your body speaks

Ep10: Pumping and Purging – How Your Body Moves and Eliminates Waste

• Dr. Brook Sheehan

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In this episode of your body speaks, Dr. Brook Sheehan explores two vital functions of the body—pumping and purging. While the heart is known as the body’s primary pump, did you know that other organs, like the lungs, liver, and lymphatic system, also play crucial roles in keeping your body balanced? This episode uncovers how these processes work together to optimize circulation, detoxification, and elimination.

You’ll discover how your body efficiently removes waste, why hydration is the key to organ function, and simple strategies to support digestion and detoxification.

Key Takeaways:

  • The Hidden Pumps of the Body: Beyond the heart, learn how the lungs, liver, and lymphatic system pump fluids to support oxygenation, detoxification, and immune health.
  • Hydration & Detoxification: How dehydration slows down circulation, thickens blood, and leads to sluggish digestion, brain fog, and joint pain.
  • Signs of Poor Elimination: Bloating, constipation, skin breakouts, and dark urine—what these signals mean and how to address them.
  • Food & Supplement Support: The best fiber-rich foods, probiotics, and magnesium to keep digestion regular and waste elimination smooth.
  • Stress & Digestion: How your nervous system impacts elimination and why deep breathing before meals can transform digestion.

Memorable Moments:

  • Lymphatic Flow & Movement: Why exercise and hydration are essential for keeping your body’s “trash removal” system working properly.
  • What Your Poop Says About You: A deep dive into stool color, consistency, and frequency—what’s normal and what’s a sign of imbalance.
  • Food Sequencing for Gut Health: How eating fiber first, followed by proteins and fats, can improve digestion and blood sugar balance.
  • Tracking Your Digestion: Why tuning into your body’s elimination patterns can help you optimize nutrition, hydration, and stress levels.

What to Expect in Future Episodes:

Next, we’ll explore depositing and dividing—how your body builds and regenerates tissues to maintain strength, repair damage, and sustain vitality.

Quote of the Episode:

“Your body is always working to eliminate what it doesn’t need. When you support its natural detox and digestion processes, you unlock greater energy and well-being.”

Connect with Dr. Brook:

Tune in now to learn how your body’s natural pumping and purging functions are essential for vibrant health!

Hi, friend. Welcome back to Your Body Speaks. I'm Dr. Brooke Sheehan, and as a holistic chiropractor, I believe that your body is an intelligent, self-healing, and self-regulating masterpiece designed by God. My mission is to help you tune in, remove interference, and unlock your greatest health potential. We are human beings, and our bodies never stop doing. They're constantly working to support us through countless processes that keep us alive. Welcome to the Body Speaks podcast with me, Dr. Brooke Sheehan. Join me on a journey in discovering how to interpret the subtle signs your body uses to communicate with you, the whispers, the screams, and everything in between. Your body truly holds the answers for your health and well-being. It's time to discover them. Together, let's dive in.

 As part of our ongoing series exploring the body's many intricate functions, through the lens of the four pillars of health, physical, spiritual, emotional, and mental, we are breaking down how these processes work together to create balance and well-being. In our last episode, we explored perceiving, how our senses help us navigate the pain homeostasis, and pulsing, which highlighted the incredible role of circulation in delivering oxygen and nutrients throughout our entire body. If you haven't listened yet, I encourage you to check it out after this episode. But today, we're diving into two more important functions that are critical for your health, pumping and purging. These processes ensure your body's well-being and well-being. Your organs function optimally, and your body effectively eliminates what it no longer needs. Let's get into it.

 Pumping, the hidden power of your organs. Most of the time, when we think of pumping, our minds go straight to our heart, which of course is central to circulation. But did you know that there are other organs that are constantly pumping too? First one, our lungs. Our lungs don't just breathe oxygen in and out, but they also pump out carbon dioxide, a waste product that your body needs to eliminate. When we're stressed out, it can lead to less oxygen in your bloodstream and poor detoxification. Which brings me to the second organ, the liver. The liver is your body's powerhouse filter, working non-stop to pump out toxins through the bio. Clearing out excess hormones, alcohol, heavy metals, pesticides, and metabolic waste before they exit the body through digestion. And last is the lymphatic system.

 Unlike your circulatory system, which has the heart as the pump, your lymphatic system actually relies on movement and muscle contractions to keep fluid circulating to remove waste. This is why exercise and hydration are so important. And if you're not familiar with the lymphatic system, you're not familiar with the lymphatic system. So what is the impact of dehydration on organ function? When you're dehydrated, all of these systems slow down. The heart, the lungs, the liver, the gastrointestinal tract, the lymphatic system. Our blood becomes thicker. Lymph fluid becomes stagnant, and detoxification slows down. These can lead to symptoms like fatigue, brain fog, sluggish digestion, and lots of joint pain. Nothing that we want. So what are some ways to optimize hydration? One of the ways is to sip water consistently throughout the day, rather than chugging it all at once or in large doses.

