Detoxify Your Body

Detoxify Your Body with Dr. Jeffrey Morrison

In this episode of The Functional Medicine Radio Show, Dr. Carri’s special guest Dr. Jeffrey Morrsion explains how you can detoxify your body and get on the road to better health.

Dr. Morrison is a practicing physician, founder of The Morrison Center for Integrative Medicine in New York City, award-winning author of Cleanse Your Body, Clear Your Mind, and Board Certified in Family Practice and Integrative Medicine.  His focus is on preventing and reversing degenerative and chronic diseases by enhancing the body’s innate ability to detoxify and heal itself.

Main Questions Asked:

  • How did you get interested in detox?
  • Are there any other symptoms that make you think that a person might need a detox?
  • Can you tell us about the studies on how much of a burden toxins are to our body now?
  • How do you detoxify your body?
  • Can you give a real case example from your practice?
  • What are three things our listeners can start doing today to help them to achieve more of a detox lifestyle?

Key Points made by Dr. Morrison:

  • While in medical school and living on a medical student’s budget, I was eating tuna fish twice a day every day for two or three years.  I was having memory changes and difficulty concentrating, and symptoms that couldn’t be explained by any medical tests that were performed.  Fortunately, I had the opportunity to work with a doctor that did environmental medicine and he helped me to diagnose that I had mercury toxicity.
  • That recognition helped me start my study in environmental medicine and also recognizing that if we can find the root cause of a person’s problems, we can make a really big impact on helping people feel great again.
  • There are a lot of doctors now who are recognizing how important nutrition, environmental medicine, and detoxification are for really coming up with fantastic strategies to help people to rejuvenate themselves by identifying what these underlying causes are, to help the body work better, and then come up with some targeted strategies for rejuvenation.
  • We can all take inventory when we wake up in the morning.  Are we feeling at our best self?  Once we step out of bed, symptoms are sometimes coming up.
  • All of these symptoms of not performing at our best self are symptoms that the body is not functioning properly.
  • What we use in our office is a Symptom Survey that helps people capture their subjective symptoms on a list and gives it a score.  We use that score as a starting point to help people go through a process to detox themselves and see how well they can feel from beginning to an end.  Usually we look at a four week cycle to see how much better a person can feel on all their symptoms after doing some very simple strategies to help their body work better.
  • The CDC and the EPA do keep outcomes on the amount of chemicals that are being released into the environment.  The last time we checked, we were at 77,000 plus chemicals that are actively being manufactured in the United States and in the world but this number is being added to on an almost daily basis.
  • We’ve got a load of toxins being produced in our modern civilized world that have led to lots of conveniences but at the same time has led to lots of opportunities for exposure.
  • Studies have been around for 20 or 40 years about the fact that the liver has a very efficient way of handling toxins in the environment, and it goes through a two or three phase process to detoxify your body both through the liver and through the colon.
  • Everyone on this planet is getting exposed.  The only issue is how well you can detoxify your body and what you can do to decrease exposure and then improve your innate capacity for that detoxification process.
  • Good health begins with clean cells, clean living, and a clean mind.  It’s like a whole big package.
  • The cell is literally like a microcosm of our whole body.
  • We have to decrease exposures to chemicals by making the proper choices in the foods we eat, the water we drink, and even the skin care products we use.
  • In addition to that there are things we can do to improve cellular oxygenation.  It’s really as simple as just moving.  Anything where the body is moving helps improve circulation to the cells.
  • Even though we’re making it sound like there is a lot to it, it’s about as simple as it gets.  It all just really comes down to making the right choices with the foods we eat, the water we drink, and exercise.  And then making sure we are able to eliminate toxins properly by having a bowel movement one to three times a day and making sure we’re drinking plenty of water to flush toxins out of our kidneys.
  • The other thing we’re always focusing on in our practice is the mind-body connection as it relates to detoxification.
  • Nowadays we not only have the stresses from our environment but we also have emotional stresses.
  • We know that in order for you to be able to detoxify your body optimally, it needs to be in the rest and relaxed state but when you are always in that fight or flight response it is not conducive to detoxification.
  • Even though we help guide people to make the right choices, we also want to bring awareness of the importance of meditation practices, being mindful, and working on a process to get out of that chronic fight or flight state.
  • When we get people to start shifting from a negative to a positive level of consciousness, they make tremendous strides.
  • It’s very satisfying to be in a practice where patients get really enthusiastic, they feel the benefit, and people around them see the difference as well.
  • The three magic things that will transform a patient’s life forever…I’m a minimalist.  I try to focus on things that are manageable, that they can do today that will make a big impact tomorrow.
  • My big one is making sure that people are getting 7.5 to 8 hours of sleep a night.
  • Number two is it’s important to exercise.
  • It’s really important to work with an integrative holistic health care provider as a coach on the journey of the detoxification process.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – Cleanse Your Body, Clear Your Mind

Dr. Morrison’s website

Dr. Morrison’s Symptom Survey

Gotmercury.org

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

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