You’ve Been Duped: The First Step Isn’t a Magic Pill

The most important move you can make might be what you remove.

When people think about healing chronic illness, they often focus on what they need to add—more nutrients, more supplements, and more sleep. And while those things absolutely matter, in most cases the healing journey doesn’t start with addition. It begins with subtraction.

By now in this blog series, we’ve established that the symptoms, conditions, and diagnoses you face are branches of a deeper issue—connected to the roots of digestion, inflammation, and genetics. But just like roots can't thrive in polluted soil, your body can't heal in the presence of substances that irritate, confuse, or overwhelm it.

If you want to nourish your terrain and support health, the first step is to clear out what’s in the way.

Roots Can’t Heal in Toxic Soil

Imagine trying to grow a garden in soil filled with pesticides, weeds, clay, rocks, and debris. You could add all the compost and fertilizer in the world, but nothing will flourish until the soil is cleaned up.

The body works the same way.

Chronic disease doesn’t develop overnight. Sure, the diagnosis might show up suddenly, but it’s usually the result of years—sometimes decades—of subtle dysfunction at the cellular level. If you're dealing with fatigue, brain fog, chronic pain, autoimmune issues, or digestive struggles, some of the biggest obstacles to healing might be things you've come to think of as “normal”—foods, habits, and exposures that silently sabotage your health.

We don't always recognize what’s making us sick because we’ve grown up with it. It’s in our pantries, our memories, our family recipes, even our social traditions. That familiarity doesn’t mean it's harmless.

Before you jump into protocols, supplements, or advanced interventions, it's time to look honestly at what’s built up in your body’s "soil"—and start clearing it out.

Top Offenders That Get in the Way of Healing

1. Substance Abuse
Alcohol, tobacco, and recreational drugs add toxic stress to the body. Your liver, already managing digestion, hormone balance, and detoxification, gets overwhelmed. When it’s busy cleaning up what doesn’t belong, it can’t focus on healing the rest of you.

2. Processed and Chemical-Laden Foods
Packaged foods are often loaded with preservatives, dyes, additives, and fake ingredients that confuse your immune system and inflame your gut. The skin, air, and water around us can contribute additional toxins—but diet is the easiest place to start reducing your load.

3. Refined Sugar
Refined sugar spikes blood sugar, feeds bad bacteria, drives inflammation, and depletes your nutrient stores. It’s considered an anti-nutrient because digesting it actually uses more nutrients than it provides.

4. Inflammatory Fats
Trans fats and oxidized oils (found in fried and processed foods) damage your cells and drive oxidative stress. That damage begins at the cellular level and contributes to full-body dysfunction over time.

“But What About Aunt Gertrude?”

We probably all know someone who lived to 102 on a diet of soda, cigarettes, and fast food. And that makes us question if these things are really that bad.

Here’s the truth: we’re all different. One person’s body may handle insults for decades, while another's begins to break down much earlier. Genetics may load the gun—but environment pulls the trigger. Just because someone got lucky doesn’t mean it’s a risk worth taking.

Whether or not you’re managing a chronic condition right now, removing these substances is a wise move. Your body will thank you with clearer thinking, more energy, and a better capacity to heal.

How These Substances Disrupt the Roots

Inflammation
These foods keep your immune system on high alert, generating chronic, low-grade inflammation—the root of most chronic illnesses. A taxed liver can't manage detox or repair efficiently when overloaded with sugar, chemicals, and damaged fats.

Digestion
Poor-quality foods damage the gut lining, letting toxins and food particles leak into the bloodstream. This triggers immune responses, nutrient malabsorption, and systemic stress. Low-nutrient foods don’t just lack value—they actively rob your body of resources.

Genetics
Your genes aren’t your destiny, but they can be influenced by your environment. What you eat, breathe, and absorb can switch genes on or off, steering your health toward disease or resilience.

Start by Cleaning Up the Soil

In Functional Nutrition, healing starts with removing what’s most harmful. Instead of just putting a lid on a pot of boiling water, the subtraction of the heat is really what’s going to best help the pot from boiling over.

Some people can make sweeping changes overnight. Others need to ease in. What matters most is knowing your why. Ask yourself: What in my daily life is blocking my healing—and am I ready to clear it away?

Here’s how you might start making changes today:

• Focus on whole, real foods. Vegetables, quality proteins, healthy fats, and slow-burning carbohydrates are good sources of nutrition. Expand your palette and try out new foods you might not have before.

• Eat the rainbow by adding natural whole foods that are brightly colored. The natural bright color is usually a sign that they contain phytochemicals and nutrients to support health.

• Fill up on fiber. Fiber helps keep you full for longer, feeds the microbiome, slows carbohydrate absorption, and supports digestive motility.

• Cook more at home and with fewer ingredients that come pre-packaged and processed. Read ingredient labels and avoid anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food or if it has more than a handful of ingredients.

• Crowd out undesirable foods with better ones. You might be removing white table sugar or flour, but when you don’t replace them with something else it’ll be difficult to stick to it. Try experimenting with dates, figs, apple sauce, almond flour, or whole wheat as you adjust.
  
  

The internet has fooled you. There is usually no single cause to a condition and there is no magic supplement that addresses the myriad factors likely contributing. Getting rid of what’s hurting you is very often your best bet for a first step.

So, before you ask what to add to your diet, first ask what needs to go. Sometimes, the most powerful thing you can do is remove what’s in the way.

If you’re ready for support, or if you've already removed these things and still feel stuck, Peak Functional Health is here to help. Together, we can uncover what else might be contributing to your symptoms and clear the next path toward healing.