The Top 6 Detox Pathways For Cancer Prevention + How To Support Them

The C word… we all hate it. 

Cancer has taken far too many loved ones from us and caused us distress, heartache, and pain. Whether you’ve experienced it personally or watched a family member or friend battle cancer, you know this much: it’s not something to be taken lightly. 

In light of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we wanted to provide you + your loved ones with some valuable information. We’ve put together a list of tangible ways to support the detox pathways built into your body for cancer prevention.

Let’s kick cancer’s butt and take advantage of our body’s natural detoxification pathways to prevent it. 

1. Lymphatic System

Your lymphatic system plays a massive role in your immunity against diseases like cancer. It’s responsible for creating white blood cells that fight diseases. So starting with your lymphatic system is a no-brainer for immunity and the natural prevention of cancer.

Why Your Lymphatic System Is One of Your Body’s Detox Pathways

The lymphatic system contains lymph nodes that:¹

• Filter out toxins to reduce your toxic load
• Recycle nutrients to keep your body functioning
• Eliminate dangerous cells that are abnormal or cancerous

Simply put, your immune system works hand in hand with your lymphatic system. Supporting the detox pathways in your lymphatic system assists your body in its most natural and powerful cancer prevention.

How to Support Your Lymphatic System

Here are some activities that support your lymphatic system’s detox pathways:

• Movement throughout the day (including stretching)
• Yoga (and specifically, inversions)
• Rebounding on a personal trampoline
• Dry brushing to manually stimulate fluid movement
• Hydration to keep fluids (including your lymph fluid) moving through your body
• Lymphatic massage for targeted fluid movement

The lymphatic system is a fascinating, complex system. It’s one of the most critical detox pathways for cancer prevention. If you want to learn even more about this system and its detox pathways, check out our post on the lymphatic system + your immunity.

2. Kidneys

The biggest function of your kidneys is to filter your blood. Since we know that toxins from our everyday products and environment enter our bloodstream, this is one of the most important detox pathways in cancer prevention.

Why Your Kidneys Are One of Your Body’s Pathways for Detox

When you ingest toxins or absorb them into your bloodstream, your body needs to eliminate them. Whether the exposure is from household products or personal care products, kidneys are one of the most direct detox pathways your body uses to filter toxins.

In fact, your kidneys filter 150 quarts of blood per day.² Little filtering units called nephrons inside the kidneys are responsible for filtering blood.

Waste is then filtered out + exits your body through urine – including toxins like heavy metals, glyphosate, and even BPA.^3,4

How to Support Your Kidney’s Pathways

Here’s how to keep your kidney’s detox pathways strong:

 

• Prioritize hydration – keeps more fluids in your body. This allows more filtering and urine to be excreted with toxins.

• Monitor blood sugar – high levels can slow down the function of your kidney detox pathways. Choose a diet low in glycemic sugar and high in fiber, healthy fats, and protein. Limit caffeine and alcohol. 

• Consume cranberry juice – helps prevent kidney stones and maintains the right chemical balance in your urine.5 Make sure you choose sugar-free. (Bonus: keeps away dreaded UTIs.)

• Stomp your feet – doing so slowly with flat feet for about 5 minutes daily stimulates your kidney’s energy. Your feet are associated with your kidney and bladder meridians, which run through your heel to the sole of your foot.

• Rub your ears – strengthens kidney function since your ears are connected energetically to the kidney organ and meridian.

Kidney health supports detox pathways for your body to cleanse your blood and feed your body with fresh, healthy blood. As long as you take care of your kidneys, they’ll assist as natural cancer prevention along the way.

3. Lungs

Your lungs are arguably one of your body’s most undervalued detox pathways. Of course, your lungs keep you alive by breathing. But they do much more than that. Your lungs function to filter and remove waste – which makes them an incredible source of cancer prevention.

Why Your Lungs Are One of Your Body’s Detox Paths 

Your lungs filter out something called “waste gas” (aka carbon dioxide from our cells). They’re also one of your first lines of defense when it comes to toxins. Your lungs protect from toxins by coughing, sneezing, filtering, or swallowing them.⁶  

The fresh oxygen they deliver to your entire body assists all the critical detox pathways + bodily functions necessary for cancer prevention.

How to Support Your Lungs 

Give your lung detox pathways a little assistance by trying these:

 

• Practice breathwork – deep breathing is linked to improved lung function. It also regulates blood pressure, mood, and stress for whole-body health.⁷   

• Get more oxygen – cancer cells can’t thrive in an oxygen-rich environment. You can increase your oxygen intake for cancer prevention with deep breathing, spending more time outside, or trying a hyperbaric oxygen tank at a wellness center for a dose of ultra-potent oxygen.⁸

• Use a nebulizer – it assists your lung’s detoxification pathways and can help clear out toxins/invaders in the lungs. Try a saline solution or food-grade hydrogen peroxide. Here’s a great tutorial from a dear friend who saved her son from cancer with natural modalities.

• Breathe through your nose – believe it or not, there’s an entire book written on how we’ve been breathing wrong. Nose breathing has some pretty astounding science behind its efficiency for detoxing + healing the body.⁹  

Without healthy lungs as one of your first lines of defense to filter toxins, you’re at higher risk for disease. So protecting and promoting detox pathways in your lungs is an excellent form of cancer prevention.

4. Sweat

Sweating is one of our favorite ways to support detox pathways in the body through your skin. There are plenty of studies to back this one. Your skin excretes toxins through the simple act of sweating.

