The Everyday Awesome Project
The Everyday Awesome Podcast is your mega dose of multivitamins for building your mental muscles, physical body and an empowered life. Your hosts Polly and Sam are on your dream team; lifelong coaches in business, health & fitness and human potential. They are on fire to ignite change in the lives they touch.
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The Everyday Awesome Project
87: Detox: Your Body's Filters Need Changing Too: Why Detoxing Matters P1
DETOX Time? Feeling tired, foggy, or just "off" lately? Your body might be desperately trying to tell you something. In this eye-opening conversation, Coaches Polly and Sam dive into the often misunderstood world of detoxification and cleansing, sharing their combined 50+ years of experience with supporting the body's natural healing processes.
Beyond the trendy juice fasts and quick-fix cleanses lies a fundamental truth: our bodies are designed with sophisticated filtration systems that are increasingly overwhelmed by modern living. From persistent skin issues to unexplained fatigue, these symptoms aren't random—they're your body's way of signaling that its natural detoxification pathways need support.
We explore the critical (and often overlooked) role of the lymphatic system, which contains three times more fluid than your bloodstream yet lacks its own pump. You'll discover how the vagus nerve creates a direct highway between your brain and gut, profoundly affecting both physical and emotional wellbeing. Most importantly, we challenge the harmful mindset that views the body as an adversary rather than an intelligent system trying to maintain balance.
Whether you're dealing with chronic health issues or simply want to optimize your wellbeing, this conversation offers practical wisdom for supporting your body's natural cleansing abilities. From understanding the four main elimination pathways to implementing simple, free interventions that make a significant difference, we provide actionable insights without the extremes or pseudoscience that often surround this topic.
Remember: your body isn't turning against you—it's trying to communicate with you. Are you ready to listen and respond with the support it's asking for?
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hey, superstars, welcome back paula here and sam pruitt.
Samantha Pruitt:What's up, beautiful humans yeah, it's so good to be together again together and you're on the road, which is so good for your soul and mine, and actually the entire universe is being fed because you're on the road.
Polly Mertens:I agree, I agree, I think I'm. My mom said you're just better when you're on the road, you know, and I'm like, yeah, it just is like my, my happy place, or like it's somehow my body, my, what do you call it? My, my, my wellbeing is fed by travel.
Samantha Pruitt:I don't know what that is, but I just got that in my DNA and you're on the road in your home with four wheels. So, to be clear, you're not like you know. So that's also a really wonderful thing. You can take the cats, you have your stuff, you can work, you can be really productive and also just be out exploring. It's this really nice balance.
Polly Mertens:It is. It's like my traveling apartment. I love it. I love it. Well, let's dive in, because we have a fun topic today the truth, the truth, our truth about cleansing and detoxes, because somebody is doing one of these right at the moment.
Samantha Pruitt:I am in the middle of one. It's been quite interesting and you and I have been doing them off and on for a very long time. So as we have worked, you know, 25, 30 years on our physical bodies and we can talk about how we sort of even came to discovering cleanses and detoxes. We should talk about that. But we understand the value and we want to really be clear today that the reason we're imparting it to our audience is yes, I'm in the middle of one, and isn't that a gay old time for everybody around me, including me?
Samantha Pruitt:But they're really powerful and your health, your physical body, is complicated. Right, there's so many things now in our everyday environments. Right, there's so many things now in our everyday environments the environment, air, water, et cetera, impurities or whatever food intake, things we put on our skin, things that we expose ourselves to have a massive impact on how our body is either going to stay in homeostasis and in healthy balance or get out of balance and then start to have a negative consequence, a streamlined downstream, you know, consequence in our health in myriads of ways, only because it's just not functioning at its highest level. And why wouldn't we want it to?
Polly Mertens:You know, I don't know why, as you started to say that, the metaphor that came to me was you know, we take our car in for an oil change, change the filter, replace, you know, change the oil out, replace the air filter, replace the oil filter and stuff, because things get clogged up in it, right, and there's parts of our body little do some people realize that are the funnels or the filters. You know how are people don't quite understand and I didn't know for a long time, like the like you were talking. I love what you're alluding to about. There's so many elements, right, and people don't understand yet. And we're going to talk about these things. We'll go into it. Like how the interplay of physical and emotional and spiritual, we can get blocked up in various ways and they interact with each other. You can have a backed up filter in one part of your body and feel the emotional imbalance in another area, right?
Samantha Pruitt:Yeah, there's no doubt that the function, or whatever level of functioning or lack thereof, there might be in these various systems, organs and systems of the body, how they will have a massive impact on how you feel. Well, first of all, just walking around in your skin, in this bone and muscle bag, how I actually feel, the amount of energy I have, the clarity of my brain, but also the impact on my emotions, you know. Will I be more prone to anxiety or depression because the body is literally bogged down, or will I just not really feel like myself tapped into the energy I need to get through my day, nevermind go out and do cool, epic things? So let's just start with that, really like basic, foundational. What the heck is a detox, slash, cleanse, and then we'll get into all the different opportunities around that and why people might consider it for themselves.
Samantha Pruitt:And along the way, I will share what I'm doing, of course.
Polly Mertens:For sure, for sure, and I think a fundamental thing, of cleanse, detox, are they the same? I would say so. They're just. You know there's new fad words or whatever. You know. So, like I think we've heard for a lot of times, like the juice cleanse, and you know the fruit cleanse, or the cabbage, you know diet or whatever.
Polly Mertens:So really a cleanse, detox, are moving out or helping the body, push out toxins that get into the body. We get it in our water, we get it in our air, we get it in, you know, the pesticides in our food, whatever it is, our hand creams, lotions, like the body is just all these organs coming in and it gets backed up and it can affect your immune response in various ways. We'll go into world has gotten more toxins. Coming into us is assisting the body. So that you know, I liken it to one of the things that I notice with people who get colds. You know, like, if I get a cold, you know a lot of times people get like after the holidays, it's like it's actually a cold to me.
Polly Mertens:Now, is your body's cleansing? Like I look at those the same as like, oh, your body got over toxified, it got too many chemicals, too many somethings, too many impurities in it and the mucus like imagine what I learned of is like when you have mucus, you have cough things coming out. It's like your brain is stuffed up with fluids and then it starts draining. That's the body's way of going. I got to get these things out of the blood, out of the organs and out of the body and out of the body sneezing. You know snot stuff like that.
Samantha Pruitt:Yeah, the body is sending you very clear messages of the internal environment, whether it's your microbiome or what's going on in your immune system or your lymphatic system We'll talk about all these different systems. There is inflammation and products being produced, and phlegm is a great example of that, telling you very clearly that the internal environment of your body is currently not functioning Overloaded, unfortunately. People then go. Well, I should definitely get this antibiotic or drink this cold medicine or do something to take those symptoms down so I can get on about my busy life, which is actually completely counterproductive to how the physical body works and what you should be doing to nurture the natural immune response and the systems of the body so it can clear it on its own and become stronger because of it. Infection or a low-grade fungal bacterial infection, like what I was nursing for freaking six months, or something even worse where it compromises part of the body or one of the organs of the body, and ultimately that's what happens if we don't take care of it and allow it to come out.
