How To Do The 10-Day Detox

Mark Hyman, MD

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Narrator: Coming up on this episode of the Doctor's pharmacy. Dr. Mark Hyman: Remember, when you're adding things back, you want to do it smartly. You have to add one thing at a time. So if you're adding back gluten, just do that for three days. Don't have a pizza which has gluten and dairy because you won't know what's effective if you feel bad. Welcome to the doctor's pharmacy. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman. That's pharmacy. Have a place for conversations that matter. And I'm going to share with you today something that really matters because it's the cornerstone of my medical practice. It's the secret a lot of my success, and it's how I get a lot of my patients better, which is something called the 10 Day Detox Diet. Now, I do call it the 10 day Detox Diet, but sometimes you need to do it longer, like two weeks, three weeks, 10 months, maybe even 10 years depending on the situation. But we're going to talk about the 10 days and how powerful that can be to transform your health. And this today is part of our Health Bite series to improve your health by taking small steps every day that can make significant changes in your health over time. Now, I find that most people have never connected the dots between how they feel and what they eat. They walk around with what I call F L D syndrome. That's when you feel like crap, and that is a big problem for people. What do I mean by that? Well, you might be tired, sluggish, you might have brain fog, maybe you have digestive issues, reflux, heartburn, irritable bowel, maybe you have nasal congestion, sinus issues, muscle aches, joint pains, headaches, insomnia. Should I go on rashes, acne, I mean it goes on and on and on. And many of these things are caused by food. And the only way to know is to do a total body reset like hitting the reset button on your commuter when all the systems are jammed. It's a complete reboot. So how do you do a reboot? It's very powerful and most people have never experienced this, and this is why I love to do with people and I actually run programs all around the world where people can come and actually experience this. We do programs where we have people do this just in five days, not even 10 days. People have a 70% reduction in all symptoms from all diseases. Now I'm going to put in the show notes, the medical symptom questionnaire that I use in my practice, which essentially gives you a score based on the degree and frequency and severity of symptoms. So if you have a headache is a zero meaning never or a four, I get it all the time and they're really bad or some version in between. And then you get a score at the end and people have a score of 60, 70, a hundred. It should be less than 10, maybe even zero. Ideally I should have symptoms. It's not normal for human beings to suffer this much, and that's really why I created this book and the program, the 10 day detox side, because I was doing this with my patients and seeing such incredible results. So I do this personally regularly. I do it at least two or three times a year, four times a year to really reset my system to kind of get my body back on track to get rid of all the bad stuff, put in all the good stuff. I'm going to walk you through how to do this. I'm going to teach you how to hit the reset button, reboot your system, and to optimize your biology, to help your gut, help your detox system, to help your immune system to help reset your nervous system. And it's powerful. So if you want to really see how your body can feel and get rid of what we call F L C syndrome, I would do this. Most people are like the frog that's in cold water where you turn the heat up slowly and it starts to boil to death. We just kind of get used to it and think it's normal. These symptoms are not normal. So what are the principles? What are the foundational pillars of the 10 day detox program and what can you do Now? Basically anybody can do this. People go, I want to do this with a junior high school once. And the teachers are like, well, we might have to get permission from the parents to see if it's safe. Maybe they don't want their children doing this. I'm like, what is it safe to eat fruits and vegetables and nuts and seeds and protein and cut out sugar and starch and processed food? I mean, they should get a note that it's permission to eat the junk food that they have in school. It's the opposite. I know. Yes, it's very safe. Anybody can do this. And some people, by the way need more of certain things or other things. But basically this is a very universal approach to resetting your system. So what are the first principle, the first pillar, it's eat real food. Real whole food. Understand the food is medicine. It's not just energy or calories, it's truly medicine. It's information, it's instructions, it's code that literally programs your biology with every bite. It regulates your gene expression, your hormones, your brain chemistry, your immune system, your microbiome. Pretty much everything is controlled by food. And if you're eating the wrong food, you're sending all the wrong messages, it'll be the right