Why Releasing Sweat via the Skin Is a Critical Detox

Sweat is the classic detoxer. It releases many known carcinogens, chemicals, and heavy metals such as:

• Lead
• Arsenic
• Cadmium
• Mercury10
• BPA4
• Phthalates¹¹  

Sweat also improves circulation, supporting other detox pathways in the body, like your lymphatic system. Sweating also improves heart health, which pumps more oxygen throughout the body to fight cancerous cells.¹² 

How to Support Your Sweat as a Detox Passage for Cancer Prevention

Here’s how to support your sweat detox pathways:

• Sweat more to eliminate more toxins
• Avoid antiperspirant deodorants that prevent you from sweating
• Spend time in an infrared sauna on a regular basis
• Take hot baths or do hot yoga

Without sweat, your body wouldn’t be able to eliminate such a large amount of toxins regularly. It’s essential for health. Your sweat detox pathways provide an easy cancer prevention method. And it’s a by-product of so many grounding, energizing, and soothing practices – the best of both worlds.

5. Digestive System

At Primally Pure, we love to remind you that your gut health matters. It determines many factors in your overall health. And that includes the immune system – which you need to fight cancerous cells.

Why Your Digestive System Is One of the Best Detoxing Pathways for Cancer Prevention

This one might be a little more obvious. We know human waste is toxic, so clearly, toxins are being excreted through waste.

But it’s bigger than that. Your gut lining protects toxins from escaping into your bloodstream. Research from the last five years shows a clear link between the microbiome and cancer.¹³ The International Cancer Microbiome Consortium (ICMC) was even founded to pioneer more research. That’s just how telling the evidence is.

Your intestinal tract (aka your gut) is your largest immune system organ, with about 80% of your immune-producing cells living there.¹⁴ This perfectly illustrates why this is one of the best detox pathways for cancer prevention.

How to Support the Pathways for Detox in Your Gut

Here are a few tips to support the detox pathways in your gut:

• Avoid sugar, alcohol, and gluten
• Eliminate processed foods and industrial oils
• Eat pre and probiotics 
• Add in plenty of fibers
• Choose fermented foods (but not too much kombucha because it can be high in sugar)
• Prioritize exercise for a variety of health benefits related to your gut
• Reduce stress to keep the gut healthy (your gut directly suffers from stress/anxiety)

With a healthy gut, cancer prevention is a natural by-product. Your gut plays a role in health that can’t be understated. So take care of your gut!

6. Liver

Your liver is probably best known as one of your body’s main detox pathways. But what exactly does your liver do to help detox and prevent cancer? So many things!

Why Your Liver Is One of Your Body’s Biggest Detox Pathways

The liver directly deals with toxins. It converts toxic substances into harmless substances or releases them from the body through the bowel.¹⁵ More specifically, it breaks down old or damaged blood cells. 

Healthy cells = natural cancer prevention.

Our liver is intuitive in a very unique way:¹⁶

The liver also produces bile to remove waste products and toxins while also breaking down + absorbing fats.¹⁷

How to Support the Detox Pathways of Your Liver

Here are some important ways to assist the function of your liver’s detox pathways:

 

• Avoid alcohol – overconsumption can do a lot of damage to the liver, leading to less-than-optimal detoxing power from your liver 
• Exercise – to reduce liver fat (which slows the liver down)
• Hydrate – to keep fluids moving
• Eat a balanced diet  – with healthy fats, fibers, and low sugar intake
• Supplement with turmeric – known in TCM and Ayurveda for its anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties

Your liver is a powerful contributor to your health. Taking care of it and prioritizing the health of your liver’s detox pathways is an excellent form of cancer prevention that’ll benefit your total quality of life.

Embrace Your Body’s Detox Pathways

Knowing that your body is equipped with all these detox pathways is enlightening. It opens up a whole new world of possibilities for your health. 

And while taking care of your body can feel like a full-time job, there’s no better feeling than knowing you’re actively participating in your health. 

The power is in your hands, what do you want to do? 

XO

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Sources: 

1. Cleveland Clinic | Lymphatic System 
2. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases | Your Kidneys & How They Work 
3. Frontiers | Excretion of Heavy Metals and Glyphosate in Urine and Hair Before and After Long-Term Fasting in Humans
4. National Library of Medicine | Human Excretion of Bisphenol A: Blood, Urine, and Sweat (BUS) Study
5. BJUI International | Influence of Cranberry Juice on the Urinary Risk Factors for Calcium Oxalate Kidney Stone Formation
6. American Lung Association | How Lungs Work 
7. Science Direct | Deep-Breathing Exercises Reduce Atelectasis and Improve Pulmonary Function After Coronary Artery Bypass Surgery
8. Hope4Cancer Treatment Centers | Can Deep Breathing Be Key to Cancer Healing? You Bet!
9. Mint Lounge | Slow, Deep and From the Nose: James Nestor on Breathing
10. National Library of Medicine | Arsenic, Cadmium, Lead, and Mercury in Sweat: A Systematic Review 
11. National Library of Medicine | Human Elimination of Phthalate Compounds: Blood, Urine, and Sweat (BUS) Study 
12. Harvard Health Publishing | Hot Baths and Saunas: Beneficial for Your Heart?
13. Shrink the Mutant School | The Link between Gut Health and Cancer
14. Cleveland Clinic | How Your Gut Microbiome Impacts Your Health
15. National Library of Medicine | How Does the Liver Work? 
16. University of Michigan Health | What Does the Liver Do, and How Do I Keep Mine Healthy?

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