Detoxing vs. Nourishing - are they at odds?

This is the "health" resilience post I've been promising... this was the doozy I knew it would be to write. It will also probably be a doozy to read...

Today, I’m talking about detoxing and depletion, and breaking down some/more of the reasons why I’ve come to realize that detoxing is not the best way to go about health.

And instead, why nourishing, and in turn, helping your body to become more resilient, seems to be the thing I keep coming back to… over and over again.

Note… this post details some pretty strange health practices, and I’m aware it may not be that relatable to people who’ve never gone down these alternative “healing” paths before, or for people who haven’t struggled with their health the way I have. It’s also essentially “at email length limit” — meaning… it’s long. I’ve been working on it for a long time now, and I still almost definitely left important stuff out. If you want to hear me read it, become a paid subscriber :-)

TRS drama

I’m still on my instagram break, but, a friend told me to watch some drama going down on instagram, all about a detox product called TRS. So, I hopped on my computer, and watched it all from my desktop.

TRS is a multi-level-marketing “health” product that’s supposed to help you detox heavy metals and other environmental toxins through it’s nano-zeolite technology.

Zeolite is a mineral that is supposed to bind to toxins and heavy metals. I was actually taking (not-nano) zeolite powder a few years ago when I was working with a naturopath, but it was so chalky to drink, that I didn’t end up taking it very often. I took other ‘binders’ instead. But this TRS is zeolite is in nano form, (aka: teeny tiny). And it’s made in a lab, and claims to cross the blood brain barrier and detox toxins from your brain that have also crossed the blood brain barrier.

But now, the drama, is that many people are reporting that when they were using this product, they started experiencing tons of horrible symptoms, many of them neurological, and most of these people never realized it was related to the spray until later on. Instead, their symptoms actually just made them think that they needed the TRS spray even MORE. Multiple people reported that they started to go gray while on the product, and some people who gave it to their children noticed that their children’s hair started to go gray as well. (Going gray early can be a sign of mineral deficiency, they say.)

This is the dark-side of the worldview “detox-gets-worse-before-it-gets-better.” When people experience bad side effects, they’re told to maybe slow down, but definitely keep going. ‘Just keep detoxing. Don’t turn back now! Don’t you see how toxic you are? You gotta get it all out!’

The accusation is that Multi-Level Marketing TRS sales reps just… deleted all of these negative reviews and reactions, gaslit their customers and claimed it was impossible that the negative reactions were coming from their product — if anything, it was just a detox reaction. A sign you need the product even more.

Instead, the sales reps only post glowing reviews. And the reviews are indeed glowing. They say TRS heals everything, and not only that, but if you’re not constantly detoxing heavy metals, you’re slowly getting more and more poisoned. They also boldly claim that it’s safe for newborns, babies, nursing mothers, pregnant women, etc…

When I read these horrible side effects of TRS the other day, first, I kicked myself. Because I had fallen for it. I bought some of this stuff in early 2022, and used it for a month or two, because of the glowing reviews. Even though I am very anti-MLM and know how predatory they usually are… I was still conned. “Ugh. Caroline you’re such an idiot. Of course it was too good to be true.”

But, what reading this whole detox drama reminded me of even more, is the time I spent killing parasites with herbs — for almost two years. And during that time, out of deep confusion and desperation, I was pulled into an insane detox world, while also trying to balance it with being “anti-diet.”

And in the end, it gave me very little. In fact, it may have been terrible for my health overall, and very hard on my body. So now, it’s time to reckon with the detox world… again.

The thing is…I do believe that we live in a fake, toxic world, and that our bodies are often dealing with an overload that it struggles to keep up with. I think that the people who say there is nothing to detox, and that your body and liver are totally able to handle it no problem, may also be missing the mark — just based purely on my own experience. But, so are the people who say we have to be constantly detoxing and constantly taking products to bind to toxins. We’re all missing the mark, a little bit.

I only know some things

There is so much I don’t know about health. And the things I do know about health, are pretty broad, and largely based on my own experience, and mistakes. Some research. But mostly … my own mistakes.

And I’ve particularly been dragging my feet writing this post because… I don’t really have a full conclusion yet. And I don’t know if I ever will.