food. You're turning on the right messages. So maybe the 10 day detox, you're basically taking out the bad stuff and putting in the good stuff. You're taking all the foods that cause inflammation that are toxic to your system, that are inflammatory, that mess with your gut, and you're putting in foods that actually help reset your system. And it's pretty much a very simple approach. It's lots of veggies, so mostly veggies, lots of good fats, lots of fiber, lots of good clean protein. And what does that look like? It's tons of non-starchy veggies like broccoli. Any kind of veggie you think of, it's not basically a potato. Sometimes sweet potatoes are okay for people. Avocados, good shots, avocados, olive oil, nuts and seeds, lots of good protein, grass fed, organic regenerative meat, fish, chicken. Sometimes for vegetarians we can, or vegans, we can use plant-based proteins like Tempe or non G M O, organic soy tofu. Those are the most dense sources of protein, but you do need protein as you detoxify. So for the 10 days, you're going to be getting rid of all the other junk, right? Processed food, other carbs, sugar, dairy, coffee, gluten, alcohol. Pretty much actually all grains and beans. And the reason we get rid of grains, that beans, it's not that they're necessarily all bad. A lot of people have issues. A lot of people have issues with their gut. A lot of people have issues with inflammation. A lot of people have issues with gluten. A lot of people have issues with insulin resistance and pre-diabetes and obesity and they can be problematic for these people. So basically get off all the bad stuff. Now it's not calorie count. You can eat as much as you want. We're not like crazy how much macronutrients and percent of this and percent of that. No, it's just pick the right foods and we focus on what to eat. You don't have to focus on how much to eat, right? So when you look at your plate, it should basically look like this. Three quarters of it should be non-starchy veggies. And I often will put two or three veggies in my dinner. I'll make mushrooms, I'll have broccoli, I'll make some maybe a salad. So I'll have lots of veggies and I'll have a portion of protein that's essentially the size of my pump, four to six ounces, which usually 30 to 40 grams of protein. Now that's a good amount of protein, but you don't need that much if you're having an all protein. It should be very generally raised. Should be pasture raised, chicken, wild caught, fish should be low. Mercury obviously all that. And we'll put all the show notes, lots of good fats with dinner like avocados, nuts of seeds, olive oil in your veggies. You can even use for example ghee, which is a kind of a butter, but it actually has the inflammatory proteins. Remove casein and whey. So basically has just the fat. It's called clarified butter. Very common. You can get my book tend Detox diet. You can get the 10 80 detox diet, cookbook, whatever you want. Put all the show notes and links together. A second pillar aside from what you eat, the food is really important and by the, you need protein in the morning. You need to make sure you get rid of sugar and starch in the morning. Super important. Then people start their diet, their day with carbs, which is the worst thing you can do with sugar sweetened coffees, teas, cereals, muffins, bagels, breads, bad news. Second pillar are your daily habits essentially involves a pattern of eating and living that puts your body back in rhythm and helps you reset your nervous system. And there's two really important habits as part of the 10 day detox. One is when you eat and also when you sleep. So let's talk about when you eat. Now, when you eat might be as important as what you eat. So many of us don't eat in the right pattern. We tend to eat all day long. We tend to snack. We tend to eat before bed. We snack late at night. It's kind of bad. So basically when you eat, it's very important. Research shows that doing that can really be bad for your health if you eat at night. So the first is make sure you give yourself at least 12 to 14 hours between dinner and breakfast. So dinner at six, breakfast at eight, that's a 14 hour fast, okay? If you eat at six and then you keep snacking all night, that doesn't count right? And most simple form of what we call time restricted eating, and it's basically giving our body a rest and getting the body to reset. And I wrote a lot about this in my book, the Young Forever. But basically there's a whole process at night that happens called autophagy and cleanup and repair. You want to give your body the ability to do that. The next is food. Now you can do a breakfast if you're eating, for example, dinner at six and breakfast at eight or so, that's a 14 hour fast. Really important to have protein in the morning on, not carbs and sugar. Also not eating three hours before bed is really important. So most people eat and snack after dinner. Don't do that. Have at least three hours the time you eat and you go to sleep that way you will lose weight. Your body can repair and heal instead of trying to digest and store the food. What about sleep? Sleep is one of the most underrated pillars of health. It's probably even before