Polly Mertens:Get it out. Get it out and I think at this point just helping people understand some of the organs, edit out and I think at this point just helping people understand some of the organs, some of the systems that are involved in purifying or, you know, filtering the things that our body takes in. Whether we inhale something, we digest something, something gets on our skin, whatever, right. So we're mostly in the detoxification. A lot of organs can play a part, but largely it's your liver, your kidneys, skin and gut, okay, that are responsible for that in varying levels. So just when we're talking about cleansing and whatnot, it's largely those organs that are involved in this. So some play a really key part, like our liver and our kidneys. People kind of know that that's what the purpose of them is, but some people don't understand, like the lymphatic system and that whole. You know that we'll go into right. Or your skin, like you know, and sweating and all of this. So just want to talk about that. So in a client, let's talk real quick about.
Samantha Pruitt:this is kind of the gross part, but I want to just get it out the way early yeah. The pooping we're going to be talking about real life things here, people.
Samantha Pruitt:Brace yourselves okay, how else would anything come out of the human body? Okay, so we have. Obviously we poop and we pee. I think most people God, everybody listening to this understands pooing and peeing at this point. Right, they're grown adults and they've been doing that for a long time. But also, toxins are excreted through your sweat, through your skin, the glands and your squints, so they do come out through your sweat.
Samantha Pruitt:Sweating is so good for you Through breathing, coming out of the air in your body, and you'll know this is really obvious when you're around somebody who is sick or in a house of sick people and it doesn't smell good, or you go into someone's house maybe older people or an environment where people have been sick, and you literally can smell the sickness. It's a real thing that all of us are excreting toxins through our breath every day, all time, and that's why open the damn windows and get outside, otherwise you're literally breathing back in that same air into your physical body. If you're around sick people, why do you think you get sick so easily? Like, I mean, don't be breathing in that air, you need to get fresh air. So anyway, that was just my little rant. I had to put that out there.
Polly Mertens:And one thing I want to double click on that you were talking about is elimination Elimination. So these are. So it's the ways the body is eliminating what it doesn't want to hold on to like toxins. You know things that it's, you know, processed right your poop comes out, your pee comes out, you know the things that it's taken, what it needs and sometimes not what it needs, but it's hold on to and then it eliminates what it doesn't need. And sometimes things get put into the body or you know impurities or whatnot. You know people, sodas, diet, sodas just drives me nuts that people still haven't, you know, gotten that Like. There's all these impurities that the body goes oh, let me hold on to that over here put it in the fat cells. And when the body is under a lot of stress whether it's emotional stress, physical stress, toxic stress, like impurities or whatever you know non-again Chronic inflammation.
Polly Mertens:Things like that, like it won't release or eliminate things that it's holding onto unless it says, oh, this is okay. So when you start it and we'll go into maybe like the process of a cleanse, but you'll see that like the stages of it when the body goes, oh it's okay to release, right, you know like then it starts to release it. So we're talking about elimination, getting those things out of the body, right?
Samantha Pruitt:on, and maybe you know it's really well, we all went to health science, didn't we? I mean somewhere along the line. But I don't really even know what that education looks like anymore, because it's not at all what ended up being the reality for me as I started to understand how my body actually works and how to heal my physical illnesses, my mental and emotional illnesses. I learned how the body worked then later, as an adult. So we're taught this very basic, basic stuff. But I mean, people just think that somehow things are going in and they're just magically making their way out, I think primarily through poo and pee, and that's a very small piece of the equation. Right, there's the whole circulatory system that's circulating blood through and all of that, and then the lymphatic system, as we're going to discuss too. But all of those garbage collectors, if you will, are going around through the body and then moving that process through these filtering organs, the organs that you just mentioned, and then they're getting excreted out through the cleanse pathways.
Polly Mertens:So that's just very basic picture stuff. You know, things get stuffed up too.
Samantha Pruitt:Or they don't get moved through.
Polly Mertens:Yeah, because you know, when people have IBS irritable bowel system, or you have fatty liver, right. Yeah, because you know when people have IBS irritable bowel system or you have fatty liver, right it's like those organs, those parts of the natural detoxification elimination system have just been overworked. You know, fatty liver is like you're giving me too much here. You know I can't, I can't, I can't eliminate it, I can't get rid of it, or I feel like I have to hold on to it because there's other things that I'm fighting, you know, in the body, right, in terms of inflammation.
Samantha Pruitt:So, or people get their appendix removed there, you know they've got pancreas issues. There's all these other organs too that are inside the systems, that are trying their damnedest to help. The systems and the organs in place work, but we're just clogging them up.
Polly Mertens:Yeah, yeah. And I would say, you know, one of the things that I've heard, I can't say this, you know, and everything that we say, samantha and I say, is we're not physicians, we're not doctors. This is not advice, this is not a prescription. Go do this. This is talk to your professionals. Blah, blah, blah. Double check all the things that we say.
Polly Mertens:But this is our opinion of personal experience of how we've lived our lives and what we've experienced the amount of people that don't understand all the things that are coming in right and ways that you know how. I started to look back and go oh, that cold you have that a lot of people get come, you know, right before New Year's or right after New Year's is like you've been partying hard, you've been not been sleeping, you've been a lot of stress and spending a lot of money and taking in a lot of family foods and pies and things that you're not used to taking in. Oh, that, that cold that everybody gets, guess what? That's one of the signs. So I just want to talk about, you know why, when your body is crying out for a reset, like some of the, some of the like, the tipping point. Okay, so you know, your bodies are designed to detox, like, thank God it knows what to do right, like it's already doing it Right, and we just get this unprecedented burden of other things and some would say everybody in the world right now thank you Roundup and Monsanto for introducing that horrible product is walking around with some version or flavor of a leaky gut. We'll go into that, you know, maybe later. So we all need to support this. The environment is just so massively intruding upon our body's ability to detox and remove these things. That's why I think we have rampant autoimmune diseases right. So the toxins from our food, environment and stress and the cleanse is a way to hit that reset.
Polly Mertens:But if you have things like persistent fatigue and I don't mean you're a new mom and you're managing small children and stuff like that, but like persistent fatigue in your life, skin issues, right, like yours, I think you had the rosacea rash, acne oh my God, I want to talk about my acne and that whole journey. Brain fog, joint pain, headaches, bloating, irritable bowel your movements are either backed up or not moving once a day smoothly. So it can also be on the emotional front that symptoms occur Mood swings, irritability, difficulty concentrating, you know, lack of focus and just emotional drain, right Like these things that we just go. Oh, that's just the way that I am. That's the way that life is. You know, take a look like that. You're listening to this episode. I hope you know, kind of pointing to huh, what is the truth about this? Is there something in here for me? So those are just some of the symptoms. Do you want to talk about maybe some of your symptoms and how you on your recent one, why you?
Samantha Pruitt:looked yeah, yeah and, as a precursor to that, like I was just thinking about my own journey, which has been, you know complicated 25, I keep saying 25 years, soon I'm going to have to say 30, because I just aged up again.
