reaction is the body's way of saying this is too much for me to handle right now or it's uncomfortable and it is not really sustainable. So a lot of people will try to power through these and sometimes they are unavoidable.

But like the old kind of paradigm is they're completely unavailable detox reactions and you just have to kind suck it up and go through it. the net effect might be positive, but still in the short term, it could cause a lot of issues and could even trigger autoimmunity. And there's a lotta things that could go wrong with that. So ideally, that's when practitioners will say, oh, you're too sick to detox, because they don't want the patient to go through that acute inflammatory response and just mess things up, possibly trigger mast cell or excess system, whatever it may be.

Basically, back to the processing center level one example, what your body can handle. Let's imagine that as a cup. Right, so kind of like the functional medicine cup example, when the cup overflows, that's when you get symptoms. So let's take that example and relate it to toxicity and the processing center. Everyone has a different amount that they can handle. When that cup fills up, That toxic cupfuls up. when it over flows, thats when get detox reactions. or the symptoms, right? So some people, interestingly, are having detox reactions every single day without even taking a detox product because their daily burden, their dose of toxicity is greater than what their body can handle, so their cup is always overflowing.

If that's the case, or you're kind of right on the verge, the tipping point, and then you take a detox product that mobilizes toxicity from a tissue, we'll call that level two or level three toxicity, that enters level one, The Processing Center. The cup was already full. Now it's even fuller. It's going to cause more symptoms because the body already cannot handle it. Some people are just below the threshold. Maybe they're at 80% full in their cup. They're not symptomatic, but they don't even know there's anything in there because they can't feel it, whatever it may be an agent and it comes in and overflows the cup because you've just taken toxicity from tissue and its gone into the cups overflowing and now you get detox symptoms right so the people that are too sick to detox generally have a full cup or a Fuller Cup And they're potentially dealing with a chronic health condition or even just acute emotional stress or whatever it may be, opposed to someone that's generally healthy, asymptomatic.

And when they take detox products, they don't even experience the negative reactions because there's more room to receive the toxicity that is coming in from tissue. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, you've emphasized the importance of addressing what you call the daily dose of toxins. Can you explain what that means and why it matters during a detox protocol? Yeah, so the Daily Dose is just what your body is exposed to on a daily basis. And there's a couple categories here. But basically, what we're talking about is the processing center.

Right? It's what's going into the cup on a daily basis. So first you have what is coming from outside, right? Food, water, air, personal care products, all the things that we're exposed to, the daily exposure, and those are coming in every single day that are filling up the cups, those things the body has to work on. And that's where everyone focuses on, but there's actually even a greater source of toxicity, which is the internal, internally produced and internally recycled toxicity. So our bodies are naturally just producing toxic elements on a daily basis, and they're designed to do that, right?

We've got waste products, metabolic waste, products like ammonia, urea, all these things. And it's just natural for that to happen. But if you're at kind of max capacity, those might even be problematic. You can get a buildup of ammonia. If that builds up, it can go to the blood, go the brain, cause a lot of issues. Your liver's not working properly, you can't clear it. There's a lot of issues here, but they all contribute to your daily dose. So you've got the external sources, you got natural internal sources and the natural sources become even more if your body's not working properly.

What Zeolite Is and How It Binds Toxins 15:24

If your natural detox organs are not functioning because they're hanging around longer instead of being cleared. And then you have what is really interesting is the recycled toxicity. And this is where the metals and the toxic elements and all these things are just moving around in the body, but they're not leaving you. But you're basically poisoning yourself every single day with your own toxicity. And a lot of people think that they were just exposed to something outside and they can't figure it out, But really it was from within.

So for an example, let's say you had the mercury, you know, amalgam fillings or some sorts of mercury. and mercury has accumulated in your liver over a number of years. The liver, as it produces bile, a daily basis after you know eating eating meal fat meal or exposed to heat or exercise or whatever it may be the bile from the liver carries toxic elements from The liver into the small intestine. So basically if your liver is toxic then your bile is Toxic if you're bile as toxic you are releasing toxicity into your small Intestine on a day the basis basically poisoning the Small intestine And then the problem is that the body is designed to recycle most of its bile.

So enterohepatic recirculation, so gut liver reciculation, right? So it goes from the liver to the gut, portal vein, and then it was back to liver. That's great if it were just pure bile, but if its toxic bile you're recycling that toxicity. And as it comes out of the livers into the small intestine, you've just taken it from storage to the processing center and now it's back in the cup. And so some people that overflows their cups. So every time they eat a meal, every they go into sauna, they get detox reactions because their body's natural detox through bio flow has just tipped them over in.

The cup and then some People think, well, that's great because you know, I'm detoxing, but if it doesn't leave the body, it' not great. It's just recirculating back and forth. So always some of it is going to be leaving, but that's, you know, if someone's not pooping, or if their natural detox is not working well, they're getting more of the circulation of detox elements. so it's quite problematic. That's where, back to the too sick to detox thing, one of, the main, traditionally methods of Detox is taking bitter herbs and things that are designed specifically to stimulate bioflow.

Because the idea is, you know, the liver accumulates all this toxicity, let's try to push more out because the faster we push it out, The faster, we get clean and detoxed, right? But it also is the, faster you're pushing toxicity back into the processing center and the more symptoms you are going to get if you can't clear it and then more recirculation there's going to be. So zeolite is a binder, so opposed to going in and stimulating the release of more bile, it's binding to the toxic elements in the small intestine and helping prevent the recirculation.

Right? So it is kind of the opposite approach. So same with the cup example, it's not pushing things or pulling things into the cups. It's taking what's already in the Cup and the processing center, binding it and reducing the stress load in Cup. So it is really the exact opposite of traditional detox because traditional Detox automatically adds stress to the system. And a binder, the whole point of a Binder is to reduce stress on the System. There's a lot of caveats there and reactions that can occur, but that's the base of it.

Okay. Yeah. Well, that's great because that leads me into my next question, which is, can you walk us through the difference between a push-catch and a catch-and-release detox strategies and why that distinction is so important clinically? Yeah, and there's, I will say, there are a lot of ways to detox. I mean, it's just kind of like there're a lots of way to get healthy. And it's just finding the most effective and efficient way, finding something that works for you, something you can commit to, et cetera.

And the healthier someone is, and I'm not talking about lifestyle, I am talking physiologically health, because sometimes it is not fair. Sometimes it the people eating donuts and pizza that are healthier than the 100% organic and doing all this stuff, right? So sometimes, it just not is fair, but hang in there, people. The healthier, physiologically someone, the more liberty they have to play around with different methods of detox. Right. Because there's more room to receive the toxic elements as they're coming out of tissue.

So for those individuals, they can, you know, sometimes chelation works, the push catch, homeopathics, all this stuff, it doesn't really matter. It's just finding one that works well. But for individuals that are more sensitive, that kind of at max capacity, when they are doing like a push-catch. I'll just explain what that means. Push-Catch is Dr. Chris Shade. He's a PhD in mercury toxicity. That's kind of what he's narrowed things down to with his approach is push-catch. You use bitter herbs, bile stimulating agents, you push the toxicity out of the liver, and then you take a binding agent and you catch the toxins in the small intestine so it doesn't reabsorb.

So the idea is you're automatically adding stress to the system with the push agent, because that's, it's adding things to system, to processing center. And then, your trying to mitigate the stress, mitigate inflammatory reaction with the binder now it's a great approach but if someone's at max capacity the push agent might push them over and then they have the symptoms and mitigating it helps a little bit but you've already caused the immune reaction the inflammation and some people just can't tolerate it so one approach is actually you could even use those same products but to catch push just reverse it.

So first take the Binder and then lower the burden in the cup and take the push agent because there's more room to receive it. So that's one idea. And then you have what I call catch and release, which is where you just take binding agents. Like you take a zeo charge, it just binds, reduces the toxic level in cup, the processing center. And then the body, if it wants to, will start releasing toxic elements from tissue and increasing bioflow naturally because now there's room to receive it because the bodies very intelligent.

So when someone becomes more sick or more toxic, you would think that they would detox faster to get it out, but they actually detox slower because it's

Too Sick to Detox 21:00

a self-defense mechanism because. The more, toxic you become. Like, if someone is toxic and they have a full cup, they're at max capacity, their body is going to slow down lymph flow, it's going slowdown bio flow. It's gonna slow-down sweating. it is gonna slowing down the release of toxic elements from tissue because the body can't handle any more toxic element in the processing center. Because if it started, you know, ramping all that up, It would give people terrible reactions and the bodies, once again, is more focused on long term than short term.

So, its not gonna do that. So just by catching stuff and binding to the toxic elements, a lot of people report that all of a sudden they're increasing bowel flow. They're increasingly in flow, they are sweating more, They are getting the toxin relief from tissue because the body now has room to receive. So it's able to naturally ramp up. That's why I like the binding approach because it is working with the bodies natural processes. It's not trying to fight against anything. Its not forcing the bodys to do anything it doesn't want to.

You know, some people will take a zero charge and they'll start detoxing pretty much immediately. Some people, it might take few weeks to get their body in the groove because it's really, its encouraging. It's a detox accelerant. Its encouraging the body to do what it is designed to at a higher level, but it truly up to the bodies if it wants to let go of these toxic elements from tissue or not. Yeah. Well, detox reactions can be a major concern for patients. How do you differentiate between a normal response and something that signals that the body is overwhelmed?

Yeah, so great question because detoxed reactions are the main headline category of all these things that happen when you detox. And then there's kind of subcategories of the detox actions. Some are unavoidable, some are avoidable. We want to avoid the ones that can And then we want to understand what's happening with the other ones. So we know that maybe we don't need to give up on the protocol just yet. What we wanted to avoid when it comes to detox reactions is the redistribution of toxic elements.

That's where something is mobilized and it doesn't all leave the body and then it finds a new home. right? It redistributes. That's what we don't want. And then in the meantime, it's causing all these reactions because the immune system is going after it, etc. and then it finds a new home. So that's why we want and that can be avoided largely with the dosing we're going to talk about and just depending on the approach. Like when people say you want to slow down the detox or you're detoxing too fast is because they're pushing more stuff out that they can release and they are getting redistribution.

The more symptomatic you are doesn't mean the faster you detox necessarily. It just means the more symptoms you getting It might just be an inefficient detox. So it's not necessarily a good thing. A lot of people age their detox progress based on symptoms. But in an ideal situation, when you're detoxing, you want to feel nothing. Because that's a sign that you are efficiently removing the stuff. And then if you feel better, it is a bonus. I mean, but when it comes to removing Oregon level toxicity, that's not an immediate benefit.

That's a long term. It takes a lot of time for those things to cause symptoms. it takes long time to alleviate the symptoms, usually three to six months. But when people feel better on day one or day two or seven, it's because of the binding effect. They were already getting daily dose toxicity symptoms every day. And then just by binding, it lowered their cup to under the threshold, and then they feel better. So it's not necessarily from that deep level detox people think it is. They're like, oh, I'm detoxing my brain because the brain fog's gone.

I feel but we don't know that. It's probably just the binding less inflammation. But anyway, so back to the reaction. We've got the redistribution, which we want to avoid. Then we have like Herxheimer reactions, Which is a microbial die off. generally like bacteria. It could be other microbes as well. Because when you go in and you start detoxing heavy metals, parasites, yeast, bacteria, these things all kind of clump together in the body. They're stuck together and biofilms. And when we liberate one, a lot of times they all get liberated.

and like with a binder and a lot of these detox agents they're not designed to go after the microbial aspect. So let's say you go in and you bind mercury or a heavy metal with the zeo charge and it stirs all the stuff up and because it breaks open a biofilm potentially

Daily Toxic Dose and Internal Recycling 25:00

and now you have a parasite or fungus whatever it may be that was attached to the metal is now exposed to immune system where it was hidden and then the body tries to clean that up. That's not an issue of redistribution. It can still cause the same symptoms because you're still getting that cleanup reaction. But it's, not necessarily a bad thing because, you still have got the metals out and then you just your body's dealing with the other thing. Now, it still you want to avoid that. You don't want it just say, oh, this is okay and just continue on it for months at a time feeling terrible every single day because it is still a stress on the system.

and you don't want to sustain that higher level of inflammation and detox reaction. So at that point, you know, sometimes taking breaks are warranted or, adding some additional support to deal with the microbial aspect as well. The Herzheimer microbio reaction is sometimes unavoidable, but that's a better detox action than the redistribution of metals and toxic elements. Then you have reactions like retracement symptoms. These are things where things were hidden in the body, and these could even be emotions.

Because the body stores all sorts of information, toxic elements, both physical and basically like frequency based things of like emotions. So some people will start detoxing and they'll actually start having memories of past traumas or even dreams, sometimes nightmares, very vivid dreams. Just kind of almost reliving things that happened in the past. And it's a very interesting phenomenon. It doesn't happen all the time, but it is not uncommon. And this is because these things are coming out. They're coming to the surface because the body suppresses like emotions.

That makes sense, right? If you're in a situation that is overwhelming emotionally, there's only so much energy. The body has to process these emotions, and I think the bodies processes in emotions is processing metals is, processing all these. There's so many so So even with emotions, if it can't process it all, it has to store or kind of hide some of these emotions. And they can come back later, they could come to the surface and you experiencing them, you're not going to bind to emotion that you can like directly detox or bind the frequency of the emotion.

So sometimes those just have to come out. Usually it's not very long lived. It can just be kind frightening for some people because they're like, Whoa, where did this come from? But it's just a sign that the body is ramping up detox and it is just starting to cleanse all of these things that were hidden internally over the years. So that's a super interesting one. But yeah, those are kind of the three main categories. The redistribution, you want to avoid the Herxheimer reaction or microbial related reactions and then kind the retracement or emotional or other things are just coming to the surface.

That could even be, I mean, that could be like joint pain and things. So a lot of times things that people experienced in the past when they kind of developed a chronic illness and then they, you know, kind went in remission or whatever it is, sometimes the body has just tucked all that stuff away. Let's say there's mercury that was causing severe joint-pain and the joint went away because the buddy tucked the mercury in tissue instead of detoxing it. And then when the Mercury comes out again, You experienced the same symptoms that you did when you were first exposed.

because it's toxic on the way in, toxic, on, the, way out. So it, it is quite interesting because, It's the same mercury, or it might be, you know, a metabolite or broken down a little bit, but when it comes in you're exposed, its toxic. When it hiding, You don't get those same symptoms because its hiding. when It comes out, Its almost like you were just exposed for the first time. so that's another, detox reaction is coming out so thats the reason the body tucked it into tissue to begin with because It was causing too many issues so when, When It Comes out and hopefully now you are in a better position to excrete it and facilitate the release than you were when you first exposed.

And that goes back to the too sick to detox thing, right? You want to work on emotional health, nervous system balance, all these other things, and then you're in a better position to do detox. That leads me to a really important, I always say this, people probably don't think it's helpful, but I say one of the keys to an effective detox is to get healthy. Because the healthier you are, the faster you detox and the better positioned your body is in. So even if a practitioner is not focusing at all, on detox, they might be greatly helping people detox by helping them get healthy, you know, balancing hormones and then working on the GI tract.

All these things encourage natural detox. Okay, yeah. And what are some of the most common mistakes you see practitioners or patients make when it comes to detox reactions? Yeah, I think it depends on the person. Everyone knows their limits. But it's not always, first of all, more detox reaction does not equate to more detox. Then, you know, powering through might be okay for a short time, depending on a person, but it can also be highly problematic because when you sustain a level of inflammation and, detox action for too long, It could kind of like lead to worse thing.

You know, it could lead more like a mass cell activation event that could last for three months or something like that. So you don't want to stir the pot more than you need to. But I think one of the main things is it's just understanding that if you can detox without the reactions, that's going to be ideal. And then looking for methods or adding methods to your current approach to mitigate some of detox reactions. go through those because I talked to a lot of people and they say, you know, they're completely unavoidable.

You cannot mitigate the reactions. But I think that a lotta times you can at least dampen the reaction. Because sometimes there's turbulence when these toxic elements come out, but you could reduce the turbulence. And the more you reduce it or ideally eliminate it, that's gonna be better because not only do you feel better, and you're not getting the terrible reactions, you are actually going to be detoxing faster, not slower. Because when you put your body in that survival mode, kind of a stressed out state, it enters survival, when your in survival your doesn't want to detox.

It slows down detox, so if you can start removing these things without stressing out the system, the body is going continue to let go of the toxic elements and ramp up detox because it's not stressed, because survival is the enemy of detox Okay, yeah, that makes sense. So you've mentioned something called the zeolite dosing paradox.

Push-Catch vs Catch-and-Release Detox 31:00

Can you explain what that is and how it should influence how we approach dosings? Yeah, so this is the most important thing. I mean, the two most things with most products, honestly, especially zeolate, are quality and quantity, right? So with anything, I'm in the dosage, with the poisons in dosages, it's with medications, supplements, all this stuff, you don't just randomly take it. With medications you would never just take a dose and microdose it to see how Because a lot of times you have the opposite effect with a microdose than a proper dose.

Like something with like, you know, like a naltrexone or something. It's like you take it at 400 milligrams. That does one thing. You take that 2.5 milligrams, low dose, no trexon, it's the exact opposite. So with the natural community, a lotta people are in this camp of we need to micro dose everything. Because it is like oh, I'm super sensitive. I need take, one one thousandth of the recommended dose to see how it goes. A lot times that backfires. And it's not just with zeolite, but especially with Zeolight, because with most detox agents, that might be a good idea, Because most Detox agents are designed to stimulate the release of toxic elements from tissue, add to the cup, stress out the system.

The more you take, the more, you're going to stress up the systems. Makes sense. But when you are taking a Zeolyte, it is a binding agent. the More you Take, The More You Bind, More, You Reduce the Stress. So essentially what happens is, if you take a microdose, I'm talking, so like a serving of zeo charge is five grams or 5,000 milligrams. And when I talk about a microdose I am talking about 10 milligrams or even a half scoop might be too little, but the higher the dose, the gentler. Because when you a little bit, let's say 10mg, like you mix a scoop of Zeo Charge with a glass of water.

You take one sip. Okay. That's what a lot of people do just to see how it goes. That is much more likely to cause headaches, irritability, joint pain, and reactions because you've basically stirred the pot a little bit, but then you don't have enough zeolite left to finish the job. So the body then has to clean the mess up that it made. When you take a higher dose, you go and you kind of still stir the part, make a mess, But there's enough to cleanup the mass. And because the point of a binder is to reduce stress on the system.

When you take a micro dose, it usually ends up adding stress to the. Because it mobilizes things, but not enough to finish it. So back to The Cup example, I think this will help people. It'll make more sense to people So let's say you're at 90% full in your toxic cup in the processing center. And then you took a sip of zeolite. Maybe it took the toxicity from 90 to 88, but then your body released more toxins in response to detox, or it disrupted a biofilm and a bunch of stuff poured out. That adds 20 units, bam, you are over 100. You're getting symptoms.

Now, let's say the same person took a bunch of the zeolite, a full scoop or two scoops or five scoups or whatever. It takes, you know, your toxic burden from 90 down to 20. Now your body can dump all sorts of toxic elements into the processing center, biofilm disruption, et cetera. You're still under the threshold of symptoms. So because you have to look at the whole net effect of what happens when you take it. You have the initial binding, but then there's additional stress that is caused from the binding reaction, which is like with zeolite, there is no side effects.

There's only detox reactions and that could be anything based on the person because there are so many things that can bind to and so may reactions that are going to occur in response to it, that's why just taking more is better because we want to bind as much stuff as possible, reduce the cup load, and then have a little bit extra floating around in the cup for when toxins are dumped into it, there's an extra binder and you flush it out. There's a dosing bunch of information on our website, zeolitelapse.com about dosings.

Quite lengthy dosin paradox article that goes over different theories and just all the reasons behind it. If anyone, I would check that out or just at least if you're going to try a Zeolite product, understand the dosage mechanism because it's the opposite of what you think and the people that are really sensitive need higher doses. Not lower doses. And that's where certain products like liquid zeolite products and nanos, they can be quite problematic for sensitive individuals because we're looking at about one milligram, sometimes less than one milligrams of zeolit per serving, where a lot of people need, you know, 5,000 to 30, 000 milligrams per serving to avoid the detox reaction.

So a lot of people take these products, they get terrible reactions and they're all like, oh, this is fantastic. I'm feeling so, you know, like I feel awful. That means it's working. It's like well, it is doing something, but those same people can take a higher dose and don't have their reactions. it doesn't mean the low dose worked better. And means the load was worse. Like we did a sip challenge where people took one sip of zeo charge and some of them got reactions, headaches, joint pain, irritability.

The next day they drank an entire glass of zero charge. They did not get any reactions So it doesn't mean that the reactions like, oh, yeah, this is great. It's working. If it was inefficient, there's probably redistribution. You're detoxing slower because the body's in survival mode where the higher dose was efficient. That was not stressing out the. And they're able to sustain that and they can take that longer term without causing any issues. Yeah. Does zeolite get through biofilms?

Detox Reactions and What They Mean 36:00

It helps disrupt the biofilms by binding to some of the elements that are in the Biofilm. So the biofilms have so many things in them. There's a lot of lead and heavy metals in their biofils. Depending on what the biosfilm is comprised of, it generally has a pretty strong biofilm disrupting effect. That's great. And how do you personally approach starting someone on a binder like zeolite, especially if they are sensitive and dealing with a complex illness? Do you tell them just go for the higher dose?

Yeah. So first off, you have to do what you're comfortable with because there is the mental and placebo aspect, which is very real. If you think that taking two scoops is going to cause severe issues for you, then don't do it. Right. Or don't, you know, get educated or, just do what you're comfortable with. Having said that, if you are only comfortable taking one sip, I would also say don´t do it. Right? Yeah, yeah. Because that's generally not a good idea. So I mean, there's a lot of the people that take the zeo charge are very sensitive individuals.

They're in that category of too sick to detox. where they haven't been able to do anything, but now they're able take zeo-charge and feel incredible, not only not feel reactions but feel incredibly, a lot of them have to take six scoops per day or 30 grams. Some people are taking 12 scOops or even more just to be able tolerate it and then they can work down over time. But generally I say start with two scOOPs or more if you feel like you need more. So between two and six SCOOPS based on what you think that you'll need.

Do that one time per-day. Take it 30 to 60 minutes after your largest meal. because then you're going to start binding to some of that toxicity in the bile. And then don't split up the dose because the key is to get enough on each dose, not enough cumulatively throughout the day. So don�t get a glass of water and sip on it all throughout day, that's usually the worst thing you can do. You just want to do it once, drink it down, be done with it, and then move on. Two scoops is great, just for reference.

I take 12 scOops a day and I've been doing that for 14, 15 months now. Okay. It's overkill. I don't need that much. It was just kind of a demonstration. You can't overdo it. If you take more than you need, you're just wasting product. Because you just have unused zeolite cages and you flush it out. And I'm getting, I know a guy, and I get a pretty good deal on the product, otherwise I wouldn't be doing that. But yeah, I'd say between two and six scoops. If you take two scOops and then you get a headache, the next day go to four scOOps and see if the headache goes away.

So that's a good way to do it. And how does zeolite fit into a broader detox strategy when we're also considering gut health, liver pathways, and drainage? Yeah, so it's really nice because I like to consider it kind of a foundation to a protocol. So because it is not working on any specific biochemical pathway or it isn't competing really with any other protocols, it can be taken alongside because everyone can use a little bit of additional binding support. It's just going in, it's grabbing things, is reducing the stress in the body, calming things down.

So if someone is utilizing other detox approaches, whether it is like a homeopathic strategy where they're trying to mobilize toxicity from tissue or it s like the bitter herb strategy or whatever it may be, just adding a binder to help mitigate that stress. Some people that are doing antimicrobial protocols, they really like it because as you start going after parasites and yeast and stuff, these things are attached to metals. So as she started killing those off, you have all of these metals that were mobilized and you don't want those to redistribute.

You can go in with the binder and start grabbing some of those as well. So it's really great for, like, as part of an antimicrobial protocol. It can be used, you know, standalone as well for people that just want to calm things down. Sometimes pectorals will do phases where the super sensitive individuals, they just start them on the binder, start calming things and then they start adding, stacking more detox and say, okay, we start pushing it a little bit. Let's add some bitter herbs and whatever, and just getting to where they need to be.

because it's a selective binder. You don't have to worry about nutrient depletion when you take it with food. It can be taken at the same time as most supplements. Okay. Natural supplements, herbs and things, no problem. If you're taking something that is like an iron supplement or copper, then you might want to space it out a little bit because there's binding there. Even if it does bind to it, it usually re-releases it in the body because some people actually mix, let's say, coiled silver with the zero charge in a glass of water.

They preload the zeolite cage with silver And the idea is that when the zeolite then encounters the binding site of toxicity or a microbial activity like a biofilm, it deliver, swaps the silver for the toxic element. So some people actually use it as a delivery system. That's kind of experimental. Yeah, that's pretty clever. I like that. Same with zinc. Some people will mix zinc with the Zeo charge and it's delivery, but you can't get a good dose of that because you don't know exactly how much is going to leave the zoolite gauge.

Yeah. So if you're trying to take 25 milligrams of zinc and you mix 25 mg with zeolite, there's no way to know how much you are actually going to be absorbing. Yeah, yeah. That's the challenge there. And does zeolate predispose you to constipation the way some of these other binders do? It usually does not. And I will say, once again, all zeolites are different. You have to be careful because you can't just go on Amazon and say all Zeolite are the same because there's a lot of different variations with particle size, cleaning processes, sources, and all this other stuff.

So I was thinking about zeo-charge and people can experiment with whatever they're experimenting with. But with zeocharge, at least, most people actually have more of a gut-regulating effect and it tends to more laxative than constipating, which is the opposite of every other binder. So about 80% of the time, it actually gets things moving. So a lot of people use it that have been dealing with chronic constipation for years, and it's the only thing that actually keeps them regular. And that's why they stay on it.

Now, do you have the other 20% where it is constibating? So it just depends on what is being detoxed. And part of it is dose. So if you take a half of a scoop, the constipation is usually not from the powder. It's a detox reaction from inflammation. Okay. When you can take six scoops, it actually is less likely to cause the reaction. Yeah. Someone emailed me last night and was taking like three or four scoops and a little bit constipated over like four or five months.

The Zeolite Dosing Paradox 42:00

And then she went to 12 scOops, and wasn't constiPated. Oh, okay. But then, she's like, you know, doesn't want to take 12 ScOop because it's too expensive. So she is adding some other more natural laxatives to get things moving and continuing on like six scOOps. So there's different approaches, but if it is the powder itself, it could be because it's dehydrating. So if someone's taking six scoops and they're drinking three ounces of water with it and then get constipated, that might be, because its absorbing the water.

It depends on if its the power or if the detox reaction, It takes a little bit of trial and error, But if someones super concerned about constepation because of other binders, a lot of people have been able to take it without constapation that did get consipation on charcoal clays and all the other binder. OK, OK. And how do you measure whether a detox protocol is actually working, especially when symptoms can fluctuate? Yeah, great question. So it's the challenge with and it kind of depends on, you know, what is your goal with it?

Because the great thing about CO charge is it always working because it is always binding to something because there's always something for it to bind to. So in one sense, it works 100% of the time for everyone. The question is, is it going to help you achieve your health goals? And that really just depends on what it is. If it's immediate symptom relief, maybe, may be not. if it just binding, yes. So there's testing that can be done. It's very tricky because heavy metal testing is a little bit limited because we're not looking at organ levels.

We're looking excretion through the hair, circulation in the blood, excretaion to the urine or tissue with the illegal scan, but it still not necessarily indicative of how much is coming out of organs and the metals tend to cycle with testing. So they'll go up, they go down, based on the natural rhythms. If you test after a year or six months and you expect all your metals to be gone, it might actually be higher because you're excreting more, which is actually a good sign. It's really tricky. When I do heavy metal testing, I recommend doing it every month.

like whatever you're doing, like every 30 days, because you are getting a pattern. You're looking at the pattern, and then if you were getting movement, you want to see movement whether up or down on these tests. If you get movement you know your body is processing metals and just continue on it, but sometimes it's better just to do other tests like traditional lab work and functional medicine labwork, looking other markers just see if your seeing improvement in those as opposed to detox specific markers.

Yeah. But other than that, I mean, we did a case studies program prior to launch with the illegal scan the tissue analysis to see what it could do. So when we were looking at, you know, is it safe? Is it going to deplete nutrients and all this other stuff? And that's all on the website, the case study's page. OK. The reason we have our protocol, which is the ultimate zeolite experience, where you start with six scoops and you work down a scoop every month. It's five months. You do six groups, month one and five scopes and four than three than two is because in our case, studies, program, everybody except for one person, was able to detox all 15 metals on six scoops, right?

And the other person was able to detox 14, but mercury would just not move no matter what she did. And so that's the only person we've ever tested that wasn't able get it going. But essentially some people will take, let's say one scoop or two scopes, they feel better, But they're on a binding dose. They're just binding, it's not enough to encourage the body to start dumping toxic elements from tissue. So they think they are detoxing because they feeling better but they level one detox. We want to get them to all three levels, the tissue and the organs.

And sometimes like when people did two scoops and they felt better and were on, you know, just tissue or a processing level, we went to four scopes or six scops, and then they started dumping toxicity. Okay. Right. So that was kind of interesting. That's why we set it as if you're not sure and you not going to do testing, to start with six groups, even for a week, You could do six group for week. Then you have five scoups the next week for and kind accelerate the program because once you get the detox ball rolling, the body usually keeps dumping the toxic elements.

I like the higher dose to start, and then you work down. The healthier you are, the less you need. Okay. So for someone listening who feels overwhelmed by all this, what are the most important first steps they can take to begin reducing their toxic burden safely? Yeah, I think it's twofold. It's one, it is reducing the daily dose of toxicity through reducing external sources, removing what has accumulated in the body, right? So a lot of people just are like, oh, I'm living the super clean lifestyle, meaning all organic, like I personally, am living in middle of the woods, have no Wi-Fi, got ethernet, everything is, it's a pretty good lifestyle.

But it doesn't address all of toxicity that has stored in my body from previous years. So now it's like, all right, let's focus on that because the recycle toxicity and all this other stuff. So it is twofold. One, you definitely want to prevent more from coming in. You want stop the bleeding, so to speak. Right? You wanna stop. Yeah. The accumulation. And then you want your body to keep up with what it doing. Then you wanna get to the point where every day you're releasing a little bit more and you are getting cleaner and cleaner.

Because that's the formula for success. If your daily dose of toxicity is less than your body's natural capacity, then eventually you're going to keep cleaning stuff out and you'll feel better and better, and have better prevention of certain things in the future. And it's just a matter of time. Maybe that's years. It's not a one month or two month process, but if you can get to that point, you are on the right track. So avoidance. That could mean a lot of things. We didn't have time to get into it all, from cookware to And there's certain exposures that are greater than others, like a Malcolm fillings in the mouth, but you have to be careful.

It's a whole nother topic. We wouldn't have been getting into it, sometimes it's breast implants. Whatever is your greatest source of toxicity and stress, you want to start with that and then start working on the lower level stuff later. Okay. Well, looking back over your work in this space, what's one thing you've changed your mind about when it comes to detoxification? I think it's that more is better because I used to think, okay, well, this works and this and works, and let's just take all four.

And that's going to be better, but not necessarily. Like even I used to have a biohacking center and I was like, come in and do, you know, six different therapies in the same day. Because, because why not?

How to Start Zeolite Safely 48:00

Why not exactly? Then take all these supplements home and take. All of those. But I think now, even with technologies, a lot of times just doing one good really wellness technology might be. Better than stacking six of them. Cause it's just a. Lot of information for the body to handle. Yeah, right. So same with supplements, I think, because with detox, there's kind of a max detox. Like your body is not going to really detox faster than it wants to. And if it does, then it's probably not gonna work out for you because of the symptoms and it is too much to handle.

Yeah. If you have one really effective product that is pumping out toxicity, it s working great, your bodies responding well, and then you add five others, a lot of times you don't detox It actually, a lot of times, results in you detoxing slower because one of those or two of these or all of this stressed out your system, your body left that comfort zone of detox and started going into survival mode, lockdown mode closing down the cells, and now you're slowing down detox. So that's where a lotta people that just take zeotroj are getting better results than people who take 20 supplements for detox, And that took me a while to learn.

I actually learned that in the case studies because I was recommending all this stuff and I'm like, wait a second, why are they detoxin' slower? than just the zeo charge pixel. Yeah, love that. If you could give one piece of advice to both patients and practitioners trying to navigate detox safely and effectively, what would it be? That's a tricky one. Get started, I guess, right? The key to getting ahead is getting started. So sometimes it does take a little bit of experimentation because you don't know exactly.

You know, you see something on social media or on an interview like this and you're like, this is the best thing. ever. But maybe it is, maybe isn't. It just depends. Each person responds differently and it depends on what's going on. So I think trying multiple things, finding what works for you. And then if you find something that is working really well, just stick with it. Don't make a bunch of changes. Okay, now let's add 10 other things. Just keep it going because you want to continue seeing that forward momentum.

And it's very tricky, both for practitioners and especially for consumers, because there's so much information on the internet. I always say that most of the information in the Internet is incorrect. But I stand by that. It's tricky because, there are so many claims being thrown out on so, many products and a lot of these companies are marketing companies that are selling health products. They're not practitioner based. And it's really, they're taking advantage of a lot of consumers. It's very sad, very frustrating to me, but I think a lotta times you just have to find a practitioner like yourself that you trust and you look to them.

Also, another thing I'll say is a outta times I thinks it better to work with one or two practitioners opposed to 10 practitioners. Yes, too many kids in the kitchen. I talk to aotta people and they like, well, I'm taking these seven supplements from this doctor. Then I saw this other doctor and he said I need to take these four Then I saw this other doc and then they just like continue on all of these supplements for the next 10 years. And then there are 35 supplements. So I do think maybe this is my piece of advice.

Less is more. Simplicity is king. You know, find things that work really well as your kind of foundational tools, both as a practitioner and a consumer. Stick with those and you can kind experiment with other things.

Zeolite in a Broader Detox Protocol 51:00

But you don't necessarily have to stay on everything forever. Use things for a time. and then move on or come back to them. And, you know, some practitioners like seasonal detox where, okay, let's do a little bit more pushing of liver cleansing in the spring or in fall and let us do the binding support year round or whatever it is. But it's like when you think about more natural approaches like food, it s like if you're trying to take like an omega supplement, for example. I don't see why you would have to take that every single day, except that's what it says on the label.

But are you eating fish every day? It's like you can treat supplements as food supplements, right? So sometimes they don t have be taken every, they can be taking as needed or in substitute of what you're lacking from your diet type of thing. Yeah, so binders are a little different. I don't recommend taking CO charge every other day or intermittently because when you go off of it, a lot of times it adds more stress to the system because you've mobilized toxicity and now your body has to clean it up.

So it's a bit of an outlier there. But with some things, I do think taking breaks from a lots of things is good, letting the body reset and just not getting married to your protocol to you're like committing to 25 supplements for the next 25 years, and you can't survive without them. Because the idea is as you get healthier, which is the goal when you are taking these things, the less you need. The healthier you, are the least you'll need, The goal is to get off as much, even zeolite charge. Like if you don't need it anymore, don' t take it any more.

I'm totally fine with that. It's support for as needed, And if don t need that, then move on. Great. Yes. Well, where can people go to find out more information about zeolate? So the main website is zeolitelabs.com. We've got a ton of information, articles, lots of videos, the dosing information. The case studies page, et cetera. And then we have an Instagram, which is at zeolytelabs with some, you know, our brand manager has been doing a really good job putting some content on there as well. So those are the two best sources and I would check out some of the education, like just a five minute getting started video.

I encourage people, if you're going to try it, just watch one of those videos to make sure you understand the docing and you get started with that.

Final Advice and Where to Learn More 53:00

And can you just spell zeolite for us? Yes, it's z-e-o-l-i-t- e. And then our product is zeo charge. Zeo Charge. So that's the one that we have. We'll definitely put this in the show notes for everyone as well. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining me on the functional edge. I hope today's episode gave you fresh insights and practical tools to level up your life. If you found this conversation helpful, I'd love for you to hit subscribe, share it with someone who might benefit, and leave a review.

It truly helps us reach more people and continue bringing meaningful root cause health insights to those who need them most. So for more resources, updates and behind the scenes content, visit drjuliaward.com. And until next time, stay strong, say healthy and keep living on the functional edge. Thank you for joining me on The Functional Edge. I hope today's episode gave you fresh insights and practical tools to level up your life. If you've found value in what you heard, don't forget to hit subscribe, share the podcast with someone who needs it and leave a review.

It's the best way to support our mission of bringing powerful health solutions to more people. For more resources, updates and behind the scenes content, visit drjuliaward.com. Until next time, stay strong, Stay healthy and keep living on the functional edge.