Red Antioxidant Smoothie Recipe

What if the exhaustion isn’t you—but what you’re carrying? You’re eating better. Drinking more water. Trying your best to care for your body. And still…your energy is low. The inflammation lingers. The spark feels just out of reach. Sometimes, what drains us isn’t a lack of effort—but an unseen burden. Alcohol. Pesticides. Plastics. We’ve all heard these aren’t great for us—but what do they actually do once inside the body? These hidden stressors quietly disrupt hormones, damage the gut, block detox pathways, and drain the nutrients your body needs to function and heal. Understanding the science behind their impact brings conscious awareness—and with it, the power to change. This post reveals what these everyday toxins are really doing—and how their release can begin clearing the way back to wholeness.

Every single day, your body is working quietly and powerfully to protect you. With every breath you take, every bite of food, every sip of water, your cells are assessing, sorting, and transforming what’s needed—and what must be let go. This is detoxification: your body’s innate ability to process, neutralize, and eliminate harmful substances. But in today’s world, that natural process can become overwhelmed. The air we breathe, the foods we eat, the products we put on our skin—all contribute to a growing toxic burden. A Detoxification Diet offers a way to reduce that load while nourishing your body with the nutrients it needs to restore balance and resilience.

Your body has exquisite detoxification systems—your liver, kidneys, lymph, gut, and even skin are constantly working to eliminate what you no longer need. But those systems can’t function optimally when they’re overwhelmed by sugar, alcohol, pesticides, plastics, and synthetic chemicals. Remove what burdens the body and replenish what nourishes. This is the guiding principle in functional medicine and behind the "remove and replace" phase in our 12 Gifts of Health journey this year. Month 5 is about removing dietary and environmental toxins—a sacred pause in which we clear space for healing by gently and intentionally removing the substances that burden our bodies. And at the top of that list? Refined sugar.

A "detoxification diet" is actually something you can do everyday by incorporating certain foods into your diet. Think of it as an inclusion diet where the focus is to bring in a variety of detoxification-supporting foods each day. Kohlrabi is an excellent food to support detoxification! It is a cruciferous vegetable like broccoli, cabbage, radishes, and kale, and it's part of the Brassicaceae family of vegetables. Cruciferous vegetables contain compounds that can upregulate biotransformation pathways in order to transform and excrete toxins.

This flavorful green soup uses simple ingredients to create a nourishing meal that can help support natural detoxification. It is designed for Phase 1 of our Elimination Diet, but of course is a wonderful addition to your weekly meal planning even if you are not on the elimination diet! The Elimination Diet is not a diet that tells you what is good for you and what is not. It is a process that helps you discover what foods work best for you. We are all unique. There is no one way of eating or one perfect diet that is right for everyone. Even Hippocrates noticed this well over 2000 years ago.

Sometimes when the weather cools it is easy to get into the habit of eating more dense, cooked foods. For some people this is just what they need. But for others, a balance between raw and cooked is best. We each are unique, and so should be our diets. This colorful and nutrient-dense salad provides some key ingredients to support healthy detoxification. The dressing is delicious and can be used as a dip for raw veggies or used to top your favorite salads! I've even used it to top steamed vegetables! In functional medicine, detoxification is often considered "biotransformation" because our bodies will transform harmful substances into less harmful substances and then excrete them from the body.