Speaker 1 – Welcome back. Spring could be a great time to start practicing healthier lifestyle habits. And today, Dr. Erica Steele from holistic family practice in Virginia Beach is here to discuss one of the latest health fads, detoxification. We’ve talked much about it here on the coastline, Dr. Steele; welcome back to the show. It’s great to see you today.
Speaker 2 – Thank you so much for having me again.
Speaker 1 – Let’s talk about this detoxification. What is it for folks who don’t know, and why should people look into it?
Speaker 2 – Yeah, so detoxification is the process of ridding your body of environmental toxins. We have metabolic products with our waste products from just our metabolism, but then we also detoxify from all the different chemicals in our environment.
Speaker 1 – Alright, what sort of symptoms might somebody be experiencing if detoxing is in their best interest?
Speaker 2 – Excessive sweating and body odor are bad breath, fatigue, brain fog, gassing, bloating, and constipation. Those are all typical symptoms that somebody really needs to detoxify their organs.
Speaker 1 – I’ve got quite a few of those on the list. All right, so let’s say that somebody, not any particular daytime talk show host, has some of these symptoms; why would detox be the best option to help them?
Speaker 2 – Well, detoxification number one, especially in spring, it’s a great transition because we tend to eat heavier in the winter. And then we transitioned to eating lighter in the spring where it was, excuse me, Summer, were more active and that kind of thing. So detoxification can be a healthy tool for overall Oregon health and function, and hygieneYou know, we’re taught to brush our teeth and, we’re prepared ta shower, those sorts of things. But we’re not necessarily led to detoxify our organs and how to detoxify our organs.
Speaker 1 – A lot of that is detoxifying your diet, right, like eating pure foods, is that right?
Speaker 2 – Yeah, I often tend to advise patients if they’re going to do it themselves without a health care professional to start just with their food, right? So we tend to know what we’re eating and not eating. That’s healthy, right? So we tend to see if we’re eating junk, we’re eating processed foods, those sorts of things. So eliminating those, but there are also some really popular food-based detoxes, such as the Daniel fast or the whole 30, which remove all of the pro-inflammatory foods in the diet. So then, we detoxify our bodies naturally by eliminating those things from the diet.
Speaker 1 – And you’ve talked a lot about this on our show, in your segment, the holistic wellness men, and we had just one yesterday about crafting better metabolism and your body. So, what’s next for somebody looking to detox once we take care of our diet?
Speaker 2 – So once you look at your diet, then that’s when we use herbs, or we’ll use homeopathy. A lot of times, I’ll look at labs to be able to determine that a funny story. The first time I detoxified somebody, I was like, brand new naturopath. I was like, You know what, I’m just gonna go do it, wing it. And the patient actually got really sick. And she called me up as like, oh my gosh, what did I do? I ran labs and looked at her adrenals which are stress glands. She was a busy real estate agent. And they were just exhausted. Electrolytes were just in the toilet. And so when I learned then was this, I’m never going to detoxify somebody without looking at their labs because there are so many things that you really just don’t know, she was, you know, super busy, high energy, but then your body needs extra energy to detoxify. So I always look at labs. So, of course, I can review somebody’s labs for them. We also have a 21-day detox program, and we have some webinars coming up to educate you more because that’s really important, especially if you have a diagnosis or you’re on medications or things like that.
Speaker 1 – Speaking of your webinars, you’re going into more detail about detoxification one coming up soon. How can we watch it?
Speaker 2 – Yeah, so we have it. It’s an online webinar. You can text our office, and they’ll give you links to our website, socials, etc. And so you’ll be able to tune in then, and it’s an hour long, and I’ll educate you from beginning to end. I always love to inform people about how they can live naturally.
Speaker 1 – Dr. Erica Steele, you always teach me. I legitimately learn so much every time I talk to you. Thank you so much for coming to the show. I can’t wait to talk to you next time.
Speaker 2 – Awesome. Sounds good. Have a great day. You too.