Detoxification Done Right (Performance & Longevity Series)

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Transcript: Detoxification Done Right (Performance & Longevity Series)

Season 11, Episode 22  | October 9, 2025

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Welcome to Life Time Talks in our series on performance and longevity with MIORA. I’m Jamie Martin. And I’m here today with Life Time’s Chief Science Officer, Jim LaValle We are talking about detox. The body has its own natural detoxification process through organs like the liver, kidneys, and lymphatic system. And supporting these pathways is critical to our health. So we’re going to dive deep into what those systems are, how they work, and what we can all do to support them.

So Jim, welcome back.

Great to be here.

So we hear all the time, you heard me say it at the top of the show, that there are a lot of things that you hear about in health and wellness. You got to detox. You got to detox. The reality is that our bodies do know how to detox. They’re built to do that to a degree. So can you explain how that works before we talk about how it gets compromised?

Sure. So the first thing is when we hear here detox, we think, oh, detox your liver, detox your gut, which are organs of detoxification. But your kidneys also help with detoxification. Your skin, your lymph, your lungs, you breathe out and expel intoxicants.

And so all of your body is working at either getting rid of things that it’s taken in from the environment, or getting rid of things that are a byproduct of your metabolism, or getting rid of byproducts of metabolism from things that are happening that maybe shouldn’t be there.

Like, for example, if you’re growing Candida, for example, people have heard of Candida, and the byproducts of Candida metabolism are things like mycotoxins. And your body has to get rid of those. So your body’s pretty busy all the time, trying to clear the byproducts of what it gets exposed to and what’s happening inside the body.

So we know, like you mentioned, those organs, including the intestine and all that as well, our digestive system is involved there too.

Yeah. You had mentioned that right away. So yeah, absolutely. The gut is super important.

1. So what’s the connection between our body’s ability to detox and our health and how we feel?

Well, so if you can’t process an intoxicant or you can’t metabolize your hormones. This isn’t just about toxicity. This is about your body’s ability to process things. So for example, if you can’t get rid of environmental burden, something like mercury from fish that you’re eating or arsenic from the rice that you ate because we have these environmental burdens in our food, they can accumulate. And when they accumulate, they disrupt or denature enzyme systems in our body that run every aspect of our chemistry.

So there’s thousands of different enzymes, systems that are going on. And so from the environmental burden side, if I can’t clear it and I start to store it, it can affect enzyme substrates. It can damage your DNA. They could bind to hormone receptor sites, and therefore, inactivate the ability of a hormone to bind to its receptor. Lead displaces calcium, so you get lead in your bones. Mercury displaces magnesium. So there’s all these things that happen when we get exposure. So that’s one.

If you don’t take enough fiber in, or if your diet is very high in sugar, carbohydrates, or a very high fat diet, you end up making an unfriendly microbiome. And that unfriendly microbiome releases an enzyme called beta-glucuronidase. And when a woman is metabolizing her estrogen, it goes through what’s called the glucuronide pathway. So you put a handle on the estrogen to carry it out.

But it’s going through the intestine, and that enzyme, beta glucuronidase that got upregulated because of a lack of fiber, too much sugar, too many carbs, and/or a very high fat diet, that enzyme cleaves that handle off and now you’ve got free estrogen. And that recirculates and stores. And so there’s a lot of ways that things happen. And so one of the most important things that can happen is called phase I, phase II, and lately they’ve discussed phase III detoxification.

So let’s walk through those then. What are they? I want to know about this phase III. But let’s start with phase I and what is happening in that phase.

So when you get exposed to something or your body has to metabolize something, you go through what’s called the cytochrome P450 system. So it’s the first phase of detoxification. And say it’s a compound that you got exposed to. When it’s in the middle of metabolically processing it, the detox process, the intermediate, so you got the original compound and you got this first process, the intermediate compound. It’s actually usually more toxic than the first compound.

Than that first thing you were exposed to.

Exactly. Phase II detoxification is I’m going to take that intermediate that’s pretty reactive, and I’m going to process it to make it water soluble and able to be eliminated, either through typically the gut through feces, through urine, or it could pass off through your skin, for that matter. But that phase I and phase II is to render something that’s basically toxic and making it harmless.

So it can exit your system more easily.

Exactly. That’s the process. Now, the problem is you could have genetic predispositions to being a poor detoxifier. That’s never really — I’ve done a lot of work, I’ve even done studies detoxifying people. That’s never really been as important to me as understanding, well, you need to have adequate magnesium for phase I detoxification. You have to think about other nutrients that your body needs in order to process that phase I detoxification pathway. So amino acids and vitamins. And so that’s happening.

