Drainage Before Detox: Why Your Cleanse Made You Feel Worse - Episode 331

You've been sold the three-day cleanse, the celery juice, the tea with a coupon code. And you've probably also heard a doctor say detox is nonsense because your body already does it on its own. Both are missing the same thing: drainage.

In this episode I break down — in plain language — what detoxification actually is, what drainage is, and why one has to come before the other. I walk you through the machinery: the liver, the kidneys, the bowel, the skin, the lungs, and the lymph — the system with no pump, which moves only when you do.

Then I get into what changes in midlife. Liver capacity drops. Glutathione declines. Kidney filtration slows decade by decade. Motility slows, and low estrogen and low thyroid make it worse. Estrogen influences how your gallbladder empties and how thick your bile gets, which is why gallbladder issues climb for women at exactly this stage. Menopause isn't only hot flashes and broken sleep. It's a drainage story.

I also cover:

- Liver phase one and phase two — and the reason phase one can make you feel worse before phase two catches up
- The emunctories — your organs of elimination — and the order you have to open them
- Biotherapeutic drainage and UNDA: the early-1900s European lineage behind Nebel, Discry and Reuter, and how a plant tincture paired with a homeopathic metal actually targets a specific organ
- MTHFR, methylation as a phase two pathway, and my own genetics — held without the internet's drama
- Where drainage costs nothing, and the free daily practices I'd start with
- My own experience with cysts under the arm, and how I read it
- Why emotional stagnation is a terrain too, and what it means to drain the soul

Nothing here is medical advice. I'm giving you breadcrumbs — take them to a qualified practitioner, one trained specifically in drainage.

If this one lands, share it with one person and hit follow. It genuinely helps the show get found.

Transcript

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Welcome And Integrity In Wellness

Sandy Kruse 0:02

Hi everyone, it's me, Sandy Kruse. Welcome to Sandy K Nutrition Health and Lifestyle Queen. For many years now, I've been a trusted voice for people in midlife and beyond who want a deeper, more honest conversation about wellness. One that includes the physical, the emotional, the mental, and the esoteric. Most episodes are solo now because I want to bring you thoughtful research, lived experience, and grounded insight without noise or bias. And when I do bring on a guest, it's because their work genuinely adds something meaningful to the conversation. Here we explore the full spectrum of what it means to be well, how the body functions, how the mind heals, how the spirit expands, and how all of these layers shape life lived with clarity and joy. Thanks for being here. And if this show resonates with you, please follow, rate, review, and share it. It truly helps the message reach more people.

Detox Marketing Versus Detoxification

Sandy Kruse 1:31

Hi everyone, welcome to Sandy K Nutrition Health and Lifestyle Queen. Today I'm going to talk about something that everybody talks about. Detox. You hear about juice detoxes, celery detoxes. You hear from doctors that detoxes are bunk and your body does it on its own. And yes, there is truth to that. We have organs that are for that purpose. However, what I am going to do is break all of this down so that everyone by the end of this episode will understand in layman's terms what is drainage, because that's rarely talked about, and what is detox. And in what situations would you maybe want to let's say push the pathways a little bit more? And by pathways, we have a number of different detox pathways in the body. One is pooping, one is peeing, one is sweating. We have our organs that help with this, our kidneys, our liver. So we do have built-in systems to help us with this. However, what does drainage mean and where does that come into play? So I'm going to give you a little bit of background and I'm going to tell you why when I was working with clients one-on-one, I always, always incorporated a drainage protocol before anything major. It's just to help the organs work a little bit more and why it's important to do this before you do any kind of detox. And I'm going to explain all of it. But the problem is you get all of these, you know, three-day cleanse with celery juice and drink this tea, and it's going to cleanse all the toxins from your body. And then, you know, if you're like me, you're like trying to put yourself in the shoes of the person who's listening who doesn't have any sort of formal training in health or wellness. And they're like, Oh, what does this tea do? It magically just eliminates all the garbage from my body. Well, no, it doesn't work that way. So I'm going to break all of this down. I am going to say, wherever you are listening, my numbers in the summer always go down, which is normally why for the last, I don't know, five years, I've done a summer reboot series where I don't take new content and I reuse older content that I want more play. I want people to listen to more. But I've decided to keep going this summer. So what you can do to help keep my numbers decent because everybody's at a cottage or at a vacation or in Europe is wherever you're listening, hit like, hit subscribe, share it with one person, share it on social media. This will help my show to be seen even in the summer. So let's talk