 Another thing to do is to add a pinch of sea salt or electrolytes to your water for better absorption. But having hydration balance is key. So while staying hydrated is essential, drinking too much water is not going to help you. So if you're dehydrated, eating too much water can flush white blood cells out of your body and dilute your body's internal environment. A good indicator of proper hydration is the color of your urine. If it is completely clear, you may be over-hydrated. So aim for more of a yellow to light brown for optimal function. What is your heart's role in these organ health? Your heart doesn't just pump blood, but it does deliver oxygen, nutrients, and hydration to every organ. So if you're dehydrated, you may want to drink more water.

 So if you're dehydrated, every organ. A strong heart means better circulation, which means better organ function, right? We want movement in these pumping organs. So let's take away from this episode, a morning routine for better organ performance. We want to keep these organs pumping. So to start your day off strong, I'd like to see you drink a warm glass of lemon water to support digestion and hydration. I'd like you to spend two minutes of deep breathing to really get oxygen flowing. Another thing to do would be five to 10 minutes of movement. I talk about this with bodyweight exercises, with stretching, with walking, whatever you need to do to help activate that circulation in that lymphatic flow. Moving on to purging. How does our body get rid of waste?

 Your body is constantly eliminating waste. We're constantly eliminating waste. We're constantly eliminating through your lungs, through your skin, through your kidneys, through your digestive tract. If something is off, you'll notice signs like bloating, constipation, skin breakouts, or even headaches. This is not what we want. So how can we know when our body isn't eliminating waste properly? One of the things you'll notice is you'll have infrequent bowel movements. So less than one bowel movement a day and maybe a long stretch of time. Although if you're traveling, caveat there, that travel may cause you to have less bowel movements. But that's also something you've learned from this podcast, episode five, where we revealed mysteries of the body. But if you're not traveling, you should have a bowel movement at least once a day.

 Another symptom you may experience is bloating, gas, or discomfort regularly. You may see a sign that your urine is dark yellow, which is a sign of dehydration. Your skin may break out or become dull. Your body, truly trying to detox through your skin. So there are food and supplements to support regular elimination. As a caveat here, you know, Dr. Brooke is not heavy-handed on the supplementation unless the body asks for it. In the occasion where you might be experiencing some constipation, there might be a need for some supplementation, which we will talk about in just a second. But there are other remedies that you can do. To help support digestion without needing to take over-the-counter supplementation. First thing that supports regular elimination is fiber-rich foods.

 Eating plenty of fiber helps keep digestion regular and actually supports the body's natural detox processes. Great options for these include leafy greens, chia seeds, flax seeds, but only in limited amounts. If you have any of these, you can use them as a supplement. If you have any of these, you can use them as a supplement. If you have any hormone concerns, as flax seeds do contain phytoestrogens. Another one is berries, cruciferous vegetables like broccoli and Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, those kinds of things have a lot of fiber in them. Magnesium. This essential mineral relaxes your bowels and helps keep things moving smoothly. Magnesium citrate. There's multiple different kinds of magnesium, but magnesium citrate is your, your friend.

 This is the one that helps support gastrointestinal issues, and it can help get those bowels moving and get you a regular again, but making food choices and drinking water and making sure you're eating proper amounts of food can be more beneficial than, than relying on magnesium citrate for normal bowel movements. Magnesium works as it draws water into the intestines, softening your stools, and promoting regularity. Probiotics. These beneficial bacteria support your gut health, improve digestion, and enhance nutrient absorption. But to really truly maximize their benefits, it's best to cycle through different probiotic strands every 60 to 90 days, ensuring a diverse and resilient microbiome. We don't want the same thing over and over and over again. The body loves diversity.

 You have to switch this up multiple times to really get good gut health, good microbiome, good diverse, uh, bacteria in your gut to help support this healthy digestion. So fiber-rich foods, magnesium, probiotics, they can all be super supportive. But again, going back to the food intake, making sure that you actually, if you're doing any sort of food sequencing, if you're not familiar with that term, food sequencing is simply having a proper order of food in which you eat to help maintain and stabilize your blood sugar. And that is actually to start out with your fiber-rich foods first, and then to eat your proteins and fats, and then to have your, uh, refined carbohydrates. If you're going to have any, um, ideally complex carbohydrates after your proteins and fats.