And then on the second phase, it’s also the need for things like glycine and sulfur and B vitamins and other amino acids that helps you be able to continue to do those functions. So a lot of times people get into trouble just because they have inadequate nutrient status and now their body can’t perform that smooth transition to phase I and phase II. So what happens?

I mean, most people have seen the old Lucille Ball movie or skit, where the pies are going down the conveyor belt and she can’t keep up with them. So she’s trying to eat them and she’s shoving them in her pocket. That’s what’s happening with your liver. It can’t keep up with that conveyor belt. And so that conveyor belt now is getting backed up with intermediate intoxicants.

And then if you combine that, because once again, there’s never one root cause most of the time. Someone who may be a little insulin resistant and they already are storing fat in their liver, now all of a sudden we’re starting to get a little bit of a train wreck. And so that’s where the real issues come. And then there’s things that can change your ability to detoxify.

For example, grapefruit juice is, hey, if you’re on certain medications, you don’t want to drink grapefruit juice with it because it could speed up the detoxification process or metabolism of that drug. Vegetarian diets actually slow down detoxification. I mean, just because you don’t get as much cysteine, so you don’t get as much sulfur. It’s not saying don’t be vegetarian. If you have a belief that that’s the way to be, no problem. You just got to get dietary sulfur in.

Yep, because that will help support that natural process better.

Exactly. And so those are the keys to it is understanding that protein improves detoxification, milk thistle improves detoxification. So there’s nutrients that can help improve it. There are things that could slow it down. And then after it has to be taken from phase I to phase II, what phase III is, is the process of going through the kidneys.

And so if you have an acidic pH to your urine, that means you have an excess of hydrogen ions. That means that your body is more in a highly oxidized state in the kidneys. Well, if you have something that you’re passing through that has the handle on it, that acidic pH can break that handle off and now you have that free intoxicant trying to be metabolized in the kidneys, which then triggers more free radical damage or damage to the kidneys.

And so phase I, phase II, phase III is to get it out through the liver. Then, of course, it can go through the stool and feces. But then that water-soluble component where it’s trying to be eliminated by the kidneys can be affected by that.

What happens when it can’t get eliminated by the kidneys? Does it just recirculate again?

Well, it’ll either store. So for example, there’s a lot of studies that show the storage of certain metals or intoxicants in the kidneys. So a certain percentage of it will recirculate and some of it will get stored and cause damage.

So let’s say your system’s not functioning as it should. These phases aren’t — you’re not going through the phases as you would. What are the symptoms that you might notice or some issues you might be experiencing as a result of your detox system not functioning as it should?

Yeah. A really good question. I mean, easy one is skin rashes. Skin rashes, headaches, feeling puffy, inflammation. So it could be joint aches. It could be headaches. It could be changes in your lab chemistry. So kidney function, liver function. It could be changes in your hormones because of the way you’re processing them.

Literally any number of symptoms could drive back to, oh, you’re having problems with detoxification. But the big ones — headaches, inflammation, skin, joint aches, joint pain, cognitive cloudiness. And then, of course, GI symptoms, the obvious ones, diarrhea, constipation, bloating, gas, abdominal discomfort.

Kind of some of the common things that would be looking for. It’s so interesting because you could attribute those to any number of things. So now let’s say somebody’s listening and they’re like, oh, I’m experiencing some of those things. What would you suggest for them in terms of learning, like, hey, your detox pathway needs some support? I mean, obviously, there’s the testing we would do, as always. That’s always foundational from getting that comprehensive lab info.

Yeah. Well, I think, in general, I always start with giving people recommendations on how you’re going to improve that intoxication pathway. And the first one is going to be, are you drinking water? What’s your diet like? Are you sweating? Because it’s one of the things people also will see as a symptom is I don’t sweat. I go into sauna and I don’t sweat. I mean, they’ll just say it’s very difficult for them to sweat. That’s a lot of lymphatic congestion.

And so when people are saying, hey, I’ve got headaches, or gee, I’ve got inflammation, or my gosh, I’m bloated, I’m gassy, and I’ve got this terrible irritable bowel. I’m going to always fall back on what’s the source. So it’s one thing to just say, oh, you need to detox. And to do it, a short-term detoxification, or what I’d call a cleanse that allows people to be a little more strict, do a reset on their food, take nutrients that will help them to process. That’s a nice reset.

