Recently I came across four videos someone posted on Telegram on the flush Niacin and sauna detox protocol, the best of which I am sharing here. Please watch this short video through the 7 min 20 sec mark and I will explain what I see that’s missing for the ultimate detox … (that 99.99% of doctors and so-called “health and fitness gurus” have no clue about.)
Dr. Yu’s Niacin Sauna Detox Protocol
As you might know, I take Niacin (immediate release, flush niacin only, not niacinamide which is toxic and which is put in most breads and bread products because nothing much has changed yet, the food industry is still poisoning the public) along with activated charcoal. This is because Niacin is the fuel for detox, while the activated charcoal assures the toxins released into the small intestines actually stay in the intestines and go down the toilet, rather than being reabsorbed back into the bloodstream.
Dr. Yu’s protocol in the first video does recommend activated charcoal tablets, but he tells you to take them AFTER exercise and AFTER the sauna. (To his credit, Dr. Yu does bring up both the skin and the G.I. tract as pathways of detox, which, it seems anyway, many doctors are oblivious to.) The other videos recommended the Niacin flush, but everyone is unaware of the importance of also taking activated charcoal along with it.
I learned from naturopathic physician Dr. Garrett Smith, the Nutrition Detective channel on YouTube, that both exercise and heat trigger a bile dump. Your liver dumps bile (your liver’s waste) into your small intestine, which is full of toxins, to try to get rid of them. The Niacin helps fuel the detox, by increasing circulation and upping the releasing of toxins. So, it just makes sense that as soon as your liver dumps the bile into the small intestine, the moment those toxins enter your small intestine you want to have a binder already in there to soak those toxins up, rather than waiting until after your exercise and sauna. This is critical for a proper sauna detox. I cannot emphasize enough how important this is, but the following incident (that I wrote about in a previous blog post) proves my point.
Hot Yoga Heart Attack
Less than a year ago, a friend’s son-in-law, who lived in LA and was 44 years old, had a heart attack during a Bikram hot yoga session. Paramedics were able to revive him at the gym, but he died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. He left behind a wife and three teenage boys.
No, he was not vaxxed, received no boosters, and neither did he have any obvious pre-existing conditions. He was viewed, at least by the medical establishment and the people around him, as being healthy.
This demonstrates the point that toxins are much safer when they’re stored in the liver, as the liver is a filter and is designed for this, but if the liver dumps too many toxins into the bile all at once (intense heat and exercise both dump lots of bile), which then goes into the small intestine, some or most of those toxins are going to be reabsorbed back into the bloodstream, where those toxins can wreak havoc as they go everywhere in the body, including your brain and heart.
Toxins in the liver are okay, but those same toxins in the bloodstream, brain or heart wreak havoc, damage vital organs, and can cause death. (This is why some people die from the flu, which is the liver trying to get rid of a lot of toxins in a bile dump: too many toxins in the bloodstream causing damage, and an overburdened, sluggish liver from decades of poor food choices and frankly, bad nutrition advice.)
When to Take Activated Charcoal
This also demonstrates the point that taking activated charcoal AFTER his hot exercise session would have been already too late, as he had the heart attack DURING the hot yoga class. The only thing that would have helped is if he had a strong binder ALREADY in his intestines. Because when you take an activated charcoal drink consisting of, say, a teaspoon of activated charcoal powder in a small bottle of filtered water, it gets to your stomach and starts working within seconds, and about a half hour later it is already present in your small intestine, when you need it most.
Indeed, Dr. Garrett Smith advises an “activated charcoal sandwich,” which is taking some activated charcoal both BEFORE your exercise and / or sauna, and AFTER your exercise and / or sauna. Because after your exercise and / or sauna your body will continue to detox at an elevated pace for a short period, maybe an hour or two.
I am quite certain this heart attack would not have occurred if my friend’s son-in-law had drunk some activated charcoal water before his class (a teaspoon of activated charcoal in a glass of water is a good dose), or had a bunch of soluble fiber food such as a bowl of oatmeal in his digestive system to bind to the toxins and keep them in the intestines.
Important Point Number Two
This also demonstrates the point that the liver does indeed store tons of toxins, even the toxins present in a significant bile dump can cause major problems, and therefore should never be eaten. Nor should your pets eat liver or kidneys, either.
Your fat cells store toxins too, but not in as high concentrations as the liver. This is why Dr. Smith warns people never to eat liver or kidneys, and advises high soluble fiber foods, lean muscle meat protein (so your body makes RBP, retinol binding protein) and flush Niacin along with activated charcoal—the best binder of toxins bar none.
Prove the Activated Charcoal for Yourself!
You can easily verify the efficacy of the activated charcoal by trying it out for yourself. If you go to the sauna, or do hot yoga or any intense exercise that gets you hot and sweaty (or even manual labor in the hot sun), try this experiment: Right before you go into the sauna or some intense exercise, drink a glass of water with a level teaspoon of hardwood activated charcoal***, then stay in the sauna your normal length of time. Then leave the sauna and notice how you feel. Do you feel better? Less woozy? Less like you’re going to pass out? This means the activated charcoal adsorbed a bunch of the toxins your liver released into the small intestine.
