823: The Right Way to Complete a 7, 14 or 21-Day Functional Medicine

You're listening to an archived Cabral concept podcast. After listening to this show, check out the most up-to-date podcasts available at stephencabral.com slash podcasts or search directly on iTunes. And now, welcome to The Cabral Concept, where board-certified naturopath and integrative health practitioner, Dr. Stephen Cabral, shares how he was diagnosed at the age of 17 with a life-altering illness and given no hope for recovery. It was only after studying and traveling all over the world did he discover how to combine ancient Ayurvedic healing practices with state-of-the-art naturopathic and functional medicine to fully rebalance the body and re-energize it with life. It's time to discover how to get well, lose weight, and finally feel alive again. And now, here's your host, Dr. Stephen Cabral. Thank you so much for joining me here today on this Total Wellness Tuesday show. We're gonna be taking you through how to complete a 7, 14, or 21-day functional medicine detox. And it's hard to believe, it really is, but this is why we really have to get out of our own head. Hopefully you checked out yesterday's episode. That's exactly what that topic was on. But today is episode 823. And in 823 episodes, I have never taken you through exactly how to complete a 7-14 or 21-day detox, specifically a functional medicine detox. I've talked about on previous episodes, the difference between a functional medicine detox and a juice cleanse, a functional medicine detox and an intestinal cleanse. I told you how they're not the same, but somehow I've overlooked how to complete a 7-14 or 21-day. Functional medicine detox. And so that's why it's so great for you to write in with your suggestions for show topics because that was today's suggestion. Meaning that, can you explain, we have so many people, so many people doing the detox in our practice and all over the world, that could I explain it in more depth? How do you use it? What are the best practices? What are your tips? What are your tricks for getting the most out of it? So that's what I want to do here today. And I want to keep it simple. I want to keep it straightforward. And I'm hoping that this episode then will serve for all of those people who have maybe been a little bit timid about starting one or those people who are looking forward to doing it again and getting that much more out of it. So excited today to speak about that. I really am. And one of the reasons why is because this is the time of the year that I believe, again, this goes back to Ayurvedic teachings and really all Eastern-based philosophies that the springtime, the springtime is our time to really detoxify the body as much as we can. Anytime we go from a cooler season, where the body's retaining more heat and more acids, we want to be able to eliminate those as we're moving into warmer weather. So every season is the time in Eastern-based practices, all Eastern-based philosophies of medicine, that you would complete a detox. You really would. And that would be because... With the change in the season, your body's changing as well in that environment. Some animals fast a little bit, their microbiome changes. We see all of these things happening in nature, but we as humans, we just kind of go along and go on with our daily practices without thinking much of it. So again, this is the time where I do my largest detox of the year every single spring. Helps with any allergies. It helps with just keeping my body feeling energetic. It helps with eliminating any toxins I may have accumulated over the winter since. I am eating more cooked and heavier foods, which is very, very normal for the winter season and the cold to keep my body warm and nourished. So looking forward to this today, and let's get right into it. So people always ask, why would I complete a detox? Why do I need to? Well, the truth is that if you're feeling any symptoms of overall sluggishness or imbalance with hormones or imbalance with blood sugar or higher levels of inflammation, poor sleep, poor skin, poor digestion, or you feel like you just need a whole body reset, that's the time to do what's called a functional medicine detox. I wanna explain exactly what that is. And again, I think we all should, but most of us don't care until it's kind of too late, is that we need to be doing this for overall anti-aging. And the reason is this, a functional medicine detox is about supporting your liver. It has nothing to do with cleaning out the bowels. It has nothing to do with green juices or anything like that, although they're phenomenal and I use them every day. It's not about that. What it's about- is supporting the organ of the body that is in charge of, so every organ is in charge of something, but the liver is in charge of filtering your blood. Think of it this way. Think of you never cleaned your house. Think about that. All the stuff that you track in from outside, the dust that would accumulate, all the hair that would pile up. If you have an animal, all the dander, everything that accumulates, any food that might be falling to the floor, imagine never cleaning your house. how dirty it would be. Or when you go to vacuum your house or sweep your house, how much debris you do pick up. And you're like, how does this happen every single week? We do one big cleaning a week in my house. Then of course, we're cleaning every night, especially with two young girls. The amount of mess is unbelievable. I mean, last night we had dinner and my wife got up. She came back to the table. She's like, was this like a food fight? What happened here? We had food all over the table. And that's just part of having young kids and not caring at the meal, but really afterwards trying to clean up. But- Again, if you look at the vacuum, the filter, how much debris you really do pick up, well, that's the thing. It's not like you're not cleaning on a daily basis, but you need those big cleanings once a week or in terms of our detoxes quarterly. So what's it really doing though? Well, a functional medicine detox, I explain this really in depth in my book. On page 160, I'm gonna go through that right now, but let's see if I can find it just in my book quick. And it's called the Dr. Ball Detox Manual. It's on page 353. So again, if you don't have the rain barrel effect, I can't recommend picking that up enough. There's a really short chapter. It's just kind of like the jumpstart chapter where if you want to figure out what all this stuff is all about, I think it's somewhere around a 20-page chapter. We can learn all of this in depth. And I did that because I wanted the book to be used as a manual as well. And again, this book supports Vitamin Angels and other charities as well. All profits are donated to charity. But on page 160, it goes into exactly why. we need to do a Dr. Ball detox or a functional medicine detox. So in the book as well, I talk about actually many other functional medicine detoxes and the products that go into it because I always tell people, maybe you don't have access to the specific detox that we do in my practice, or maybe you just don't want to do that one. You want to do the one that your functional medicine practitioner is providing you. Absolutely great. So what I do in the book is actually list the products that you need to complete a functional medicine detox. And what are those? Well, they're natural folate, They're niacin, which is B3, B6, B12, vitamin A, vitamin C, calcium, vitamin D3, vitamin E, milk thistle or herbal-based product to help with the liver detoxification, N-acetylcysteine, some type of bioflavonoid, antioxidant-based product, and quercetin, okay? So why? Okay, well, here's why. Your body, so as your liver is filtering your blood, think of it this way, your liver, this organ under the right side of your rib cage, it is filtering. all of the blood in your body, every ounce of the blood in your body, every six minutes. So it's taking a swipe at it. It's trying to grab on as much as it can every six minutes, okay? And it's doing that 24 hours a day, 365 days per year for your entire life. So all of the nutrients that I just stated right there help with phase one detoxification. And what is that? Well, we know, again, this is all science-based. We know that when your body, let's say it takes in plastics or it takes in something like that. We're looking at, again, it can be anything, pesticides from foods. It could be aluminum, heavy metals, anything like that that you might just be getting from ice cubes when you drink tap water at a restaurant or chlorine that you breathe in in your shower if you don't have a shower filter. Any of these things, again, we're exposed to 77,000 man-made chemicals in our environment. You're exposed to at least, I would say at least 1,000 of those per day, minimum. Minimum of 1,000 per day, probably more like 10,000. I mean, to be