in 2007, a science advocacy group called senseabout science reached out to the manufacturers of 15 detox health products. they wanted to figure out one thing: whatexactly was the toxin that those products were targeting? after talking to the makers of everythingfrom smoothies to supplements to shampoos,
easy cleansing diets to follow, the researchers came back with absolutelynothing. not a single company could identify what “toxicsubstance†their “detox†product eliminated. long story short, detoxing — for weightloss, for beauty treatments, for fitness — is bullshit. but it’s been kept alive thanks to somereally archaic misconceptions about how our
bodies work, and a whole lot of celebrityendorsements. in fact, i've created a great 48-hour detox plan on doctoroz.com. so how did we get here? now when we talk about detox, we're thinking aboutgetting rid of things we've overconsumed, too much food, too much alcohol, or dangerous chemicals that have entered our bodies from the environment. but if you go back to about 3000 bc in ancientegypt, physicians thought that toxic substances were actually produced within people’s bodies, and that these toxins were the cause of disease, and that theyneeded to be expelled.
remember how we used to use leeches to getout the “bad blood†when people were sick? that’s kind of the same idea. people thought that the body would poisonitself when toxins from feces were absorbed back into the blood. they called this idea autointoxication, andit lasted for a long time. and even microbiologists believed in it throughthe last century. by the early 1900s, our understanding of physiologyevolved, and we stopped taking the idea of autointoxication seriously. but in the realm of health pseudoscience,detoxing still stuck around.
and a lot of that detox culture has been shapedby celebrity culture. movie stars and other performers will usedetox products, and their stories will get written up in magazines. gwyneth paltrow is a fantastic exampleof that, her website is just a panorama of pseudoscience. she’s famously endorsed different typesof cleanses that she allegedly uses herself. what you don’t see is that those productsare just one part of a multi-million dollar business promoting easy exercise and dietsolutions. it’s very appealing to just believe you cantake something from a store shelf,
take it for a few weeks, and somehow have this very quick transformation into somethingthat will look as wonderful as she does. here’s the thing: our bodies are alreadyfantastic detox machines. we have the skin, the lymphatic and gastrointestinalsystems, the kidneys, the liver — they’re all working together to convert toxic substancesthat enter the body into harmless things that your body can either store or eliminate. but the best things you can do to boost your wellbeing and maybe even improve your long-term health outcomes are just sleep, don't drink too much, don't smoke, exercise, eat a balanced diet— and these don’t come in a magical pill
form, they don’t come in a tea form, youcan’t put them on your face in a special cream. at the same time, “detoxing†is a realprocess for people suffering from substance addiction. the detox that you see on the side of a shampoobottle, or vitamin bottle — that’s marketing hype. but there’s actual, real, legitimate medical detoxprocedures for people who have levels of alcohol or drugs or poisons in their body that are too high, and they need to go through some kind of treatment to get them back to levels that basically won’t kill them, or overwhelm their organ systems. again, that’s not something you can buyon the shelf at the grocery store or the pharmacy. the bottom line is, over the counter detoxproducts just aren’t supported by science.
and they can also actually be dangerous. more extreme detoxes like colon cleanses candeplete electrolytes to dangerously low levels. there have been reports of perforations ofthe gut and even death when people use these kinds of products. "and the things that these 'detox' and 'cleanse'products claim to accomplish? your body does those things on its own." so any time you see words like ‘detox’or ‘cleanse’ on a product label, remember: it’s just marketing hype. and it’s time we start treating it accordingly.
one of the things we didn't get into in this story is that amazon, one of the world's largest retailers, is also selling hundreds of detox products on its site. so everything from colon cleansers to help you lose weight to detox footpads, teas. so it's not just gwyneth paltrow selling this stuff, it's everywhere, and it's a reminder of how critical we need to be of health claims that seem to good to be true.
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