If you’ve ever been to my house, you will notice that the closets and drawers tend to gather piles of papers and things that haven’t been fully processed. They sit and gather and wait for that day when I finally go back in and declare, “Today is the day that I deal with you!” On that day, the stars have aligned and I have the energy, the time, and the resources to deal with the piles.
Some of my patients find that their bodies have started to resemble my closets – filled with unnecessary objects and compounds that take up space and serve no beneficial purpose. Sometimes, instead of being inert objects, the compounds they harbor are toxic, causing inflammation, alternating gene expression, or utilizing metabolic resources normally reserved for everyday waste products. I try to help align my patients’ stars with a supplement designed to “cleanse” them, although I rarely use this type of terminology. Hypothetically, the presence of abundant cofactors for metabolism and excretion will induce these processes to pick up where they left off; the content of the body’s closets will finally be processed.
Of the many well formulated products designed to increase metabolism and excretion of xenobiotics, I have randomly chosen three to review here. Metagenics Adva Clear and Ultra Clear Macro (a pill, powder combo); Tyler’s Detoxication Formula and Lipotropic Complex (a pill, pill combo); and Thorne’s Mediclear (a powder).
Most products, including the ones mentioned, aim to aid the function of the Cytochrome P450 system, an enzymatic system within the liver that metabolizes lipid soluble hormones and toxins into water soluble forms that can be excreted from the body. The three products mentioned are similar in their vitamin and mineral composition, with an occasional difference in form. They start to differ from one another in the amino acid arena. After glycine, glutamine and taurine, they all add a few, or in Tyler’s case, a lot more amino acids into the blend.
Where they completely differ is when it comes to essential fatty acids and herbs. Thorne’s product has no herbs but is the only product mentioned with borage oil and added medium chain triglycerides. The Metagenics products have a handful of herbs, including the star of liver function – milk thistle seed extract. The Tyler products have at least twice the amount of herbs, including many different forms of silymarin, from milk thistle seed. Each company mentioned has a variety of products with additional herbs, amino acids and nutrients in the blends.
Recent studies have been done to determine the effects of different nutrients, herbs and phytochemicals on hepatoprotection, xenobiotic metabolism and antioxidant activity. Be forewarned, the language involved in discussing the enzymatic processes of detoxification may lead you to believe that your medical journal is really an IT journal in disguise. The phrase, “…downregulation of cyclin D1, cyclin E, cyclin– dependent kinase (CDK)2, CDK4, and CDK6 and upregulation of p15, p21, and p27,” is par for the course. Perhaps it is a harbinger of things to come, and the ND community will develop its own brand of “detox geek” similar to the ones often seen shopping at the Mac store and attending Star Trek conferences. Let’s just hope they can get more dates.
It is a popular theory that toxic exposure resulting in chronic insult to the tissue via oxidative stress can lead to cancer. Since funding for cancer research is so great, natural substances that fall into this category have been increasingly examined in recent studies.
Flavonoids, vitamin E, indole-3-carbinol, amino acids, specific herbs and herb blends have been explored for their role in detoxification and anticarcinogenic processes. Unfortunately, many of these are animal studies. One human study looked at an herbal tea and its effectiveness in helping men quit smoking. Of the 11 herbs chosen for the tea, Eugenia aromaticum and Astragalus membranaceus Bunge showed the highest antioxidant activity. Of 100 men involved in the four week study, it was found that the men drinking the tea were metabolizing their nicotine at a higher rate, had less symptoms of withdrawal, and had a 38% success rate versus the 12% of men not drinking the tea.
Glutathione and its enzymes are other popular targets of investigation, as is the mineral they are dependent upon – selenium. While selenium supplementation alone is not always seen as beneficial in environmental associated health disorders, glutathione and glutathione precursors usually show a positive correlation. Again, many of the studies are done in animals or in vitro. One Russian study of 12 children with allergic asthma and recurrent respiratory disease showed that they had deficiency of reduced glutathione in their blood. Supplementation of reduced glutathione, L-cysteine and anthocyanins resulted in improvement of clinical status, as well as an increase of lymphocyte response to mitogens and an increased NK cell activity, among other parameters.
As your patients prepare for their spring cleaning, you can read up on the latest and greatest in scientific validation for herbal and nutritional medicine. Help your patients keep in mind that no matter which intervention you both choose, a successful spring cleaning of any kind involves the creation of a lot of waste that needs to be taken out. Keep the clean water flowing in and the waste moving out and they should feel better when it is all said and done.
Patient translation: Your body requires many different nutrients to break down toxins and get them out of your body. If you are deficient in any of these nutrients, your body will store these toxins away until it has everything it needs to complete the process. When we flood your body with the nutrients typically needed to break down toxins, it should pick up where it left off and get the toxins out of your body.