honest, not all 77,000. but you're exposed to thousands of those every single day. Again, in the book, I talk about most women are exposed to 126 before they even leave the house because of cosmetics and other things like that. Men, not far behind. So here's the deal though. The deal is that our body is going to tuck those toxins away because your liver could not possibly get all of them at once. So it puts them away in what's called the adipose tissue, our fat tissue. And it does that. Because that's a very safe way to store them so they're not in the bloodstream and they can't damage the rest of the body. Well, of course, over time, that can make our fat cells swell, which makes us look puffier. We look like we're holding onto more body fat, and we are, but it's actually fluid retained in that adipose tissue. But as we start to detox and burn body fat and all of those things, our body gets those fat-soluble toxins, brings them to the liver, and it needs all of the vitamins and minerals that I just stated. Okay, the B vitamins, the vitamin Cs, the vitamin Es, the D3, N-acetylcysteine, bioflavonoids or antioxidants, and things like quercetin as well. So it uses those and it takes those fat-soluble toxins and it turns them into what's called an intermediary metabolite. Okay, now at this point, your body is ready to start to break that down to a harmless substrate called a water-soluble toxin that can then be eliminated. through what I talked about last time, which is the four forgotten ways to detoxify. So that is on episode 811. That's how your body detoxifies. Okay, hopefully you checked out that episode as well. That's through the stool. That is through the urine. it's through the lungs huffing it off and it's through the skin through sweating. But your body has to make it water-soluble first. So it does that now through, think of it this way, all the sulfur-based amino acids, okay? Glutamine, lysine, glycine, carnitine, L-carnitine, taurine. These are all amino acids that your body's able to use to break down in what's called in phase two of liver detoxification to make these things. Less harmful, sulforaphane, sulfur-based, that we get from things such as our cruciferous vegetables, namely broccoli as well. We also, again, need more glutamine, which I talked about. We need more N-acetylcysteine. Those are all precursors to glutathione. Now, glutathione is what we refer to in functional medicine as the mother antioxidant. It is one of the best ways for our body to take these things, destroy free radicals, remove them from our body. So what is a functional medicine detox? Well, a functional medicine detox, literally, I always say like this is, once you know the science, it honestly becomes a lot simpler. So a functional medicine detox is a detox that then gives you all of the vitamins and minerals for phase one and all the vitamins, minerals, and amino acids for phase two. So the other minerals that I didn't name that's needed for phase two would be things like zinc and selenium, okay? Namely selenium as well. So what we hope to do in functional medicine is to be able to give your body, give your liver namely, okay, namely the liver, more of the vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants it needs to perform its function. And when it does that, it's able to eliminate toxins at a faster level. Now, a lot of people say, well, your body's detoxifying on a daily basis. That is absolutely true. But there's a huge difference, an enormous difference between doing it optimally and doing it okay to survive. Okay, your body will... always do enough to be able to survive until finally it can't. Our job is to not wait until it can't. Our job is to make sure that it gets more than enough on a daily basis so that it has the raw materials to heal itself. Remember, as a naturopath, I'd never, never would I say that I heal your body. Never would I say that I help you get well. Never would I say I eliminate any type of disease in your body. What I do though, is I give your body anything that it's deficient in, to help build that back up, build those stores back up. And then I help your body to eliminate many of the toxicities within it that are holding you back from the energy, from the vibrant skin, through the vibrant life that you want to live. That's what I help to do, right? But all I can do is give your body the nutrients, the raw materials that it needs, and then it does it on its own, through its own innate wisdom that we don't even fully know. Again. We know about liver detoxification and that's why in functional medicine for decades now, we've been able to help people through a great degree. I've talked about this before. I talked about it. This is the way, this is the reason we came up with functional medicine detoxes for our practice in the first place. So many, many years ago, I was working, and again, to this day, I still work with thousands of people with autoimmune-based issues, okay? Let's not call them disease. Let's call them imbalances. So they have an autoimmune imbalance. And what we started doing, again, this is before the doctor. where all detox even existed. I was using other functional medicine detoxes and I used them and I was like, wow. I mean, like literally nothing worked better than it. Like nothing at all. Forget about the turmeric. Forget about all the other things, MSM. Forget about all of those things. We did a 21 day functional medicine detox. Not only were at least 50% of the symptoms reduced, including the joint pain and rheumatoid arthritis. including the brain fog and fatigue and many of the Hashimoto's and a lot of the other autoimmune-based issues, the overall inflammation, better sleeping, all of those things. But people were dropping like five to 10 pounds. And I knew that it couldn't just be body fat alone. So what was going on? Well, their inflammation levels, like not completely, but let's say pretty close to it, subsided. And because of that, I said, this is unbelievable. Let me keep digging into this research. And I made it my mission for at least six months to say like- Okay, I need to learn more about this. I need to figure out why this is working, what each nutrient does specifically in the body. And what I realized was really what we were doing was we were supporting the liver. This is really a liver detox or liver support. It's liver support. That's what we're doing. So here's what we did. We said, this works so well. Why don't we use it for those people who want to just decrease inflammation overall, who want to start living a healthier life with more energy, better skin, better sleep, better hormones, better digestion, better blood sugar balance. And it worked for all of those people. I mean, tremendous. If you don't need to lose weight, still okay. You can still do it. And I'm gonna talk about ways to do that. But if you need to lose weight, this is one of those ways because it's balancing inflammation, it's balancing hormones, it's balancing blood sugar, it's decreasing all of the toxic water weight that your body may be holding. I mean, it's literally one of the best things I've seen. Five to 10 pounds in a week, more than 10 pounds of weight loss in two weeks. Again, this is saying that you need to lose the weight. Again, for those people who don't need to lose the weight, you're not gonna lose that much weight. And then for 21 days, we've seen 15. plus or more. We've seen 21 plus pounds in 21 days for those people with quite a bit of toxicity in their body and quite a bit of weight to lose. I mean, really, really phenomenal results. And again, you can use the Dr. Bell Detox, but I'm also sharing with you the exact nutrients to look for in other detoxes. So let's get right into it as well. And in the book, I actually give you all of those as well so that you don't feel like I'm ever saying that you need to use the one that I formulate for equilibrium nutrition. All right. So now that we know essentially how it works. And if you want to know the difference in depth about how a cleanse works versus a detox, please go back to stephencabral.com forward slash podcast and simply type in cleanse versus detox, okay? Or type in intestinal cleanse or whatever you'd like. You'll be able to see the big difference because there's a huge difference. Both are phenomenal. Both are absolutely phenomenal, but they're very, very different, okay? A cleanse is not supporting your liver at all. Like it has nothing to do with that. All right. So. The way that we do the Dr. Ball detox or a functional medicine detox in general is this. We are doing the first two days, the first 48 hours of four shakes per day for two days. Okay. And then on day three, which I'll get to, you're doing a shake in the morning and then you have your first lunch that day. So what are we doing? Well, for two days, how does this work so well? For two days, we are taking advantage of large amounts of