Drainage Before Any Deep Detox

Sandy Kruse 4:57

about it. All of this. If you start pulling things out of the deeper tissues of your body, out of your cells, out of your fat. Remember, fat holds a lot of toxins, out of places in your body that have been quietly storing what it couldn't actually eliminate or deal with. And the doors out of the body are jammed, shut, you don't feel so good. You probably would feel worse. Headaches, breakouts in the skin, maybe even a little bit fluish if anybody's done these detox, a little bit of achiness. And quite frankly, you feel kind of like garbage. And so this is not necessarily the toxins leaving the body. This could potentially be traffic. Think of it as a pile up at every exit because you started the demolition before you even opened the doors. So today I want to talk a little bit about the step that almost everyone skips, and that is drainage, not detox, drainage, what it actually is, why it comes first, um, how the herbs and the remedies actually work in the organs, on the organs. And I'm going to walk you through a traditional method that I was trained in. I did a seven-week training with UND. So UNDA are these little glass bottles. I think they've been bought out, but they were originally made, I think it was in Sweden. It's called biotherapeutic drainage. And the way it's actually practiced. And yes, I'm going to tell you a little bit about cysts that I've had, but what I am going to say is that whatever I speak about is not medical advice. I am not giving you advice. I am giving you breadcrumbs. This is for you to go and speak with your qualified practitioner. If you go and talk to your doctor about UNDA and biotherapeutic drainage, I can tell you guaranteed, he or she will have no idea what you're talking about. If you want to explore this more, make sure you're speaking with a functional practitioner, a holistic health practitioner, a naturopath doctor, somebody also who is trained in UNDA. UNDA is a very old method. Okay. So let's let's start by reclaiming the word detox. And I'm going to take this word back because detox got hijacked by the tea companies and the juice cleanse people. And now it means like skinny influencer holding a green little bottle. That is not detox. This is marketing. Be aware of this. And I educate so much about influencers selling their coupon code and selling a miracle to you. It's really important because one of my missions is integrity on this planet and integrity in wellness. That's body, mind, spirit, soul. So detoxification, real detoxification, is something that your body is actually doing right now. Right now, while you're listening to me without asking for your permission and taking this little green juice, it never stops. Your body consistently does this. You have a built-in system for transforming things in your body that it doesn't want and it escorts this stuff out. Let me actually name the players because when you understand the machinery a little bit better, everything I say after this will land a little differently.

Meet The Body’s Detox Exits

Sandy Kruse 8:58

So the liver, it's a workhorse. So this is where most of the heavy chemistry actually happens. Think of it in two phases. If anybody here has ever done the Dutch test, you're going to understand this a little bit more. Okay. Um, I'm also trained in functional, uh, functional uh testing, lab testing, but for nutritionists, so I don't do any kind of lab testing or anything, but I understand it and I'm trained in it. So phase one, liver detox, takes a fat-soluble compound. And this is something that your body can't easily excrete. And what it does is it starts to break it down. And here's the catch that almost nobody really explains. Phase one actually makes some of these intermediates more reactive, more irritating before phase two comes along and neutralizes them, wraps them up, and makes them water soluble so you can actually pee them out or move them into bile. Remember, the liver makes bile. Okay. So sit with that for a second because it's the whole reason that drainage, which is what I'm talking about, matters. If phase one is roaring, okay, and phase two is sluggish, you generate a backlog of half processed junk, and you feel that backlog. Let's talk about the kidneys. These are your filters, they're pulling waste out of your blood every minute and sending it out through your urine. Then there's the bowel, that's the exit. Your liver dumps a huge amount of what it processes into bile. Bile goes into the gut. And if you're not pooping regularly, every single day, a lot of that gets reabsorbed into the body. So basically, you're recirculating your own waste. And this is why elimination is non-negotiable, but it's a big problem for many women, many women in menopause, many women with thyroid disease. These are non-negotiables. You gotta poop every day. Now let's talk about the skin. This is your largest organ. You hear this a lot, and you sweat things out. It's actually a really great route. Then there's your lungs, and people don't think about the lungs as a detoxification organ a lot of the times. But every exhale is an elimination. You are literally breathing out metabolic byproducts all day long. Then there's your lymph. So everyone tends to forget their lymph nodes. Okay. And this is actually a drainage network of your whole body, the fluid that bathes your tissues, picks up cellular waste and debris, and fluid, and carries your immune cells and returns it all back towards circulation. And here's the part that matters: your lymph has no pump. Your blood has a heart. Okay, because you know your heart pumps the blood. Your lymph has you. It moves when you move, it moves when you breathe deep. It moves when your muscles squeeze it along. Sit still and shallow breathe all day, and your lymph gets sluggish and swampy. So when I say detox, I don't mean a product, I mean supporting the system you already have. If you take one thing from this episode, take this.