Samantha Pruitt:You know, sure, a lot of things initially might show up in the gut, because a lot of people will associate what I put into my mouth is causing some kind of gut issue diarrhea, constipation, everything in between, right. So we'll tend to look at that process, if you will, first when things have gone awry. But there's so many other and that's obviously glaringly obvious. If that's not functioning, we have a big problem leaky gut or there's a hundred thousand things that could be going on with your gut. So you got to deep dive into that. But the skin rashes. So I have forever gotten skin rashes. Way before I was diagnosed with celiacs, it started in the very beginning as a skin rash. So of course I was like Western medicine, let me go to the dermatologist, get some cream.
Polly Mertens:Because I have a skin rash.
Samantha Pruitt:And why, all of a sudden, am I getting skin rashes on my face and neck and they're like oh, here's some steroid cream, rub that on there, stop the itching, I'm like. But I'm pretty sure it's something I'm putting in my mouth, because when I eat, I have a skin rash reaction relatively quickly, whether it's within now. Now it's literally within half an hour or an hour, like.
Polly Mertens:It's like that but it would be the next day or whatever I said.
Samantha Pruitt:So I feel like there's a correlation and they'd say no. I said are you telling me my skin has nothing to do with what I eat or the water I drink or anything that I drink? No, nothing to do. What the hell? I mean? This is really fascinating, and I know this was 25 years ago, so I do hope they're educated now.
Samantha Pruitt:So I guess I'm just proving. And then, of course, I went down the journey of all these other traditional Western doctors. I'm not dissing Western medicine. There is a time and a place for Western medicine in some instances. But listen, people, if your body, you know your body. So I'm the expert of this body. No office I walk into and now I do functional medicine and naturopath and all this stuff but no office I walk into or doctor I'm seeing, or a nurse, practitioner or whomever knows my body better than me. I need to be the expert. So you need to come empowered to this conversation with us today and with any practitioner or path that you choose to take.
Polly Mertens:You need to just double click on that, because that is not how a lot of people operate. So you and I are operating inside of being empowered in our physical well-being and those sorts of things, but most people go somewhere where there's a white lab coat and they hand their power right over to that person and say you tell me what I need, and it's like no, that person can be your advisor, they can, you know, check, like even one of my mentors. She's like yeah, I just talked to chat TBT and then see, you know, like, like, it's got even more information, I would say, these days than some of these doctors, you know. So just tread lightly. I would say I am not a huge fan.
Polly Mertens:I think there's a emergency basis that Western medicine can definitely step in. And you've broken a leg, you've, you know, hurt yourself bad, whatnot, but a lot of them are just going to surface it. They're going to like give you, you know, especially, depression, let's give you antidepressant. Oh, you've got skin stuff, let's give you some creams, like. No, like you said, there's more going on.
Samantha Pruitt:Well, western medicine, how they're trained, is specifically to somebody already is in a disease state. So, right there, it's not a proactive, it's a reactive way of operating in the world with the body. So already we're saying please be empowered to be proactive, don't be reactive, don't wait till you're terminally ill to go, you know like, let's try and get on top of these things now. Heal the systems of the body so it can function in its highest level now by being proactive and empowered. So, even if you're choosing to go those paths you have insurance or whatever your rationale is for however you're going about your medical care, come into the room empowered with the information and already knowing what you want to accomplish. So the Samantha then versus the Samantha now who walks into these offices is a very different person. I literally sometimes walk in with books. I always walk in with a notepad. I have 50, you know, and they're like whoa, I mean, they're used to me now. But I also choose functional medicine and practitioners. Now who will that one? They embrace that. Yeah. Yeah, they're all about it.
Samantha Pruitt:Yeah, so it could be showing up in skin rashes. That's how my origins were, but then it was very quickly constipation, diarrhea, all the myriad of the things just started falling down after that because it went on for so long. It went on and on and on until my issues wore down so many other parts of my physical body that's the downstream effects If I had been able to catch it earlier on in the game. You know, five years of being sick is a lot of deterioration and, frankly, I should be thankful that I'm alive and I'm as healthy as I am now, which shows you the miraculous nature of detoxification and also healing of the body, right. So it's going to show up, different for everybody.
Samantha Pruitt:I would say if you don't feel good, you don't feel good. I mean, do you have to have blisters all over your face to take care of this? Or do you have to not be poop all over your face to take care of this? Or do you have to not be pooping for a week to take care of this? No, if you don't feel good, you don't feel good. It can change. Let's get busy working on it.
Polly Mertens:And I think, address it right away, immediately. I think people are, you know, like some things I've not recognized. You know. So acne, like I just you know, growing up as a young something you know teenager, whatever it was like, was coaching her young teenage students or whatever you know, college students or whatever that would come to her for acne, in addressing it with dairy, it was like are you eating dairy? Ok, that's a big one. You know that's going to do this and you know those sorts of things. Nobody ever told me as a teenager. With acne, it was all about getting the best skincare products, not treating it from within. With acne, it was all about getting the best let's say skincare products, not treating it from within.
Polly Mertens:So, and I even had adult acne and I just was like I'm one of those that just has adult acne, you know like I was like no, I was, you know, overloading my body with alcohol and sugar or whatever. You know, mostly I would say my adult acne, I think, was the alcohol. So when I took the alcohol out, it was like totally clear. And when I have a drink or like, if I notice those like a pimple, it's either I've put on too much SPF, you know, and it kind of clogged the pores or something like that, or alcohol, it's like amazing, it just boom right. But I just walked around thinking, oh, I've just got adult acne right. So, yes, skin is a big indicator and you can see it in people's skin. When they have health and vitality, that just looks thriving.
Samantha Pruitt:So you know it's one of the four elimination pathways of the body right.
Samantha Pruitt:So if something comes, out exactly so now, if I get little blisters I was doing this detox and before I was getting these little blisters here and it's a bacterial fungi in my small intestine I mean literally the blisters pop right here and I mean it's not acne, it's literally blisters like itchy, burning blisters or whatever. It comes out of the skin so quickly it's like nope, nope, you know better than this or I need to get this out. So I'm talking to you. I'm talking to you, you know, rosacea, whatever. All the things are so skin. What we're talking about? Some of the ways that people can identify, I think they get it If you don't feel good and your body's talking to you.
Samantha Pruitt:Please listen.
Polly Mertens:And let's talk some of the other side, like the benefits of cleansing. So we talked about, like, you know what the symptoms are, so you know what the symptoms are, so you know one of the things is, when your liver is overloaded, your liver processes everything. You consume Everything, and if it's constantly overwhelmed by sugar, alcohol, like you know, in my case, oftentimes it just it's just not as efficient, right? And you know fatty liver, I mean it's, you know, yes, it can, you know, regenerate and stuff, but not if we just destroy it and, you know, beat it up. So a cleanse, detoxification, gives your liver a rest that it needs to effectively filter those toxins again. So it's just like it's like taking an oil change. You know it's like, oh, the car works better, right, you know you want to take care of your precious car or whatever. Like you get the oil change, you get the air filters change, you get the oil filters changed, right, do the same for your body.
Samantha Pruitt:And it's a filter system. That's actually the perfect analogy you just used, right, Because these are filter systems of the body. If the filter is clogged with fat toxins, et cetera, et cetera, how is it going to be filtering it's?