water. which means we're flushing the system. And we're also keeping in mind that your blood is 90% water. So if we want to saturate the body with more fluid, right? Whether you're using distilled water or whether you're using spring water that I recommend or even just filtered water, okay? We're getting clean water. We're putting that in your body, 20 ounces or more per shake that you just shake it up with this powder. And again, what does the powder contain? The powder contains the phase one and phase two detox nutrients. and then 15 grams of vegan-based protein so that you get your amino acids so that there's no muscle wasting. Okay, then you use your IU, which is AYU detox capsules, which is Ayurvedic-based herbal blends that I formulated from being overseas and knowing what the body needs. And then FM, which stands for functional medicine detox. And those are the phase two nutrients, all right? Everything that's gonna help convert the intermediary metabolites to harmless water-soluble toxins that you can then poop out through your stool You can urinate out, you can sweat out if you want to do a sauna or some rebounding or any type of exercise after the two days. And then also you can do some, again, some exercise to huff it out through your lungs. That's what it's all about. It's simple. It's three products. It's just the shake that you're doing every day and then morning capsules and evening capsules. Again, you can see how all of this works, whether it's in my book or just go to drcabraldetox.com. I'll link it up in the show notes today. Go to stevencabral.com forward slash 823. So again, you don't even have to use the one that I'm recommending. But on that website, I showed you our whole plan. Again, you know my goal is to teach. So I am giving you exactly what I do in my practice. My goal is never to hold back. I don't want that. I don't want to feel like, oh, I need to hold that back so I could sell that particular ebook or whatever. No, there will be none of that. My goal is to teach other practitioners, to help this functional medicine community in general. and to help you understand how this works. So there's an infographic right at drcabraldetox.com that shows you exactly how to do this. So the first two days are shakes only. And the reason that they're shakes only is that we want to also take advantage of something that I found out much more about it just a couple of years back. And that was something called autophagy or autophagy, however you would like to pronounce it. It works for me. And what this is, is this is the time. when your body does not have more food toxins coming in, a lot of food coming in, any big spikes in blood sugar, anything like that, that your white blood cells can actually start to ramp up and they can go after cancer cells, they can go after necrotic tissue, they can go after bacteria, viruses, any type of dead tissue, and they can actually preferentially remove those first. It is absolutely amazing. We are still learning to this day how the body uses a fasted period of time to start to clean house, to really start to remove the infected parts of our body. I mean, it is essential. I talk about it quite a bit. I talk about how best to use it. And I also spoke about it on last Wednesday's, I believe it was last Wednesday's podcast, episode 817. I do hope you're checking out the back episodes of The Cabral Concept. That was on how to increase natural growth hormone by up to 2000%. Check out that show on a specific type of intermittent fasting, not daily. but more like weekly or monthly. intermittent fasting. Okay. So after those first two days of shakes only, so you're taking advantage of killing cancer cells, of autophagy, eliminating viruses, eliminating all the stuff that's going on with the immune system. Why? Because remember, over 30% of all of your energy goes to digestion every single day. Well, what if you're not having to break down any food? But what if you're also getting all the nutrients that your body needs so that it doesn't become too catabolic? Pretty amazing. Because a lot of people are very, very sick. The last thing they need... is to become even more wiped out and catabolic. So the first couple of days, you might feel just a little bit lower energy. And the reason is you're taking in the bare amount of nutrients, or I should say calories that you need, but the maximum amount of micronutrients, which means not calories, but the nutrients contained in those calories that your body needs. It is doing the work of really like breaking down this bacteria, breaking down dead tissue and helping to remove it from your body. Pretty amazing, pretty remarkable. All right, back to day three. Now we're getting our first meal. Again, you're eating every basically three and a half hours. Shake for breakfast, shake for lunch, shake mid-afternoon, shake for dinner on days one and two. On days three, you're doing shake for breakfast, you're doing a vegetarian vegan-based lunch, which is packed with many, many nutrients in there. We give you the shopping list, which is very, very simple, picking out some vegetables, picking out a vegan-based protein, picking out some healthy fats. Then mid-afternoon, you're doing another shake again. And then at dinner, you're doing a paleo-type dinner, which could be something like salmon, asparagus, bok choy, olive oil, lemon, herbs, spices, like delicious, right? Delicious. And then, or I should say, in addition to paleo, if you wanted to do another vegan-based dinner because you follow a vegan-based lifestyle, then absolutely fine. You'll do, instead of the salmon, you may just do X, like you might do right chickpeas or black beans or any of those things. Totally, totally fine. Okay. So that's in a nutshell, but now let's go over just a few things that I wanna talk about because these are very, very popular questions. Let's say that it's your first time doing a detox, a functional medicine detox, your first time using shake powder, any of those things. Well, here's what you wanna do is that you might, of course, you just wanna try to do it with spring water. Okay, a couple of things that are helpful. Some people, they like to shake it up with ice, okay? Totally fine. I prefer it to be just room temperature, better, easier to digest for your stomach, but- Taste-wise, if you like to do it shaken up with ice, totally fine. For others, they might want to use a little bit of nut milk, unsweetened nut milk, such as almond milk. Maybe it's unsweetened vanilla almond milk, unsweetened vanilla coconut milk, macadamia nut, Brazil nut, any of those are totally fine. Or let's say that you're not trying to lose any weight. Again, I still like, I know that you'll lose a little weight, but to get the full detox effects, I like not to mix it up with any berries to make a smoothie the first day. However, let's say that you're someone who doesn't want to lose the weight. and that you've already done detox in the past or you're feeling pretty good or you just want to add more flavor to taste. Okay, well then mix in a cup or two of wild blueberries to the shake, blend it up and make your smoothie that way, totally fine. But to get the maximum detox benefits, I like people just to do the water with the shakes or add some nut milk if needed for flavor or texture. Totally up to you, okay? Because remember, the most important thing is that you do the detox. Even if it's not 100%, like exactly how it looks in the infographic, like... Remember, if you can get 80% of the benefits, hey, that's phenomenal. I mean, it really is. That is phenomenal. And maybe you're just working your way up. Maybe this is your very first detox, okay? Because you were nervous to try it before. So try that out. The other thing is people always say, can I have coffee? All right. If you all of a sudden cut out coffee from your diet, you're going to get a headache. That's just the way it is. Most people, not everyone, but most people have that caffeine addiction, all right? So what's going to happen is they'll get a headache. So if you want to do one cup of black coffee, or just with unsweetened nut milk in it, whether it's almond or coconut or any of those things in the morning, totally fine. Would it be even better not to have any caffeine? Sure, but I don't want you to feel like you have no energy now because you cut out all your caffeine and I don't want you to feel like you have a terrible headache for the first two days. Okay, so if you're trying to break your caffeine fix, well, maybe this is the seven-day detox that you're going to do it, but that's totally up to you. What I don't want you to do is a lot of people attribute a headache or low energy on a detox to the detox itself. Not true if you're cutting out coffee, right? If you cut out coffee, it's most likely because you cut out the caffeine. So keep that in mind, all right? Always keep that in mind. My goal is to get you 80, 90% of the