But you have to keep in mind that you probably need to work on things a little bit more to understand, well, why are you having those symptoms? Because it could be due to those detox pathways being backed up. It could be due to the fact, for example, the gut-skin connection, very clear. Lots of papers coming out on the whole aspect of the microbiome, the gut and skin health. Which would, in fact, make that a detoxification process get jumbled up. But you would work on the gut.

Yeah, you start there.

You would start there. So if somebody comes in and tells me, oh, yeah, I work in a cabinet shop and I’m exposed to formaldehyde a lot. Or I’m a mechanic and I don’t know if you — you look at the back of an oil can and there’s a skull and crossbones on the back of there, and it says, don’t get on your hands or skin.

But that’s happening on a regular basis.

Yeah, many mechanics. I mean, it’s more and more frequently you see now. You never used to see mechanics wear like rubber gloves while they’re working on cars. Nowadays, a lot more are doing that. So it’s that thought of are you a high-exposure person? If you’re over a certain age, I think of that as well. So when you’re especially in your 60s, leaded gas was around. You read newspapers and got the ink on your hands. There was all kinds of ways that could think of exposure, and we’re still getting it today. It’s not like it’s all gone away.

So age dependency would be a thought. And then what is their exposome look like. What are they exposed to? And then is it something that if we clean the person up, meaning look at their big metabolic roadblocks and correct for those, do a lot of other things go away?

But I always like people thinking of, well, maybe I should do a couple week program just to really tighten up my diet, create a little bit less food load, and use appropriate powders that help clean up at least the gut and the liver. And I think those are valuable things that people can do.

Yeah. I mean, that’s something that is a very regular offering we have at Life Time. We have our detox program. It’s 14 days. But again, you mentioned that’s kind of a short-term thing. You often hear do something like that a couple times a year. I always do one in the spring, maybe do one in the fall, and then go from there.

When you’re seeing somebody who has a lot of symptoms, a lot of things ongoing, they have high exposure. That’s a longer process and going to take more time, more commitment to make some really significant changes. And what are some of the biomarkers? You’ve talked about meta-inflammation that would maybe be indicators for them. What are some other things that, in their case, why they would need to focus for much longer potentially?

Yeah. I mean, you can measure — you could actually in an advance screening, you could measure something like toxic metals or pesticides. You can find out what the levels are. And that would tell you right away. I mean, you don’t get rid of those things on a master cleanse diet, where you’re drinking maple syrup and lemon water. That’s not going to be it.

And honestly, when you get to that level, you really need an oversight. You want to have a practitioner in your corner because it’s going to take months. You don’t want to pull those kind of things out fast. You want to pull them out slowly. And you don’t want to feel bad in the process because some people will feel bad when they detoxify.

I don’t know. I never thought it was really smart to have people feel bad from the work that I was doing on them, so I tried to do it so they were comfortable. And then over time, you can continue to target where they need to go. So it’s different.

If it’s the gut, you may choose to do a microbiome test and find out, well, do you have a bunch of unfriendly flora? Do you have a bunch of inflammatory compounds going on? What are the things that a test could show that you would go, oh, we need to work on gut detoxification, for example, or at least rebalancing of the microflora? We need to look at something like a toxic metal test.

If you’re looking at the general test, meaning the metabolic code, very comprehensive test, kidney function is important and it’s in there. And we’re seeing a lot of people with kidney problems these days. There’s a lot of dialysis centers going up everywhere. So kidney function? Where is your liver at? What’s your liver enzymes? Do you have elevated triglycerides? That’s important.

Where’s your white blood cell count at? It turns out that if your white blood cell count is kind of low, like in the low 3’s, typically you’re going to benefit from detoxification. There’s probably a little bit of a toxin overload when that white blood cell count is really suppressed. So you want to look at that and see where that’s at.

And then, of course, it’s just looking at different aspects of metabolic inflammation. Mean Platelet Volume, another thing in the CBC, MVP. The higher the MPV, the more the risk of metabolic inflammation. C-reactive protein, we think of that just as a hard number. But really that lab test is showing inflammation that could be getting triggered by toxicity as well. So you can look at that as well.

A lot of times companies do blood for their heavy metals. So they say, oh, we’re measuring to see if you’ve got any markers for metals in your blood. Do you have lead? Do you have mercury? Do you have cadmium? Here’s the problem with that. Unless you’re acutely exposed, if you’re acutely exposed, it’s going to show up in your blood. If it’s a chronic low-grade exposure, your body gets that stuff out of your bloodstream and stores it in your tissues. And where it goes, bone, fat, nerves, that’s where it’s going to go.

