Time to Revive: Support Your Gut’s Detox Capabilities With Fiber-Rich Foods

When you hear the word “detoxification,” thoughts of your liver might immediately come to mind. Indeed, the liver is ground zero for detox. This extremely important organ is in charge of processing all the toxins we come into contact with, including everything from environmental toxins to the chemicals found in drugs and medications, and even our own hormones. As a board-certified internist and Functional Medicine Certified practitioner, you’ll often find me talking about how important the liver is for detox, such as in this previous blog post, “ Time to Reset: Cleanse Your Liver .”

The liver definitely has the spotlight when it comes to detox, but the truth is, it’s not the only organ involved in detoxification — not even close. In fact, the following organs also play a critical role in your body’s ability to process toxins and chemicals:

• The kidneys: The kidneys have the important job of filtering blood and excreting waste products in urine, which is essentially to the detoxification process. Factors like too much alcohol, certain medications, and the accumulation of toxins will stall the detoxification process of these two critical organs.
• The skin: Move over, liver. The skin is actually the body’s largest detoxification organ. When other organs get backed up with toxins, the skin has the ability to step in and eliminate toxins through sweating. In fact, if you’re exercising intensely you can eliminate as many as 10 liters of water through perspiration in a single day. And all of that sweat contains toxins like arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury. 
• The gut: Your skin forms a barrier between the outside world and your body, and your gut plays a similar role inside your body. Its surface area is a remarkable 200 times greater than that of your skin, making it your largest surface of interaction with the outside world.

By now I’ve hopefully convinced you that while the liver might score the game-winning goal when it comes to detox, it’s certainly not the only player on the field. In fact, the way the gut controls how we interact with the world makes it a critical but often overlooked detox organ. And that’s why we’ll be talking about it today.

How the Gut Helps With Detoxification

The gut is like the gatekeeper for your body, determining what makes it from your GI tract into your bloodstream and what does not. It not only comes in continuous contact with the nutrients you consume, it also comes into contact with toxins, food additives, microbes, and drugs that may pass through your digestive tract on a daily basis. As the gatekeeper, your gut has the huge task of serving as a porous filter that allows the building blocks of life in , while making sure the detrimental substance you may be exposed to stay out .

In addition to acting as a filter that determines what’s allowed into the body, the gut also acts as a detox organ in and of itself. The cells that line the gut are rich in detoxifying enzymes and the gut works directly with the liver to remove noxious substances derived from food, your environment, gut microbes, and even the operation of your own metabolism and hormones.

The gut also works to detox the body through bowel movements. After all, when the gut does its job as gatekeeper and refuses entry to noxious substances, they have to go somewhere. If the substances we eat are not absorbed into the body, the gut sends them through the rest of the digestive tract and they are efficiently removed from the body via the stool.

As a result, your stool is full of toxins, which is why it’s incredibly important to have at least one bowel movement daily. In fact, it’s perfectly normal to have up to three bowel movements daily, one after each meal. When you suffer from constant or even intermittent constipation, the gut is not properly detoxifying and those toxins are not being properly eliminated.

So how do you make sure that your gut is detoxing efficiently, and that you’re having healthy bowel movements? Make sure the hundred trillion microbes that live inside the gut are as healthy as possible, which brings us to…

Meet the Microbiome: Another Important Detox “Organ”

The gut is home to trillions of microbes, including at least a thousand different species of bacteria, dozens of different types of yeasts and fungi, an unknown number of viruses, and the occasional worm. Collectively these are called the “gut microbiome.”

As a gut health doctor, I write about the importance of the gut microbiome all the time. For example, did you know that the gut is often referred to as the “second brain”? It’s true; in fact, many neurotransmitters are actually synthesized by the gut, including your feel-good serotonin and melatonin, which helps regulate your circadian rhythm .

The gut microbiome also has a hand in critical processes required to have a healthy detox system, including breaking down potentially toxic food compounds, synthesizing certain vitamins and amino acids — like B vitamins and vitamin K — that are involved in detox, and producing short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), which fuel colon cells and promote regular bowel movements.

The gut microbiome also aids the detoxification process directly by supporting phase I and phase II detoxification in the liver. These microbes, for instance, help metabolize certain medications and manage oxalate levels in the body. (High amounts of oxalates from plant foods can bind certain minerals, such as calcium and magnesium, and contribute to problems like kidney stones.) Healthy microbes also  helps  increase the absorption of nutrients that help with detox, such as vitamin C and other antioxidants.   

For these microbes to manage all of their important duties, they need to be strong in number and diversity. This means not only the right ratio of “good” to “bad” microbes, but the right numbers of specific bacteria that can carry out detoxification functions. When these microbes become imbalanced, a phenomenon known as “dysbiosis,” the gut’s detoxification abilities can be impaired.

How Gut Dysbiosis Hinders Detoxification

As you just learned, dysbiosis occurs when there’s an imbalance between favorable and unfavorable gut microbes. Allowing too many unfavorable microbes to grow can also increase the toxicity of certain compounds and release toxins that:

• Increase gut permeability
• Suppress the immune system
• Damage cells in the gut
• Impact how well the gut utilizes the nutrients from food
• Create inflammation within the gut ³

An imbalance in the gut, and the subsequent release of inflammatory signals, can eventually lead to other gut conditions such as a leaky gut . This leakiness or “hyperpermeability” in your gut lining exposes your body to partially digested protein molecules from food and toxic substances, which can slip through the now leaky gut barrier, causing an increase in toxicity and wreak havoc on the body. How? Oftentimes, it’s because the molecules are toxic in and of themselves but sometimes, the immune system does not recognize these molecules so it attacks, which results in food sensitivities. You might not even be aware of these sensitivities, which can manifest as hives, allergies , chronic sinus inflammation, and migraines and become the triggers for irritable bowel syndrome and autoimmune disease.

All of these things – leaky gut, food sensitivities, inflammation – will impact how well the gut and other organs can effectively detoxify. Even if the other detox organs are performing smoothly, when the gut is struggling, the body will become more toxic. 

Luckily, there are some easy and effective ways to safeguard the long-term health of the gut and its role in detoxification such as taking a probiotic supplement.

How Probiotics Promote Gut Balance and Detoxification

The word “probiotics” comes from the Latin word “pro” and the Greek word “biotic,” meaning “for life.” Probiotics are supplements that contain beneficial microbes, such as  Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium (two of the most common types of probiotic bacteria) and beneficial yeasts, such as Saccharomyces boulardii .

These favorable microbes help maintain balance in the gut, allowing it to do its job and prevent over-toxicity. For example, probiotic bacteria can bind toxins such as heavy metals, which are found in much of our food and water supply. One study showed that specific probiotic bacteria, including Lactobacillus , could bind cadmium and lead. When these and other heavy metals accumulate in the body, they can overwhelm the body’s ability to manage free radicals and lead to disease. ⁵

Probiotics are clearly important for strengthening your body’s resilience to toxins, but they don’t act alone. Dietary fiber is an equally critical part of the detoxification puzzle.

Why Fiber Is So Important for Detoxification