Detox Pathways For Cancer Prevention

Detox isn’t a product you buy or a weekend cleanse you “power through.” It’s the quiet, daily work of keeping your body’s drainage systems open so inflammation and toxins don’t linger, recirculate, and add to your cancer risk over time. 

In today's episode we break down the six core detoxification pathways in a simple, practical way: lymph, liver, kidneys, colon, skin, and lungs. You’ll learn what each pathway is responsible for, what “sluggish” can feel like in real life, and the most effective habits to support healthy detox function. 

Here's some of what we're covering:

• the sink analogy for toxic burden and why backups happen
• lymph basics, signs of sluggish flow, and the best ways to move lymph
• how to better support the liver with diet
• strategies to enhance elimination through the gut, kidneys, & skin
• why stress and poor sleep slow detox, plus emotional and energetic “inputs” to clean up
• fasting basics + when supplements may help, including binders and targeted support based on labs and genetics
• putting it all together into a simple daily plan

👉 Resources mentioned on today's episode:

1- Environmental Working Group

2- The Healing Accelerator Spring Detox Challenge

3- Episode 2: Why Cancer Grows

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Transcript

Spring Detox Series Kickoff

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome back to the Ground and Root Podcast, where we explore the world of holistic and functional strategies to enhance healing and help you stay cancer free. I am your host and holistic cancer dietitian, Dion Detraz, and I'm excited for us today to continue our conversation around enhancing detoxification pathways and reducing toxic burden. So we are continuing this conversation. If you haven't already listened to any prior episodes, the two previous episodes were also on this topic. Okay, our theme for the month is to enhance our detox, essentially spring clean spring detox. So at the beginning of the month, the very first episode of the month, we discussed how to reduce your exposures. And I hope you've been playing around with that. If you listen to that podcast episode and have started to slowly work your way through your exposures and make out swaps where you can, right? Every swap is helpful. So again, please don't feel like it has to be perfect for it to be helping you. Okay. Each step you take is going to be helpful. Then today, what we're going to do is we're going to continue the conversation. So if this is really a two-step process, right? Step one is to reduce the burden, reduce the toxins coming in as best we can. Step two is to enhance the drainage pathways, to enhance what's going out. And in case you didn't listen to that first episode, I want to take a minute just to make sure we're all on the same like visual page. And the way I like to think about this is a sink, a sink example. Okay. So the faucets turned on, the water's coming in. You can imagine that being the toxins coming in. The drain is open, the drain is clear, the water is leaving the sink, right? So what's coming in is going out. There's no backup. When that drain gets clogged, though, it's not clearing the water as effectively. And slowly but surely the sink backs up, right? So we need to take both approaches. We need to help reduce what's coming in and we need to help enhance what's going out. And that's what we're going to talk about today. Okay. So let's dive in. Now, there are six systems of detoxification, six pathways, if you will, of detoxification. We're going to go through each one. I want to make sure you understand a little bit about the purpose of the pathway, like what its responsibility is, and then all the different ways we can help that pathway stay clear and open and working for our best interest. Okay. So quickly for first, just I'm going to give you the overview of the six. So there's the lymph system, there's the liver, the kidneys, the colon, the skin, and the lungs. All of these organs, all of these systems are involved in helping you detoxify and clear toxins and clear inflammation and things that are coming into your body. All right. So we're going to go step, we're going to go one by one. And I'm going to give you some tips. So get a notepad out if you can. If it's easy for you if you're in the car, if you're listening on the go, then you can jot these down later. I will also just make sure in the show notes that I have those six listed. Okay. So first the lymph. We have to start there, okay? Because it is essentially the first step in the process. The lymph is moving toxins into the blood. So part of this is what we're exposed to, but this is also a really important system when it comes to toxins that have been stored in the body. Because oftentimes when we are exposed to something, if the body's not able to process or deal with it right away, it gets tucked away. It gets tucked away into our cells, into our tissues to be dealt with later. Okay. When we do something like fasting, which you all know, hopefully by now, unless you're new, that I'm a really big fan of fasting for many reasons. But one of those reasons, fasting is one of the most effective ways, effective methods we have to purge toxins from our cells, to release the stored toxins, put them back into our bloodstream so they can be dealt with. All right. So the lymph is helping us with that. When the lymph is not at its optimal, when the lymph is backed up or sluggish, you might feel this as swelling, as puffiness. Okay. Those could all be signs that the lymph is struggling a bit. So how do we help the lymph? What is really important to know is that the lymph does not move on its own. Okay. Unlike our blood supply, our circulatory system, the heart is pumping the blood through the body. It's moving it even when we're sleeping, right? It's moving it. The