Do you feel like you’ve tried every diet and detox under the sun without much success? You may need a new approach to health and wellness. Join Dr. Laura Belus, a licensed naturopathic doctor from the Greater Toronto area, on this special episode as she shares her insight into how to get your body back on track with powerful lifestyle changes that can make a world of difference! Find out more about her journey to natural medicine for relief from migraines & acne and learn essential tips for weight loss, stress management, greater energy & better digestion through proper detoxification and hormone balance. In this episode, you'll learn: - The importance of detoxing for better health and vitality - Keys to successful detoxification - How to balance hormones for optimal health - Tips for a healthy diet & lifestyle habits that promote wellness - And more! Don’t miss out on this life-changing information and tune in to this inspiring episode to get the essentials on detoxing and health! (00:00): Forward in life is forward in life leap and the net will appear. Dr. Laura Bela, find out how you are doing detox wrong and most importantly, how to do it right. (00:15): So the big question is, how do women over 40 like us keep weight off, have great energy, balance our hormones and our moods, feel sexy and confident and master midlife. If you're like most of us, you are not getting the answers you need and remain confused and pretty hopeless to ever feel like yourself again. As an O B G Y N, I had to discover for myself the truth about what creates a rock solid metabolism, lasting weight loss, and supercharged energy after 40 in order to lose a hundred pounds and fix my fatigue, now I'm on a mission. This podcast is designed to share the natural tools you need for impactful results and to give you clarity on the answers to your midlife metabolism challenges. Join me for tangible, natural strategies to crush the hormone imbalances you are facing and help you get unstuck from the sidelines of life. My name is Dr. Kyrin Dunston. Welcome to the Hormone Prescription Podcast. (01:08): Hi everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kiran. Thank you so much for joining me today. Today we are talking about doing detox. At this time of year, so many people are trying to do a detox and there's a lot of confusion about what really is a detox, what's a detox versus a cleanse? How do I properly do a detox? Do I need a detox or do I need a cleanse? , what am I missing? And I find that so many people get this wrong and it's not disastrous to get it wrong, it's just that you're not gonna get the benefits that you should get from a cleanser detox if you do it incorrectly. So you wanna make sure you're getting the most bang for your time and your money and effort invested. So you wanna listen up today to Dr. (01:57): Laura Belus cuz she specializes in this. I'll tell you a little bit about her. Well let me tell you a little story first. So I used to work with this massage therapist and we would talk about all kinds of health things. She knew what I did, she loved what I did cuz she was all about treating things at the root cause and not just medicating symptoms. You guys know, you know, cuz you're about it too. She said to me, I got this detox supplement at the health food store and I took it for a month and I feel so much better. And like I always tell you guys, I don't preach to people who don't ask for the information. So I just said, oh great. But I knew all the health problems she was dealing with and I knew that wasn't the only thing she needed. (02:41): And I was glad that she said she felt better, but I knew how good she really could feel. So, you know, she wasn't interested in learning more. Not everybody is. We help the ones who are swimming towards us who wanna be helped and who wanna be taught. So don't let that be you. Don't let that be be you at the supplement store asking the clerk at the health food store who has a high school degree who doesn't really know about this. Come and let's talk about it with Dr. Laura Bela. She's an expert and you'll get the information you need. So at this time of year you can do your detox, right? I'll tell you a little bit about her and then we can get started. Dr. Laura Beis is a licensed naturopathic doctor practicing in the greater Toronto area. In her early adult years, her recurrent migraines and acne led her to natural medicine for relief. She now focuses her clinical practice on detoxification and hormone balances for weight loss, stress management, greater energy and better digestion. She believes in making simple yet powerful changes to diet and lifestyle habits that create lasting results. Welcome Dr. Laura Belus to the podcast. Happy (03:50): To be here. (03:51): Super excited to talk about detoxing and why everybody's doing it wrong and what they don't know that they should know because this is the time of year when people are doing detoxes and like we were talking before we got started, about the difference between a detox and a cleanse. Ladies listening, do you know the difference? So we're gonna dive into that, but why is detox so important? Why do we even need to do one? Let's start there. (04:18): That's a great starting point and I think an important piece to, you know, really highlight. So detoxification is already a natural part in the body. Our body is always detoxifying and that's an important piece to know. It's a natural part of the body. It's not something we have to start doing. However, detoxification is literally like a waste removal plant in our body. Our body clears things it doesn't need, it packages them numb, it packages them up and then it sends them out of the body in various ways. But sometimes in our modern lives we are inundated with so many things, whether that's the food we're eating might not be free of pesticides, it might be the air we breathe, it might be a lot of the chemicals in our body and personal care products. The reality is our body and our liver specifically is working over time to detoxify these things from our systems. And let's be honest, there's a lot going on and sometimes the body needs a little bit of