Basically detoxification is happening all of the time in your body. The process is 100% dependent on the proper nutrients for the biochemistry to work right. When we have an excess of toxins in our body and a deficiency in the nutrients to process them out, these toxins back up and are stored in our tissues and wreak havoc with our physiology. For example, xenohormones, which are environmental chemicals that mimic estrogen in the body((from plastics, makeup, pesticides, herbicides (which are on nonorganic food), pharmaceutical hormones, etc.)) are one of the things that can put you into estrogen dominance, symptoms of this are imbalances in menstruation, anxiety, anger, mood swings, agitation, depression, cravings, little red dots on your skin (cherry hemangiomas), facial hair growth(peach fuzz) and a ton of other symptoms. Just google estrogen dominance symptoms. This is but one example of excess toxins (in this case xenoestrogens) building up in the body. The toxic load has overwhelmed the detox mechanisms and lots of weird symptoms result. The main detox mechanism is called the Cytochrome P450 enzyme system, the main detox organ is the liver. There are two phases. Phase I is the oxidation,reduction, hydrolysis, hydration, dehalogenation step, this produces reactive oxygen intermediates referred to a primary metabolites, that are actually more toxic than the initial molecule. Phase II is the Sulfation, methylation, glucuronidation steps of the primary metabolite formed in Phase I. This makes them water soluble to then be excreted in the bile through the gut, and in the urine via the kidneys. You don’t need to know all of the biochemistry of this, all you need to know is that both of these steps are 100% dependent on nutrients, and without the nutrients it will not work, and a toxic load builds up in your system causing all kinds of weird seemingly unrelated symptoms. The detox products we use are from Standard Process (a whole food nutrition company), Cruciferous Complete, SP Cleanse, Folic acid B12, B6 niacinimide, Gastrofiber, and SP Complete. You can read about them on http://www.StandardProcess.com.
It is a very complex system, but at the same time quite simple. How many times one needs to do a detox depends on how much toxic load there is. I compare symptoms of before and after, and just use common sense.

You can email me with questions
DrJNutrition@gmail.com

Hope this helps

Dr J