lymph does not have a pump. So unless we're moving, the lymph is not moving. This is often why, too, like in the morning, you might feel more puffy, you might feel more swollen, right? Because you've been laying down all night. The lymph has not been moving while you're sleeping. We have to move the lymph. So we have to move. We have to move our bodies. Exercise is probably one of the best ways to move lymph, especially jumping. This is a take-home message you can take. Is even on a day that you don't have time to exercise or whatever, you don't want to go outside, whatever it is, at least jump. Okay. Jump in place, do some jumping jacks, jump on a trampoline. If you have one, if you have kids, it's good for everybody, right? That is gonna help you move lymph, movement, jumping, hydration. Okay, the lymph is fluid. It needs fluid to move. So if you're dehydrated, the lymph is not is gonna be more sluggish. So optimizing your hydration is gonna help lymph move. Dry brushing is another great way. Dry brushing or massage, so like physical touch, right? But when we move lymph, we're moving it from the extremities towards the heart. So it's a more intentional pattern of movement. And we can do that with a dry brush, or we can even do that with light massage, right? You can do that to yourself, or you can get a lymphatic massage. Another thing that moves the lymph is deep belly breathing. Okay. When we move the breath in a deep way, we stimulate the vagus nerve. This also helps stimulate the lymph. So a lot of different ways we can help the lymph get going. Okay, that's step number one. Step number two, then once it once the toxins are in the blood, they're gonna go into the liver to be cleansed, right? The liver is like our giant filtration organ, if you will. And the liver is also gonna take a hit because it's one of the first lines of defense, right? Between the lymph and the liver. If either of those two begin to back up or get sluggish, then you know, any of the downstream things we do to support is not gonna be as helpful. Like we first need the lymph flowing, and then we need the liver purifying and cleansing the blood. How you may know if your liver is sluggish, there's a lot of different ways. That could be a whole separate conversation about like signs and symptoms that you might experience. But what I'm thinking about too, working with people one-on-one, especially as you're moving through treatment, is we're doing blood work, right? We're looking at labs. Elevated liver enzymes are gonna be a sign that your liver is struggling. So, how do we support the liver? How do we help the liver stay in optimal function? Diet is gonna be a big part here, okay? A nutrient-dense diet is gonna be very important to nourish the liver and keep the liver working well. Also, liver-loving foods and teas, things like cruciferous vegetables, right? The liver loves the sulfur compounds in cruciferous vegetables. And in case you don't know what I'm talking about, cruciferous vegetables are broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, arugula. It's a whole category. Okay. Alliums are another one that the liver loves. Alliums are your garlic, your onions, leeks, chives. Again, the sulfur. Okay, the sulfur helps the liver do its job. Bitter foods also work really well here. And this is great in the springtime, right? Again, we're recording this in the spring. That's why we're spring cleaning is top of mind. And bitter foods, especially your leafy greens that are coming into season right now, like any of your leafy greens, okay, especially dandelion, is very bitter. You probably see it growing everywhere outside. That is going to help nourish the liver. Green tea is another one. We talked about, remember, we had a whole episode on tea last month with Maria Uspensky. You can go back and listen to that if you're interested in different teas and the benefits of them. Milk thistle is one of my favorite herbs for liver support, especially when we see elevated liver enzymes or if there's any signs or symptoms of sluggish liver, or we're even just doing like an intentional detox protocol. For example, what we also are doing this month in April is we're doing our group fast. So again, inside our coaching program, inside our container, every season we move through a fast together, a guided fast, a three to five day fast, because fasting is one of the best things we can do to help our body stay healthy for as long as possible and to help us stay cancer free. Now, when we're fasting, when we're doing an intentional detox, we will bring in extra liver support. And that is where milk thistle can be really helpful. Okay, you can do that as a tea. It doesn't have to be a supplement. Some other ones that I love that also support the liver, spirulina, chlorella, right? Anything green, honestly, is gonna be a great liver supporter. So that's number two. Number three is the kidneys. Okay, so now once the blood has been cleaned, now what remains can be removed. It can be eliminated, it can be it can leave the body, right? There are so one, two, three, four different pathways that these toxins will leave the body. One way is through the kidneys, another is through the colon or the skin or the lungs. So we're gonna start with the kidneys. And the kidneys are primarily excreting water-soluble toxins. Okay. Now, this is important when we think about some of those toxins we talked about to try to reduce our load, reduce our exposure, hydrocarbons from petroleum products, okay, from plastics, or that also could be in some of your cosmetics, gas, essential, you know, things that we're breathing in. Those are excreted through the kidneys, just as one example. So, how do we help the kidneys be efficient, right? First off, are you well hydrated? That is really like where to start, right? Because if we are dehydrated, we are not supporting the kidneys clearing