How to Detox Your Body in 8 Simple Steps

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Dr. Michael Murray, N.D. Posted on January 2, 2025

Benefits of A Detox

Fasting, cleansing, and detoxing have been around for a long time. Today, with rising exposure to toxins in air, water, and food, the ability to detoxify is more important than ever for health.

In the past, fasting was used to eliminate toxins, as most were water-soluble and easy for the body to remove. However, modern toxins like pesticides, herbicides, and heavy metals are stored in fat cells and are harder to eliminate. During a water or juice fast, breaking down fat cells releases these toxins into the bloodstream. Without proper nutritional support, detoxification can be compromised, potentially moving toxins to sensitive areas like the brain and kidneys.

For these reasons, eliminating modern toxins requires a steady, long-term approach that supports the body’s detoxification system. Here are eight steps to detox your body safely.

8-Step Full Body Detox

Step 1. Clean Up Your Diet

Detoxification is a continuous process in the body, so the best approach is to live and eat clean consistently. Certain foods are especially helpful for full-body detox as they provide nutrients and phytochemicals that support enzymes involved in detoxifying harmful compounds.

Foods To Eat While Detoxing:

Sources of water-soluble fibers, such as pears, oat bran, apples, and legumes
Cabbage-family vegetables, especially broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and cabbage
Artichokes, beets, carrots, dandelion greens, and many herbs and spices such as turmeric, cinnamon, and ginger
Garlic, legumes, onions, eggs, and mushrooms for their high sulfur content
Green leafy vegetables and greens drinks like spirulina, barley grass juice, etc.
Herbal teas like green tea
Whole fruit especially berries
Fresh vegetable and fruit juice
Clean water, fruit and vegetable infusions, and herbal teas
Non-gluten grains
Low mercury fish such as wild salmon, smaller species of ocean fish like sardines and herring, and rainbow trout
Organic, grass-fed meat and dairy (optional)
Nuts and seeds
Good oils like olive, avocado, coconut, and flax

Foods To Cut Out While Detoxing:

Refined, processed, and high-sugar foods
High-sugar beverages including pasteurized fruit juices
Alcohol and diet sodas
Wheat and gluten
High mercury fish such as swordfish, marlin, orange roughie, shark, and larger tuna.
Grain-fed and non-organic dairy
Potato and corn chips
Bad oils like corn, safflower, soy, margarine, and shortening

Intermittent fasting is a key complement to a clean diet. This eating pattern limits food intake to a set time, such as the popular 16/8 method, where you fast for 16 hours and eat during an 8-hour window, like noon to 8 pm. It supports detoxification and boosts metabolic health by improving insulin function, blood sugar control, and cholesterol levels. Intermittent fasting also encourages detoxification, cellular repair, and autophagy (explained below).

Step 2. Eliminate Toxins From Your Lifestyle

Cut out chemicals, toxins, and harmful substances. The more toxins you’re exposed to, the harder your body works to eliminate them. Lifestyle choices like smoking, alcohol, sleep, and exercise also affect your toxin load and ability to detoxify.

Clean living means not only following a diet and lifestyle to reduce your toxin load, but also applying to cleaning, beauty, skincare, and personal products. The products you breathe in or put on your skin can greatly increase your toxin load. Choose natural products that do not contain potentially harmful compounds.

Step 3. Stay Well Hydrated

Low fluid consumption in general and low water consumption in particular makes it difficult for the body to eliminate toxins. You have probably heard a thousand times that you need to drink at least six to eight glasses of water (48 to 64 ounces) each day. But it’s true! Staying well-hydrated is a basic axiom for good health. Try to have a glass of water every two waking hours. Don’t wait until you’re thirsty, schedule regular water breaks throughout the day instead.

To make drinking water more appealing consider utilizing powdered electrolyte drink mixes and hydration enhancers.

Step 4. Boost Glutathione Levels

Supporting the liver is essential for its vital detoxification role. A healthy diet and lifestyle are key, but supplements boosting glutathione levels can also help. Glutathione, a compound naturally produced by the body, plays a vital role in supporting healthy liver function. It binds to toxins like pesticides, heavy metals, and other harmful compounds, helping remove them from the body.

The liver produces 8,000–10,000 mg of glutathione daily, but aging, toxins, certain drugs (like acetaminophen), and poor liver function can reduce this. Lower glutathione levels lead to poor detoxification. Supplements are often needed since a healthy diet with fresh fruits and vegetables provides only about 150 mg of glutathione per day. Asparagus, avocado, and walnuts are particularly rich sources.

The most popular dietary supplements to boost glutathione levels are reduced glutathione and N-acetylcysteine. Either can be used on an ongoing basis to support detoxification at the typical dosage range of 500 to 1,200 mg daily.

Another consideration for boosting glutathione levels is supplementing with ergothioneine (ERGO), a sulfur-containing amino acid. ERGO exerts many effects similar to glutathione, but it is a much smaller molecule. Glutathione contains three amino acids bound together, ERGO is a single amino acid. So, it is better absorbed and gets into cells much easier than glutathione. Plus, like glutathione, may be able to bind toxins directly and help escort them from cells and out of the body.

