Somewhere in the wellness internet, eczema, psoriasis and acne got filed under "signs of a high toxic burden," and a raw carrot salad got filed under the fix. This post takes that framing seriously enough to check it: where the checklist comes from, what a binder does, what the research behind charcoal, clay and mushrooms shows, and why the sequencing matters more than the products.
The checklist is a naturopathic framing device rather than a finding, the food-first binders are cheap and low risk, the supplemental ones carry real interactions, and the evidence for any of them affecting skin is not there. What is worth keeping is her ordering rule and her honesty about flares.
The framework comes from Andra Sitoianu, who writes The Bioavailable Naturopath on Substack. She's a certified naturopath, and her Detox Binder Bible is the most complete public version of this thinking I've read. We don't sell a detox and we never will, so nothing in this post ends at a product.
Where this comes from. This post draws on the public writing of Andra Sitoianu, The Bioavailable Naturopath, in particular Andra's Detox Binder Bible. We paraphrase her framing, add the general research, and link her posts so you can read her in her own words; her paid guides carry her full protocols. Educational content, not medical advice.
Why skin ends up on a toxic burden checklist
Her binder post opens with a list she calls seven signs of a high toxic burden, and then publishes nine of them. The seven below are the ones that carry the skin argument. I mention that because it tells you what kind of object this is: a clinical pattern list, written quickly, not a validated instrument. The fourth item is the one that puts skin in this conversation, and she words it as skin dysbiosis: eczema, psoriasis, acne.
| Her checklist item | What it also commonly is |
|---|---|
| Persistent fatigue and unrefreshing sleep | Sleep disorder, anemia, thyroid, depression, plain overwork |
| Bloating, gas and other gut symptoms | IBS, coeliac disease, food intolerance, altered motility |
| Food and skin sensitivities | Allergy, contact dermatitis, histamine intolerance |
| Skin dysbiosis: eczema, psoriasis, acne | Three separate conditions with their own established drivers |
| Brain fog, mood swings, irritability | Sleep debt, stress load, blood sugar, mood disorders |
| Water retention, body odor, sensitivity to light and sound | Hormonal cycles, medication effects, migraine biology |
| Autoimmune disease | A diagnosis, made by a clinician, with its own management |
Look at the right-hand column and you can see the problem with a burden checklist: every item on it has a shorter, better-supported explanation available. Acne in particular is a multifactorial condition of sebaceous activity, follicular plugging, microbial colonization and inflammation, and that mechanism doesn't need a toxin story to work. Eczema and psoriasis have their own well-mapped drivers too.
So I'd treat the list the way I'd treat a friend saying "you look tired." Worth noticing, not a diagnosis, and not a reason to start swallowing carbon.
Drainage before binders, which is her actual sequence
This is the part of her framework I'd keep, because it's a sequencing rule rather than a product pitch. Her foundations post puts it plainly: detox should never be the starting point, the body can only release what it's capable of moving, and pushing anyway creates symptoms. She calls the ordering a hierarchy of healing, and the phrase for her whole approach is flow over force.
In her drainage post, drainage means fluid movement, waste clearance and each system's ability to eliminate what it processes, and when that's impaired she says fatigue deepens, skin flares appear, digestion reacts and histamine symptoms escalate. Drainage is her construct rather than a clinical one. The physiology underneath part of it is real enough: the lymphatic system has no central pump, and lymph moves by the rhythmic contraction of the vessels themselves plus the squeeze of surrounding skeletal muscle and arterial pulsation, with one-way valves keeping it going in one direction. That is why movement matters, and why sitting still all day doesn't help anything.
The full drainage argument gets its own post in this series: lymph, drainage and why forced detox flares the skin.
What a binder actually is
A binder is a material that adsorbs compounds in the gut so they leave in stool instead of being reabsorbed. That's a real mechanism, used in real medicine: prescription bile acid sequestrants work this way, and activated charcoal is standard equipment in an emergency department. The question is never whether adsorption happens. It's whether it does anything useful when nobody has been poisoned.
| Food-first binders | Supplemental binders | |
|---|---|---|
| Examples she uses | Raw carrot, fruit pectins from apple, citrus and berries, cooked mushrooms | Charcoal, clays, modified citrus pectin, humic and fulvic acids, chlorella, chitosan, carbonized bamboo |
| Evidence level | Mechanistic and in vitro at best | Real data in poisoning and in prescription contexts, thin to absent for routine use |
| Main risk | Boredom | Nutrient and medication binding, constipation, contaminants |
| Timing rule | Not critical | Away from food, supplements and medication |
The carrot salad, traced to its source
Her version is one medium raw carrot, half a teaspoon of coconut oil, a teaspoon of white vinegar and a pinch of salt, once a day on an empty stomach. She credits the practice to Ray Peat, and she's right to: it comes out of his writing, not out of a trial. She describes it binding endotoxin, bile acids and mold metabolites, and credits it with lowering estrogen recirculation, supporting skin and steadying mood.