toxins, right? We need hydration to move the lymph, we need hydration to move the blood, we need hydration to pee. And if you're not urinating at least every two hours, you are probably not drinking enough, okay? Before you even worry about amounts, how much or counting glasses, you know what I mean, or filling up your water bottle. It's just how often are you using the bathroom. And if it's not at least every two hours, you're not drinking enough. And when I say hydration, of course, that can be water, ideally filtered water, but there's other things that can be hydrating too. Teas are a great one, herbal teas, green tea, fresh veggie juices, coconut water. You can mix it up. Milk, plant-based milks, anything that's bringing in liquid is going to help with your hydration. So that is first and foremost, is just we have to be hydrating enough in order to help the kidneys do their job. Plus the lymph, too. Right? There are certain foods that are very nourishing for the kidneys as well. Some of the ones that are good for the liver are also good for the kidneys. So having a nutrient-dense diet with a lot of colorful plants, right? That is also going to help the kidneys. One in particular, so we mentioned, I mentioned dandelion is being especially helpful for the liver as well as milk thistle. Dandelion is also very helpful for the kidneys. And stinging nettle is another one that's really good for the kidneys. And again, when I think about springtime, those are like growing everywhere outside, probably in your garden. Right now, dandelion and stinging nettle. All right, then the colon is another way we eliminate. This is a major one because it is helping us not only excrete water-soluble toxins like the kidneys do, but also fat-soluble toxins. So now this includes a wider array of toxins: pesticides, parabens, phthalates, diesel fumes, you know, like a bigger swath of toxins are going to be eliminated through the colon. Now, if you're not having a bowel movement every single day, I consider that to be constipation. And I know that's not necessarily agreed upon in the Western medical space, where they will claim that, you know, even once every other day, every couple days is normal. No, that's not normal. That's not what the body was designed to do. Okay. If you're not having a bowel movement every single day, those toxins are sitting in your gut. They can get reabsorbed and recirculate and create problems. Okay. So we're aiming for at least one a day, even two or three a day would be great, as long as they're formed and normal. You know, they're not loose or we're not leaning towards diarrhea. That's different. So, how do we help the colon move better? Hydration again. Right? That kind of goes across. I guess it truly is going to go across every single system. That's probably the very first thing you could do to support your detox pathways is just make sure you're hydrating enough. All right. Fiber, though, eating again, nutrient-dense, plant-based foods, getting a lot of good fiber is also going to help the colon do its job. The fiber is also going to help clean up what's in the colon, right? It's going to help you help keep a clean colon. So you can have full formed bowel movements. Movement is also going to be really important here because even though the intestines, the gut does move on its own, it has muscles, right? It's like peristalsis, it does move. The more you move, the more it helps your gut move. So being more active is a way to help your gut move more. Some people have slower peristalsis for various reasons. And in those cases, we're going to bring in foods that actually help stimulate, that helps stimulate the gut to move. Things like ginger, it's a really great one. Artichoke leaf is another. Just to give you a couple examples. And then fermented foods, bringing in probiotic and prebiotic foods to help just restore the overall health and balance of the gut, right? Of the microbiome of the gut is going to help the colon do its job better. Every day, a bowel movement. Okay. We need to shoot for that. All right. Then we have, then we move to the skin. Now, the skin is essentially our largest organ of detoxification. In last week's episode with Jody, we talked a lot about the skin, right? Not only what's coming into the skin, but what's coming out of the skin and how that's impacting like our whole system. So fascinating. You're never going to look at your skin the same way after you listen to that episode. So if you haven't listened to it yet, please go back and do. I think you'll really appreciate it. But our skin is our largest organ of detoxification. It is excreting both fat-soluble toxins. So some of what we talked about for the colon as well, and also heavy metals. So remember, again, remember, if you listen to the episode I shared a couple of weeks ago about reducing toxic exposure, I talked about how a lot of chemotherapies and cancer treatments are toxic, right? And so we have to be mindful of how we clear those and detox those once treatment is done. So it doesn't, you know, continue to be a problem or become a problem later on. The heavy metals that are found in a lot of those chemotherapies, the best way to clear them is through the skin. And yet, this may be true for you too, but how many times have I heard from my clients or my community that they have a hard time sweating? Even when they're exercising, right? Even when they're out in the sun, they have a hard time sweating. That is a sign of a detoxification issue. Like your skin was meant to sweat, to breathe, coming in and out. So we need to help you sweat, right? So we're reducing the toxins that are coming in through the skin. What we're putting on our skin matters, but we also need to help expel things outward through the skin. So how do we help you sweat? For sure, exercise is often the one that works the best for people. But if that is