exercise, meditation, maybe even before nutrition because when you don't sleep well, you're going to eat tons of sugar and carbs. You're going to crave more. So you want to focus on sleep and restorative rest. We know that getting in a routine of waking and sleeping can help us have deeper, more restful sleep. So try to take the same bedtime every night. Try to get off your screens for an hour or two before bed or use blue blocker glasses. Keep your room dark and cold, probably 65 to 68. Really important because your body does much better with sleep at night. Try to relax at night with meditation. Do a guided imagery, do breath work, stretching, journaling, gratitude, practice whatever you like, but do something very important. So your evening routine should be like set a bedtime and stick it over the 10 days, turn your phone off and get it out of your bedroom. Turn the TV off for at least an hour or two before you go to bed. And then use the time at night to read, to journal, to meditate, to connect with people you love and just kind of wind down. The third pillar is extra support we need on the journey right now we all need nutrients. They're called vitamins because they were vital. A means vital to life, right? And so we've seen a dramatic reduction in the nutrient density of our food. Our organic matter has gone out of our soils. Nutrients can't be extracted. Foods travel long differences. We have commodity crops that are bred to actually breed out the nutrients and in the starch and yield. And so foods aren't as nutritious as they once were and probably 90% of Americans according to the government owned surveys are deficient in one or more nutrients at the minimum level to prevent deficiency. So how much vitamin D or do you need to not get rickets? Not very much like 30 units. How much you need for optimal health? Probably three to 5,000. So we need to really probably focus on nutrients and even with a perfect diet, because none of us are hunter gatherers anymore, we're eating all kinds of food that we never ate. And I mean nutrient depleted. We need the basic supplements. So we need a basic set of supplements, a multivitamin and mineral foundational magnesium. A lot of us are deficient. Probably 45% are low or deficient magnesium. It's involved over 300 different enzymatic reactions. Super important, helps relax your nervous system at night, help you calm down. Also, people get constipated sometimes when they change their diet. So taking magnesium, citric can help. And lastly, vitamin D. You can also take fish oil, but vitamin D is really important. Vitamin D over 80% is lower deficient in vitamin D. It's involved in so many different things in the body. So really important and it helps your mood, helps your muscle function, helps your brain, helps your energy, helps inflammation, autoimmunity, it's just super important. And most of us are low fish. Oil is also important and I often recommend fish oil to people or omega fats. So one of the program steps in the 10 day detox, what should be the steps? And then we're going to go through this. The first step is to eat from the 10 day detox approved list for 10 days. So eat what I'm telling you to eat whole foods. You can a whole food based shake in the morning. You can add protein powder, grassfed protein if you want. I have a grassed protein called super simple protein, but you really need to make sure you have good breakfast. Second is commit to daily habits. Pick your designated eating window. You want a 12 to 14 hour overnight fast, which means eating within a 10 or 12 hour window. Know, don't snack before bed. Try to have the same bedtime. Get off your technology an hour or two before practice some active relaxation, huge impact on your health. Step three is adding the supplements. Now you don't have to do this, but I really encourage people to have a multivitamin, magnesium, vitamin D, and potentially fish oil. And we're going to list which products we should take in the show notes so you have it all listed there. Also, what you should eat and what you should avoid during your 10 80 detox. Let's go through that. So here's the full food list. We're going to have it in the show notes. You can take it with you in the store. It's in the book, the 10 80 detox. It's in the 10 80 detox cookbook. But essentially here's what you should eat and what you should actually get rid of. What you should eat is protein. You need to write protein, right? So grass fed or generally raised meats is great. You can have past raised lamb, beef, bison, venison, elk, grass fed beef, pasture raised, chicken, Turkey, duck. All that's fine. What you should avoid is conventionally raised chicken and poultry and eggs and so forth. And by the way, you can also have eggs if they're pasture raised. Eggs, meat, get rid of all processed meats, deli meats, all conventionally raised feed lot meats. Get rid of all that stuff. What about fish and seafood? Lots of small fish are good. Big fish are bad, right? Big fish like swordfish, tuna filling sea bass halibut. Most farm-based fish are pretty bad for you. What you should be consuming are things like the, I call the smash fish, small wild salmon, sardines, anchovies, herring mackerel. You