No clinical trial supports any of that. I looked. What can be said is that raw carrot is fiber, fiber affects transit and bile handling, and a daily vegetable is not a bad habit. If you like it, eat it. Just hold the mechanism loosely, because "traces to a respected writer" and "tested in people" are different claims.
Mushrooms, fruit fiber and the in vitro problem
Cooked mushrooms are her gentle binder, credited with binding mycotoxins, bile residues and metabolic waste through chitin and beta glucans. There's a real measurement behind part of that. A 2024 study found beta glucan at 4.5 to 8.1 g per 100 g dry weight in common button mushrooms and 32.5 to 37.4 g in oyster mushrooms against 7.6 g for oats, and in a simulated digestion assay button mushroom bound 29% to 36% of bile acids, similar to oats, with both boiling and frying increasing the binding.
Now the limit, which the authors state themselves: that's a test tube digestion assay, clinical evidence is limited and of low quality, and nothing there shows that eating mushrooms binds mycotoxins, heavy metals or estrogen metabolites in a person, or that it changes anyone's skin. Fruit pectins sit in the same place: plausible, pleasant, unproven for this purpose.
Activated charcoal, in its actual context
This is where the gap between wellness use and clinical use is widest. The position paper from the American Academy of Clinical Toxicology and its European counterpart says single dose activated charcoal should not be given routinely to poisoned patients and that there is no evidence it improves clinical outcome. It may be considered within an hour of swallowing a toxic amount of something that binds to charcoal, with volunteer studies showing mean reductions in absorption of 47.3% at 30 minutes and 40.1% at 60 minutes.
Those are the numbers from the situation charcoal is made for, and the window is measured in minutes. The same document notes that lithium, iron, ethanol, most hydrocarbons and many heavy metals are not usefully adsorbed at all, and that most adverse events are complications of aspiration. It says nothing whatsoever about daily use, detoxification, mold or skin, because that isn't what it studies.
Clays, and the rule she gets right
Clays are the category where her own standard is the best thing in the post. She insists that any binder be third party tested for heavy metals, because a low quality product introduces new contaminants to the terrain it was supposed to clean. That's exactly right, and it isn't hypothetical: in 2016 the FDA warned consumers not to use a specific bentonite clay product after testing found elevated lead, noting that chronic low-level lead exposure is associated with cognitive impairment and behavioural difficulties in children.
That warning named one product rather than the category, and no case of poisoning from it had been confirmed at the time. It still makes the point: a clay you swallow or wear should come with a certificate of analysis, and "natural mineral" is not a safety claim.
Safety, and where her post stops being free
The safety list is short and it matters more than the product list. Binders adsorb indiscriminately, so they take nutrients and medication along with whatever they were aimed at. That means keeping them well away from food, supplements and prescriptions, watching for constipation, and taking seriously that long-run use without monitoring can deplete minerals and fat-soluble vitamins. Anyone on regular medication should ask a pharmacist about interactions before starting a binder.
Her specific dosing schedules sit behind her paywall, and I'm not reconstructing them. That's fine by me. Dosing a binder belongs with a practitioner who knows your history, which is what she says too.
Skin flares during a detox push, read as feedback
Here's the most useful sentence in her whole binder post, paraphrased: if headaches, insomnia or skin flares persist, reduce or stop, increase fluids and go back to the drainage basics. In her framework a flare is feedback, not evidence that something is working.
I want to underline that, because the opposite idea is common and it's the one that hurts people. There's no mechanism by which making your skin worse is progress, and nothing in the literature supports a "purge" as a stage of a detox protocol; the one documented purge is the first weeks on a retinoid, and that is a different mechanism. If a protocol is making your skin worse, that's a reason to stop it, and eczema, psoriasis or acne that's painful, spreading or infected belongs with a clinician rather than with a bigger scoop of charcoal.