not working well for you, if you still have a hard time sweating, even with exercise, sauna is going to be really important. Detox baths can be helpful. Even red light therapy can be helpful in pulling toxins through the skin, right? Helping the skin breathe better both ways. Ideally, you're sweating every single day. At least a few times a week would be the minimum, but ideally, every single day to make sure things like heavy metals, which have a hard time clearing the body, have an opportunity to be sweated out. All right, our last system is the lungs. And of course, we think we probably think of the lungs as one of the organs where toxins can come in, right? Because what we're breathing, what's in the air. But it is also a way that we exhale toxins, right? We exhale carbon dioxide. We exhale toxins through our body. So how do we help the lungs stay healthy and supportive in our detoxification pathways? Daily deep breathing is probably the best way. Most people are just not breathing deep enough. They're shallow breathers. Most of us are. So having an opportunity where you just sit and take really deep breaths and slow the breath. Fully in, fully out. Air filtration is also probably going to be really important, right? Just like we talked about water filtration in the a previous episode, air filtration might be too, depending on what's true for where you live or where you work, what you're exposed to. Now, there are a few other ways that we can help support detoxification because here's the thing when we are in a stressed-out fight or flight state, when there are other priorities, we're not going to clear toxins, right? That's not considered a short-term survival need. So it's going to be put on the back burning, which means toxins are going to be stored or shuttled away somewhere until we get to a place that's safe enough for our body to like clean house and work on other things. So parasympathetic support, and I know we talk about this a lot here, it is our very first step in our three-step process of how we help people through cancer and after, is to calm the stress response. Okay. Because we don't heal when we're in fight or flight, and we definitely don't detox when we're in fight or flight. Despite all the other things that I talked about, which will be helpful, if you are running in fight or flight mode and you're stressed out all the time, and you have a lot of toxic exposures, that's going to be a very big risk factor for you, right? So nervous system support every day, doing things that switch you out of parasympathetic back into sympathetic. I highly encourage you if you haven't already listened to those or maybe even re-listened to them, go back to all of the episodes I shared in February of 2026. That was the theme for the entire month was nervous system support. Now, another thing that helps with nervous system support is deep and restorative sleep. So sleep support, right? Taking steps to enhance the quality and the quantity of your sleep can also be helpful in helping you detox. Okay. We also do a lot of detoxing and cleaning up during the night when we're sleeping. And if we're not sleeping, we're not taking advantage of that time, or if we're not sleeping well. Now, another thing I want you to consider is the toxins, quote unquote toxins that are coming in through your mental, emotional, and spiritual energy. Energy bodies, right? Because toxins are not just physical. We think of it that way, of course, because that's the majority. But our mental, emotional, spiritual burdens can be just as taxing on the body, especially your immune system, and can be toxic. So having, again, that kind of piggybacks off of the nervous system support because obviously those pieces go together, but having daily practices too that help you emotionally detox, help you offload some of this. So a daily meditation or journaling practice can be helpful. Doing energy work, right? Getting energy healings can be helpful. Avoiding sources of mental emotional toxins as best you can. That could be toxic people in your life. That could be the nightly news, right? That could be social media. It really just depends on what's coming into your awareness, your energetic field during the day. But now would be the time. Like when you're thinking about detox support or you're moving through a detox protocol, or maybe you're in the detox challenge with us right now, we are thinking about the emotional toxins as well. All right, a couple other things before we wrap it up. I've already mentioned this a few times, but just to bring it back home again, fasting is a very effective way to help support detoxification. And not just our like longer extended fasts, like we do together once a season, we do a three to five day fast. Those are very effective. But even your nightly overnight fast can be very helpful. Having enough time without food before you go to bed so that by the time you get to bed, you're done digesting, your body can do other things, right? Your body can start to clean house or repair the immune system or whatever else it needs to do. So, what I typically recommend people start with is a 13 to 15 hour overnight fast. And just do that. Don't worry about going longer. Don't worry about intermittent fasting. Don't worry about a three-day fast. Just start with your overnight fast and try to have at least three hours of no food before you go to bed. That alone is gonna enhance your nightly detox, right? Your nightly cleanup. And that's gonna be very effective at helping to reduce your risk going forward for cancer. The final piece here are supplements. And there are times when we do bring in supplements to help the detox process. When we're doing a concentrated detox protocol, we'll bring in supplements to help. If we know that you're intentionally offloading a lot of toxins, so like through fasting or doing a lot of sauna work, we