All I have to share today, is another realization about health and nourishment, that lines up with my other epiphany from over ten years ago: that dieting is destructive. But after healing my relationship with food ten years ago, I fell down the rabbit hole a few years ago, trying to blend my beliefs about food and disordered eating with an attempt to heal holistically (detox! detox! detox!), and after a few years of confusion and misdirection, I’ve finally figure out how they blend.

I think.

At least, this is what I think right now.

And hopefully, it will be food for thought, and a salve to the fear-based, toxin-obsessed, purity-based, alternative-health approach that many of us fall into when we are trying to heal our bodies holistically.

And again… I say that as someone who does believe we are essentially being poisoned by the world we live in. And, I seem to be a very “chemically sensitive” person, so to speak. But I still keep coming back to how important it is to support our bodies by nourishing them, relaxing, and trusting our bodies.

And hey, maybe I wouldn’t be quite so chemically sensitive, if I hadn’t done all the dumbass things I’ve done over the past 20 years.

The Diet Days

Just for some context, for the newer readers:

Back when I was a teenager, and through my early 20s, my views about health were all about weight. I thought that if I could triumph over my “food addiction,” and finally stay on my diet perfectly, forever, and become permanently skinny, all of my health problems would go away.

I had been diagnosed with PCOS. I had very bad skin, irregular and absent menstrual cycles, and other strange and miscellaneous health problems like: a thyroid nodule, extreme anemia, and … what I believed to be a dangerous food addiction.

I thought I was dieting for my health, but this extreme dieting was probably the worst thing I could have been doing. I was starving myself by trying to eat the smallest amount possible, then stuffing myself with fake food, fake sugar, and fake fiber-filled-everything, over actual food, actual calories, and actual carbs and sugar — and actual nutrients and minerals. I thought the less I ate the better, the less carbs I ate the better, and the less food I took in overall: the better. And it led to a cycle of starvation, and bingeing, and then starvation again. It led to feeling horribly, horribly out of control around food. And all of that led to a more and more erratic and stressful relationship with food.

It all certainly made my health worse, but I didn’t make the connection. I thought my health was bad because of my food “addiction,” bingeing, and weight gain. So I dieted more. I hopped from diet to diet, taking on new rules and new fears and new theories for why I couldn’t get my act together and just stick to my diet, damnit.

All of this led to The F*ck It Diet, something I wrote about for the last ten+ years, until more recently. All of this also became The F*ck It Diet book.

This liberated me from the roller coaster. I finally realized that I was approaching it all wrong. I needed food. I needed to gain weight, in response to years of restriction, even though I didn’t look underfed. I needed to let the perfectionism go.

I believed, finally, that food was good. That calories were good. That carbs were not, in fact, the devil. That what we needed was to nourish ourselves. That eating and nourishing was actually the way to feed our bodies, which would support our metabolism, and in turn, our entire body and heath and immune system.

During my early years on The F*ck It Diet, I still had pretty wholesome beliefs about the food that was best for us: meat, animal fats, grains, starch, fruit, vegetables, dairy, and even sugar. I was actually really inspired by Ray Peat’s work on health, which is pretty neutral/positive about… plain ol’ sugar. It helped break my intense fear of sugar and carbs, which is truly what I needed.

Then, to fully heal my mind, I went another step: I realized that my obsession with the purity of food was also in my way, so I let it go, very deliberately. I also let my obsession with thinness and weight loss go. I relaxed. I still generally thought that “whole, real” foods were probably best, and I ate them when I could, and when I wanted. But, I lived in NYC. I was in my 20s. I ate out constantly. I drank. I had a great time.

I was free. And I felt great.

Until I didn’t.

Chronic Health Issues

About five or six years later, I didn’t feel so great anymore. And I was drinking a lot, at least for me, and for what I can handle. According to our culture, I wasn’t drinking a lot at all for a single, mid/late-20-something, but my body could not handle it.

It still can’t handle alcohol. Food makes me feel great. But just one drink can make me feel terrible. It took me a long time to accept this, and finally feel good and strong about my decision to barely drink.