results, even if you have to keep some of that caffeine or coffee in there. Let's just make sure that there's no sweetener unless it's some stevia in that coffee. So no sugar, anything like that. And definitely no dairy unless it's a nut milk-based dairy alternative. So hopefully that helps for sure. Okay, now- A big thing is as well is how do we do the 14-day or 21-day detox? Do we do two days of fasting on the next? So basically you finished. You did days one and two, which are fasting, shake fasting days. You have four shakes per day, every three and a half hours. Okay, so you're always having something. You're staying nice and satiated. Between meals, you could have herbal tea, such as ginger tea, chamomile tea, or maybe you're just doing some lemon water between meals if you feel like you need any water at all. Remember, you're getting 80 ounces for the day because you're shaking up 20 ounces of water with every single shake. Okay. But if you need a little extra water, go for it. No problem at all. You can do herbal teas as well. Really, really nice. Okay, so the next part is this. How do we do days eight through 14 if you're gonna do another week of it? Well, you have three options essentially. The first one is you just complete it like you did the first seven days. That's how you get the most benefit. You do another two days on days eight and nine essentially of shake fasting, all right? You do four shakes a day and you do that for two days. Then you go back into your next days, which would be days 10 through what, 14 or so of the regular meal plan, which would be the shake of the morning. vegetarian lunch, shake, and then the paleo style dinner or vegan-based dinner at night. Really, really simple. All right, so that's option one, just complete another seven days. Really, really simple. Option two would be, you're only gonna do one day of a shake fast. So maybe on day eight, that's the only day that you do four shakes per day, and then you get right back into your normal eating, which would be the shake in the morning, the vegan lunch, the shake mid-afternoon, and then the dinner at night. Okay, and then your third option is this, and a lot of people enjoy doing this as well because they're not trying to get as much weight loss, they already feel pretty good. They're gonna complete... days eight through 14 of just doing the same meal plan as days three through seven, which is the no shake fast days, but they do the shake in the morning, the vegetarian lunch, vegan lunch. They're doing the shake at mid-afternoon and then the dinner at night, okay? So that's your third way. And then if you want to do a full 21 day, which again, I honestly believe is life changing for most people, life changing. Even if you thought you were already in good health, then you could do the same exact option for days. Now I have to do math here again. 15 through 21, right? You could do the first option, which is two more shake fasting days, okay? Going to be the most beneficial for autoimmune and really health-based issues, as well as weight loss. So two shake fast days, and then get back on track for the last five days, which was the shake lunch, shake and dinner. Or you could do just one shake fast day, or you could simply go from days three all the way up to day 21 of doing the shake vegan-based lunch. shake mid-afternoon, and then the paleo or vegan-based dinner. All three options are absolutely phenomenal. The first option where you do the two shake fast days every single week, you get the most benefit, of course, right? Because you get two more days of what's called autophagy and really no energy, no energy being used for digestion because you're doing liquid only, liquid the whole day, but you're getting all the nutrients that you need, all right? And then the second option, which is the one shake fast day. That would be for the next two weeks. And then the third option, which is just maintaining your same nutrition plan on the detox from days three through 21. All great options. You can choose to do a seven day, a 14 day, or a 21 day. And that is really up to you, okay? The greater the weight loss, the greater the health issue, or the greater the anti-aging if you've never done a detox before. I love the full 21 day. That is how I started. It's how I started with people in my practice as well. And that's where just huge benefits came from. And then maybe after that, you only do. A seven-day detox seasonally, that's completely up to you. I'm at the point right now where the body feels great. It tells me what I need. I really try to listen to it and I do a seven-day detox every single season. Sometimes it turns into a longer one if I really feel like I need that or I'm just really enjoying the benefits. And again, since I obviously have access to as many of the Dr. Paul detoxes as I need right around my own clinic, it's easy for me. But I want you to do what you feel is best for you. So those are the easiest ways to transition. Maybe I'll do a part two where like with the most frequently asked questions. But what I wanted to do is just really, you know, kind of introduce you to what a functional medicine detox is. I know it can be life-changing. You can choose to use the Dr. Ball detox. You can choose, here's what I want you to do. I'd rather you just learn more about what a functional medicine detox is. So you can simply look at, if you have my book, The Rain Barrel Effect, you're going to look at essentially the last chapter, which is the Dr. Ball detox. manual. And again, this is on page 353. So that walks you through the specifics, the details on how to do that. The other thing you could do is just for a synopsis, an overview, is to go to drcabraldetox.com. And it will walk you through exactly how to do a functional medicine detox, why to do it, why we're exposed to all these things like GMOs and toxins in the environment, and how we're supposed to expel them at least. seasonally. Really, really important. So hopefully this was helpful. Again, always give me your feedback. Your feedback is what develops topics for this show. Your feedback is really what drives me to do more of this. So if you enjoyed the show, I would love to hear about it. If you have additional questions, I would love to hear about that. The best place to place those. is inside of cabralsupportgroup.com, which is our free Facebook group, or all of the comments on Instagram. Just go to Instagram and type in my name, Stephen Cabral, and a little search. Hopefully you're following along on this journey. And every single day I do a podcast kind of synopsis intro. I would love to hear right on today's, how to complete a 7, 14, or 21 day functional medicine detox, how you enjoyed the show. Maybe something that I should add back in or any questions that you may have. Love your feedback. Appreciate you so much. Thank you for everyone writing in. Thank you for the topic for today's show. Have an amazing day. Please do feel free to share this show with anyone you believe it could help. Before you go, I wanted to ask you this question. What if I could teach you in just a couple of hours how to transform your thyroid, hormones, adrenal, cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar, weight loss, energy, mood, brain, pregnancy, anti-aging, or many other health-related issues? After 20 years in private practice, after seeing and overseeing a quarter of a million client appointments, I sincerely feel I have the real-world data and have found the answer you've been searching for. So what I've done is spent hundreds of hours of my own time refining what you need to know in order to uncover your underlying root cause health issues and then begin to rebalance the body and bring it back to a state of robust health and wellness. I'm going to teach you exactly what I do in my private practice. So you can understand how you got here and now what you need to do in order to heal. You'll receive all of the important success checklists, protocols, and even ways to customize it to make the program fit your busy life. And you'll get all of this at a fraction of the price. Let me save you the time, money, energy, stress, and frustration of not knowing what to do next. Instead of reading dozens of books on the topic and seeing multiple practitioners, I will condense everything that you need to know in just a few hours of video tutorials that you can watch and listen to anywhere. Together, we will make this healing process an enjoyable one that you can take with you for the rest of your life. I wish you all of the best of health and happiness, and I hope to be able to guide you on your healing journey through my health results accelerators. Simply choose the health imbalance you're currently suffering from, and by the end of today, you'll know what went wrong and how to get well again. I guarantee it. For details, head over now to stephencabral.com forward slash courses.