Where we sit in all this is narrow and on purpose. We tape boxes at the kitchen table, my kids included, and we sell one thing: a balm. A balm is fat on the surface of skin. It softens, it slows water loss, it makes a rough patch more comfortable, and it does not bind, clear or remove anything from inside a body. If your skin is dry and uncomfortable while you're sorting out the rest of your life, that's a perfectly good reason to use one and the only reason I'd give you.
Questions we hear
Does the carrot salad do anything?
It's raw fiber eaten daily, which is a fine habit, and that's as far as the evidence goes. The practice traces to Ray Peat's writing through her, no clinical trial supports the endotoxin, estrogen or skin claims made for it, and I wouldn't expect anything dramatic. Eat it because you like carrots.
Should I take activated charcoal for my skin?
No, and the clinical toxicology position paper is the reason. Charcoal is for acute poisoning within about an hour, it doesn't bind many heavy metals or alcohols usefully, its routine use is not recommended even in poisoned patients, and the document says nothing at all about skin. It will, however, happily bind your supplements and medication.
Are binders safe to take long term?
That's exactly the question to bring to a practitioner who knows your history. They adsorb without discriminating, so nutrients, medication and minerals go too, constipation is common, and depletion over time is the documented risk. Timing them well away from food and medicines is the baseline rule, not an optimization.
Is eczema or acne a sign that I'm toxic?
Not on any evidence I can point at. Acne is multifactorial with a well-mapped local mechanism, eczema has barrier and immune drivers with genetics behind them, and psoriasis is its own immune-mediated disease. They can all sit alongside a heavy load of stress, poor sleep and a rough diet, which is worth addressing on its own terms without the toxin framing.
What about clay masks and clay drinks?
The category is fine and the sourcing is everything. Ask for third party heavy metal testing, which is her own rule, and remember that the FDA warned consumers off a specific bentonite product after finding elevated lead. A clay mask on skin is a low-stakes thing to enjoy; swallowing clay is not.
Does Craft Tallow make anything for detox?
No. We make balm, and a balm is comfort on the surface of skin: it can't bind, clear or remove anything from inside you, and I'd be suspicious of anyone selling a jar that claims otherwise. That's the whole answer.
Go deeper
The sequencing argument gets its own post in lymph, drainage and why forced detox flares the skin, and the metals version of this conversation is in eczema, nickel and filaggrin. The series hub is Skin Terrain 101, the orientation piece is skin is downstream, and the gut mechanisms sit in the gut-skin axis. If you came for the fat rather than the framework, that's the beef tallow for skin guide.
Sources
- Andra Sitoianu, The Bioavailable Naturopath (2025). Andra's Detox Binder Bible: From Carrot Salad to Carbon Technology. Substack. Long free preview; the burden checklist, the binder hierarchy and the flare instruction come from it, and her dosing sits behind her paywall.
- Andra Sitoianu, The Bioavailable Naturopath (2025). The Foundations of Detoxification starts with Drainage. Substack. Teaser only; the source of the hierarchy of healing phrase and the drainage-first ordering.
- Andra Sitoianu, The Bioavailable Naturopath (2025). Drainage Before Detox Phase 1: Endocrine System. Substack. Free preview; her definition of drainage and the symptom sequence she associates with impaired drainage.
- American Academy of Clinical Toxicology and European Association of Poisons Centres and Clinical Toxicologists (2005). Position paper: Single-dose activated charcoal. Clinical Toxicology 43:61.
- Belobrajdic DP, Brook H, James-Martin G, Stonehouse W (2024). Beta-glucan content and in vitro bile-acid binding capacity of Agaricus bisporus and Pleurotus spp. Food and Function 15:9880.
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration (2016). FDA Warns Consumers Not to Use Best Bentonite Clay. FDA.
- Angeli V, Lim HY (2023). Biomechanical control of lymphatic vessel physiology and functions. Cellular and Molecular Immunology 20:1051.
- Kim YH et al. (2024). Exploring Acne Treatments: From Pathophysiological Mechanisms to Emerging Therapies. International Journal of Molecular Sciences 25:5302.
Brian is the founder of Craft Tallow, a small-batch tallow skincare line shipped from Cottonwood Heights, Utah, built on 100% grass-fed suet. Questions? Reply to any email from us; it lands with him.