a help and that's why doing a focused detoxification plan or supporting your body's liver detoxification naturally is so vital now more than ever. (05:33): Yes, it's super important. I always say our body is a city and every city has a sanitation department , so we've got one but it gets, it's so sluggish. And what is the difference between a cleanse and a detox? (05:48): Yeah, so a cleanse really it gets a lot of publicity. You know, it's definitely a more of a buzzword. A cleanse traditionally is a liquid or almost liquid based diet for one three even seven days. And it's intended really to focus on resetting the digestive system. Our gut from people that have a lot of digestive issues, bloating, maybe they've been quite sick digestively and they're slowly trying to get back into things or more famously a lot of people are familiar with perhaps green juice cleanses where they're drinking a lot of fresh juices all day. It's limited, it's a low calorie, liquid-based diet. So it does give the gut a bit of a break. It doesn't make your digestive system work really hard to break down solid foods because solid foods need to be digested and it takes a lot of effort to do that. But a cleanse is really focused on gut restoration. It's almost like hitting the reset button. It doesn't do very much for liver health. It is a quick reset for some people, but I normally don't recommend cleanses for most of us. And if I do recommend a cleanse it might be a one day reset. Just to reset the, the digestive system, it doesn't really focus on liver detoxification. (07:05): Okay, so liver, I call that the sanitation department and you gotta love your liver. So can you talk a little bit about why the liver should be the focus of your detox? What's going on in the liver that's so important when it comes to detoxification? (07:23): Yeah, so the liver is really, I love that analogy, the sanitation department because it is, it is, it's filtering so much blood through our circulatory system from our digestive system running through and it is cleaning out and picking out all of the not so nice things that are in our circulation are in our bloodstream and it's packaging those up that takes effort. It's sort of a two-step process for those that that are interested more in the science side of it, it's a two-phase process where your liver packages up these toxins or these chemicals or these pesticides, whatever you wanna call them, and it packages them up into two phases and after the second phase it dumps it into the digestive system or back into the bloodstream where you can sweat it out, you can pee it out or you can poop it out. And that's a very important part of getting these toxins or or these chemicals out of the body. The liver is responsible for that packaging process. (08:18): And so what kinds of things are happening to us on a daily basis? Things that we're coming in contact with maybe eating, drinking are impacting our liver. Why isn't our, so when I was in medical school , I was taught that you don't need nutritional supplements, vitamins, minerals, et cetera because you get it from the food you eat, which is totally wrong, right? And then I was also taught that you don't need to do any detox or cleanse cuz your body takes care of it itself. So I think more and more people in this day and age are aware that that's a fallacy. Why is that a fallacy? Why can't our liver just take care of what it needs to take care of in this day and age? (09:00): And that's a key point what you just said there in this day and age, that is the key point that that I think the listeners hopefully are are tuning into because this day and age we are number one living very stressful lies when you add stress to the mix, people say, so what stress or the main stress hormone that we produce cortisol, many people have heard of that word before. That has to be broken down and processed by the liver as well. Well now if I add a huge bucket of cortisol for my body to produce or to clear out day in and day out, that's c clogging up the sanitation plant that's clogging up the pipelines. I add in maybe a few extra coffees or a couple extra glasses of wine during the week sugar. Right? A lot of us are grabbing sugar or sugary sweets for that pick-me-up in the afternoon. These are hard to process items for the liver. Yes the liver can do it, but once we start to get stacked items that are not working in the liver's favor, there is an overburden we need to, to interject, we need to add in some supports to get that assembly line cleared and that bucket empty once again. (10:07): Yes. So clear talk. You mentioned alcohol. Can you talk a little bit about alcohol in the liver? Because I remember back when the French paradox came out by Walter Willette and everybody's, you know, they had a justification for drinking their two glasses of wine every day, but nobody talked about what it does to your liver. Can you talk a little bit about what alcohol does to your liver? (10:30): Yeah, so the liver does, and again let me first start by saying that genetics play a role here. Some of us are faster metabolizers or we can break down alcohol more efficiently than others and there's different ethnicities that have a better time or an easier time breaking that down and and others not so much. And that's based on an enzyme that pretty much degrades or breaks down alcohol. So it can be flushed out of the system. But there again, there are two phases to this and if we start to break down alcohol and there's too much already in the system in phase one or part one of this detoxification, the body becomes quite toxic. That phase one, that first step of the liver detoxification process, that's often what leads to a hangover when we've consumed too much alcohol and many of us know what that feels like. (11:15): But even if we add alcohol to an already overburdened liver, it might not be the amount of alcohol per se that might be an extra glass of wine or even just a single glass more regularly. It might push the body or the liver over the edge and it cannot clear things fast enough, quickly enough and on a regular enough basis so we can feel toxic, sluggish head, ay