will bring in supplements to make sure we're like really mopping up what's getting released, depending on your DNA, right? I shared that in the earlier episode this month. But when we can look at your DNA to see how well you are set up to detoxify, to anti-inflame, to antioxidate, right? And once we know your genetic potential, then it might make sense to bring in supplements to make up the difference, right? That becomes obviously more personalized. But a few of the supplements that we might turn to, we might bring in some gut motility if you're really having a hard time getting your gut moving, despite the strategies I mentioned earlier. So we might bring in magnesium or ginger or artichoke or aloe or digestive enzymes to help get things moving. We might bring in binders. So again, if you're in a focused detox, you're fasting, you're doing a lot of sauna work, you're doing chelation work, whatever it is, we will bring in binders to make sure that we're mopping up what's being released and it doesn't get recirculated. So that could be charcoal, it could be zeolite, it could be hummock or fulvic acids. There's a big variety of binders we could use. As a first step, you don't need to take it as a supplement, but just having psyllium in your diet is a grape binder, like a daily binder or spirulina, a chlorella. Those are grape binders that, you know, you don't need to be taking as a supplement. They can just be part of your diet. We might bring in extra liver support. I already mentioned that around the milk thistle. We might bring N-acetylcysteine, occasionally glutathione, but usually not. Usually precursors are where I would start. And we might sometimes also have to bring in extra lymph or bile support. Like if we know further up, like you're just not draining. It's just not getting to the liver, right? Like it's just not getting the process needs help getting started. Then we might bring in some extra herbs or nutrients to help the drainage piece. That could be with astragalus or burdock or dandelion or red clover, tootsa. There's a lot of different ingredients that can be helpful for that. So, how do we put this all together? Right? What is a daily plan? I would suggest first and foremost, you hydrate, right? That's gonna work on almost every single system of detoxification. So, in addition to the trying to lower your burden, right? Controlling what you can, then as far as enhancing your pathways, hydration first, movement second, right? Because again, that's gonna work on several different systems of your body. Sweating after that. Nourishing, so getting enough fiber in, right? Getting a nutrient-dense diet, getting colorful plants, those liver-loving foods, those kidney foods. So a good variety of plants is gonna also be helpful for these organs. Fasting, at least the nightly fast, and then occasionally going longer is gonna be helpful. And finally, rest, getting deep restorative sleep, having moments in your day where you can rest, relax, right? Ground, connect to your parasympathetic state, get out of fight or flight. All of those things are essential for good health, anyways, right? But hopefully now it also makes more sense around how they can specifically help detoxification too, which ultimately, you know, other than the immune system, detoxification is a major pathway, a major system in our body when it comes to helping us stay cancer free. So this is a really important system that we put intention around. I hope that was helpful. I hope you have a few ideas of what you can do going forward to enhance this system for yourself. There's a lot of ways, right? So start with just one and then go from there. And just a reminder inside our coaching program right now, we are guiding our community through an eight-week detox challenge. We're going week by week and we're helping you take really specific action on both reducing your exposures and improving these pathways. So if you're at all interested in getting some personal support from us, now would be a great time to do it. Because not only will you get the coaching around how to enhance your recovery if you're still moving through cancer or enhancing your long-term prevention plan, but you're also going to get some guided direction on taking a closer look at cleaning up, right? Again, one of our primary systems of cancer prevention, one of the primary reasons why cancer grows in our body. This is such important work. And if you're listening to this later, no worries. This eight-week challenge lives inside our program. So anytime you come in to work with us, you can start with that detox challenge. You can click the link in our show notes to learn more and connect with us if you're interested in diving into this with us. Now, next week we will have our final episode in this topic for April. And I have a special guest joining us. Brandon is a cancer survivor. So he's gonna share his own story through cancer and beyond. And also specifically, all the ways he's been working towards a non-toxic lifestyle. This detox piece was a really important part to his long-term prevention plan, something that like really spoke to him and drew him into this work and this sort of holistic living. So we're gonna spend a lot of time talking about not just his story, but all the things he's doing to help reduce his toxic burden and enhance his detox pathways. So I think you're gonna find it really inspiring. Thank you so much for being here with me today. As always, if you're enjoying this, the content that we cover here, please help us spread the word. Please share, podcast, subscribe, leave a review. I'd be so appreciative. We really need your help in getting this information into the ears of as many people as possible. So thank you for that. I wish you such a beautiful day, a beautiful spring, and I look forward to connecting with you again on next week's episode. Bye for now.