So, just to be clear at this point of the story: I don’t think it was ‘the fuck it diet’ that made me sick. Besides the fact that I had struggled with my health since I was a teenager, and there were probably lots of things going on, I also think, for me, it was the alcohol. And, back then: the extreme amounts of caffeine. The crazy late sleep schedule and the trouble sleeping. The extreme stress of still auditioning. And, probably, needing to add in more foods that were even more nourishing on an even deeper level. But, I’ll get there soon…

I’d started feeling really tired. So, that’s when I first cut out drinking almost entirely, because I started to feel my liver after just having one drink. I called it “liver pain,” but it wasn’t really pain. It was just this slightly uncomfortable sensation under the bottom of my ribs on the right side. And, I started getting constant low grade fevers and headaches. I’d think, wow! I keep almost getting sick and then fighting it off! But now I realize it was some sort of chronic virus. Eventually I learned it was most likely chronic Epstein Barr.

So, I started working with a naturopathic doctor, not only because that was (and still is) my preferred way to approach health, but even if I’d been super mainstream, no mainstream western medical doctor would have known what to do with me. In fact, I eventually went to one, told them my symptoms, and all they did was test me for HIV and say: nope, you don’t have it!

As soon as I started working with the natural doctor, I was thrown (back) into the world of toxins and detox that I’d been in years before. (Except this time, thankfully, I wasn’t dieting.)

I also got a DNA test that my naturopath looked at, and the test showed I have one of the MTHFR gene mutations. Yes, it’s what people like to call the motherf*cker mutation. And it really is a motherf*cker. It means you have trouble ‘methylating.’

What is methylating, you ask? Funny… I don’t actually have a definition. All I ever understood, was that it impaired my detox capability. So, the toxins other people could process no problem, were stuck in me… making me fucking sick. Or something like that.

This is what a quick google says about methylation:

“When methylation is going well, the process helps repair your DNA, regulates hormones, produces energy, protects against cancer, supports detoxification, keeps your immune system healthy, supports the protective coating along your nerves, strengthens the nervous system and on and on and on.”

And, when it’s not… all of those things can suffer.

Also, my mom, who also has the MTHFR mutation, had just learned she had high levels of mercury from her mercury fillings, that she eventually had removed. Mercury can be passed in utero, so it stood to reason that I could also have a high level of mercury in my tissues. And because of the MTHFR, we have a harder time than some others getting it out. (Actually, I just got a “hair tissue mineral analysis” test and it still shows high mercury in my hair… huzzah.)

My doctor put me on “binders” to bind to metals (charcoal is a binder, zeolite is a binder, but I was primarily on algae binders like chlorella), I was on herbs to support my immune system to fight chronic viruses, and some vitamins to support certain things that I don’t even really understand. It’s all a blur. I was super sick and exhausted all the time. I started getting terrible headaches I’d never gotten before.

I remember I told this doctor: I am open to doing anything you tell me to, except go on a diet, UNLESS you can assure me that the diet is actually necessary, and that it will help me.

So, she never put me on a diet, because … I’d done it all before and… I knew they were not magic cures.

Around this time though, I was eating relatively well. Everything is relative, isn’t it?Like, “well” will mean different things to different people. So I guess I mean… ‘high quality’ food. Which again… is relative. But, either way, it really didn’t seem to me, based on the way I was eating, that I would be as sick as I was from the way I was eating. But I do remember being very clear that I didn’t want to be be trapped by own bias against diets, so, because I felt so terrible all of the time, I cut out gluten just in case. My friend was just diagnosed celiac and, hey, what if this was a piece of the puzzle? But, I didn’t feel any better after a while, so I added it back in.

I was trying to be both anti-diet, and open to healing and supporting my body in whatever way seemed helpful or necessary. And… I was clearly poisoned or overwhelmed or …something, maybe from mercury, or the motherf*cker gene, or this… chronic virus thing, and it was clear that I needed to do something to try and help myself.

I also had a blood test around then, and some of my liver enzymes were elevated. I already wasn’t drinking at all at the time, and hadn’t been drinking for about a half a year at that point. Seeing high ALT on the blood test really really freaked me out. I had that liver “pain,” — what was going on? What was wrong with me? I was willing to do whatever I needed to do to help my body. “I will do anything.”

My naturopath suggested I try a weekly coffee enema, because it was supposed to be good for my liver by releasing glutathione or something… so, in desperation, I started doing coffee enemas.

Parasites

Then, my friend, who had also worked with this same naturopath, told me that when she was chronically ill over a decade before, she eventually passed a ton of parasites and her health turned around.

I said… no. No no. No no no. I do not like that. That will not be my problem. I do not have parasites.

Then, of course, I started seeing them. I think it was because the herbs I was taking to “kill” chronic viruses, kill parasites too.