Terrain And The Soul Connection

Sandy Kruse 13:34

And this is what I used to do when I worked one-on-one with women, always, usually anywhere from four to six or three to six-week protocol on drainage. Drainage is the work of opening and supporting your organs of elimination, getting them functioning, getting them flowing before and while you do anything deeper. Often I would give a drainage protocol along with a place to start with every single client. So think of it as the on-ramp. It's the preparation, it's the part that everyone skips because it's just not sexy and there's no before and after photo or for my bile is flowing nicely, right? And the other thing that there's not, there's not a giant coupon code that is attached to it. That's the facts, my friends. So it's not so massively marketed and saleable. In the tradition I trained in, we talk about the terrain. So your terrain is your inner environment, the state of your tissues, the fluids, your fluids, your cells, the whole background field your health is growing out of. The idea is that disease doesn't just fall on you out of the sky. It takes root in a terrain that's congested, stagnant, overwhelmed. So you don't chase the symptom. You work the terrain. And the first thing you do is to drain it. You get things moving and flowing again so the body can do what it wants to do, which is the return to balance. And I will say there's also something very spiritual about this. And you know I'm gonna go there because so much of healing, physical, emotional, all of it is just really opening up those exits. So stop holding and let the thing move through and out. Drainage is a physical practice and it's a life practice. Okay. So there's a lot of emotions tied to all of this. There always is. Everything is body, mind, spirit, soul, science and soul, my friends. Detox without drainage is where people can feel hurt. Like not hurt, hurt, but that awful, why did I feel, you know, why do I feel worse kind of crash? And then they decide detoxing isn't for me. And the truth is that they they skip the whole first act. So drainage first,

