In 2007, a science advocacy group called Sense About Science reached out to the manufacturers
of 15 detox health products.
They wanted to figure out one thing: what exactly was the toxin that those products
were targeting?
After talking to the makers of everything from smoothies to supplements to shampoos,
the researchers came back with absolutely nothing.
Not a single company could identify what “toxic substance” their “detox” product eliminated.
Long story short, detoxing — for weight loss, for beauty treatments, for fitness — is bullshit.
But it’s been kept alive thanks to some really archaic misconceptions about how our
bodies work, and a whole lot of celebrity endorsements.
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 about getting 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 ancient Egypt, physicians thought that toxic substances were
actually produced within people’s bodies, and that these toxins
were the cause of disease, and that they needed to be expelled.
Remember how we used to use leeches to get out the “bad blood” when people were sick?
That’s kind of the same idea.
People thought that the body would poison itself when toxins from feces were absorbed
back into the blood.
They called this idea autointoxication, and it lasted for a long time.
And even microbiologists believed in it through the last century.
By the early 1900s, our understanding of physiology evolved, 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 shaped by celebrity culture.
Movie stars and other performers will use detox products, and their stories will get
written up in magazines.
Gwyneth Paltrow is a fantastic example of that, her website is just a panorama of
pseudoscience.
She’s famously endorsed different types of cleanses that she allegedly uses herself.
What you don’t see is that those products are just one part of a multi-million dollar
business promoting easy exercise and diet solutions.
It’s very appealing to just believe you can take something from a store shelf,
take it for a few weeks, and somehow have
this very quick transformation into something that will look as wonderful as she does.
Here’s the thing: our bodies are already fantastic detox machines.
We have the skin, the lymphatic and gastrointestinal systems, the kidneys, the liver — they’re
all working together to convert toxic substances that 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, you can’t put them on your face in a special cream.
At the same time, “detoxing” is a real process for people suffering from substance
addiction.
The detox that you see on the side of a shampoo bottle, or vitamin bottle — that’s marketing hype.
But there’s actual, real, legitimate medical detox procedures 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 buy on the shelf at the grocery store or the pharmacy.
The bottom line is, over the counter detox products just aren’t supported by science.
And they can also actually be dangerous.
More extreme detoxes like colon cleanses can deplete electrolytes to dangerously low levels.
There have been reports of perforations of the 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.