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5 steps to detox heavy metals

By Kaya Kozanecka

Step into any wellness corner of the internet and you’ll be told you’re heavy metal toxic. Mercury in your brain, arsenic in your skin, lead in your bones. And the solution, apparently, is to neck a green smoothie and “flush it all out”.

Spoiler... that’s how a lot of people make themselves worse.

The truth is, heavy metals are everywhere in our environment. And once inside us, they wedge themselves into enzymes, displace essential minerals, and disrupt the mitochondria that keep our cells functioning. But if you try to push them out too fast or without the right nutritional scaffolding, you risk redistribution, shifting them from somewhere relatively harmless (like your thigh bone) to somewhere catastrophic (like your hippocampus). And at best case? You’ve fallen for expensive wellness marketing.

And there’s a lot more to say here about “detox”. Your body already comes equipped with exquisitely designed detox systems, liver, kidneys, lymph, skin, lungs. Given the right environment (nutrient sufficiency, deep sleep, low toxic exposure, and regular elimination) it can return to homeostasis without a single juice cleanse or enema.

The problem is, most modern “detox” protocols do the opposite. They strip the body of nutrients, overwhelm the organs of elimination, and stir up stored toxins without providing a safe way out. Worse still, they often prey on the vulnerable, people desperate for relief from real symptoms, or struggling with eating disorders, selling quick fixes that leave them sicker, more depleted, and convinced they need even more detoxing.

This isn’t what we believe here. Our approach is and always will be grounded in nourishment, long term safety, and respect for how the body actually works.

1. Stop them at the source

Before addressing the heavy metals already stored in your body, it’s essential to reduce the amount coming in. Lowering ongoing exposure allows your detox systems to work on what’s already there, instead of constantly managing new arrivals.

Where heavy metals lurk most...

Water supply: arsenic, lead, mercury from old pipes, industrial runoff, and contaminated groundwater
Cookware & kitchenware: aluminium pots & pans
Personal care products: aluminium in deodorants, heavy metal contamination in makeup pigment
Food chain: large predatory fish (tuna, swordfish, shark), rice (arsenic), cacao/chocolate (cadmium), leafy greens grown in polluted soil
Household items: old paint (lead), batteries (cadmium, nickel), cheap jewellery and toys (lead, cadmium)
Herbal supplements & seaweeds: spirulina, chlorella, and long-lived seaweeds that bioaccumulate metals

2. Stop drinking green powders

Here’s the scariest irony. Some of the highest dietary sources of heavy metals are the powders and smoothies marketed to “cleanse” them out of you.

Spirulina and chlorella are microalgae with an extraordinary ability to absorb metals from their environment. In nature, this makes them brilliant at cleaning up contaminated water. On your kitchen counter, it means they can arrive already loaded with lead, cadmium, arsenic, or mercury, especially if they’re poorly sourced, which is common in mass market wellness products.

3. Feed a well resourced liver

Your liver is the body’s primary processing plant for toxins, including heavy metals, and it needs the right nutrients to function optimally. Phase I and Phase II detox pathways work in sequence to transform metals into forms the body can safely excrete, but this process depends on a constant supply of specific vitamins, minerals, and amino acids.

Magnesium and selenium are essential for antioxidant enzymes such as glutathione peroxidase, which protect cells from metal-induced oxidative stress. Vitamins B6, B9, and B12 are required for methylation and conjugation, key reactions that package toxins for elimination. Amino acids like methionine, cysteine, and glycine physically bind to metals so they can be neutralised and removed.

A well-nourished liver is far more effective at clearing toxins than one lacking these resources. Focus on nutrient-dense foods such as:

Liver, heart, and bone broth for B vitamins, CoQ10, glycine, and minerals
Egg yolks, dairy, and shellfish for choline, selenium, and methionine
Seasonal fruit for the carbohydrates that fuel Phase II detox reactions

The aim is to maintain a biochemical environment where the liver can process metals steadily and safely, rather than mobilising them without the means to escort them out.

4. Support slow and steady elimination

Heavy metals exit the body through well established routes...sweat, urine, bile, and stool. For detoxification to be safe, these pathways must be working efficiently before any attempt is made to mobilise stored metals. If elimination is sluggish, toxins can be reabsorbed and deposited in more vulnerable tissues, exactly what you’re trying to avoid.

Here’s how to keep each route clear and dependable:

Sweat regularly: Engage in movement that raises your core temperature, use a sauna, or take hot baths. Sweating can remove measurable amounts of arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury. Aim for gentle but consistent sessions rather than occasional extremes.
Maintain daily bowel movements: Metals excreted in bile need to leave the body promptly via stool. Gut supportive foods, adequate hydration, and magnesium-rich foods (or magnesium baths) help keep transit time short and predictable. Constipation invites toxins back into circulation through the enterohepatic loop.
Protect kidney function: Drink clean, mineral-rich water and maintain electrolyte balance (sodium, potassium, magnesium). Avoid chronic dehydration and excessive diuretics, which can strain the kidneys and slow filtration
Support bile flow: Bitter greens like dandelion or rocket, and choline rich foods such as egg yolks, can help maintain bile production and flow, a key route for fat-soluble toxins and metals.