Why Aging Slows Detox Pathways

Sandy Kruse 16:17

always. Now let me show you the doors. So this matters a little bit more as we age. Here's something I want you to really hear, especially the women in their 40s, 50s, and beyond, your detox and drainage systems don't stay the same your whole life. They get a little slower as you age. And this isn't fear-mongering or saying that, you know, because you're getting older, you don't work as well or whatever. Um, it's actually physiology. So once you understand everything about why I say drainage first makes more sense, you'll you'll get this. Your liver loses a little bit of horsepower as you age. And your liver literally gets a little bit smaller, and blood flow and the blood flow that's moving through it, it tends to drop. Less tissue, less blood flow, less processing capacity. It's a big part why medications hit older bodies harder and get dosed differently. The liver is simply clearing things a little more slower than it used to. Your glutathione tank runs lower. Glutathione is your master antioxidant. It is central and imperative to phase two detoxification. The thing that mops up the reactive stuff that the phase one creates. Remember all that fat-soluble stuff. And glutathione tends to decline with age. So the very buffer that protects you during detox gets thinner right when your liver is working with less headroom. So your kidneys also filter a little slower. Filtration just drops pretty predictably decade by decade after your 40s. Slower filter, slower flushing, your gut slows down, motility can decrease with age. It's a big reason constipation climbs the older we get. And by now, what a sluggish bowel does, we know it lets everything the liver dumped into bile get reabsorbed into your body. And the exits, the exit gets very sticky. So, and then there's other reasons too why um motility can slow down. I already mentioned them low estrogen, low thyroid function. So picture this the processing plant running with less capacity, the antioxidant buffer thinner, the filter is slower, the exit door is stickier all at once, gradually as the years go on. Nothing is broken, but the headroom shrinks, and that right there is the whole argument for drainage as you age. The exits get a little narrower, so you can't afford to allow them to clog. You keep them open on purpose. Then there's menopause, there's that whole hormonal layer stacked on top of all of this. And as I mentioned, estrogen is a big factor here, and it actually influences your bile. It affects how your gallbladder empties and how sludgy your bile becomes. Remember, I've talked about that in the past. As our hormones shift through perimenopause and into menopause, bile can get thicker, more sluggish, and the gallbladder issues and stones climb in women exactly at our stage in life. So the single most important drainage route we talked about, bile flow, is the one midlife hormonal change that hits most directly. Metapause isn't just about hot flashes and sleep issues, it's a drainage story, too, which is why supporting the liver and the bile become more important for us, not less, right at the right moment that everyone's telling us just to push through. So here's the last layer that I'm going to talk about.

MTHFR Genetics Without Fear

Sandy Kruse 20:28

And it's the genetic one. Some of us are simply running certain pathways a little slower. And this is from birth. And I always say, you know, genetics are always a little bit of a factor here. And it's not necessarily your whole story, but it does create part of the story. So the one that you might have heard of is the MTHFR. Okay. And the gene behind the enzyme that turns your folate into its active, usable form and runs your methylation. Methylation is one of your phase two detox roots and how you clear estrogen and how you process homocysteine. So a slower methylation pathway touches detox hormones and health all at once. I'll tell you mine. I've done so many different genetics tests because I've recorded with lots of different genetics individuals. I find genetics really fascinating. I also find them complicated. I am not an expert in genetics, but I'll tell you mine. I've had my genetics run on numerous occasions, and I carry one copy of the common MTHFR variant. And this one is A1298C. I am heterozygous. Heterozygous means I have one. Copy of it, not from both parents. I have one. And interestingly, I am completely clear of the more famous one, which is the C677T. I want to model how to hold this without drama because the internet has turned MTHFR into the boogeyman, right? And a single A1298C common uh copy is common, and it's actually the gentler end and it nudges the pathway, it doesn't doom it. So here's the real key I want to want you to take with you. Your genes are the predisposition, but your function is the reality. The genotype isn't the whole story. And I will say, you know, if if any of this makes you kind of curious about your own blueprint, you can get your own genetics tested. I've recorded numerous podcasts about this. Just go into my history and and find something that resonates if you want to learn more about this. So I think it's very important to just understand that your genetics might be one component to this, but there's so many other factors that always come into play.

