I think it's a while since I've done a quack product, so....
What better than - well, I was gonna say the current fad, it's not, it's been around for a while -
- but it's the ionic foot detox.
So this electrode here, this is one of the consumable electrodes. It came from eBay - surprise, surprise! - from China - bigger surprise!
-and it's described as a "Detox Foot Bath Arrays Round Stainless Steel Array-"
Stainless steel? Really?
- and, it's...
It cost £4.45, and it came from a seller called "sayhello2015", which is one of the easiest names to remember in a while, even if it was presumably last year's name.
But anyway, yes, it came from eBay, and the idea of these things is that you...
er, well I'll do a wee doodle, actually.
It's a quack health therapy-type thing.
So basically speaking, you've got a seat. It can be a nice comfortable seat if it's a - well, it typically depends on the quality of the clinic
- and you've got a sort of foot bath in front of it, and people sit, with their feet in the foot bath....
Er, let's draw their arm as well, because some of them have another little feature, and a unit... a unit with all sorts of digital readouts and buttons all over it for maximum show
connects to this electrode which sits in the water...
which has salt added to it. Special salt, presumably.
Or maybe not.
And...
so this unit sits in there, and... another possibility for some fancy units, another wee cable comes out, and there's a wee arm band, or an electrode goes on
And the idea is, that you sit in this, er...
hold on, let's adjust the contrast here, just to make it more visible. That's better.
You sit in the seat with your foot in the bath for about 30 minutes, and it detoxifies your body by passing electricity through it, and...
It starts off with the water clear, and then as it goes on, it's supposed to end up looking like this
and all this is the impurities that have been drawn out of your body. It looks absolutely disgusting.
Which is the whole point. It even comes with a chart, which you're supposed to like, poke about in it, and look for all the wee particles,
And each coloured bit represents bits of your gallbladder, liver, or brain, and red patches it even pulls blood clots out,
It... yeah. Anyway, quite.
So let's pop the lid on this and take a look inside. These things are still widely in use in these beauty clinics.
I'm looking for the screwdriver to pop this open- there it is.
Woop!
Oops, almost stabbing in - almost managed to actually get the detox in my blood, there.
*He grunts with effort*
Get open!
There we go!
So what's inside, it's quite neat inside, I have to say. It's got a plastic separator and then it's got two helixes of metal
Now, is that stainless steel, or is it just steel?
It's... ah, I think that is stainless steel...
...or is it a special alloy designed to corrode? Because basically, all they're gonna be doing is applying... presumably DC across this
and it's gonna cause electrolytic corrosion, accelerated corrosion, and rusting.
I'm just wondering, is that inner one different? No, it seems to be the same sort of stuff, so um...
I reckon the best way to test this, just to see it operating, is to actually put it in some water.
Oh, I should mention that uh, there are some of the units that just... they're very simple,
you put it in the water and it just starts clouding it, making it go brown right there and then.
Other ones do require the little wristband. Not because it's actually doing anything special to your body, but just to make sure someone does have their feet in the water.
It detects a slight current between the wristband, and the electrodes, and then enables the electrode to start doing the... thing.
So what I've got here, just to try this out... I'm gonna put a bit of kitchen towel down...
and I've got a bowl of freshly prepared health water...
which I've added some kitchen salt into, just to try this out, and I'm gonna submerge the electrode in it, and connect it to a DC supply.
Now, I'm not sure if the outer electrode, I'm guessing... I'm not sure which are best connected to positive and the negative, so I'm just going to randomly connect them, willy-nilly.
And then I'm going to energise it at 12V. How's that looking? Can I brighten this image just a wee tad? Yeah, let's brighten it up a wee bit.
So, let's turn it on.
Oh, that is very conductive, actually. That is really low voltage and high current, because I set that to 12 and it's dropped to about 2.65V
because it's limiting to about 1.5A, so let's turn the current up...
because the higher the current is, I'm guessing, the more of an effect we're going to get.
Oh, I can see a cloudiness coming out of it already... oh, and brown, so that's about 2A. Maybe 2A is actually too high, because it's going brown already.
and that's about 3V. So I'm going to set the voltage down to about... well, it doesn't really matter actually, because it's a current-limiting supply.
So yeah. 2A, and it's already starting to go very brown.
It's quite an interesting effect, the clouding spreading out.
Thats... I didn't really expect it to be that fast, to be honest. I thought it was going to take a lot longer...
I can see the bubbles coming out and popping. They're presumably hydrogen and oxygen.
Oh, that is very cloudy and dirty...
So, this is the effect. I'm wondering then, if the current I've set it at here, 2A, is acutally a bit too high, in fact.
Because if people are going to get this done for about 30 minutes, you want it all to happen very gradually.
That's kind of disgusting, isn't it?
And every time a bubble comes out, a cloud... oh it is sort of green-y bits, so hold on, where's my colour chart, to see what's come out?
So it's got a greenish film here, so that's... "Material or Area/System of the body..." let's see, where is it, where is it?
That's my kidney, bladder and reproductory system. There's orange, so that's going to be joints and muscles.
I don't see any blood yet, coming out of the...
I do see the bubbles. The bubbles are quite dramatic, I have to say. That is...
Presumably, the amount of salt you put in is also going to have a significant effect.
So, I'm just going to pause momentarily and come back in about.. I'm gonna go surf the net for a while,
and then we'll come back in about, say... 20 minutes, and we'll see just how disgusting this has gotten, so I'll be back shortly.
Okay, it's had time to marinate, and it's looking pretty disgusting. It's got the bubbles, and it's got the...
Ohh.... Yeah, that's disgusting! What's it smell like?
It smells like rust, strangely enough(!)
So, let's turn this off now, and we'll fish this out.
I should say, that I'm looking at this from the side, because it's a glass container and all the stuff that's floating about, all the scum is on top here
So, I'm going to just lift this out and...
Eugh...
Yeah, lots of different coloured bits. It's er...
quite interesting, actually...
So, I'm looking at the electrodes here. Let's get this open, in fact, I'm just going to wipe this off and clean it a bit.
I'll move this out of the way, since I don't really want to spill it.
I've got a jug just in case I had to put this into it, but I think I'll just leave it here and move the jug out of the way.
So let's pop this open again and see what it's like inside.....
and see how much corrosion has occurred. I have to say, looking from the side, it doesn't really look like all that much corrosion has occurred
unless it's actually reacting with the salt, and creating the sodium metals.
That is surprisingly clean, you're going to get quite a lot of cycles out of that. It's got sort of... goop on it,
but that's just, you know, the residue of when I was taking it out. So I was expecting this to be really corroded, but it's not,
particularly given how disgusting that jar of liquid is, because it really is.
It does have lots of colours. It's got the dark green, and it's got the.... slimy bits, and whitish bits. It's got a whole range of colours.
So yeah, that's the - I kind of wish I hadn't done that now - that's the ionic foot detox unit. You stick your feet in the bath,
and it claims that this is being drawn out of your body, but really, it's not. It's just really...
Hold on, I'm just going to try and improve the intensity here, is this going to come out a bit- oh no, it's just going to swamp out...
Yeah, it's kind of not very photogenic is it? It's just brown sludge.
But yeah, that's the whole concept of it. It claims that it... It actually stains your skin a wee bit, I have to say.
But it claims- but I suppose that gives the impression that it's pulling it out from your... through your skin. It's supposed to draw this out of your body, but it really doesn't.
But quite a novel thing, really. It's quite an interesting scam, and I suppose that some people probably quite enjoy the experience of being pampered
and given this magical treatment, so... Yeah, interesting, the ionic foot detox.