It was only after studying and traveling all over the world did he discover how to combine ancient Ayurvedic healing practices with state-of-the-art naturopathic and functional medicine to fully rebalance the body and re-energize it with life. It's time to discover how to get well, lose weight, and finally feel alive again. And now, here's your host, Dr. Stephen Cabral.

Thank you so much for joining me here today on this Total Wellness Tuesday show. We're gonna be taking you through how to complete a 7, 14, or 21-day functional medicine detox. And it's hard to believe, it really is, but this is why we really have to get out of our own head.

Hopefully you checked out yesterday's episode. That's exactly what that topic was on. But today is episode 823. And in 823 episodes, I have never taken you through exactly how to complete a 7-14 or 21-day detox, specifically a functional medicine detox.

I've talked about on previous episodes, the difference between a functional medicine detox and a juice cleanse, a functional medicine detox and an intestinal cleanse. I told you how they're not the same, but somehow I've overlooked how to complete a 7-14 or 21-day. Functional medicine detox. And so that's why it's so great for you to write in with your suggestions for show topics because that was today's suggestion. Meaning that, can you explain, we have so many people, so many people doing the detox in our practice and all over the world, that could I explain it in more depth?

How do you use it? What are the best practices? What are your tips?

What are your tricks for getting the most out of it? So that's what I want to do here today. And I want to keep it simple.

I want to keep it straightforward. And I'm hoping that this episode then will serve for all of those people who have maybe been a little bit timid about starting one or those people who are looking forward to doing it again and getting that much more out of it. So excited today to speak about that.

I really am. And one of the reasons why is because this is the time of the year that I believe, again, this goes back to Ayurvedic teachings and really all Eastern-based philosophies that the springtime, the springtime is our time to really detoxify the body as much as we can. Anytime we go from a cooler season, where the body's retaining more heat and more acids, we want to be able to eliminate those as we're moving into warmer weather.

So every season is the time in Eastern-based practices, all Eastern-based philosophies of medicine, that you would complete a detox. You really would. And that would be because...

With the change in the season, your body's changing as well in that environment. Some animals fast a little bit, their microbiome changes. We see all of these things happening in nature, but we as humans, we just kind of go along and go on with our daily practices without thinking much of it.

So again, this is the time where I do my largest detox of the year every single spring. Helps with any allergies. It helps with just keeping my body feeling energetic.

It helps with eliminating any toxins I may have accumulated over the winter since. I am eating more cooked and heavier foods, which is very, very normal for the winter season and the cold to keep my body warm and nourished. So looking forward to this today, and let's get right into it. So people always ask, why would I complete a detox?

Why do I need to? Well, the truth is that if you're feeling any symptoms of overall sluggishness or imbalance with hormones or imbalance with blood sugar or higher levels of inflammation, poor sleep, poor skin, poor digestion, or you feel like you just need a whole body reset, that's the time to do what's called a functional medicine detox. I wanna explain exactly what that is.

And again, I think we all should, but most of us don't care until it's kind of too late, is that we need to be doing this for overall anti-aging. And the reason is this, a functional medicine detox is about supporting your liver. It has nothing to do with cleaning out the bowels.

It has nothing to do with green juices or anything like that, although they're phenomenal and I use them every day. It's not about that. What it's about- is supporting the organ of the body that is in charge of, so every organ is in charge of something, but the liver is in charge of filtering your blood. Think of it this way. Think of you never cleaned your house.

Think about that. All the stuff that you track in from outside, the dust that would accumulate, all the hair that would pile up. If you have an animal, all the dander, everything that accumulates, any food that might be falling to the floor, imagine never cleaning your house. how dirty it would be. Or when you go to vacuum your house or sweep your house, how much debris you do pick up.

And you're like, how does this happen every single week? We do one big cleaning a week in my house. Then of course, we're cleaning every night, especially with two young girls.

The amount of mess is unbelievable. I mean, last night we had dinner and my wife got up. She came back to the table. She's like, was this like a food fight? What happened here?

We had food all over the table. And that's just part of having young kids and not caring at the meal, but really afterwards trying to clean up. But- Again, if you look at the vacuum, the filter, how much debris you really do pick up, well, that's the thing.

It's not like you're not cleaning on a daily basis, but you need those big cleanings once a week or in terms of our detoxes quarterly. So what's it really doing though? Well, a functional medicine detox, I explain this really in depth in my book. On page 160, I'm gonna go through that right now, but let's see if I can find it just in my book quick.

And it's called the Dr. Ball Detox Manual. It's on page 353. So again, if you don't have the rain barrel effect, I can't recommend picking that up enough. There's a really short chapter.

It's just kind of like the jumpstart chapter where if you want to figure out what all this stuff is all about, I think it's somewhere around a 20-page chapter. We can learn all of this in depth. And I did that because I wanted the book to be used as a manual as well. And again, this book supports Vitamin Angels and other charities as well. All profits are donated to charity.

But on page 160, it goes into exactly why. we need to do a Dr. Ball detox or a functional medicine detox. So in the book as well, I talk about actually many other functional medicine detoxes and the products that go into it because I always tell people, maybe you don't have access to the specific detox that we do in my practice, or maybe you just don't want to do that one. You want to do the one that your functional medicine practitioner is providing you.

Absolutely great. So what I do in the book is actually list the products that you need to complete a functional medicine detox. And what are those?

Well, they're natural folate, They're niacin, which is B3, B6, B12, vitamin A, vitamin C, calcium, vitamin D3, vitamin E, milk thistle or herbal-based product to help with the liver detoxification, N-acetylcysteine, some type of bioflavonoid, antioxidant-based product, and quercetin, okay? So why? Okay, well, here's why.

Your body, so as your liver is filtering your blood, think of it this way, your liver, this organ under the right side of your rib cage, it is filtering. all of the blood in your body, every ounce of the blood in your body, every six minutes. So it's taking a swipe at it.

It's trying to grab on as much as it can every six minutes, okay? And it's doing that 24 hours a day, 365 days per year for your entire life. So all of the nutrients that I just stated right there help with phase one detoxification.

And what is that? Well, we know, again, this is all science-based. We know that when your body, let's say it takes in plastics or it takes in something like that.

We're looking at, again, it can be anything, pesticides from foods. It could be aluminum, heavy metals, anything like that that you might just be getting from ice cubes when you drink tap water at a restaurant or chlorine that you breathe in in your shower if you don't have a shower filter. Any of these things, again, we're exposed to 77,000 man-made chemicals in our environment. You're exposed to at least, I would say at least 1,000 of those per day, minimum. Minimum of 1,000 per day, probably more like 10,000.

I mean, to be honest, not all 77,000. but you're exposed to thousands of those every single day. Again, in the book, I talk about most women are exposed to 126 before they even leave the house because of cosmetics and other things like that. Men, not far behind. So here's the deal though.

The deal is that our body is going to tuck those toxins away because your liver could not possibly get all of them at once. So it puts them away in what's called the adipose tissue, our fat tissue. And it does that. Because that's a very safe way to store them so they're not in the bloodstream and they can't damage the rest of the body.