Polly Mertens:not, it's not. Well, you know and know, and here's yeah, I've got a couple examples of oil fit, like I hadn't realized in my motor home there was some air filter that people had been missing, you know whatever. And so my recent mechanic, he's like, takes it out. It was so bad. I was like, oh, my god, you know I've been taking it in for oil changes but they didn't. It was like holy smokes, this thing is horrible and I just the filter is I don't know. There's.
Polly Mertens:You know people talk about you know elimination and whatnot. But if we can't get the filter to process it, like one of my favorite lines too and I'm drinking water, here is and I always have purified water One of my favorite quotes from some guy who was like all into water. He's like if you don't buy a filter, you become a filter. Like if you're not filtering, your pre-filtering your water, your body's doing it. And just think of, like, all the things that RO and these different systems take out of you know, city water, let's say, to not have that in your body Heavy metals, all sorts of things. So all right.
Polly Mertens:Next, is your gut health Right? So the liver is, you know, detoxifying, cleansing we're. You know we understand the pooping Right. So that's your channel where a lot of things are being absorbed right and the body is, and I would say they say 80% of your immunity or your immune system, what do they call it? Your white blood cells are on the lining of your gut. They're just like your little army, protecting for things coming out of your. That gut lining is what is protecting you from everything that's coming through your body, if you will. The gut microbiome plays a direct role in detoxification. 80% of your immune system is working on your gut and so a damaged gut lining, leaky gut, I mean I would say there's. I can't remember some of the studies that I've read, but they talk about if you have disease, you have a leaky gut, like it's stemming.
Samantha Pruitt:It stems from your gut, is leaking things into your body, into your organs and just I think people should just look that up, because most people maybe have not even heard of that term leaky gut but I would suspect 90% of the population has leaky gut. And it is the root of most disease states. So just start there with that like foundational pause moment. Yeah, google leaky gut, read it, and if you don't have half of those symptoms, I will be shocked.
Samantha Pruitt:And if you're living in the Western world. If you're coming from another planet, you might not have experienced these things, but if you're living in the Western world, you definitely have.
Polly Mertens:You know, I'm starting to realize I didn't see this episode as becoming a part two, like a one and two, but I, you know, I don't think we're going to cover everything because, like what you know, we'll talk about cleanses and detoxes and what they are and the benefits of it. But like getting down into brass tacks of like this is what you're doing. You have a whole protocol right now. You know, and you and I have both done different kinds and yeah, so lots of benefits. I don't think there's a downside to cleansing and detoxing. Is there a downside?
Samantha Pruitt:No, there is not a downside. Well, okay, yes, yes, there is the downside.
Samantha Pruitt:Well, if we talked a little bit about our history with doing cleanses and detoxing and I shared with you and you might have some similar experiences it's really, really important that you come to the desire to do one with the right intentions. So, historically, what I was taught as a young person is the reason you do the cabbage soup and the then is you're losing weight, you want to lose weight, want to lose weight, you want to get skinny, you want to lose weight, and so the focus was on that. It wasn't at all about health. Nobody give two shits about whether we were healthy or not. We were literally starving ourselves, trying to be skinny or lose weight or whatever. The dynamic was, um, change our body's physical appearance, and so we were doing crazy shit.
Samantha Pruitt:Okay, crazy, unsafe, ridiculous, nothing scientific whatsoever, not reality-based stuff, and I think a lot of people get sold that on the internet, okay, and it used to be all these other places that we would get sold these ideas and these concepts and these programs, because we didn't have the internet. Places that we would get sold these ideas and these concepts and these programs, because we didn't have the internet. Somehow people found us and sold us things, okay. So nowadays it's pervasive, it's really toxic. So I just want to say that there is a downside that if you're coming to this party with that intention weight loss, specifically, or changing the look of your physical body that's not at all the reason to be doing these things and it can actually be quite harmful. And there are a lot of these things out there that maybe you will temporarily lose weight, but they will be at the cost of your health.
Samantha Pruitt:What we're prescribing and saying is completely the polar opposite of that. We are looking to build our health. Of that. We are looking to build our health, build the physical body back up, including in the organs and the systems, so we can best function, best perform, live a long, healthy, well life, mentally and physically. And so be careful right, make sure that you are reading the actual science. You are with trusted practitioners. You are in programs if you need one, or if you're doing this yourself, that's fine where you have trusted resources that are scientifically based and lean on people who have the expertise in this area. You and I have 30 years of experience doing it, but we are not these practitioners. I did go to school and study holistic health and that's how I healed my body the first go round. So now I practice functional medicine and different things, but it's taken a long time and I still am learning, and it's always-.
Polly Mertens:Practicing it, not like a doctor, but you mean like you put it into practice in your life. You put it into practice in your life, yeah, yeah, practical practice, if you will. And I think you know one of the pieces of advice I would say that I didn't get. That I want to maybe say now is don't jump in the deep end, if you're, if you've never done this before, like do not go. Like I jumped, I felt like I jumped in the deep end. I did a because, on the recommendation from Rach, like, oh, yeah, I do these cleanses and this and that, and I was like, oh, sounds great. I did a 21 day, mostly no food supplement. You know, la la la. You know there's lots of cleanses. We can go into that. But don't jump in the deep end.
Polly Mertens:Start in the shallow end, walk in, because if you have, I find too many people have like like gone too far into the deep end and then they like, oh, I don't want to swim anymore, like I don't need to do that anymore, but your body still wants the detoxification and the support. So step gradually into it. Find you know some and we'll give you some resources in the show notes of cleanses that we've done things, protocols. But, you know, walk into it. It doesn't have to be extreme, it can be 24 hours. You can start with 24 hours, right, like some of it could be fasting or, you know, water cleanse or something like that. You'd be amazed some results you could see just from that fast, you know. But you have been going through a multi-week supported cleanse because you've got something really going on in your gut, you know. So, as you need more advanced support to help the body detox step into the deeper end, as you need it.
Samantha Pruitt:Right, yeah, yeah, most of the ones I've done have been like seven days, but there's there's 24 hours, there's three days or seven days. It has to work into your life, you know. If you, whatever that looks like, so you have to make room for it. So if it's a long weekend, three day, it's easier to make room for that, and maybe you're doing that quarterly versus like if you're doing a big intensive, like a once a year, then it can maybe be a little bit longer. But you literally have to carve out time and space mental, physical, emotional space to allow yourself it's a healing moment. So if I was healing my mental state Surgery or like- post-surgery or something, or healing from a surgery, healing from an injury, healing from an emotional trauma.
Polly Mertens:I wouldn't be like you know I'm going to go run a game about it.
Polly Mertens:Yeah, and it's the same. And so I think there's environmental things that you need to set up. You know, oftentimes cleanses have, you know, protocols with either supplements or food plans or you know whatever. So you've got to go get the foods and you know, prepare yourself and then prepare the people in your life hey, y'all, I'm not going to be eating what you're eating or we're not going to be eating that or you know, enroll them if you can on. You know, doing it with you. That's the best, because it can be very challenging when you're the one cleansing, detoxing, and everybody's eating hamburgers and french fries around you, it's like that's done, that doesn't feel so good. And having that support, that emotional support, like hey, are you bought into? I'm doing this for myself and this is why, right, so huge and then oftentimes cleanses I don't know about you, but you're gentle on the physical plane as well, right? So this isn't a time to go doing your CrossFit workouts.