UNDA Biotherapeutic Drainage Basics

Sandy Kruse 23:21

Let's talk about the amunctories. Many people have no idea what this word is, but it's it was used in the training that I did for drainage. So the amunctories are your organs of elimination and the order you open them. So the traditional word of for your organs of elimination, it's an old word, it's amunctories from the Latin to clean out or to wipe away. Your amuncturies are the roots out. They have an order of operations. You don't open them randomly, you open them from the outside in. You know, I always say inside out. This is from the outside in if you're doing any kind of drainage. You start with the bowel and the kidneys. These are the primary exits. These are the big drains. If your bowels aren't moving daily and moving well, nothing else I say really matters. Okay. Like that's it. Drink enough water, make sure you're well hydrated. If you can't go to the bathroom, talk to your practitioner about it. Then the liver and the bile. Once the primary exits are open, you support the liver and you get the bile flowing. Bile is one of your major waste-carrying fluids. Sluggish, thick, stuck bile is a congested terrain. Moving bile is drainage. Then you go to the deeper layers, the lymph, the connective tissue, the cellular level. And then there's the skin, the lungs, the mucous membranes. So you have to kind of work on it systemically. This is the training from UNDA. So I want to give you the roots because I think it matters that this isn't something invented last year on TikTok. Biotherapeutic drainage comes out of a European tradition from the early 1900s. And this thread runs from Dr. Antoine Nabel and was carried forward and built into a complete system by Georges Descris and Dr. Louis Ruder, working in France and then in Belgium through the 1920s and 30s. They tested over a thousand formulations before settling the system down into the compounds that we still use. The company that came to carry this work out of Ben Belgium is Unda, and the whole philosophy sits on the terrain idea: support the ground, open the among trees, restore the flow, and the body does the healing. So the word Unda actually is Latin for wave, the undulating wave. I always love that. Fluids in motion, waves carrying things towards the shore and out. That's drainage, movement, flow, nothing stagnant. So I love that. You know, everything that heals moves, water, waves. I love that. So the UNDA numbers, people who are familiar with UNDA numbers, they'll see they actually have all these little numbered compounds. And if you've ever been in any practitioner's office that has this, you'll see a row of these little tiny bottles, and they're just labeled with a number. One, two, two forty-three. Each Unda is a combination. You can't just go, I mean, you can, because you can go and buy it probably anywhere, but to know what to do with it and what order to take it in is a whole other thing. You know, you want to work with a practitioner who understands them. But these are plant tinctures paired with homeopathic metals prepared in low potency in a liquid that you take as drops. And there's a set of these compounds, each one formulated for a specific organ system, a specific tissue, a specific action in the body. And this is the part that answers your question. I'm sure all of you have, about how do these herbs actually work? Do they just go into your body and open up the lever for your liver and let it flush out? Like, you know, people are like, I don't get it. How does it work? So every plant in this system is chosen because it has an affinity, a pull or a relationship with a particular organ or tissue. That's the old herbal concept of affinity. Certain plants go to certain places in the body. So the plant is the targeting, it points to the remedy towards the liver or the kidney or the lymph. And then the metal is paired in as a catalyst. In this particular tradition, the metals prepared in homeopathic form, they don't hurt you. We're not talking about major heavy metals and crap you're putting in your body. So they act as the spark, the energetic catalyst that drives the plant's action a little deeper into the cell. Metals in the body are cofactors. So they're the little keys that let the enzymes actually do their jobs. So the framing is the plant carries the remedy to the right address, and the metal helps the cell there actually respond and function. There's a lot behind this. And what I will say is that undas are almost never used solo. You choose a combination, usually two or three, sometimes four. I've taken four at a time to build a protocol that targets the organ systems under whatever you're, you know, for whatever you're working on. Typically, you drop it under the tongue a few times a day on their own, away from food, so nothing interferes with the absorption. And they're designed to be gentle enough to lair and don't make you feel awful. So I'm a big fan of these and I have seen, and this is not making any kind of medical claims or anything. So please do not put words in my mouth. I have seen and I have felt just overall better, just from doing a little bit of drainage. So the classic openers that people reach for for the primary among trees and the terrain moving. One of them is UNDA 243. It's a great hepatic drainer. This is like known as the liver number. When you want to help with the liver just to work a little bit better. You get the idea. I want to say that you can move your lymph without a single bottle. You could do detox without, you know, any kind of expensive protocol, but I will say UNDA is not expensive. And a lot of times people just feel good when they do little things like their digestion. You have bitter herbs before every meal. And guess what that does? And I've given this to clients and individuals for years. Just eat a nice little serving of bitter herbs. And guess what that does? That gets all of the digestive juices flowing and it gets those enzymes moving. And they are gentle to help the liver and the bile just start working. You know, some of the things that I love are milk thistle. That's a wonderful daily, you know, herb. Again, I'm not giving you any kind of um advice here. You do need to work with somebody.