hives, you name it. A lot of odd, sometimes symptoms can come through and that can be because of this burden of alcohol not being fully broken down and metabolized. (11:49): Yeah, I think it's something that people need to be aware of and people, people say, oh Dr. Kyrin, you're such a kill joy, you're saying none of us can drink. That's not what I said. , you have to look at your individual biochemistry and where you are and maybe there might be evidence that you need a break for a while, but doesn't mean forever. All right, so let's dive a little bit more into it. You mentioned phase one and phase two detox. I don't think in the liver most people are aware of that. So how exactly does your body use the liver to get rid of things? What is it doing to them? (12:27): Yeah, so the two phases of lead liver detoxification are essentially there is a biochemical process going on. So we we're removing and adding various molecules. If we go back to high school chemistry class, whether it's an oxygen or a hydrogen, we're taking off and putting on different molecules to these starting items. So whether it's a, a pesticide for example, or alcohol, we'll use alcohol as an example. And phase one is making it, it's basically starting the process. Phase two, a second phase, a second process. A bunch of different enzymes have to go in and make that item more water soluble. And that requires different items, different antioxidants or different components to help phase two. And then once that, that item is now or that alcohol is now water soluble, it's more, more or less inert. So it doesn't really can, can't really create problems in the body. (13:18): It can now be safely expelled, whether that's through the kidneys and in the urine or in the gut through the stool or sweat out or breathed out by the the lungs. I forgot to mention that earlier. So there are various processes, both of them are distinct. Phase one is in many ways making this item potentially more disruptive for a short period of time. And then phase two jumps in and adds a a molecule or adds a component to that phase one portion and says, okay, we've packaged you up, you're now safe, you're not gonna cause any more problems and now it can leave the body. We have to highlight phase two is arguably much more important than phase one when you wanna feel your best and detox effectively. (14:03): And isn't this where a lot of people get into trouble because they're only stimulating phase one and they're pushing all these substances to become water soluble, meaning they can go more places and do more damage And they're not addressing phase two properly (14:17): A hundred percent. I think that's really when we think about oh let's give our body all the B vitamins or all the antioxidants, those are heavy hitters for phase one. Those even some herbal ingredients milk thistle, a lot of people are familiar with that herbal ingredient. Yes, to an extent they can touch on phase two, but phase two again has a very unique component. It's not about breaking things down, it's actually about safely packaging them back up so that they can leave the body. And phase two requires a different set of nutrients and components that I don't think a lot of people, I know a lot of my patients sometimes neglect that and that needs to be looked (14:56): At. Mm-Hmm what kinds of foods and nutrients are needed in phase two? So (15:00): Phase two detoxification, this is where our amino acids come into play. And when I say amino acids, I mean the components of proteins. So definitely I'm thinking of glycine, I'm thinking of my sulforaphanes in terms of my broccoli family of vegetables, n acetyl cystine or N A C for short, the cystine component. These are all components that support phase two. And I wanna highlight that there are many micro processes always happening in the liver. It's not just what do I take for phase one and what do I take for phase two. There are a lot of these nutrients that play a role in both phases. But when I think about phase two, I'm really thinking about my amino acids and my sulfur or my broccoli and brassica family of vegetables. Those really have some additional support on that phase. (15:52): Right. And I'll just add the methyl groups cuz I happen to be a poor phase two detox. Yes. Cause I have the SNPs with the methyl groups. My body has a problem with that. So that's caused me huge problems. And I find with a lot of my patients that's true too. So I think getting the genetics done. Yeah. What role does a genetic profile play in assisting you in doing a proper detox? (16:16): And that is something I think, I think that's where medicine and health is going in the next, you know, five to 10 years. I'm starting to see a lot of, a lot more of my patients interested in genetic testing. Maybe have had a few SNPs looked at, you know, and they are interested in figuring out how their body processes and breaks various things down the liver. The, the SNPs or the genetic components really play a role in how effectively your body can break down certain chemicals or certain items. And again, this is an ever-growing field in the liver. So caffeine is a big one. Methylation, which is an important portion of phase two detox, detoxification, alcohol, certain medications, right? How well does your body break down or detoxify These components can really tell you, hey, do you have to be really strict on avoiding caffeine during your detox? Or hey, do you need a little bit more methyl support during your detox? Especially when we're focusing on phase two. So this is a, a very emerging and still very new area, but it's rapidly growing and absolutely it can customize how you take your detox to the next level. (17:26): Hmm. Yeah, I think that's key. And what about phase three detox? Do you wanna talk a little about that? Well, (17:32): Phase three detox is really important because I think, you know, especially when I was studying as well, I found when I, when I was talking about liver detox in the beginning of my practice and my career, it was sort of assumed that there was this elimination process. But phase two really is that final step in the body getting rid of