And so, my naturopath put me on more parasites herbs, and I started seeing more parasites. (In the toilet, yes. Dead, yes. Worm-like. Also flat liver “flukes.”)

And I started feeling worse. There were “die-off” symptoms. My headaches got worse, my general malaise got worse, and so I thought, oh, this must be my core health problem, so… if I can just fix this problem, I’ll finally be better. It stood to reason, based on what I was experiencing, that… if I could just power through and get these parasites out, that I’d feel better on the other side. Just like my friend! She said she had passed them all in the course of a day or two, and immediately her health shifted.

So I tried to go as fast as I could, killing them. And… I couldn’t. The harder I went, the worse I felt. I was becoming too sick to function. So I had to slow down. But I kept going. And, every day, I felt… hungover. From “detox.”

Supposedly, the reason I was feeling so horrible during my detoxing/parasite killing, was my methylation issue and my impaired detox/drainage system… actually now that I say that, maybe it’s the same thing? I don’t know. Stagnant lymphatic system, maybe. Who knows. I still believe in this stuff, generally, but I also subscribe to a way lighter touch, and also don’t really know the specifics of everything, clearly.

But anyway, back then I was taking parasite herbs and binders, to bind to the toxins the parasites were releasing (allegedly), every day, for over a year and a half. I was doing coffee enemas often, practically every day, because a, it lessened my headaches, and b, it was supposed to be good for my liver. And c, every time I did them, I saw more parasites, so I hoped it would help speed up the process.

I asked my doctor, ‘why do I feel so horrible while I am killing parasites? Is it the parasites? Is it something else?’ The vague answer I got, because it seems like no one fully understands the reason, was: parasites actually store toxins and heavy metals for us, so in killing them, they are getting re-released, and you have to make sure your drainage pathways are open so you don’t just re-absorb the toxins. Or something. It also would mean that people with higher levels of heavy metals or toxins in their tissues, would be a better environment for parasites in the first place. Which would also would mean… that they aren’t parasites at all, but that this is more like a … symbiotic relationship…

Take all of that for what you will.

At the end of the day, I don’t know.

I actually switched up my parasite herbs at a certain point, and instead of debilitating headaches, I started getting debilitating vertigo. Why? Ohhh who knows! The doctor said it must have stirred up latent viruses or something. I honestly don’t know. But it was not easy. And it was not fun. And it just debilitated me more.

This bizarre and torturous experience just… never ended. I never got to the other side. I kept feeling like hell, every day, until finally… I gave up.

And once I gave up, I slowly started feeling a little better. Not like, fully great, but I started feeling a lot more normal.

Not long after this, I went to another doctor who muscle tested me, said I had parasites, and put me on a drug that kills parasites. I noticed nothing while I was on the drug except a slight headache, so… did it do anything? Who knows. Lots of parasites are microscopic. This doctor also said that in the US, we usually get parasites from produce that’s imported from other countries, because it’s washed in unclean water. Others say you get parasites from literally everywhere and anywhere, and the idea that the US is too clean for parasites is a hilarious little myth.

When I returned to this doctor, he muscle tested me for parasites again, and said the parasites weren’t a problem anymore. Muscle testing is energetic “bio-resonance” testing, so take from that what you will. I think there is something to it, but I wouldn’t live and die by it. Also, him saying that parasites aren’t a problem anymore doesn’t meant they’re gone. It just means that, relatively, it’s not a major burden on my system. That’s if you believe anything they’re saying in the first place, which, I at least half do.

So, back then, I decided that whether he was correct or incorrect about parasites, I would put my parasite drama behind me, at least for the time being. I stopped doing any of these health practices. And I was fine-ish for a few years.

I always thought that maybe I felt ok because I detoxed some stuff, which allowed my body to soldier on, slightly less toxic-ly burdened than before. But I’m not 100% sure, because I also think that the way I was detoxing was really hard on my body. There is an outlook that believes that if detoxing hurts that much, and makes you sicker, you’re going to hard, and you’re actually just being re-poisoned by the toxins you think you’re detoxing.

So honestly……

I don’t know.

In the back of my mind I always wondered if I should, one day, eventually go back to killing parasites. Because, in the holistic-health parasite-killing world, it’s not a one and done. They can easily come back. I’d heard that in most traditional cultures, they would do a parasite cleanse every year. Or something.

But, I remembered how horrible it made me feel, so I kept putting it off.