A few years ago, before I knew about activated charcoal and Dr. Smith’s program, I would usually stay in a sauna until I had at least 15 minutes of good sweating, normally around 30-45 minutes total (depending on how hot the sauna was). Then when I left the sauna, I often felt slightly woozy, dizzy, like I would (almost) pass out.
Recently, I started going to the sauna again, and I slowly upped my stay in the sauna to a full hour (getting more than 20-30 minutes of good sweating), and now when I get up out of the sauna, I do not feel even slightly woozy. (Most of my life my blood pressure was slightly on the low side, and I’d get slightly dizzy if I got up out of a crouching position, such as when weeding in the garden. This does not happen anymore.)
This means the activated charcoal is doing its job: binding to the toxins your liver released (which, anyway, are meant for going down the toilet) so they DO NOT get reabsorbed by your bloodstream, giving you symptoms of all sorts. (Your symptoms may be different than mine. This is where being in touch with your body and observing your symptoms is valuable.)
*** A good brand to get is Zen Principle activated charcoal powder. Start with 1/2 teaspoon once a day, and go up slowly every few days until you take a teaspoon 2-3 times a day. Additional instructions are given at Dr. Smith’s Love Your Liver program. (Taking larger amounts may constipate you and there’s a process to this detox, so don’t overdo it until you know exactly what you’re doing.)
Reabsorption of Toxins = Enterohepatic Recirculation
Enterohepatic recirculation is real, and Google AI gives a good explanation that you can look up. Most toxins are actually reabsorbed; on a standard American diet low in soluble fiber the research shows that 90-95% of toxins are reabsorbed back into the bloodstream. Which means the liver has to filter them out again, then during the next bile dump tries to get rid of them again, putting them in the small intestines with the bile again, then they get reabsorbed back into the bloodstream again in a continuous negative loop / vicious cycle. This vicious cycle is a major cause of disease and aging. This is why daily soluble fiber and activated charcoal are super important.
I also found this paper on Enterohepatic Recirculation on the NaturopathicInstitute.org website and took the following quote from the first paragraph:
The liver is designed to dump toxins into bile, store it in the gallbladder and eventually eliminate the bile carrying toxins through the digestive system. When the diet lacks a source of soluble fiber to bind to the bile and eliminate it from the body, 95% of the bile including harmful toxins will absorb through the intestinal wall and recirculate back to the liver. This process is referred to as enterohepatic recirculation.
A side point: Niacin aka nicotinic acid is miscategorized as a B vitamin. The reason is that niacin is completely unlike any of the other B vitamins, and unlike the other B vitamins it is actually an amino acid, a derivative of tryptophan. This is why Niacin is beneficial: because it is a protein.
Folks, details matter. Being on target matters. Your emotions, not so much.
According to Dr. Smith and several others, most other vitamins are harmful, especially the fat-soluble ones. The fat-soluble “vitamins” get stored in the liver and the fat cells (liver and fat cells are storage depots for toxins away from vital organs.)
In my opinion, Dr. Smith is the best naturopathic doctor, bar none. Attend a livestream of his Tuesday mornings (starting around 9:15 or 9:30 am PST time) at his Nutrition Detective channel, search his archive for the topic of your choice, and check out his Love Your Liver program where you will get all the details for how to detox your body the correct way. (Which helps immensely with weight loss as well, I mean true weight loss where you don’t gain the weight back so easily.)
I don’t care how many followers other doctors may have on their social media channels, their knowledge is limited, and their advice can sometimes be dangerous. I am sure my friend’s son-in-law thought he was doing wonderful things for his body sweating in that hot yoga class. It is unfortunate he was not aware of toxic bile theory and the benefits of soluble fiber and activated charcoal.
If you haven’t yet read my previous blog posts on this new, true science-backed approach to nutrition and health, here are the links to my previous posts:
1st post: Nutrition 3.0 and the Recovery of Health
2nd post: How to Avoid Cancer and My One-Year Detox Update
3rd post: Detox Like a Champ with Activated Charcoal
4th post: Take Back Your Health No Matter Your Age (Proves, with my dad’s blood tests, that it’s not too late to improve your health, even in your 80s!)
Thanks and have a wonderful new year!
Update January 13, 2025:
Yesterday I went to the sauna at the local gym and people there were talking about a woman who just minutes before had a seizure while in the sauna. She was helped out of the sauna and recovered in the pool area. It appears, to me anyway, that she was predisposed to having seizures and the higher concentrations of toxins that got to her brain from her bloodstream / bile dump caused her to have a mild seizure. Next time I go to the gym, I will let management know about this blog post. I’ve been telling people in the sauna about the activated charcoal, but it would be great if a wider group of people were made aware of this life saver.
Image by Fernando Zamora from Pixabay
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