“I tried detoxing and everything got worse.”
I hear some version of this often from patients with Lyme, long COVID, and chronic fatigue syndrome. It’s something that often drives patients to seek my care. And it’s confusing—because detox is often talked about as essential for healing. So why does it sometimes help… and other times completely derail progress?
The answer isn’t that detox is bad.
It’s that timing, capacity, and approach matter more than most people realize.
Technically you are always detoxing. Your kidneys, liver, lungs, lymphatics, and skin are always working to process and eliminate waste. When the natural medicine world says detox, I often think they really mean helping the body through its natural process of detox by improving the efficiency and safety of these natural processes. Most of the time it is by decreasing environmental exposure to inflammatory toxicants and foods. Sometimes its uncovering past infections or disrupting biofilms as well.
Detox is often helpful when you’re stable and have predictable energy. Personally, I like a reset every so often and detoxes often feel like that. Many times, detoxes are simply food elimination diets that remove the additional stress and inflammation on the body and elimination support. I liken it to cleaning out your closet!
To ensure a detox protocol works, you need to make sure you are adequately hydrated, you have regular bowel movements, and your nervous system is in a good place.
What I find with most of my patient population, the chronically ill, is that most attempts at detox will feel worse than when you started. This is because “detoxing” is like trying to clean out your closet when the bedroom is a mess. It becomes overwhelming for the body.
In these cases, detox can increase inflammation, worsen fatigue, trigger flares, or make people feel like they’re “failing” at healing—when in reality, their body is asking for more support and patience, not more pressure.
When we start to speed through detoxification or biofilm disruption; its almost like speed cleaning your closet. But if we don’t speed up the rate you can take out the trash you’re generating when you clean your closet, you end up with a very messy bedroom that is difficult to live in day to day. This is what it can feel like when we detox too hard or fast for the system.
Healing doesn’t require suffering. Ironically, when the body feels safer, detox tends to happen more effectively on its own.
Healing from chronic illness is rarely about doing more. It’s about doing the right thing, at the right time, in the right order.
And sometimes, the most therapeutic step is slowing down.
If you’ve had trouble detoxing before, schedule an appointment with us. We can help you