Last Winter

Until, last winter.

I’ve been following more ‘conspiracy theory’ accounts in the past year, and a lot of these accounts are also “holistic health” accounts too… I’m able to tune out a lot, because I’ve been down the obsessed-with-food rabbit hole, and come back out. But, on these accounts, I also started hearing people talk about parasites again. And one of the accounts I started following was also selling … drumroll… TRS, the nano-zeolite spray I talked about in the beginning of this post. Again, for context, zeolite is a binder, that binds to heavy metals/toxins. Some of the glowing reviews for TRS even said that after being on it for a few weeks, they passed a ton of parasites out of the blue. Wow… so parasites really are connected to heavy metals/toxins… I guess I need to do another parasite cleanse. Maybe I should even try this TRS…

I thought… alright, I’ve spent a few years enjoying my life, but I still struggle with my hormones and other things. Maybe it’s time to do this again. And maybe this time, I can do it in a better way. My skin is still not great, I still can’t really drink alcohol, I have sleep problems… I felt like… there was something more I needed to be doing to help myself, and maybe this was it. Again.

So, I bought a big expensive parasite protocol that had 4 phases. The first phase started with supplements that would “opening my drainage and detox pathways,” and then it moved onto more of the parasite cleanse part in the later phases. And I bought some TRS. I did not like the fact that it was an MLM but… it seemed pretty low stakes. I thought. And the reviews were amazing… maybe this was the thing that would help me detox, and not be in so much pain during the process…? (Suckerrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.)

I started the first phase of my protocol, and also started spraying TRS. I felt slightly weird, but generally …alright. I think. I mean, the fact that I wasn’t debilitated seemed like good news to me after what I went through a few years before.

Around that time, I was also experiencing a really, really bad bout of one of my many weird health problems: restless leg syndrome (aka: RLS). I have had restless leg since I was 18, off and on. It’s very hard to explain the sensation if you’ve never had it, but it is extremely uncomfortable, it usually happens at night, and leads to horrible insomnia. I knew magnesium helped, but never cured it. It was… allegedly… neurological. Maybe tied to dopamine deficiency? Maybe tied to mineral imbalances, or anemia (I wasn’t anemic at the time, but when I first had RLS at 18, I was dangerously anemic…)

But, my RLS had gotten so bad around this time, and was such a disturbance to my sleep that I finally said ok - I HAVE to figure this out. I cannot live like this.

I had also become, essentially, addicted to weed edibles to sleep over the two years prior. At first, weed was the only thing that allowed me to sleep when I had RLS, but by this point, it wasn’t helping at all. The RLS was back, and the weed was now a dependence in order sleep, and almost making my sleep worse because I couldn’t sleep unless I had the right dose in my system…

I asked my instagram about RLS. Had anybody cured it without drugs? Mainstream medicine would just put me on gabapentin, a hardcore anti-seizure and anti nerve pain drug that my sister was flippantly put on in college that she had to titrate off of.

My instagram followers said: “Magnesium! Weed!” (I said I know, I know. It’s not enough.) “They said: It could be tied to TMJ! Go to an Orafacial Myologist!” (Which, I did! Another story!) “Go to a cranio-sacral fascial practitioner!” (Which, I did!) “It’s actually related to your minerals and copper/iron metabolism! Check that out!”

Interestingly… I had just stumbled into the minerals corner of instagram. Something in me said: This. I need this. I know I need this. I need minerals.

Minerals.

Way back when I started The F*ck It Diet, I remember I constantly was thinking: I need minerals. I need minerals.

I know food has minerals, but beyond the “I need minerals” inner knowing, I didn’t know much else about it.

So this past winter, I started reading more… apparently, balanced minerals are the basis of absolutely every function in our bodies. And, taking certain supplements in high doses can knock off your minerals, and knock off that balance. Taking a lot of zinc can knock off your copper, and copper is needed for so much in the body, including iron recycling. Taking tons of vitamin D and C can knock things off too.

For the prior year or so, I’d been on lots of supplements to try support my immune system to avoid …COVID. High doses of: Liposomal Vitamin C, Vitamin D, Zinc, Quercetin... And… I mean… it worked. I never got COVID, as far as I know. I got some flu-ish / cold-ish things a few times that I thought could have been COVID, but I never tested positive. Not that I trust the tests. But, even then, when my entire family got it after last Christmas, I pounded my supplements, and never got it. I got a runny nose, and I tested: no covid. I tested my antibodies a month later: no antibodies. Huh. Wow. Wtf.