And can you test then?

You can test that. That’s called a provoked urine challenge. So what we do when we see that’s an issue is we can use doctor’s data, which is an American Board of Pathology certified lab. And you give an amino acid — so say wake up in the morning, you have your first morning urination, and then you swallow the pills. They’re just amino acids. And then you drink water and you collect your urine for the next six hours.

You take a sample of that urine, send it off to the lab, and it’ll tell us what are all the different toxic metals that you have. And then you can also do something for pesticides as well, if needed. But typically, the metals are the big one I usually teach on and have shown to have the most impact. So yeah, you just measure it. And then you can begin to understand, well, is this a problem for me or not?

So you’ve learned that it is a problem for you. What is the kind of therapeutic approach to addressing a detoxification issue? What do you have to set somebody down in that case?

Well, say it’s somebody that’s really overweight and they feel miserable. The very first thing I’m going to do is balance out their minerals, get their diet right, work on their gut. Really try to develop some resiliency. You need magnesium is actually helpful as well. So I’m going to try and get a few steps in.

If it’s somebody where it’s critical that they would detoxify first, like in past clinics, a Parkinson’s case, for example, well, then you’re going to have to start a little quicker. But ideally, what you’ll do is get people on good solid footing. If they need kidney support, you can give them herbs like solidago or shatavari, which are really good. They’re in the Commission E monograph in Germany for physicians to use actually. Here are their dietary supplements.

So do we need to support the kidneys? Do we need to support the liver? Do we need to support the lymph? And that’s more to help the body process as you start to stir it up. So once you start to stir up, I’m pulling these things out. And I think that’s the value with MIORA is we can use a little bit higher powered things like, let’s say a big word here, dimercaptosuccinic acid. I don’t know if I could say that one three times real fast. I’m not sure.

But DMSA is an oral way that you can pull things out slowly. And obviously, there’s groups that resort to doing IVs or there’s a whole bunch of different ways that you can try to do it. But I don’t know, for the last 15 years in the clinics that I’m involved with, we’ve been using DMSA. It works great. You do it two days out of seven. And then the other days, you should be taking fiber. Taking magnesium.

And maybe taking a more gentle form of detoxification like chlorophyll, for example. Chlorella, that’s really good. Fulvic acid, which everybody — sort of shilajit now is very popular. Cilantro is very popular. So you can use that on the days just to support what’s happening and you’re stirring it up. But about every two days out of seven, you do a dose. And that it really leaches out a lot of toxic metals out of tissues. And over time, you clear it.

Yeah. How long does it — like for let’s say an average person that you’ve worked with. And I know the answer is always it depends. It depends on the individual. But does is there an average a length of time that it takes for somebody to detox, or is it really dependent on how much you’ve been carrying?

It’s a little bit of both. Yeah. I mean, it does depend on how much you’ve got. The more you got, the more you got to get it out. And you can only get it out so quick. And then there’s individual variation, so that that’s where that genetics — once you’re toxic, then the genetics for methylation, COMT gene, SNPs. I mean, all of that can start to play into it. So maybe you need to supply some S-Adenosyl Methionine, otherwise known as SAM-e milk thistle, support that detox capacity.

And then really from there, it’s just starting on a regular program. And I’ll give you a good example. Women that have had breast cancer. They get cisplatin. And when I was in Ohio and I was working with oncology groups in Ohio, I always noticed that women a year after their oncology, I would do a toxic metal urine on them and they had loads of platinum in them still.

And it’s not that the platinum is circulating around in the bloodstream anymore, it stores in the bone and affects the bone marrow. And this is even the literature that you read on it. And it also can drive autoimmune behaviors or reactivation of cancers because — you’re doing a good thing. I’m not criticizing oncology. But I think why I had such great success and why there was a few oncologists that were referring to me is because I cleaned the body up after that insult.

That could take a year. Lead could take a year. It depends on the individual. Sometimes it’s six months and it’s all clear. It just depends how much load you have. How much burden.

Well, and we also know that it’s not just about the protocol, the therapeutic approach. It’s also about those other lifestyle habits that you’re embracing adopting along the way too. So let’s talk about that because you’ve alluded to nutrition already. We know that what we put in our bodies can either support or detract from what we’re absorbing and taking in. But then there’s other things we can do, saunas and all of those. So we can incorporate different habits, behaviors into our lives to support our detoxification pathways.