Well, of course, over time, that can make our fat cells swell, which makes us look puffier. We look like we're holding onto more body fat, and we are, but it's actually fluid retained in that adipose tissue. But as we start to detox and burn body fat and all of those things, our body gets those fat-soluble toxins, brings them to the liver, and it needs all of the vitamins and minerals that I just stated.

Okay, the B vitamins, the vitamin Cs, the vitamin Es, the D3, N-acetylcysteine, bioflavonoids or antioxidants, and things like quercetin as well. So it uses those and it takes those fat-soluble toxins and it turns them into what's called an intermediary metabolite. Okay, now at this point, your body is ready to start to break that down to a harmless substrate called a water-soluble toxin that can then be eliminated.

through what I talked about last time, which is the four forgotten ways to detoxify. So that is on episode 811. That's how your body detoxifies. Okay, hopefully you checked out that episode as well.

That's through the stool. That is through the urine. it's through the lungs huffing it off and it's through the skin through sweating.

But your body has to make it water-soluble first. So it does that now through, think of it this way, all the sulfur-based amino acids, okay? Glutamine, lysine, glycine, carnitine, L-carnitine, taurine. These are all amino acids that your body's able to use to break down in what's called in phase two of liver detoxification to make these things. Less harmful, sulforaphane, sulfur-based, that we get from things such as our cruciferous vegetables, namely broccoli as well.

We also, again, need more glutamine, which I talked about. We need more N-acetylcysteine. Those are all precursors to glutathione.

Now, glutathione is what we refer to in functional medicine as the mother antioxidant. It is one of the best ways for our body to take these things, destroy free radicals, remove them from our body. So what is a functional medicine detox? Well, a functional medicine detox, literally, I always say like this is, once you know the science, it honestly becomes a lot simpler. So a functional medicine detox is a detox that then gives you all of the vitamins and minerals for phase one and all the vitamins, minerals, and amino acids for phase two.

So the other minerals that I didn't name that's needed for phase two would be things like zinc and selenium, okay? Namely selenium as well. So what we hope to do in functional medicine is to be able to give your body, give your liver namely, okay, namely the liver, more of the vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants it needs to perform its function.

And when it does that, it's able to eliminate toxins at a faster level. Now, a lot of people say, well, your body's detoxifying on a daily basis. That is absolutely true. But there's a huge difference, an enormous difference between doing it optimally and doing it okay to survive. Okay, your body will...

always do enough to be able to survive until finally it can't. Our job is to not wait until it can't. Our job is to make sure that it gets more than enough on a daily basis so that it has the raw materials to heal itself. Remember, as a naturopath, I'd never, never would I say that I heal your body.

Never would I say that I help you get well. Never would I say I eliminate any type of disease in your body. What I do though, is I give your body anything that it's deficient in, to help build that back up, build those stores back up. And then I help your body to eliminate many of the toxicities within it that are holding you back from the energy, from the vibrant skin, through the vibrant life that you want to live. That's what I help to do, right?

But all I can do is give your body the nutrients, the raw materials that it needs, and then it does it on its own, through its own innate wisdom that we don't even fully know. Again. We know about liver detoxification and that's why in functional medicine for decades now, we've been able to help people through a great degree.

I've talked about this before. I talked about it. This is the way, this is the reason we came up with functional medicine detoxes for our practice in the first place.

So many, many years ago, I was working, and again, to this day, I still work with thousands of people with autoimmune-based issues, okay? Let's not call them disease. Let's call them imbalances.

So they have an autoimmune imbalance. And what we started doing, again, this is before the doctor. where all detox even existed.

I was using other functional medicine detoxes and I used them and I was like, wow. I mean, like literally nothing worked better than it. Like nothing at all.

Forget about the turmeric. Forget about all the other things, MSM. Forget about all of those things. We did a 21 day functional medicine detox. Not only were at least 50% of the symptoms reduced, including the joint pain and rheumatoid arthritis.

including the brain fog and fatigue and many of the Hashimoto's and a lot of the other autoimmune-based issues, the overall inflammation, better sleeping, all of those things. But people were dropping like five to 10 pounds. And I knew that it couldn't just be body fat alone.

So what was going on? Well, their inflammation levels, like not completely, but let's say pretty close to it, subsided. And because of that, I said, this is unbelievable.

Let me keep digging into this research. And I made it my mission for at least six months to say like- Okay, I need to learn more about this. I need to figure out why this is working, what each nutrient does specifically in the body. And what I realized was really what we were doing was we were supporting the liver.

This is really a liver detox or liver support. It's liver support. That's what we're doing. So here's what we did.

We said, this works so well. Why don't we use it for those people who want to just decrease inflammation overall, who want to start living a healthier life with more energy, better skin, better sleep, better hormones, better digestion, better blood sugar balance. And it worked for all of those people. I mean, tremendous. If you don't need to lose weight, still okay.

You can still do it. And I'm gonna talk about ways to do that. But if you need to lose weight, this is one of those ways because it's balancing inflammation, it's balancing hormones, it's balancing blood sugar, it's decreasing all of the toxic water weight that your body may be holding. I mean, it's literally one of the best things I've seen. Five to 10 pounds in a week, more than 10 pounds of weight loss in two weeks.

Again, this is saying that you need to lose the weight. Again, for those people who don't need to lose the weight, you're not gonna lose that much weight. And then for 21 days, we've seen 15. plus or more.

We've seen 21 plus pounds in 21 days for those people with quite a bit of toxicity in their body and quite a bit of weight to lose. I mean, really, really phenomenal results. And again, you can use the Dr. Bell Detox, but I'm also sharing with you the exact nutrients to look for in other detoxes. So let's get right into it as well. And in the book, I actually give you all of those as well so that you don't feel like I'm ever saying that you need to use the one that I formulate for equilibrium nutrition.

All right. So now that we know essentially how it works. And if you want to know the difference in depth about how a cleanse works versus a detox, please go back to stephencabral.com forward slash podcast and simply type in cleanse versus detox, okay?

Or type in intestinal cleanse or whatever you'd like. You'll be able to see the big difference because there's a huge difference. Both are phenomenal. Both are absolutely phenomenal, but they're very, very different, okay?

A cleanse is not supporting your liver at all. Like it has nothing to do with that. All right. So.

The way that we do the Dr. Ball detox or a functional medicine detox in general is this. We are doing the first two days, the first 48 hours of four shakes per day for two days. Okay. And then on day three, which I'll get to, you're doing a shake in the morning and then you have your first lunch that day. So what are we doing?

Well, for two days, how does this work so well? For two days, we are taking advantage of large amounts of water. which means we're flushing the system.

And we're also keeping in mind that your blood is 90% water. So if we want to saturate the body with more fluid, right? Whether you're using distilled water or whether you're using spring water that I recommend or even just filtered water, okay? We're getting clean water.

We're putting that in your body, 20 ounces or more per shake that you just shake it up with this powder. And again, what does the powder contain? The powder contains the phase one and phase two detox nutrients. and then 15 grams of vegan-based protein so that you get your amino acids so that there's no muscle wasting.

Okay, then you use your IU, which is AYU detox capsules, which is Ayurvedic-based herbal blends that I formulated from being overseas and knowing what the body needs. And then FM, which stands for functional medicine detox. And those are the phase two nutrients, all right? Everything that's gonna help convert the intermediary metabolites to harmless water-soluble toxins that you can then poop out through your stool You can urinate out, you can sweat out if you want to do a sauna or some rebounding or any type of exercise after the two days. And then also you can do some, again, some exercise to huff it out through your lungs.

That's what it's all about. It's simple. It's three products. It's just the shake that you're doing every day and then morning capsules and evening capsules.

Again, you can see how all of this works, whether it's in my book or just go to drcabraldetox.com. I'll link it up in the show notes today. Go to stevencabral.com forward slash 823. So again, you don't even have to use the one that I'm recommending. But on that website, I showed you our whole plan. Again, you know my goal is to teach.

So I am giving you exactly what I do in my practice. My goal is never to hold back. I don't want that. I don't want to feel like, oh, I need to hold that back so I could sell that particular ebook or whatever. No, there will be none of that.

My goal is to teach other practitioners, to help this functional medicine community in general. and to help you understand how this works. So there's an infographic right at drcabraldetox.com that shows you exactly how to do this.

So the first two days are shakes only. And the reason that they're shakes only is that we want to also take advantage of something that I found out much more about it just a couple of years back. And that was something called autophagy or autophagy, however you would like to pronounce it.

It works for me. And what this is, is this is the time. when your body does not have more food toxins coming in, a lot of food coming in, any big spikes in blood sugar, anything like that, that your white blood cells can actually start to ramp up and they can go after cancer cells, they can go after necrotic tissue, they can go after bacteria, viruses, any type of dead tissue, and they can actually preferentially remove those first. It is absolutely amazing.

We are still learning to this day how the body uses a fasted period of time to start to clean house, to really start to remove the infected parts of our body. I mean, it is essential. I talk about it quite a bit.

I talk about how best to use it. And I also spoke about it on last Wednesday's, I believe it was last Wednesday's podcast, episode 817. I do hope you're checking out the back episodes of The Cabral Concept. That was on how to increase natural growth hormone by up to 2000%. Check out that show on a specific type of intermittent fasting, not daily.

but more like weekly or monthly. intermittent fasting. Okay.

So after those first two days of shakes only, so you're taking advantage of killing cancer cells, of autophagy, eliminating viruses, eliminating all the stuff that's going on with the immune system. Why? Because remember, over 30% of all of your energy goes to digestion every single day. Well, what if you're not having to break down any food? But what if you're also getting all the nutrients that your body needs so that it doesn't become too catabolic?

Pretty amazing. Because a lot of people are very, very sick. The last thing they need... is to become even more wiped out and catabolic.

So the first couple of days, you might feel just a little bit lower energy. And the reason is you're taking in the bare amount of nutrients, or I should say calories that you need, but the maximum amount of micronutrients, which means not calories, but the nutrients contained in those calories that your body needs. It is doing the work of really like breaking down this bacteria, breaking down dead tissue and helping to remove it from your body.

Pretty amazing, pretty remarkable. All right, back to day three. Now we're getting our first meal. Again, you're eating every basically three and a half hours.

Shake for breakfast, shake for lunch, shake mid-afternoon, shake for dinner on days one and two. On days three, you're doing shake for breakfast, you're doing a vegetarian vegan-based lunch, which is packed with many, many nutrients in there. We give you the shopping list, which is very, very simple, picking out some vegetables, picking out a vegan-based protein, picking out some healthy fats.

Then mid-afternoon, you're doing another shake again. And then at dinner, you're doing a paleo-type dinner, which could be something like salmon, asparagus, bok choy, olive oil, lemon, herbs, spices, like delicious, right? Delicious.

And then, or I should say, in addition to paleo, if you wanted to do another vegan-based dinner because you follow a vegan-based lifestyle, then absolutely fine. You'll do, instead of the salmon, you may just do X, like you might do right chickpeas or black beans or any of those things. Totally, totally fine. Okay.

So that's in a nutshell, but now let's go over just a few things that I wanna talk about because these are very, very popular questions. Let's say that it's your first time doing a detox, a functional medicine detox, your first time using shake powder, any of those things. Well, here's what you wanna do is that you might, of course, you just wanna try to do it with spring water.

Okay, a couple of things that are helpful. Some people, they like to shake it up with ice, okay? Totally fine.

I prefer it to be just room temperature, better, easier to digest for your stomach, but- Taste-wise, if you like to do it shaken up with ice, totally fine. For others, they might want to use a little bit of nut milk, unsweetened nut milk, such as almond milk. Maybe it's unsweetened vanilla almond milk, unsweetened vanilla coconut milk, macadamia nut, Brazil nut, any of those are totally fine. Or let's say that you're not trying to lose any weight.

Again, I still like, I know that you'll lose a little weight, but to get the full detox effects, I like not to mix it up with any berries to make a smoothie the first day. However, let's say that you're someone who doesn't want to lose the weight. and that you've already done detox in the past or you're feeling pretty good or you just want to add more flavor to taste. Okay, well then mix in a cup or two of wild blueberries to the shake, blend it up and make your smoothie that way, totally fine. But to get the maximum detox benefits, I like people just to do the water with the shakes or add some nut milk if needed for flavor or texture.

Totally up to you, okay? Because remember, the most important thing is that you do the detox. Even if it's not 100%, like exactly how it looks in the infographic, like...

Remember, if you can get 80% of the benefits, hey, that's phenomenal. I mean, it really is. That is phenomenal.

And maybe you're just working your way up. Maybe this is your very first detox, okay? Because you were nervous to try it before.

So try that out. The other thing is people always say, can I have coffee? All right. If you all of a sudden cut out coffee from your diet, you're going to get a headache. That's just the way it is.

Most people, not everyone, but most people have that caffeine addiction, all right? So what's going to happen is they'll get a headache. So if you want to do one cup of black coffee, or just with unsweetened nut milk in it, whether it's almond or coconut or any of those things in the morning, totally fine. Would it be even better not to have any caffeine?

Sure, but I don't want you to feel like you have no energy now because you cut out all your caffeine and I don't want you to feel like you have a terrible headache for the first two days. Okay, so if you're trying to break your caffeine fix, well, maybe this is the seven-day detox that you're going to do it, but that's totally up to you. What I don't want you to do is a lot of people attribute a headache or low energy on a detox to the detox itself.

Not true if you're cutting out coffee, right? If you cut out coffee, it's most likely because you cut out the caffeine. So keep that in mind, all right? Always keep that in mind.

My goal is to get you 80, 90% of the results, even if you have to keep some of that caffeine or coffee in there. Let's just make sure that there's no sweetener unless it's some stevia in that coffee. So no sugar, anything like that. And definitely no dairy unless it's a nut milk-based dairy alternative. So hopefully that helps for sure.