can have black cod shrimp, sc trout, all those are fine eggs. As I said, pasture raised. Eggs are fine. Non-organic, regular eggs are not fine. What about nuts and seeds? Very important. Almonds, Brazil nuts, cashew nuts, hazelnut, macadamia pecans, pine nuts, pistachios, walnut, all that's great. You can even cap cacao nibs chocolate, not actually chocolate but's where chocolate comes from. Seeds are great. Chia seeds, flax seeds, hemp seeds, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, all great nut butters also great. So unsweetened nut butter. So almond, cashew, pecan macadamia. I love macadamia walnut. All that's great. You can also eat beans. If you're a vegan and you want to do this, you can use G M O free or non G M O, tofu or Tempe as your protein. What you should avoid are nuts. Better with sugar that are cooked in oils that are basically candied stuff. A lot of nut butters have sugar, hydrogen fats, peanut butter, peanuts can be okay, but I would say mostly avoid peanuts because they have aflatoxin in 'em. They often are rancid and so you want to be careful with that. What about oils and fats? Well, the ones you want to use are organic. Avocado oil. You can use organic coconut oil for cooking. Grass fed ghee. If you want to use tallow, large duck fat, chicken fat, that's okay as long as they're pasture raised or generally raised for salads. And you can use different kinds of oils like almond oil, fox oil, hemp oil, macadamia oil, extra virgin olive oil, and you can cook with olive oil, but only tomato sauces and things like that. Things that are not high heat. Sesame oil, tahini is great as well. Great fat sesame seed kind of paste. Wild oil. Those are flavorful oils. They're not main oils, but you want to avoid the traditional oils. All the seed oils like canola oil, partially hydrogenated oils, margarine, peanut oil, soybean oils, sunflower oil, affor oil, trans fats, vegetable oil, vegetable shortening, all that stuff's bad. What about veggies? What should you eat? Well, you want to stick with lots of non ssar veggies or Oke organic if you can. I use the Dirty dozen guide from the environmental working group, ewg.org tell you which are the clean 15, meaning you can eat them not organic or the dirty dozen, which you definitely not eat if they're not organic. But I love asparagus, artichokes, avocado, beans, sprouts, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, cucumber, egg, clan, garlic, ginger, hearts of palm called Robbie, leafy greens, mushrooms of all kinds, onions, peppers, rido, radish, rutabagas, all that kind of stuff. Seaweed is great, lots of minerals, shallots, some are squash, tomatoes, turnips, zucchini list goes on. We have all in there. You can have some things like sweet potatoes. I like the Japanese, purple, sweet potatoes, winter squash, carrots, pumpkin, all that's fine. I mean carrots are fine because unless you're doing carrot juice or that's a problem. But basically try to limit to one serving, which like half a cup of day we should be avoiding is corn and white potatoes mostly. Some of the little fingerling potatoes or the Peruvian potatoes per potatoes can be fine. What about dairy? You can eat past raised butter or ghee, but I encourage you to get 'em all dairy, including sheep and goat, which are mostly fine from people, but I encourage people to just get 'em all other dairy and if you're having encourage you to make sure it's grass fed or generally. And what about beans? Well, you can have green beans, you can have green peas, you can have non jimmo or organic soy, just tofu or Tempe. You can have snap beans, you can have snow peas, but otherwise definitely no beans. What about grains? No grains at all. So even healthy grains, quinoa, buck weed, things like that. Iron cream really get off all of that. Why could it just shuts down? The insulin response helps people lose weight, reduce inflammation. Not that these are necessarily all bad, but eventually you add them back. But basically get rid of all the other all grains, wheat, barley, rye, rice, hammer, oats, everything. Get rid of it. Fruit. Fruit can be okay, but small amounts of non high-glycemic fruits. So organic, blackberries, blueberries, cranberries, kiwi, lemons, limes, raspberries, all that's fine. Not too much, right? You know what I mean? Like two pounds of blueberries. But you can have a cup half a cup of day. You want to get rid of all the other fruit, all the high glycemic fruit like bananas, pineapple, melons, cherries, grapes is the worst. Even foods that fruits that you think may be good for you are actually good for you, right? Whether it's peaches, pears, nectarines, cherries for example. But you don't want to eat them while you're on the 10 day detox. You just want to really shut down the blood sugar in some response. What about sugar sweeteners? Sorry, none. You can sometimes have a little monk fruit or stevia, you having the shake we have, but generally tend to avoid all that stuff. Also just get rid of all the other artificial sweeteners, all the sugar, all that stuff. If you have to ask the answer's no, basically then what should you be drinking? Well, lots of water, herbal tea, green tea. Let get little