 And then if you're going to have any refined carbohydrates, you're going to have to eat your fiber-rich foods first. And then to have your after that. So in simple terms, really quick, just to give an example of this is, you would, could have a serving of broccoli or cruciferous vegetables, other cruciferous vegetables, or, you know, maybe some chia seeds; however you would have those first, maybe like a little chia pudding before dinner, uh, with that would be the first thing that you eat. And then you have your piece of chicken or a piece of steak for your protein, uh, cooked in butter or ghee for protein and fat intake, and then a sweet potato for your complex carbohydrate.

 And if you're going to have rice or any sort of grain, that would be the last thing you would eat in a food sequencing, uh, setting, uh, that can help actually start to resolve some gut distress. The gut is a very, very vast area in the body. There's so many things that can go wrong with it. This is not to freak you out. We're going to be talking about some ways that you can tune into Your gut and trying to figure out what is it saying to you and what's going on in just a moment. But I did want to share with you that slight little segment of food sequencing. So how does stress impact your elimination? Have You ever felt like Stress messes with your digestion?

 That's because your Gut and Your brain are directly connected through something called the Vagus Nerve. Or in a stress state, your Body goes into a state of fight or flight, slowing digestion and making Elimination difficulty. This actually can show up as constipation when digestion slows down too much or diarrhea when stress speeds things up too fast. So what is your poop telling you? Because your poop is a powerful communicator. It actually reveals a lot about your digestive health and overall well-being. The consistency of it. Healthy stools should be formed not too hard and not too soft. Hard stools might indicate digestion and lack of fiber, where loose stools could suggest a digestive imbalance or food sensitivities. The color of your stool matters. Ideal stools are medium to dark brown.

 Pale stools can actually indicate liver or gallbladder issues, while black or red could signal bleeding in the digestive tract. Frequency. Regularity is key. Aim for one to three bowel movements per day. I know three sounds pretty wild, but I have some patients who will go, 'Dr. Brooke, I've had three bowel movements today,' and they're kind of freaking out because they're the normal one time a day, maybe in the morning after their morning coffee or sometime after they have breakfast, they have a bowel movement and they go on throughout their day and they are not understanding why they're having more frequent bowels throughout the day. Understand your body is doing what it needs to do. You're not going to be able to do what it needs to do.

 Now, if you're having multiple, like more than three, and they're all loose and it's diarrhea, there's an underlying issue. But if it's a regular, not too hard, not too soft, the color is good, and it's up to three times a day, there's no harm to your body. Your body is actually doing work behind the scenes. It's very, very intelligent, keeping everything in line and keeping everything at play. So just trust the process. Understand your body is not doing anything out of the norm. So listen to your body. Your stool signals are an opportunity to adjust nutrition, hydration, rest, and stress management to keep your body in balance. What are some ways to support healthy elimination, even during stress? My favorite one, practicing that deep belly breathing before your meals.

 This helps shift your body into a state of rest and digest mode, improving digestion and nutrient absorption. The other thing you can do is take a short walk after meals to support digestion and movement and help bring cortisol levels down. Avoid processed foods and excessive caffeine, which can actually disrupt gut balance. So this week, I challenge you to track your bowel movements, both frequency and structure. Pay attention to how often you are going. Remember, daily is ideal. Pay attention to the consistency and the ease of elimination. So if it's really pushing hard to get out, that's not a good sign. We need more water. Any signs of straining, bloating, or irregularity, make small adjustments based on what you see. So for instance, if the stools are hard or infrequent, try increasing your fiber and water intake.

 If stools are loose or too frequent, consider reducing fiber and increasing healthier fiber. If bloating is an issue, assess whether certain foods like raw veggies or grains could be causing irritation. Tuning into these signals will help you fine-tune your diet better to support elimination and overall gut health. Try it for a week and see what shifts. Remember, your body is a self-healing, self-regulating masterpiece, but it needs your support. To function optimally, when you focus on hydration, circulation, and elimination, you create an environment where your organs can thrive, energy can flow freely, and waste is efficiently removed. I hope this episode has given you some practical insights and actionable tips to support your body's natural plumbing and purging processes. If you loved this episode, please do share it with a friend.

 You may need a little extra motivation to stay hydrated and keep things moving, and they can learn all about these precious innings that our body does. Until next time, keep listening to your body. It does have the answers. If you liked what you heard today, please do like, subscribe, leave a comment, share this far and wide so we can get this message out to more and more people just like you, who are looking to create and develop their own body. Have a really wonderful day, and I will see you on the next one.