Daily Habits That Improve Drainage

Sandy Kruse 31:30

But I do want to say that in general, people don't move enough. Your lymph moves when your muscles move. So you gotta walk, get on a rebounder. It's that little trampoline. It actually helps tremendously with lymph. Stretch, dance in the kitchen, you know. Um, movement is drainage. If you're not moving, you're not draining properly. Then there's breath work, and you don't have to do a very specific structured breath work, but every single day, I at least once or twice a day, a lot of times before bed, I'll give you a little tip. And this is not gonna cost you a penny. 478. In for four seconds, hold for seven seconds, out for eight. Four seven eight, Dr. Andrew Wheel, do that breath work before bed. I can almost guarantee you you'll have a better sleep if you do it about five times before bed. Try it deep into your belly. Okay, hydrate. Lymph is mostly water. Dehydrated lymph is thick, slow, swampy, and water is drainage. If you're drinking a lot of sugary drinks, pop, soda, coffee, that's gonna just dehydrate you more. Dry brush, I've done this, I don't know how much of an effect. Everyone says it works, but I couldn't see an effect. It's that gentle towards the heart before the shower, dry brushing. It's you know, something that you can incorporate in your daily um habits. Sweat. You know, sauna is one way. Um, but then you have to remember that when you do do sauna therapy, you're also dehydrating yourself. You gotta drink more water. And then there's warm water, lemon. That's like one of the big things that people talk about all the time.

A Lymph Congestion Case Example

Sandy Kruse 33:31

A while back, I'm gonna tell you a little bit about my situation. I had cysts under my arm. And, you know, there's a dense hub of lymph nodes under the arms, and it's a major drainage crossroad for the whole upper body and the breast tissue. Now, I'm a practitioner, I've spent years studying this terrain, so I know my body better than anyone. And in my read, for my own body, this was congestion, so stuck limps at a stuck crossroad. So I did do drainage and it resolved pretty quickly. And what I will say, and this is not saying it's a cure, uh, I think that when we know and feel, and this is certainly not saying don't see a practitioner. Remember, I am a practitioner. It's just saying the reason these things happen are more than likely because you're not supporting your body in some way. So when you pay attention to it, you can hopefully resolve it. So I'm gonna leave you with something that you can do very easily at home. Open the bowel daily, complete elimination first, fiber, water, magnesium, movement. These are non-negotiables. Flush the kidneys. That's actually drinking water. Add nettle or dandelion leaf if you like that stuff. Those are great herbs. Move the bile and support the liver. Work with a practitioner. Maybe you know, you can look at some of the unda offerings that they have, but make sure that the practitioner is trained in the open the lymph, walk, deep breathing, dry brushing, hydrating every single day. These are all like common sense things that people just did naturally, by the way, that we don't do as naturally anymore. And then, and only then go deeper if you feel you need to. The cellular, intracellular drainage. You can do protocols with UNDA to go deeper, you can do gemotherapy, which is more like plants, and work with a practitioner. And then I am gonna say, as I always say, you need to drain the soul too. Like, what are you holding that wants to move through you? Do some tapping, cry it out, walk it out, say the thing. Emotional stagnation is a terrain as well. So now you know the next time someone tries to tell sell you a three-day detox or a juice cleanse, I want you to hear my voice in your head going, hmm, but did I open the doors first? Because that's the whole game. And play plus those juice cleanses that are three days, they don't work either. Work with a practitioner. Detox is this glamorous name. That's why I want to bring some context and some integrity around what it actually means. And the fact that you may not even need it. Chances are you don't need it, especially if you're working on the drainage concept, which is a you know, something that is kind of built in, not kind of, it is built into us, but you just have to maybe sometimes help it along. I just feel it's important that you know, like you you as a human, you're not a dirty pipe that needs to be scrubbed, because a lot of times people think of detox as this. You're living terrain that wants to flow. So your job and my job is just to help you keep those waters

Final Reminder And Share Request

Sandy Kruse 37:32

moving. So thank you so much. If you found this episode helpful, please, please, please, always share it with a friend. And I will see you next week. Thanks for being here. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Be sure to share it with someone you know might benefit. And always remember when you rate, review, subscribe, you help to support my content and help me keep going and bring these conversations to you each and every week. Join me next week for a new topic, new guest, new excited conversation. Help you live your best life.