QUESTION: I have a former SEAL who is going to begin training for a 24 hr endurance event. He’s interested in doing a detox before he begins training. Any reason a liver detox (Thorne’s or Designs for Health, probably) would be a bad idea in an athlete?
ANSWER: I have had many SEAL and other “operators” as patients and consulted for other doctors treating this type of military personnel. I have done extensive testing with many and the one unifying thing is “It’s not if they are toxic, but how bad it is”. If one starts with the idea that they all need to depurate and detox (and they do) BUT that if you poke the dragon by detoxing before depurating the person can become very sick and their athletic performance can decrease. It appears they are still physically active which is part of depurating, muscle activity – sweating – hydrating – high oral fiber – are all big for the depuration end of things.
If that is covered you need to support co-factors so that the endogenous metabolic (‘detox’) pathways are well supported (i.e. nothing gets trapped) – this is good dosing of broad trace minerals & magnesium etc; All the B-Vitamins and like nutrients.
Then the ReDox triplet has to be addressed to keep the operations from damaging the cells in his body (I have written a lot about this topic but it is basically ReDox support for all compartments: Tocopherols/EFA’s/Ascorbate/Glutathione support). For more on Redox, listen to this webcall.
Only after that would one add specific ‘detox’ supplements – which are fine actually if the bases are covered. Based on my experience with this population I’d suggest (eventually not for this pre-athletic event thing) a pre and post UTM as well as chemical exposure testing as well.