Polly Mertens:You can't be telling me that.
Samantha Pruitt:Endurance running. Well, I am doing those things, but let's just say I'm doing those in a different gear. Okay, I am not going into third and fourth gear at all during this. I mean, technically, it's going to end up being like a 90 day because I've had to have some start and stops but it wouldn't have been a 60 day protocol. So I'm doing first and second gear workouts only.
Polly Mertens:I would just say what I have experienced. If I'm doing a three day or a five day or even a seven day, I will either do walking, yoga, light movement. You know, definitely movement is good to help that lymphatic and cleansing, if you will, but it's not about getting your heart rate up to a certain peak, whatever, because sometimes when you, depending on the cleanse you're on, you know, like I've been on ones that don't have a lot of food. They have nutrients right, but not a lot of. You know mastication, you know chewing if you will, and so your body just doesn't have all the things. You know chewing if you will, and so your body just doesn't have all the things. You know the energy to give it as well from food. So just manage that if you will. And then how long it is, how long you do, is really up to like. What are your symptoms Like? You know you judging for yourself, yeah, yeah, you know you're really bad.
Polly Mertens:You know so I had, you know, a candida outbreak that I was fighting for. You know, over a year doing some supplements and things like that, and I would say I wasn't doing a great job of cleansing and supporting. You know I was still like I wasn't quite aware of what was going on and how, what was causing it, because my my naturopath had said, well, candida is a tough one to fight. And so I was like, ok, okay, but I wasn't always supporting that the help, so choose what you need, right. So all right. I would say you know, people don't know that. Like we were alluding to a lot of elimination, like, oh, okay, so I do a juice, like what, something I drink in my mouth? Or I do a, you know, a cabbage cleanse or something like that, supplements or shakes. But it's surprising, like one of the biggest cleansing your lymphatic system. So I just want to talk a little bit about the importance of Number one. Your lymphatic system is your body's sewage system right.
Samantha Pruitt:First of all, do people even know what the lymphatic system is?
Polly Mertens:Well, you're the expert, you're the walking Wikipedia. So I know about my glands, my sweat glands and things like that, some of your nose and whatnot, but yeah the lymphatic system is the primary garbage transportation company of the human body, not the blood and circulatory system.
Samantha Pruitt:I do think people think that that is, but actually there's three times as much lymphatic fluid in the body than there is blood Three times Okay. And these lymph nodes that are scattered throughout your entire body are literally there to gather the fluid and take the trash out. It's literally the primary system of the body that does that, so it moves fluid throughout the body, helps stabilize all the fluids, but it really is just pushing them through, taking the bad cells out, because this happens right.
Polly Mertens:They die off yeah.
Samantha Pruitt:Yeah, Autophagy and all of the things that happen with cells. There's a whole other conversation around that. But those cells have to come out of the body and that's how they get out of the body. They go through the lymphatic system. So if that isn't working, then that edema, swelling and all of that inflamed, bad cellular tissue or damaged cells are just sitting in the physical body and you'll see it Like you can see it in the skin and you can people. You know, it's kind of almost easy to see it on people a lot of the times, unfortunately. So the only way that that system actually works is through muscle contraction and breath. Yeah, and breath. Well, that's contraction.
Samantha Pruitt:So again it's the movement, yeah, so, and breath, yeah, and breath Well that's contraction. So again, it's the movement. Yeah, so it's contraction within the body that allows that system to pump. It's a pump system, right, but it doesn't just pump on its own, like a lot of things in the body have pumps.
Samantha Pruitt:Like a heart, yeah, or lungs, you know, I know they're so amazing, but the lymphatic system for some reason doesn't have built-in pumps, so the way that it does pump and move stuff through and push it out so it can be excreted is through movement. Now it can be incredibly gentle. It can be like manual therapies where people do lymphatic drainage treatment, and that's a very high-level skill thing. By the way, Don't just be doing that on anyone. They need to be certified and know what the hell they're doing, especially if there's any kind of disease state already Really, really important, but there's great practitioners out there or you just need to move your body very gently so that that can be the process that actually happens.
Polly Mertens:Otherwise, it doesn't. You know, I would say I want to. Just something I learned in a class I took was simply bouncing, like gravitational, just like so. When you talk about movement it's not like go for a run, you know, I mean, it can be just like just a light bounce, even just up on your tippy toes and down, up and down, just gets the body moving. But you're right, like lifting weights or stretching, you know, some gentle movements can also movement.
Samantha Pruitt:Yeah.
Samantha Pruitt:Deep breathing to circulate the fluid who are ill and cannot move. This is a big challenge. Yeah, so you will see, they'll have compression boots on them, they'll have all these devices. They'll have people coming in and moving their body for them. If somebody is stuck in bed for a long period of time, we've got to get them up. We've got to move those fluids around. We can't allow those fluids to back up in these systems, because then toxicity sets in and all these other downstream effects. It's going to be a big problem. You know it really, the regulation of your blood pressure, everything is impacted by the fluid balancing or imbalance within your body. It's just, it can't be stressed enough.
Polly Mertens:You know, and I think we see it, I think more Western medicine are seeing that also. You know it used to be. The theory was like post-surgery, just like stay put, like lay in bed, you know, just like whatever Now, like after Elevate, elevate, after a heart attack, they're like get your ass up, like you need to get moving, because they know like, oh, the body's just been under a tremendous something, right, surgery, something's going on. That's not well, get them up, get them vertical, get them take a walk, light walk. You know, whatever it is, because it's a different understanding we have now of the body.
Samantha Pruitt:So and it's primarily for those fluids, the blood circulatory and lymphatic circulatory systems, to be moving, stimulating the nervous system and all the soft tissue and the muscles and the bones and joint. It's not so. Can I get stronger? Because you might not feel like, oh, I'm going to do freaking squats or whatever it is. No, it's not about that at all. It's literally about moving the fluids around the body.
Polly Mertens:Yeah, right on, and I also want to talk. You know one of the big things that you're a proponent of and we just were talking off air about. I mean, you already sweat a lot with your you know where you live and stuff like that. But like saunas and the importance of like sweating dude. So heat therapy, sauna, steam rooms they help us detox also. So sweating is one of the body's primary elimination pathways, as we've talked about. They can move heavy metals, other environmental toxins that the liver and kidneys might struggle to process.
Samantha Pruitt:Why do you think your sweat smells?
Polly Mertens:Bacteria.
Samantha Pruitt:It's all that bacteria how does it smell? Yeah, and people will be like, oh, am I going to put stuff on? I'm stinky, I got to hose everything, I spray it all down and whatever. So they're actually putting chemicals on top of what. The body is just trying to get that out. Let it get out. Sweat more, rinse it off, do soaks, do dry brushing, help it through the elimination pathway. Don't spray a perfumey doodah on top of it.
Polly Mertens:Antiperspirant, like, just get anything that doodah on top of it. Antiperspirant, like, just get anything that deodorant if you have to, but antiperspirant, stop it, just stop it. You want to perspire, you do not like you have lymph nodes in your armpits and people see them get. You know, all impacted and backed up and stuff. What do you think is going on? You know, I don't know. I think, like some of this breast cancer is these limbs in the women's breasts backed up by stuff not moving because they're putting all this stuff to stop the toxins leaving their body in certain areas. So anyway, yeah.
Samantha Pruitt:And so just final note on lymphatic system it does drain through the portals which are up here in the upper chest region. So when you're doing these things actually post elevating of feet, legs up, wall legs elevated, whatever, hand above heart, all that stuff you're trying, just like with circulatory blood flow, you're trying to get the lymphatic blood or, excuse me, the lymphatic fluids back into that same region and that's where it moves through and moves out. So you're going from the feet up, from the hands in. Okay, for anything that you might be doing in terms of exercising or movement.
Polly Mertens:Nice, nice. And let's talk about one more, and that's the importance. We touched on a lot of physical, but the importance of the vagus nerve.
Samantha Pruitt:Oh, MG, that's a whole show, dude.
Polly Mertens:What so?
Samantha Pruitt:first of all, who knows what the vagus nerve is Just like? Who knows what the lymphatic system is?
Polly Mertens:Well, of course we do, because we're obsessed with these things.
Samantha Pruitt:Yeah, yeah, this is the coolest thing ever. No Vagus nerve. Okay, people just again.
Polly Mertens:That's a cool name.
Samantha Pruitt:Can you just Google a few of these things you want to have your mind blown?
Polly Mertens:What is going on? V-a-g-u-s Vegas?
Samantha Pruitt:nerve yeah, it is the coolest part of the human body.
Polly Mertens:I'm sure of it.
Samantha Pruitt:There's no doubt in my mind, from a very empowering sense, all of these other things are too. The more you know about your body and how it works, the more empowered you're going to be to take care of it and to be honored and to be just so blown away at the miraculous nature of who we are as humans. Like my appreciation for being human, this is. I'm always blowing my own mind, but with the vagus nerve and how much impact that nerve and the health of that nerve is on your mental and emotional body. Whoa, dude, whoa. So we're all good like new psychotherapy and mental and emotional health is going towards.
Polly Mertens:And I'm sure all of our nerves have a name, like if you talk to a nerve specialist, whatever.
Polly Mertens:But the vagus nerve a lot of people know because of it's important and it's the one tell me if I've got this right that connects your brain to your gut, right. So it runs through about the middle of your chest down through your gut, right, and it's constantly sending signals back and forth like how are we doing down here? Do we need more, whatever? So it's the longest we call it cranial nerve in your body and its signals are going back and forth and it influences digestion, inflammation and emotional state, right, and chronic stress can suppress your vagus nerve from functioning. So if we're under chronic, you know, emotional stress or whatever, what it does is it stops, you know telling the digestive system everything's okay, like it sends disruptive measures down there or disruptive messages down there and it hinders your body's ability to you know that rest and digest that sympathetic or parasympathetic nervous system. If the body's under stress, like it can't rest and digest, so like things get out of balance and it's crucial for repair and detoxification.
Samantha Pruitt:Yeah, I think just to really double click on the fact that it's connecting the brain and the gut and so being is compromised. So if there is a threat or if there is any kind of illness, if there's anything that is seen as a threat to the human being animals also, I'm sure, but let's just talk about humans then that nerve is going oh, red alert, red alert, red alert, red alert. The problem is there can be something very minor, like a boss you don't like, or a nasty text from your ex, or a thousand things that happen throughout the day, can be sending a red alert Right. So that is always under stress. That nerve is always in hyper vigilant mode, if you will, which will impact your gut. So it could be that the gut's not healthy and so therefore it's dysregulating your brain. Or it could be that the brain is offline, dysregulated because of all the stress we're under, and that's sending a message to the gut. So just the fact that these things are completely reliant on one another, totally completely two ways is unbelievable, mind blowing.
Samantha Pruitt:So then we have to say well, of course, if people then have compromised nutrition or something going on in their digestive tract like I have this infection, right then their mental well-being is going to be offline and vice versa, my mental well-being is offline. I've got a lot of anxiety, depression, I have all these things going on, et cetera. Right, gut dysregulation, which ultimately is the whole health of the body, will of course be offline. This is to me like health 101. This is what we should have actually learned in health 101, is this is how your body works.
Samantha Pruitt:And if you kind of dial it down to these few kind of core systems, with the vagus nerve being the communication, and then these other systems, if you would just teach children this, never mind us adults, I mean I'm kind of pissed off. I'm learning this in my fifties. What in the hell? You know what? I would have done different for the first 50 years? A lot, and this is how I want my grandchildren to learn now. And, of course, my friends and family and anybody that I can come into touch with is like first let's just talk about how your body works so you can become friends with your own body Because you create your own well-being, or just you know, or sometimes we don't feel empowered to know what's causing this, why, you know?
Polly Mertens:why do I feel so? You know, we just think like, oh, brain fog is just like everybody's got it, or, oh, this is the way that it is. You know, we just accept or settle for something and it's like no understand these things and your ability to unwind something that you might be causing or you might be able to affect and impact at the root, not just putting topical creams or, you know, addressing the symptoms.
Samantha Pruitt:Well, I'll speak from experience, but also I mean hundreds of people at least, that I have talked to and worked with in whatever capacity is because we weren't taught that sort of foundational knowledge and wisdom. We felt that our bodies were our enemies. They were going against us by not cooperating right, not being functioning well, not being healthy, not looking healthy, not whatever. So it felt more like us against bodies against me yeah.
Samantha Pruitt:Yes, like my body's turning against me. It's doing these things. My body got this disease. My body got, you know, has acne, like as if it's two separate things and it's us against them and all we're trying to do is get that body under control, if you will.
Polly Mertens:Yeah, and we are our body and people not understanding. I mean, yes, there is a genetic DNA component to disease. However, a huge percentage is us and the things that we're exposed to, allowing ourselves to be exposed to doing, to our thoughts, minds, all of that that's allowing our body to arrive at a disease state, right, like if you push the engine too long it's going to break down, right? You know, like you talked about your whole breakdown with your mental, emotional well-being many years ago and you had to detox, through that, like really clean house and turn your life upside down to get the body well being back.
Samantha Pruitt:Yeah, and luckily, with genetics, now there's much more science, if you're reading the latest science. So there's genetics and you can be genetically predisposed based on the history of your genes that you inherited. But genetically predisposed and epigenetics, which is everything you do and the environment does around you, actually will determine whether that gets triggered or not. Right, this is all the empowered area. Yeah, okay, so if 10% is this predisposed genetic pathway that you inherited, but then the other 90% is epigenetics, which is all the things you have control over, it's a very different conversation for me to have with myself or somebody that I love. Like, let's make sure we're doing everything in the 90% we can to be proactive, engaged, educated and even if disease state sets in for whatever reason, like, how can I, to the best of my abilities, be responsible and responsible to healing this be part of that solution, not part of the problem?
Polly Mertens:yeah, don't just turn it over to the oh what the doctors say, or their protocol, or oh, this is. You know what the experts are saying. It's like no, take, take responsibility back right and and oftentimes I'm sorry, it's a lifestyle change. There's something emotionally, physically eating, whatever you know not moving, that you're likely doing. That cleansing is a start to that right, like it kickstarts it, but there's probably a lifestyle course shift if you've got something that's lingering, or you know recurring, if you will, or you know heavier duty, like a disease right.