5. Rebuild mineral reserves

Toxic metals don’t just accumulate by chance, they often exploit deficiencies. Lead mimics calcium and takes its place in bone. Cadmium competes with zinc in enzymes and reproductive tissues. Mercury binds tightly to selenium, disrupting the enzymes that depend on it. When essential minerals are lacking, metals slip in and occupy their roles, but without performing the job.

Restoring mineral reserves gives the body the means to gradually displace these imposters. Over time, as the real minerals become consistently available, the body will swap out the toxic stand-ins for the nutrients it actually needs.

A mineral cheatsheet

Zinc: Oysters, mussels, crab, beef, lamb, heart
Calcium: Raw dairy, kefir, small fish with bones (sardines, anchovies), bone broth
Selenium: Wild salmon, kidney, oysters, brazil nuts
Magnesium: Cacao, heart, figs, berries, mineral rich water
Potassium: Potatoes, oranges, beetroot, bananas, cherries
Iron: Liver, red meat, spleen, shellfish, egg yolks
Copper: Liver, oysters, dark chocolate, duck
Manganese: shellfish, whole grains (traditionally prepared), tea

What frustrates me most about the modern wellness world isn’t just that it gets detox wrong, it’s that it preys on fear. It takes genuine concerns and turns them into marketing hooks.

Wellness should be the opposite of that. It should make you feel more capable, more nourished, more in tune with your body’s own intelligence. It should respect the fact that the human body already knows how to repair itself, given the right environment, and that actual healing is often quiet, steady, and unremarkable to watch.

Since I’ve had my say, I’d love to hear yours... what wellness marketing scams annoy you the most?

Published on: August 06, 2025

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This doesn't mean adding stress with rigid rules, but rather tuning into your body's needs throughout your cycle. During your menstrual phase, consider choosing gentle movement like walking or restorative yoga over intense workouts, while allowing for more rest and sleep if possible. This is also an ideal time to nourish yourself with warming, iron-rich foods, more magnesium rich foods such as cacao and practice stress-reduction techniques like meditation or journaling that help you tune into your body's wisdom. Your body spent years adapting to synthetic hormones, so be patient as it readjusts to its natural state. It has an incredible capacity for healing and by providing it with the right nutrients, reducing toxic load, and honouring its natural rhythms, you're giving yourself the best possible foundation for long-term hormonal health.

Why stretching isn't fixing your pain (our guide to fascia health)