caffeine. Okay, little green tea is fine. Can help you get off coffee, sparkling water, mineral water, all this fine issue void, alcohol, coffee, bottled water, plastic soda, obviously sugary beverages. Basically that's the program. So if you eat that way for 10 days, if you use those simple habits, your body's going to totally transform and you're going to see just how is impacting your health, which is think most people don't have a clue about. And that's why I love this so much. Now after the program, it's really important if you do it for 10 days or 21 days or 10 weeks or 10 months, you have to be smart about getting off it where you can get into big trouble. Because when you go off of foods that are inflammatory foods that you're allergic to and then you reintroduce them, you can get a lot worse symptoms. So let's say you had migraines before and then they're gone. Wow, you're going to get a doozy of a migraine. Or let's say you had gut issues before you get a real problem. Or let's say you had sinus congestion from eating dairy and then you eat it again, you might get a sinus of infection. So you really have to be smart. So if you're feeling great and you want to continue, and let's say you have a lot of weight to lose. Let's say you're having an autoimmune disease. Let's say you're feeling great, you want to continue, no problem. You continue it, continue to do it. You can do it for another 10 days, you can do it for another 10 months. It's fine. It's totally safe to eat. And it's pretty much how I eat most of the time with occasional grains and beans. Also prioritize sleep and obviously your fasting window and not eating before bed. And then eventually people can transition slowly to the pegan diet, which incorporates a lot of the principles of the 10 80 detox diet. But it gets you more flexibility in your diet. You can add some gluten-free grains, you can have some grass-fed dairy or sheep or goat. Maybe you want to do it most of the time, but try to occasionally have a glass of wine or dessert. Occasionally, all that's fine. Remember when you're adding things back, you want to do it smartly. And in the 10 80 detox book, we'll put it in the show notes. You have to add one thing at a time. So if you're adding back gluten, just do that for three days. Don't have a pizza which has gluten and dairy because you won't know what's effective. If you feel bad, you want to know. So give yourself three days and then pick the next food. So start with gluten and dairy, then grains, other grains and whatever you'll see slowly add foods back and you'll see how you feel and that's your best barometer. The smartest doctor in the room is your own body and that's what you want to focus on. So congratulations. Hopefully you're going to do this saying congratulations in advance. You're going to take the first steps towards Optima Health. It's kind of hard sometimes to know what to think or feel, but I always say, don't listen to me, listen to your body. It's the smartest doctor in the room. Try this, see what happens. It doesn't work 10 days who caress, right? If it works, you have the answer and the key to unlock some of your health. So we have so much health information out there, just kind of reset here. Hit the reboot button on your body. And by the way, you can do this on and off. You can do it every quarter, twice a year. I do it regularly. And I think the best thing is pick somebody to do it with, right? You have a buddy as my friend Derek Warren says, everybody needs a buddy. Accountability is key. People are more likely to do it together. We do this in groups at Cleveland Clinic. We do this in groups around the world. I encourage you to do it with a friend or join a group to do this. So that's it for today's help Bite Hope. Enjoyed it. Please share with your friends and family. I bet they'll benefit from this. Nobody likes to feel like crap. They want to know their way out. And if you know anybody with metabolic issues, digestive issues, autoimmune issues, mood issues, try it. Quick anecdote before I let you go. My daughter, which was 18, was in high school that made them mean all the food there at the high school. They couldn't bring in their food. It was pretty bad. And she just ate that food for a while and then got really depressed and overweight and very inflamed, and her face was all red and she did not want to go to college. She was literally in bed not wanting to college, said, okay, just 10 days. Give me 10 days and we'll fix this. So essentially I put her on the program, I gave her the vitamins. I started exercising with her, hung out, and literally she totally transformed. And I have pictures of her before and after just 10 days. And it's hard to even recognize her as the same person. So it's very powerful. I encourage you to try it, let you do, let us know. Leave a comment. We'd love to hear from you, subscriber ever. Get your podcast and we'll see you next week on The Doctor's Pharmacy. Speaker 3: Hi everyone. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their find a practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who's trained, who's a licensed healthcare practitioner, and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.