Samantha Pruitt:I don't know any disease state that doesn't have a lifestyle modification. I don't know any literally and unfortunately, depending on the stage of the disease, it is going to be different, right. But again, we're talking about being proactive here. If you can proactively do as much of the lifestyle modifications based on this maybe genetically predisposed, or maybe a precursor to diabetes, or maybe a slight elevation in cholesterol or slight elevation in blood pressure or whatever, whatever the things are you're seeing now as warning signs on the dashboard of this car that you're driving take them seriously, make those modifications. If you do it before you're really in disease state, it's much easier. I have a couple of people close to me who I'm working with that are in very high end disease states, very far down the pipeline of these diseases, and making these modifications are very challenging. I'm not saying we're not doing it, we're doing it, but boy is it hard when you get really, really ill versus I just don't feel good, and many people can identify with right now I just don't feel great and I should.
Polly Mertens:And I want to you know something that you're pointing out and I get you know further disease states. But I just can't. I'm surprised how many people accept, let's say, a diagnosis or a prescription from a doctor and then go on that protocol, like I'm just thinking about. How many people are just like, oh yeah, I've got high blood pressure medicine and they're just like accepting that and it's like they say I have high blood pressure because my grandfather and my parents do and all this other stuff.
Samantha Pruitt:I heard that actually quite a bit and that's actually a very modifiable disease based on lifestyle. I mean it, the science is just there, it's proven. It's like 99%. I mean it's just crazy kind of number.
Samantha Pruitt:So, if you're in a case where you need to bring something down quickly because there's a danger, then that's different. Okay, I'm going to temporarily do this thing until I can make the lifestyle modifications right, but then I'm going to get very on task with that and maybe you're not in the right practitioner's hands or you don't feel empowered enough. So that's what these kinds of conversations that you and I are hosting are about, is, if we can do anything, we are here to empower the people. Owning your body and your life is paramount, and really it's why you and I freaking exist, yeah, okay, and why this show exists, yeah. So we're not saying we have all the answers, but we are here to tell you that you be the boss of you, nobody else. Yeah, and you deserve more to feel good.
Polly Mertens:Oh my gosh. Yes, I want to say one thing about you. Know the process, and, and so detoxes aren't a permanent thing you know, it's, you know.
Polly Mertens:So it's like they're often and uh, you know, and we could talk a little bit about when and whatnot but some people, some people, you know, depending on your advanced level of what you're up to in your life, you know you've got people that are going for this like age reversal type of mentality or biohacking and stuff like that, like they're doing cleanses every week or every month. You know, I would say there are a lot of practitioners of cleansing, say quarterly. You know I think seasonal is important to look at right. You know cleansing can lower the body temperature. So if you do it in winter, just know that like you'll have a lower set.
Samantha Pruitt:That's why Samantha Pruitt doesn't do juice detoxing, just juice only. I freeze my ass off. I'm literally walking around with a snow parka in the middle of summer. Yeah Anyway, go ahead, go ahead. Yeah Anyway, go ahead, go ahead.
Polly Mertens:Yeah, so just know, like detoxes, cleansing is a mild intervention, can be major depending on where your state is at and they're timed right. So some people do them once a year, some people do them never, but we're, you know, quarterly is common. I would say every six months. There's people that do that commonly Once a year. I think is a minimum to just support the body, especially with the direction that the environmental toxins have gone. And so just looking at, okay, if you're going to start in one, you know.
Polly Mertens:I want to say one more thing about skin, because it's so important that I wasn't aware of this, even though I was an organic food eater and I had done some cleansing, like I didn't get like things I put on my skin and in my hair, like toothpaste, skin creams, face creams, hair, like that stuff, mat dish soap, laundry soap.
Polly Mertens:Like people don't get that realm. Like all these smelly products that go into their Like I walk by you know laundromats and there's all these chemicals coming out of these laundromats. I'm like y'all, no, like you sleep in a pillow all night with like perfumes and stuff. Or you know I go in there's that store, that's all about the body lotions, the bath store or whatever it is, and it's all. You go in there and it just overwhelms you with the smell. And it's all. You go in there and it just overwhelms you with the smell and it's like, oh my, you know, you and I, you know, with our backpacking, like when you go into the woods, and it's like nature smell and you come back into society and you smell all the perfumes that are that our culture has added to stuff candles with smells.
Samantha Pruitt:Right, I just have to add this funny story. I was going up a mountain recently. There was these three young females I passed. Love it and the amount of perfume coming off. They had to make up the whole thing. I was like, wow, you guys looking hot out here, cause I mean, I'm sure I smelled like you know, I don't know something else. Yeah, but anyway, I went back and I was like I've made a comment about the gal's perfume in a nice loving way, but I was like, wow, you smell better than anything I've smelled in a week or whatever.
Samantha Pruitt:You know, I was on this bike backpacking trip and then she said something I can't remember what it was and then it dawned on us and we all started laughing out loud that she was detracting wildlife, probably with this smell, cause she's like, well, the bugs are eating me alive. That's what she said. The bugs are eating me alive. And I said, well, they're attracted to the smell, right, right. But here's the thing this is food. Yeah, we're putting things on our body. We should be willing to eat those things, okay, because they're going right into your circulatory system, which are eventually going to make it into your other organs. So if you're not willing to eat, it, don't put it on you.
Polly Mertens:You know, one of the biggest surprises to me when I, when the, when a naturopath, you know in my forties, was like, oh, you might want to supplement with some progesterone. Oh, okay, how do I ingest that? Oh, here it's a cream. I was like I'm going to get a hormone through a cream Like that blew my mind that like, oh, I put this on, hormones come in my body. Imagine things that you're not paying attention to. What's in the label, how, if that cream can affect my body's you know, female hormone system, what I'm putting on it, what I'm washing my dishes with, what I'm laundry soaping, whatever, Can I just say something that freaked me out when I learned this years ago Through your feet, baby powders, powders in your shoes all that stuff, no.
Samantha Pruitt:And also through your private parts, putting powder in your underwear or in your areas that you think are going to get sweaty and stinky, hell, no.
Polly Mertens:No, no, no, yeah. Contrary effects, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.
Samantha Pruitt:We're getting a little ranty. Sorry people, yeah, yeah yeah, okay, we're getting a little ranty, sorry people. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Polly Mertens:But I hope we've covered. You know some truths, for us.
Samantha Pruitt:I want to say something. I just remember one more thing. Well, I got about 100,000 things. When it comes to this, you know, if you're not comfortable doing this and many people won't be if you've never done it before and you and I didn't start this way right, this is 25 years in the making here.
Samantha Pruitt:Find a health practitioner, so a holistic health therapist, a naturopath, a functional medicine doctor. There are people that specialize in this. Specialize in this. This is their whole world, okay. So find somebody like that that you can lean on to. If it's going to be something deep, you know, have it be a supervised process. If it's going to be something very, you know, have it be a supervised process. If it's going to be something very light, then they can at least give you the protocols and give you the instructions and all that kind of stuff.