But… now as I was reading about minerals, I was thinking… omg, I’ve been bombing my body with these vitamins and supplements, and not really wondering if there would be any fallout…

And all the binders I’d been taking? Both then, and through the years? They are incredibly depleting to our bodies and our mineral stores, because not only do they bind to toxins and metals, but they bind to our minerals too (lots of minerals are also metals, and necessary ones). I generally knew that I was supposed to take binders away from food and other supplements, because it would bind to the minerals and cancel each other out, but even taken alone: they deplete you.

Not only that, but minerals are literally needed for the function of every single process in our bodies. Low mineral status can affect your enzyme production, it can lead to hormonal dysregulation, immune dysregulation, adrenal dysfunction… and way more.

(… can you see now why I have been dragging my feet in writing this, there are many moving pieces to bring together, and… it’s also strange and weird and probably not very relatable…)

And where are the most bio-available minerals? In foods that our culture doesn’t really eat anymore: animal products. Animal fats like butter and full fat dairy, bone broth, animal organ meats, and other things like oysters and cod liver oil and stuff.

This… spoke to me. I knew this stuff was good for us. I knew it.

And this push for plant-based everything… I knew it was off. But now I had more reason to believe it was off. And I wasn’t even close to being plant-based, and hadn’t been for way over a decade, but I certainly was not prioritizing meats and these mineral rich animal products… not at all. In fact, I had started drifting over towards well mayyybe I should start making even more vegetarian meals? #influenced

Soon after this, I started working with someone who could guide me more on this mineral balancing act, because I was up shit’s creek, and had been hardcore pounding these vitamins for years on end, and was currently a month and a half into a parasite protocol and using TRS as a binder.

After I told her my health and healing attempts history, she said (paraphrased): ‘Ok, based on everything you just told me, it sounds like you are really depleted. Especially with the binders and the parasite protocols… The approach I work with is that if you replenish your mineral stores, your body is able to do what it needs to do, and get rid of what it needs to get rid of, and repair what it needs to repair without any crazy parasite or virus killing sprees or detoxes… those things are really harsh on the body, and really really depleting.’

Lightbulbs. I couldn’t believe how much this resonated. Like… YES this is the missing piece. This was a focus that felt healthy, and sustainable, and made sense to me. It was the focus that trusted your body, if you just gave it what it needed. It was the approach where you didn’t have to be afraid of toxins, if your body was well-fed, it would be able to handle it.

The Detox Scam

And here’s another thing…

Minerals are antagonistic to heavy metals. Meaning: you need minerals in order for your body to naturally remove and detoxify heavy metals. If you do a harsh cleanse with binders that are binding to both the toxins AND the minerals, you are just creating a never ending loop. You are perpetuating the problem. It will never end, because you are removing the capability for your body to do it on it’s own.

This is the big scam of the holistic health world… detoxing depletes you, and makes your body incapable of detoxing on its own. Dieting does this too. THIS is the way to get people dependent on another system, that claims to be so much better than big pharma… I don’t think practitioners realize they are doing this to people, just like I don’t think doctors realize what they’re doing to people with western medicine, but… it ends up often becoming a similar paradigm.

If we are able to nourish ourselves on our own, and support our bodies on our own, then… we won’t need to pay 15K for alternative health detox treatments…

As you may imagine… this was both revelatory to me, and also… so obvious. And SO in line with everything I had previously come to believe about health through my experience healing my disordered eating… it’s about feeding the body. It’s about nourishing the body… if you are nourished, your body is resilient. End of story.

She recommended I stop the parasite protocol, and stop TRS. So I did. In this new paradigm, if your body is strong enough, it can clear parasites on its own. And even when the body may need a little extra help, she said I was so depleted that it would be way better to just focus on re-nourishing.

So, I started with these ‘adrenal cocktails,’ (whole food vitamin C + potassium + sodium) to try and give the body sodium and potassium together, I switched up the kind of magnesium I was taking to a more bio-available kind, and started applying more magnesium “transdermally” with a spray. I started drinking more bone broth, really high quality cod liver oil (because… lots of it goes rancid), raw milk and maple syrup in my coffee, and… because cooking myself organ meats to eat is a real challenge for me mentally… I started taking some beef liver capsules and oyster capsules. I stopped pretty much every other supplement and health protocol.