Okay, now- A big thing is as well is how do we do the 14-day or 21-day detox? Do we do two days of fasting on the next? So basically you finished.

You did days one and two, which are fasting, shake fasting days. You have four shakes per day, every three and a half hours. Okay, so you're always having something.

You're staying nice and satiated. Between meals, you could have herbal tea, such as ginger tea, chamomile tea, or maybe you're just doing some lemon water between meals if you feel like you need any water at all. Remember, you're getting 80 ounces for the day because you're shaking up 20 ounces of water with every single shake. Okay. But if you need a little extra water, go for it.

No problem at all. You can do herbal teas as well. Really, really nice. Okay, so the next part is this. How do we do days eight through 14 if you're gonna do another week of it?

Well, you have three options essentially. The first one is you just complete it like you did the first seven days. That's how you get the most benefit.

You do another two days on days eight and nine essentially of shake fasting, all right? You do four shakes a day and you do that for two days. Then you go back into your next days, which would be days 10 through what, 14 or so of the regular meal plan, which would be the shake of the morning.

vegetarian lunch, shake, and then the paleo style dinner or vegan-based dinner at night. Really, really simple. All right, so that's option one, just complete another seven days. Really, really simple. Option two would be, you're only gonna do one day of a shake fast.

So maybe on day eight, that's the only day that you do four shakes per day, and then you get right back into your normal eating, which would be the shake in the morning, the vegan lunch, the shake mid-afternoon, and then the dinner at night. Okay, and then your third option is this, and a lot of people enjoy doing this as well because they're not trying to get as much weight loss, they already feel pretty good. They're gonna complete... days eight through 14 of just doing the same meal plan as days three through seven, which is the no shake fast days, but they do the shake in the morning, the vegetarian lunch, vegan lunch. They're doing the shake at mid-afternoon and then the dinner at night, okay?

So that's your third way. And then if you want to do a full 21 day, which again, I honestly believe is life changing for most people, life changing. Even if you thought you were already in good health, then you could do the same exact option for days. Now I have to do math here again.

15 through 21, right? You could do the first option, which is two more shake fasting days, okay? Going to be the most beneficial for autoimmune and really health-based issues, as well as weight loss. So two shake fast days, and then get back on track for the last five days, which was the shake lunch, shake and dinner.

Or you could do just one shake fast day, or you could simply go from days three all the way up to day 21 of doing the shake vegan-based lunch. shake mid-afternoon, and then the paleo or vegan-based dinner. All three options are absolutely phenomenal. The first option where you do the two shake fast days every single week, you get the most benefit, of course, right? Because you get two more days of what's called autophagy and really no energy, no energy being used for digestion because you're doing liquid only, liquid the whole day, but you're getting all the nutrients that you need, all right?

And then the second option, which is the one shake fast day. That would be for the next two weeks. And then the third option, which is just maintaining your same nutrition plan on the detox from days three through 21. All great options. You can choose to do a seven day, a 14 day, or a 21 day. And that is really up to you, okay?

The greater the weight loss, the greater the health issue, or the greater the anti-aging if you've never done a detox before. I love the full 21 day. That is how I started. It's how I started with people in my practice as well.

And that's where just huge benefits came from. And then maybe after that, you only do. A seven-day detox seasonally, that's completely up to you.

I'm at the point right now where the body feels great. It tells me what I need. I really try to listen to it and I do a seven-day detox every single season. Sometimes it turns into a longer one if I really feel like I need that or I'm just really enjoying the benefits.

And again, since I obviously have access to as many of the Dr. Paul detoxes as I need right around my own clinic, it's easy for me. But I want you to do what you feel is best for you. So those are the easiest ways to transition. Maybe I'll do a part two where like with the most frequently asked questions. But what I wanted to do is just really, you know, kind of introduce you to what a functional medicine detox is.

I know it can be life-changing. You can choose to use the Dr. Ball detox. You can choose, here's what I want you to do.

I'd rather you just learn more about what a functional medicine detox is. So you can simply look at, if you have my book, The Rain Barrel Effect, you're going to look at essentially the last chapter, which is the Dr. Ball detox. manual. And again, this is on page 353. So that walks you through the specifics, the details on how to do that. The other thing you could do is just for a synopsis, an overview, is to go to drcabraldetox.com.

And it will walk you through exactly how to do a functional medicine detox, why to do it, why we're exposed to all these things like GMOs and toxins in the environment, and how we're supposed to expel them at least. seasonally. Really, really important.

So hopefully this was helpful. Again, always give me your feedback. Your feedback is what develops topics for this show. Your feedback is really what drives me to do more of this. So if you enjoyed the show, I would love to hear about it.

If you have additional questions, I would love to hear about that. The best place to place those. is inside of cabralsupportgroup.com, which is our free Facebook group, or all of the comments on Instagram.

Just go to Instagram and type in my name, Stephen Cabral, and a little search. Hopefully you're following along on this journey. And every single day I do a podcast kind of synopsis intro. I would love to hear right on today's, how to complete a 7, 14, or 21 day functional medicine detox, how you enjoyed the show. Maybe something that I should add back in or any questions that you may have.

Love your feedback. Appreciate you so much. Thank you for everyone writing in. Thank you for the topic for today's show.

Have an amazing day. Please do feel free to share this show with anyone you believe it could help. Before you go, I wanted to ask you this question. What if I could teach you in just a couple of hours how to transform your thyroid, hormones, adrenal, cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar, weight loss, energy, mood, brain, pregnancy, anti-aging, or many other health-related issues? After 20 years in private practice, after seeing and overseeing a quarter of a million client appointments, I sincerely feel I have the real-world data and have found the answer you've been searching for.

So what I've done is spent hundreds of hours of my own time refining what you need to know in order to uncover your underlying root cause health issues and then begin to rebalance the body and bring it back to a state of robust health and wellness. I'm going to teach you exactly what I do in my private practice. So you can understand how you got here and now what you need to do in order to heal. You'll receive all of the important success checklists, protocols, and even ways to customize it to make the program fit your busy life.

And you'll get all of this at a fraction of the price. Let me save you the time, money, energy, stress, and frustration of not knowing what to do next. Instead of reading dozens of books on the topic and seeing multiple practitioners, I will condense everything that you need to know in just a few hours of video tutorials that you can watch and listen to anywhere.

Together, we will make this healing process an enjoyable one that you can take with you for the rest of your life. I wish you all of the best of health and happiness, and I hope to be able to guide you on your healing journey through my health results accelerators. Simply choose the health imbalance you're currently suffering from, and by the end of today, you'll know what went wrong and how to get well again. I guarantee it. For details, head over now to stephencabral.com forward slash courses.

Transcript for:823: The Right Way to Complete a 7, 14 or 21-Day Functional Medicine

Transcript for:
823: The Right Way to Complete a 7, 14 or 21-Day Functional Medicine