Ever noticed your organs stay eerily still while you dance, yet your hamstring tightness never fades? Beneath those daily mysteries lies a tissue called fascia, your body's hidden web that shapes movement and stores both physical and emotional trauma. Despite its vast roles, fascia was long ignored in medicine. Truly a case of seeing “muscles and bones” but not the matrix that connects them. What is fascia? In simplest terms, fascia is a three dimensional matrix of collagen fibres, fluid, and gel-like proteins enveloping every muscle, bone, organ, and nerve. Imagine a fine silk weave that both glides and transmits force. When healthy, fascia is supple, letting joints move freely and muscles coordinate seamlessly. But when compromised, whether by repetitive strain, stress, or past injuries, this silken web stiffens or forms adhesions, making stretching feel pointless and leaving you stiff or in pain. Wrapped around muscle fibres (endomysium), bundles (perimysium), entire muscles (epimysium), and even bones, fascia connects everything in one continuous line, much like a tablecloth that, when tugged in one corner, shifts the entire table setting. As a result, your achy calves can alter posture up to your neck. This interplay means fascia shapes how we move, stand, and even sense tension in our bodies. How fascia stores trauma Physical trauma Physical trauma clearly affects fascia. A sprained ankle or surgical incision, for example, triggers the fascia to lay down extra collagen fibres in repair. Scar tissue is essentially fascia that knits up a wound, but often in a haphazard, thicker way. These adhesions can tether tissues that should slide, leading to stiffness or pain around the injury site. Even remote injuries can have body-wide effects: a broken tailbone may set off fascial tightening up the spinal line, manifesting years later as neck pain. Repetitive strain or poor posture is a slower trauma: if you hunch over a desk daily, the fascia in your chest may shorten and thicken, “remembering” that position and resisting change. Over time, the body becomes literally moulded by these persistent fascial patterns. Emotional trauma More intriguingly, emotional and psychological traumas also seem to leave footprints in our fascia. Fascia is densely innervated with sensory neurons, directly linked to the autonomic nervous system, meaning it responds to stress, trauma, and even unprocessed emotions. When we experience a threat, our body instinctively contracts, tenses, or freezes, a primal response to protect itself. If unresolved, these tension patterns can become embedded in the fascia, manifesting as chronic stiffness, pain, or dysfunction long after the event. Emerging research highlights the two-way communication between fascia and the vagus nerve, our key parasympathetic (rest-and-digest) nerve. The vagus monitors fascia’s state and signals the brain to adjust tension accordingly. In other words, fascia may be a physical medium through which the mind-body dialogue occurs, our connective tissue as a canvas for the nervous system’s signals. Many bodyworkers and somatic therapists observe that when they release a particularly bound-up area of fascia, clients sometimes experience an emotional catharsis, memories or feelings resurging as the tissue lets go. This is why traditional stretching or strength training often fails to resolve deep-seated pain, because the root issue is not just in the muscles, but in the fascia itself. 3 essential steps to healing fascia Fascia may be prone to tightness, dehydration, or holding stress, but the good news is it’s highly responsive to care. 1. Water for the web Fascia is 70% water, but not all water hydrates fascia equally. When dehydrated, fascia becomes stiff, brittle, and prone to adhesions (small areas of stuck tissue that reduce mobility). Simply drinking more water isn’t enough your body needs the right minerals to retain it. Drink structured water: (naturally occurring in fresh fruits, raw dairy, coconut water, and bone broth). Add natural electrolytes: A pinch of sea salt with lemon in water works perfectly. Magnesium, for example, is essential for protein synthesis including collagen formation, and also helps muscles relax, preventing chronic tension in fascia. Zinc and copper are needed for collagen cross-linking and tissue repair. 2. Myofascial release One of the most direct ways to improve fascial health is through myofascial release techniques: physical methods that massage, stretch, or manipulate fascia to break up adhesions and restore its glide Here are some powerful tools and techniques to liberate your fascial network: Foam rolling: Rolling works by pressing on fascial adhesions and trigger points, helping to dissipate knots and encourage fluid exchange in the tissue. As you roll out a tight spot, you are literally smoothing out fascial wrinkles and stimulating fibroblast cells to remodel. (Tip: Roll slowly and pause on tender points for 30-60 seconds until you feel a release.) Vagus nerve stimulation: Interestingly, one way to release fascia is to work indirectly via the nervous system. Stimulating the vagus nerve can cause a cascade of relaxation in muscles and fascia. Techniques like slow deep breathing, humming or chanting, cold exposure (splashing face with cold water), or gentle gargling all activate the vagus nerve. When the vagus fires, it signals the body to shift out of stress model: heart rate slows, breath deepens, and crucially, fascia relaxes its tension. Resistance stretching: Traditional stretching usually involves relaxing into a pose, but resistance stretching adds an active component: you contract your muscles while lengthening them. This technique (also known as PNF stretching or eccentric training) engages the fascia more effectively. By resisting against the stretch (for example, pushing your heel down while pulling your toes toward you), the fascia is loaded under tension, which can break up internal cross-links and increase its length and elasticity. It It also stimulates the production of new collagen in a more orderly arrangement due to the tension applied. Yin yoga, in particular, is essentially a fascial release practice: by staying in a pose 3–5 minutes, you give the fascia time to yield (muscles might relax after 30 seconds, but fascia, being more viscous, takes a couple of minutes to truly stretch). This can flush out waste and even purportedly “flush toxins” from the fascia , easing chronic pain and restoring mobility Trauma release exercises (TRE): Use gentle fatigue of certain muscles to trigger involuntary shaking, which can discharge tension in the fascia and muscles, relieving stress. Such shaking or tremoring is thought to let the nervous system reboot and the fascia loosen (much like how gelatin jiggling softens). If you’ve ever had an intense workout and found yourself trembling, you’ve touched on this mechanism. Allowing your body to tremor or gently stretching while shaking can be a profound release. 3. Fuel your fascia with ancestral nutrition Fascia is metabolically active, and made up of collagen-rich proteins, meaning it needs collagen, minerals, and bioavailable nutrients to regenerate and stay pliable. Without the right nutrients, fascia can become brittle, weak, and prone to dysfunction. Consume gelatinous foods and collagen: Our ancestors intuitively nourished their fascia by eating the whole animal: boiling bones, skin, and tendons into bone broth, and slow-cooking meats with connective tissue. These traditional foods are rich in gelatine (cooked collagen) and glycosaminoglycans: exactly what fascia is made of. In the past, cooking down bones and fascia into broth provided a bounty of collagen peptides Fascia is integral to every step and stretch you take, and every emotion you hold. The key is recognising that stubborn pains often live in this hidden web, not just in your muscles. Whether you’re recovering from an old ankle sprain or an emotional upheaval, tending to fascia can help dissolve the barriers that ordinary stretches and workouts never touch, allowing you to discover a body that moves in harmony, bearing neither the weight of past injuries nor the grip of unprocessed stress.

Comments

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Fantastic article – we had tests that showed that our child had heavy metals following chronic constipation – original advice was great with increasing supplementation and healing the gut, but then we think the introduction of a heavy metal binder tablet set us back – we’ve since decided to return to the more natural approach with food and supplements and your article has helped us see that we’re on the right track! Thanks!

What do you think of NAD shots? Taking them three days a week and want your opinion and also testosterone once a week in a shot as well

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