General dietary intake of ERGO may not be sufficient to provide optimal intake, especially in those who do not or cannot eat mushrooms regularly (mushrooms represent about 95% of the total dietary intake of ERGO). A good daily intake target for ERGO is 10 mg per day.

Step 5. Support Lymphatic Function

The lymphatic system is a key part of the body’s detox process, acting like a water purification system. Its main job is to filter fluid from the gastrointestinal tract and other tissues before it enters the bloodstream.

Fluid between cells collects in lymphatic vessels, which pass through lymph nodes that filter waste, toxins, and harmful organisms. If something unusual, like a virus, is detected, lymph nodes attract white blood cells, sometimes causing swelling. If nothing is found, the lymph continues its journey, eventually draining into the bloodstream and leaving the body.

The lymphatic system has a pump called the cisterna chyli, located in the abdomen. Diaphragmatic breathing pumps lymph from the cisterna chyli into the thoracic duct, which empties it into a vein near the heart and into blood circulation. Deep breathing, yoga, meditation, and regular movement, like walking, help promote lymphatic flow.

Lymphatic flow benefits from gravity. Elevating your feet, doing a headstand, hanging upside down briefly, or jumping on a rebounder or doing jumping jacks can help improve it.

To support lymphatic flow, try adding functional mushrooms like maitake, shiitake, reishi, or cordyceps to your diet. These mushrooms provide ERGO and beta-glucans, which boost immune function.

Beta-glucans boost the function of monocytes and macrophages, our body’s "garbage disposal" cells that digest toxins and waste. Along with eating medicinal mushrooms rich in beta-glucans, supplements made from baker’s yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) are well-supported by science to enhance immunity and macrophage function.

Step 6. Increase Your Greens Intake

There is an old axiom in naturopathic medicine, “when you are green inside, you are clean inside.” Green foods such as green leafy vegetables, celery, broccoli, etc., are rich in phytochemicals, especially carotenes and chlorophyll, that promote detoxification and antioxidant protection. So, the axiom has a lot of merit.

Green drinks made from dehydrated super greens like barley grass, wheat grass, chlorella, or spirulina are a convenient way to boost your greens intake. Just mix the powder with water or juice, and you’re good to go.

A single serving packs more concentrated phytochemicals than two cups of salad and is easier than growing your own greens. Plus, they taste better than plain wheatgrass juice, and many come in single-use packets for on-the-go convenience. For best results, drink 20 minutes before or two hours after a meal.

My favorite green drink is spirulina, a blue-green algae that is one of the original superfoods in the health food industry. Spirulina powder is rich in high-quality protein content (60-70% by weight) and is rich in phytochemicals that promote detoxification. The recommended dosage is generally in the range of 3,000 to 5,000 mg per day.

Step 7. Boost Your Fiber Intake

To increase your fiber intake, eat plant-based foods like nuts, seeds, legumes, fruits, and vegetables, and take 5 grams of fiber supplement an hour after dinner. The best options are water-soluble fibers like PGX, psyllium husks, guar gum, and pectin. These fibers support detox, healthy digestion, and a balanced gut microbiome.

Soluble fiber components can bind to toxins, such as heavy metals (e.g., lead, mercury, cadmium, arsenic), as well as prevent the reabsorption of compounds excreted in the bile, the primary route of detoxification of pesticides, herbicides, and other fat-soluble toxins.

Soluble fiber also helps promote the growth of health-promoting bacteria in the intestinal microbiome that produce short-chain fatty acids such as butyrate which increase the activity of gut-based enzymes that bind toxic compounds with sulfur and other molecules to aid in their elimination.

Step 8. Support Cellular Cleansing or Autophagy

The final step is boosting autophagy, a cellular cleansing process meaning “self-eating.” During autophagy, cellular waste is sent to lysosomes to be destroyed or reused. It’s the cell’s way of disposing of garbage, debris, microorganisms, and unwanted compounds. Enhancing autophagy is key to detoxifying your body.

To enhance autophagy, it is important to reduce the formation of excessive cellular garbage, support mitochondrial function, and activate key genes that promote autophagy. Here are some ways to accomplish these goals:

Steps 1 through 7 above all help keep autophagy functioning properly.
Getting enough quality, deep sleep is especially important.
Spice it up! Use spices and herbs liberally in the diet to take advantage of all of their benefits in protecting mitochondria and activating autophagy.
Take the four key foundational dietary supplements to support good health, detoxification, and enhanced autophagy:
- A high-quality multiple vitamin and mineral supplement.
- Vitamin D3 - 2,000-5,000 IU daily is recommended to keep your blood levels in the optimal range.
- A high-quality fish oil product to provide 1,000 mg EPA+DHA daily.
- A polyphenol-based antioxidant like resveratrol, grape seed extract, quercetin, or curcumin. These dietary supplements are somewhat interchangeable, and all have been shown to enhance both mitochondrial function and autophagy.

Final Comment

To a large extent, our toxin load has shown to be a major factor in determining our health status. Hence, it makes sense to simultaneously reduce toxin exposure while improving the ability to neutralize and excrete toxins. These eight key steps above can make that happen.

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