waste and those toxins out of the body. Specifically, I, I wanna touch on estrogen for a moment. So estrogen a very vital hormone for, for us women and our body detoxifies it along with many other hormones. But once it leaves the liver, now it's, it's in circulation and, and on its way in digestion to leave the digestive tract. Your body, believe it or not, does have different enzymes in the gut to help your body either flush estrogen out and keep it moving or unpackage that estrogen that was ready to leave and recycle estrogen back into circulation, which many of us don't want. We're trying to get rid of excess estrogen. So I wanna highlight that phase three is in short, how effectively you poop out your, your toxins. But remember that's just one component. It could be kidney function with your urinary tract, it could be sweating, are we sweating during a detox? Are we eliminating things through the skin? It's that final stage of getting everything that we don't want outta the body. (18:54): So key. Let's talk a little bit more about estrogen detox, cuz I think that is a concern particularly for women at midlife before they go through menopause. Most women are hypo hyper estrogen, so they need to be getting rid of estrogen. So do you wanna talk a little bit about the path that estrogen takes? Because we talked earlier about how all the chemicals that come in your body, your body has to detoxify. But what most people don't realize is that everything your body makes it has to get rid of somehow. Right? just like right when you do crafts inside your house, you've gotta do something with those crafts and all the scraps that you made or trash that you made when you make it. So can you talk about how the body, the full pathway gets rid of estrogen and where are some of the stumbling blocks? (19:43): This is, you know, this is a whole can of worms in so many ways because like you just said, it is so vital that women understand what estrogen is doing in their body. There are various times in our lives where estrogen sometimes does do a bit of a rollercoaster. And I find in my practice, perimenopause is a very turbulent time for a lot of women. And if we are pre perimenopause, well then, you know, let's say in our early forties we've still got regular cycles, but we might still be dealing with heavy flow, lots of clots, long periods, painful periods. And I always encourage my patients to get an idea of what estrogen is, is going, what, what's going on with their estrogen in short. And the, one of the best ways to do that is to see what we call your estrogen metabolites, your breakdown products of that estrogen hormone as it makes its way out of your system. (20:36): And that's often why I I personally use the Dutch urinary metabolites test, which is a hormone urinary hormone test. We can see how your body, what your, your body does with estrogen in theory. And what we see is, is it effectively leaving the body And that unfortunately can't be measured as accurately in the blood. And this is where women can really see is my body recycling estrogen, which we often refer to as making 16 oh estrogen or the 16 pathway. Is my body making inflammatory estrogen or the four oh pathway when we measure that breakdown product? Or is my body really good at getting rid of estrogen safely without causing too many symptoms? And that is the main and the protective pathway, which is the two oh pathway. And these are just sort of sciencey names for those specific breakdown products of estrogen. Mm-Hmm , there's three pathways and we all should know what our body's doing and which pathway is perhaps taking the reins in our bodies. (21:37): Yeah, I think that's super important. And I, you know, as you're speaking, I was just wondering, do you ever recommend that women who are have reached menopause go on hormone replacement without having a urinary metabolite test for their estrogen? I mean, it's something I require, so I'm wondering what your thoughts are. (21:55): Absolutely. It is really in a serious conversation. We have, you know, g starting hormone replacement therapy in any way, shape or form supports. We need to see what's going on. We assume, assume that estrogen is lower, we're not getting our psycho, we might have some symptoms, but that assumption really doesn't hold up for many women in terms of is their body safely and effectively clearing that estrogen out, especially if there's a family history of any estrogen sensitive cancers. We're really looking to get the full picture before we start any hormone supports. And that just gives women the power to understand and to, and to really, you know, use that information to their advantage to feel their best during hormone the supports or (22:39): Not. Right. And I'm just wondering, is it the same in Canada as it is in here in the US because the mainstream treatment for women with menopause, well first they say hormone replacement for the least amount of time and the lowest dose possible for symptom management only. There's no testing. They just give you a standard one size fits all dose, no testing of metabolites, how you're breaking it down and there's no follow up testing to see if you're on the right dose. And I'm just wondering, is it the same in Canada? (23:07): Well, yeah, you know, in, in many ways it is, you know, as a practicing naturopathic doctor, I focus on bioidentical hormones in my practice. But the conventional primary care practice here in in Canada is very much that way. We're giving oral hormone doses. We are not doing pre or post or during testing. We are not determining what that woman specifically needs. And there's a lot of gray area in terms of, you know, is this the most effective treatment for that woman? And just because a woman's not feeling great going up on a dose of estrogen, for example, or both hormones might actually make a woman feel worse because they can't metabolize estrogen effectively. There could be genetic reasons for that. So we wanna make sure their body is functioning well before we start adding hormones to the mix. Because if we're gonna give you hormones, we wanna make sure you can use them and actually feel better. (