Samantha Pruitt:Like I went to the Chopra um center for wellness down in San Diego when I first started. I was studying Ayurvedic medicine at the time this is now literally 28 years ago, or whatever and went through their Panchakarma cleanse. It was a seven day detox. Mind blowing was fricking amazing. I was so sick at the time and I felt so grateful to be in the care of these people. I mean, it was just an exceptional experience for me to kind of a gateway into this world, yeah, but there are so many resources out there. You've got resources.
Polly Mertens:Yeah, but there are so many resources out there. You've got resources. We'll drop them, obviously, in the show notes, but so find somebody. I said don't jump into the deep end. Start slowly if you will, and try one, try a 24 hour, try a three day, something like that. Right, I think you'll be amazed and just give you know.
Polly Mertens:I have a feeling we're going to have a phase two of this. It's coming, but phase one I want to say expect, just like when you get a cold, like you don't feel so good for a little bit, right, like your body's like working hard to you finally stop adding more toxins in. It's like, oh, okay, I can get rid of some of this junk for one, right, so you might go through, depending on how long your cleanse is, a period of you know whether it's low energy, you know gunk coming out, you know you had, you know, stuff coming out your face and all sorts of areas of your body or whatever. So just be gentle with yourself and know like, okay, I'm gonna, like I said, don't jump on the deep end, but and depending on your level of need, though, right, like how.
Samantha Pruitt:Yeah, if you're already having symptoms, you need to be slightly more aggressive. If you're just curious about this, do all the things that are free. Okay, examine the air you're breathing in and outside of your home. Take a look have you cleaned the filters lately? Are you breathing fresh air? Is it recirculate? Recirculate? Recirculated air from either other people or pets or things in your house that are not healthy? And then water where's your water coming from? Have you had your water tested? Are you drinking filtered water? Because anything that's coming out of a tap at this point is problematic. So filtered water, ideally, not water coming from plastic bottles. So there's some very simple things that you could just be doing right now. Right, but move your body. These things, again, are free. You're already going to drink water. You're going to already breathe air. You're already going to hopefully move your body. But, like, get a nice gentle sweat, where actually toxins are coming out of your body, and allow your body to sweat.
Samantha Pruitt:I mean, I sweat and me. That is my thing, lady, and I live in the desert and I still want a sauna or a red light sauna or some kind of. I still want it, I still want it. And then, just examining your environment so you talked about soaps and lotions and shampoos and things like that, cleansing materials what are you cleansing your house with?
Polly Mertens:yeah, oh dude, like when I'm cleaners I see them walking with like the smelly yeah, my gosh, it's like yo you're ingesting it, you know you're smelling, and stuff the Febrezes and the scented oils and the plug in things like get that. No, no more of that. No more of that.
Samantha Pruitt:So you can do all that without having to hire anybody or, you know, make any radical commitment to a three, seven or multi-day cleanse. Read your labels read your labels.
Polly Mertens:You know, and if you like you know, sometimes what's great about being in the RV is, like you know, you can't be putting things down the drain that you know just going to go into nature and stuff like that. Like you know, it's got to be better protected, like some of these dish soaps that people you know use. If it can't just go be out in nature, if it would destroy that, it's like holy smokes.
Samantha Pruitt:You know, hello, and I've got another um great resource. I'll we'll drop a link to this. It's called the good energy book. Oh, okay, I just finished that. Um, it's great, but it has some really good resources in the book, specific about these things that we're talking about, and also it has a like a health 101 human. Hey, let me tell you how my body works. I mean it's more around the energy systems like the mitochondria and things, cellular stuff that I'm fascinated with. But it's not boring at all, it's super user friendly. So I'm going to put that book up too for the audience to check into.
Polly Mertens:And I just want to say my. The one, the go-to that I've used over and over again just I'll drop it here and we'll have it in the show notes is Dr Scholl's SC. I think it's S, c, h U L Z E. It's more herb based for cleansing, you know. So it's like helping your elimination through herbs and tinctures and stuff like that. There's also the John Dulliard's Life Spa. I've done his Colorado Ayurvedic cleanse, which is more food like eating apples and things to help the fiber and whatnot. But there's lots of resources out there. So get informed. Talk to AI, your favorite AI. Don't trust it all the time, but just start to walk into the shallow end or deep end if you need it, and contact us. You're a walk in Wikipedia. You know you'd be happy to give people some feedback on what's been working and how you're doing.
Samantha Pruitt:And currently, right now, I'm with Parsley Health, which is a functional medicine system program, if you will. They do take insurance, which is amazing. Parsley Health it's a female founder started the company several years ago and has been able to expand it sufficiently that they can actually take insurance now, and that's when I switched over, because generally these things can be more expensive, and so the protocol I'm doing is through them, with my team there, so you literally are assigned a team of people to work with you.
Polly Mertens:It's mind blowing, and that's what I'm up to yeah, and you know it's based in functional medicine, if I remember correctly. So she's scaling functional medicine, you know, allowing insurance and stuff like that. Just amazing. I wish that company the best of success.
Samantha Pruitt:It sounds like it's, from your experience, has been amazing so functional medicine is the integration of what is in Western, that is reasonable and what makes sense with holistic naturopathic medicine and looking for root cause. So it's basically root cause medicine.
Polly Mertens:Yeah, which is what we want to get to Cause, if you just keep dabbling at the symptom level, you know your body could just be off track more and more and more.
Samantha Pruitt:Dude I'm absolutely sure I would not be sitting here. I'm absolutely sure there's no doubt in my mind and it's really makes me sad to think how many people aren't here today, or the people who are here and are fricking miserable in a very serious disease state, and it didn't need to happen.
Polly Mertens:And you can be high functioning, you know, I mean you don't need to be doing endurance runs, necessarily, but be just high functioning Maybe.
Polly Mertens:Get around, Samantha, you will be, but it's just about being high functioning Whatever high functioning is, and healthful and what brings you joy and vitality. That's what we want for you. That's what we want for you, right? And anything that is not that, get it addressed. Don't deal with dabbles and symptoms. Get to the root of it in every area. So all right, my dear, what's our one thing from this episode? What's the one thing we want to leave people with about cleansing and the truth about detoxes?
Samantha Pruitt:Well, my one thing is I want them to try something. So if they do that kind of free version we ran through at the end examine your water, your air, your environment great. If they do something next step, like I'm going to try a weekend or a three day, great, whatever it is, but try something, because everybody's system is burdened. None of us are not burdened. It's just the world that we live in now. There's no judgment, there's no guilt, there's no drama around this. Okay, it's just a matter of this is the reality of the environment that we all are living in, and so everybody has some kind of toxic burden. So they should do something.
Polly Mertens:And mine is for those that have done something and wanted to go to the next level. So, like, you know what, take, take on that. You know, like, if you've done a three day, okay, go for a seven. If you've done a seven, do a 21,. You know, like, really get after it. Like how good can you feel, right, like give your body a break or maybe commit to doing it regularly. You know, maybe do it on a quarterly and I'm speaking to myself here too, because it's time for me to you know, been on the road and stuff. I know it's like you've been too right. So it's like, okay, yeah, yeah, and then the stress of that, if you will. So, all right, beautiful. Well, what do we want to remind our beautiful humans of today as we sign off?
Samantha Pruitt:Oh you lovely human beings, how their life feels is more important than how it looks.
Polly Mertens:Yeah, and every day is your opportunity to find your awesome.