I didn’t immediately feel better or different, but that’s not always what this kind of healing is like. It’s slow. It’s steady.

Also, soon after I started this, I got another damn surgery, to try and fix the first surgery. This probably set me back a bit, (they pumped me with antibiotics before the surgery, plus a major stress on the body, etc.)

A few months later, I went cold turkey off my nightly edibles, too.

It’s been 8 months, and no I’m not fully healed or anything, but… just last week I realized that … I haven’t had restless legs in a few weeks. I’m just getting in bed and… falling asleep. This is huge.

HUGE.

I’m not 100% sure why. I don’t know if it’s the minerals. I don’t know if it’s some of the nervous system and stress reduction that I did, because I also think that RLS is connected to our nervous system and stress hormones. But… minerals also helps to lower stress, and… vice versa: stress depletes minerals.

Or, I don’t know if my RLS improvement is something else entirely that I am not even thinking about. But… I’m just now remembering that my RLS got extra bad when I was on TRS…

So, TRS.

Why do some people rave about it, and some people say it absolutely destroyed their health? Because… there are people who rave about TRS. And there are people who swear by binders and zeolite, and how much it helped their health (maybe it also helped mine too, even if I was doing it wrong…)

But, my thinking on why there are both raves and horror stories, are these three potential reasons.

First, some people say that TRS actually has aluminum in it, within the zeolite chemical compound, and so it can actually cause heavy metal poisoning (in some people?).

Two, as we saw while I was “detoxing” a few years ago, doing a heavy metal cleanse can actually make you feel worse… and that may be because it’s actually redistributing the metals throughout your body. Essentially… if you feel terrible while you’re “detoxing”… something is going wrong. You’re not supposed to feel terrible as you heal.

But the third reason, is because it may just deplete minerals that much, which will causes big problems all on its own.

Or maybe, it’s a combo all three.

Conclusion

My current outlook is: Food is good for you. And some (all?) of us may need extra concentrated minerals in animal products like bone broth, organ meats, cod liver oil, and oysters, etc…

But nourish, and don’t deplete your body, of all macro and micro nutrients (vitamins and minerals, from food mostly).

And ‘detoxing’ is best done gently, without extra effort, by your nourished, mineral balanced body, and not by putting your body through hell, only to wonder if you’ve made everything worse.

And no, I have not figured everything out. And no, I can’t say that all my problems are gone, though my acupuncturist sister was just doing an evaluation on me to prescribe me some new herbs, and for almost every single question she asked me, I ended up saying: well, it’s actually gotten a lot better in the last few months…

So… maybe things are on the up and up.

As you can tell, this is kind of anti-climatic. And… I’m sure as I get some more insight on all of this, I will be updating…

FAQ:

‘So… which supplements do you take?!?!’

Whenever I mention anything about this on instagram, people ask me what supplements I (or they should) take. And… I never know quite how to answer.

I can only tell you the ones I take, that I’ve been led to believe are the best best quality, and also remind you to do your own research on them because… if there’s one thing I’ve re-learned recently: it’s that I want to be on the least amount of supplements I can be. And to question all glowing reviews.

But, I take these, and also signed up to be affiliates for them this morning. Ha.

Freeze-Dried, Grass-Fed Beef Liver - use code CAROLINE for 10% off

Desiccated Oyster - use code CAROLINE for 10% off

Rosita Cod Liver Oil - use that link for 15% off

I drink this bone broth - it’s so delicious (and it’s also literally just broth, I’m sure you’ve had something like it before…)

Magnesium “Oil” (Spray) - a pretty gnarly, odd texture, but it works well. Just spray it on your feet and use your feet to rub it into your other foot. Do NOT put it on freshly shaved legs ok… trust me.

This is currently the magnesium I take - both malate and glycinate!

Those are affiliate links above, I get a small commission if you purchase after using that link. These are also products I use every day, and do believe are really high quality, or else I wouldn’t be taking them. But again… I am also wary of all supplements at this point because really, what have we learned from the TRS saga?

You’ll notice, except for the magnesium, these supplements are all actual FOOD.

Alright, thanks for reading. This was a doozy to write, and I’m sure a doozy to read, and I am sure I forgot to say things I should have said, too.

Paid Conclusion on Alcohol: