This is Why You Need to Be Detoxing!

Scott: We talked a little bit about toxicity and a lot of environmental toxins.  Are you a believer in detoxing, at least on some sort of a regular schedule and how do you go about doing that?

Philip Weeks: Well, I mean in theory, the body should be able to detoxify itself.  We're detoxifying all the time.  We're designed to detox internal toxins.  These are natural, metabolic waste that's created in our body.  However, like I said before, we have this huge burden of environmental toxins which our body has never recognized before.  So I do all kinds of tests.  I find heavy metals in people, mercury from their fillings, I find organic phosphates from food, I'm finding plastics and phthalates, and bisphenol A, all of these chemicals that bioaccumulate in our fat cells.  They go to... they're fat soluble toxins.  They go where the fat is in our system.  

So in theory, the body should be able to do it itself.  But yet, we're finding toxins in people's body that's essentially bioaccumulated over years and years and years.  So we have to do something.  We have to be proactive and have something in our lifestyle, in our routine where we're detoxing.  And there's lots of different ways we can do that.  

If you think about what ancient peoples do, they... normally it's part of some kind of religious or spiritual understanding that fasting is a part of all ancient cultures.  And fasting is a very, very good way of enabling the body to detoxify.  And there's lots of studies on intermittent fasting, the benefits of intermittent fasting, that means taking a day or two a week where you're eating a minimal amount of calories.  Normally that's between 500 and 600 calories a day for one or two days a week, and have all kinds of beneficial effects for the body.   And also for the brain as well.  So we have to do something.  I don't believe we are in a world now where we can do nothing and still be healthy, so I think people have to put something into their routine.  I do that will all of my patients as well.  Every so often we do regular detoxes and I promote that with what we're doing in their lifestyle.