A protocol I wrote in November 2025 told a client that sweating detoxifies them, that dry brushing drains lymph, and — through careless phrasing in a bulleted list — appeared to advise avoiding psychotropic drugs. Here is all of it, and what replaces it.
In November 2025 I wrote a weight loss protocol for a client. It ran to twelve pages. Most of it I would write again today. Some of it I would not.
This is the part I would not, and why.
I am publishing it because a practitioner who never corrects anything is either infallible or not checking. I know which one I am.
The protocol said this:
Exercising 3–4x a week is great to help with detoxification. Sweat, exhalation, urine and bowel elimination help to detoxify the body and eliminate toxins.
And it recommended sweating daily for up to twenty minutes, with a link to buy an infrared sauna blanket if a sauna wasn’t available.
The claim is wrong. Sweat is overwhelmingly water and electrolytes. The quantities of anything else excreted in it are trivial compared with what the liver and kidneys process continuously. You could sweat every day for a year and not meaningfully change your body burden of anything.
Detoxification is a biochemical process, not an excretory one. Phase 1 enzymes modify a compound, Phase 2 conjugates it into something water-soluble, and it leaves via bile or urine. Skin is not a meaningful route.
Exercise is still excellent. Sauna use has evidence behind it for cardiovascular and possibly mortality outcomes. Neither is because of sweating out toxins. I was attaching a real recommendation to a false mechanism — which is worse than no mechanism, because it teaches people to think about their bodies incorrectly.
I also had an affiliate-adjacent link in there for a sauna blanket. Recommending a purchase on the basis of a claim that isn’t true is not something I want in my documents.
The protocol recommended daily dry brushing and explained it like this:
Dry skin brushing helps in detoxification by stimulating the lymphatic system, which is responsible for eliminating cellular waste.
The lymphatic system is real and does clear interstitial fluid and cellular debris. But it is moved primarily by muscular contraction, breathing and arterial pulsation — not by brushing the skin above it. There is no good evidence that brushing changes lymphatic flow in any way that matters.
If someone enjoys dry brushing, it is harmless and their skin may feel nice. That is a different claim from the one I made.
The supplement schedule included activated charcoal twice daily, with this instruction:
When consuming alcohol or increased die off or detox reactions occur dose can be increased to 6 capsules per day.
Three problems.
"Die-off" as a routine expectation is not well founded. The Jarisch-Herxheimer reaction is a real phenomenon in specific infections treated with specific antimicrobials. Its extension to feeling rough after starting supplements is a convenient explanation for adverse effects, and it discourages people from stopping something that may simply not suit them.
Charcoal is non-selective. It binds what is in the gut — including medications and nutrients. Taken twice daily on an ongoing basis, that is a real interaction risk, particularly for anyone on prescribed medication. The one-hour-from-food instruction helps and does not eliminate it.
And the alcohol advice implies a protective effect it does not have. Charcoal is not meaningfully useful for alcohol.
This appeared in a bulleted list of evidence-based weight loss tips, with no elaboration.
I meant it as a note about drug classes associated with weight gain — a legitimate thing to discuss with a prescriber. But sitting unqualified in a list of instructions, a client could reasonably read it as advice to stop their antidepressant.
That is the most serious thing in this article. Stopping psychiatric medication abruptly is dangerous, and a nutrition practitioner has no business appearing to recommend it, even by careless phrasing. Medication decisions belong with the prescriber, always, and I should have written it that way.
The document contained affiliate links to a body composition device and to Amazon. One disclosed the arrangement, one did not.
Going forward: no affiliate links in clinical documents at all. If a product is worth recommending it is worth recommending without a commission, and if I have a financial interest anywhere the client should know before the recommendation rather than after.
The corrections are in the knowledge base my AI concierge works from, so it will not repeat any of them. The relevant guides have been updated. The client whose protocol this was has been contacted.
And I am not planning to build a protocol template until this is done, because a template propagates whatever is in it to everyone who receives it afterwards.
Most of it, and I want to be clear about that rather than performing contrition.
The calorie and protein targets are sound. Eating protein before carbohydrate does blunt the glycaemic response. Distributing calories earlier in the day has reasonable evidence. Tracking weight daily and reading the weekly average is the right way to handle normal fluctuation. Breaking up prolonged sitting matters. The soleus work is genuinely interesting. Sleep, resistance training and consistency are the foundations they always were.
The problem was never the advice. It was the mechanisms I attached to it — several of which sounded satisfying, spread easily, and were not true.
Because I have written roughly two hundred and seventy articles on this site, and if none of them ever needed correcting, you should not trust the other two hundred and sixty-nine.
The alternative is to edit quietly and hope nobody has the old version. Plenty of people do that. It leaves clients holding documents containing claims their practitioner has privately abandoned, which is worse than being wrong in public.
If you hold a protocol from me that contains any of the above, the corrections here supersede it. If you would like it reissued, ask.
And if you find something else I have got wrong, tell me. I would rather hear it from you than keep repeating it.
This article is general information and not medical advice. Never stop or change prescribed medication without speaking to the prescriber.
The corrections here supersede it. Ask and I will reissue it.
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