Love saunas, four times a week for 20 minutes. Heat up the fat cells. Let it sweat. A lot of people do, and they walk out of the sauna, what do they grab? So you get out of sauna, what do you grab?

What do they grab? I mean, a bottle of water, typically.

Water, and what else?

I don’t even know.

Do they ever grab a towel?

Oh, yeah. Yes, that would be the obvious.

That was my quiz.

I failed.

Yeah.

You grab a towel.

You grab a towel. But you know what’s interesting? You shouldn’t rub the sweat off because you just excreted it. And why would you be rubbing it back into your body. So instead what you want to do is you want to go to the shower, get soaped up. Take a shower and get that stuff off your skin. A lot of people don’t think about that. That’s my job is to think about that.

That’s your job. And actually you know what? I was just thinking about this. My husband is doing it right then because that’s the first thing he does. Sauna, shower immediately.

It’s really interesting how a lot of times if we don’t get the steps right on certain processes, you minimize it. So the other thing you could do is you could take a little bit of niacin before you go into the sauna, like 50 milligrams. Not a big dose, but enough to create vasodilation. And then use a loofah sponge and just work through where your lymphatics are. And you can do it on the inner thighs. You can do it underneath the arms. And that’s going to help to stimulate that lymphatic flow. So sauna is fantastic in terms of that.

Obviously, with the diet, lots of vegetables. Soup going to always be helpful in regards to that. Taking fiber. Once again, my second most favorite thing to tell people to do is to get fiber in because fiber will help with the binding as you’re eliminating toxins through the gut. That’s going to help to carry them out. That’s exactly right. I mean, obviously, exercise because you’re sweating and you’re moving the lymph. Really important.

And those are the key things. I mean, I actually keep it pretty simple when I’m doing detoxification programs with individuals because it doesn’t have to be complex. It just has to be effective. And that’s why you want to measure and then remeasure. Because sometimes people won’t have a very high level, but you start stirring all that up within the body, their second test may actually be higher.

Yeah. If that’s the case, you think about what are you feeling when there’s a lot going on with detox, or you’re stirring it up. Are they going to feel worse potentially? Do you find that they come in feeling a certain way, they’re three months in, let’s say, and things are stirred up, is there kind of that intermediary place where they may not feel great yet and then?

Yeah, it’s a great question. I’ve always tried to avoid that by giving what’s called drainage formulas. Things that support the kidneys, things that support the liver, things that support the lymph so that you’re maximizing their processing of it. You know when you’re detoxifying too much. And I know I did a clinical trial on a detox protocol. And people were getting headaches and achy.

I’ve heard it can feel like almost flu-like symptoms. And that’s not a great place. You don’t want to feel that way when you’re trying to get better.

Yeah. And I think it minimizes the desire to continue on. Am I going to feel like this for a long time because I’ve got to work? So that’s why I’ve always said get support, start slow, get the sauna going, change your diet, get the microbiome going with some fiber. Can I get you at ground zero? Just don’t jump into, oh, I need to detox.

And then the other piece is I really like it when there’s providers involved because you can look and see, well, how is your kidney function doing? How’s your liver function doing? Where’s your body at? And I think that makes a huge difference as well.

Yeah. So really it’s about wading in and having that support really. Not just like diving into the deep end and going all in, because again, if you don’t want to — you want to feel good even if — you don’t want to feel miserable as they’re going through the process.

Well, I think to your point on the detox kit, doing that a couple times a year, what a great — that’s basic. That’s easy. That makes sense. And should be done. But once you start getting into, hey, I’m going to move things out of the body. Yeah, oversight’s good.

Yeah. Always good to have support. Jim, anything we missed on this topic you want to make sure we cover?

It is such a big topic, and I’ve worked on people for 40 years in this space. And I think the biggest misconception is, well, how did I get that stuff in me? It’s understanding that we’re fully interactive with our environment. And that we store things. And if our body can’t detoxify, we can’t get rid of them. And when we can’t get rid of them, that’s where we start having troubles with damage to DNA and damage to our organs and tissues. And once again, leading us down a path towards chronic illness, not chronic health.

And that’s what we want. We want that chronic health for that health span.

Absolutely.

Awesome. OK. If people want to learn more, they can visit miora.lifetime.life. Jim, thanks for joining me again.

It’s great being here.

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