THE TRAFFIC JAM INSIDE YOUR BODY — WHY YOU SHOULD NEVER DETOX BEFORE OPENING YOUR PATHWAYS

Imagine your body as a city—a living, breathing ecosystem with highways, plumbing, and waste disposal systems that keep everything flowing.

Your arteries and veins are the highways, delivering oxygen and nutrients.

Your lymphatic system is the garbage truck fleet, collecting waste from every neighborhood (cell) and carrying it to the detox plants — your liver, kidneys, colon, lungs, and skin.

Your mucus membranes act like air filters, catching debris before it clogs the system.

Now picture what happens when the city’s waste systems back up:

• The trash trucks (lymph) can’t get through because the roads are jammed with debris.

• The dump (liver) is full and can’t accept more waste.

• The sewer (colon) is slow or blocked.

• The air vents (lungs, skin) are coated in grime.

If you send in cleaning crews (detox supplements) before you’ve cleared the traffic, you create chaos. Toxins get stirred up but have nowhere to go, flooding back into neighborhoods (tissues, brain, joints) instead of leaving the city.

This is what happens when someone detoxes too soon:

• Headaches, fatigue, rashes, anxiety, or nausea increase.

• The lymph system becomes congested.

• The liver is overwhelmed and dumps toxins back into circulation.

• The immune system goes into alarm mode.

It’s like turning on a firehose in a clogged sink — all you do is flood the house.

The Right Order: Priming Before Purging

Ease the traffic first.

• Support circulation, hydration, and movement.

• Use minerals, electrolytes, and gentle movement to get the lymph flowing again.

• Relax the nervous system so the body feels safe to open up.

Clear the exits.

• Make sure the bowels move daily.

• Open kidney and liver drainage with teas, bitters, or light sweating.

Then mobilize toxins slowly.

• Once your system flows freely, the “garbage trucks” can safely haul debris to the dump.

• Binders and gentle detox tools can now escort toxins out through stool, urine, sweat, and breath.

Starting slow isn’t weakness — it’s wisdom. You’re teaching your body how to release instead of forcing it.

Think of priming like thawing a frozen river before trying to paddle downstream. If you break the ice without warming the current, you’ll get stuck halfway and freeze over again.

Your body works the same way: first restore flow, then begin release. When fluids move freely, detox becomes effortless. When they’re stagnant, detox becomes painful.

Healing isn’t about speed. It’s about sequence.

First you open the pathways, then you let go of the past, and finally you rebuild strength.

That’s how you move from a congested, toxic city to a vibrant, flowing ecosystem — one that breathes, circulates, and thrives again.

Carey Ann George

Psychoneuroimmunology ND