Why It’s Not Possible to “Detox” Your Body

You’ve heard the claims many times before: juice cleanses or diet plans swearing that they’ll “detox” your body. But guess what – “detoxing” or the idea that you can flush your system of impurities, is a complete scam designed mostly to get you to open your wallet. According to Edzard Ernst, a professor at Exeter University:

“There are two types of detox: one is respectable and the other isn’t.” The respectable one, he says, is the medical treatment of people with life-threatening drug addictions. “The other is the word being hijacked by entrepreneurs, quacks and charlatans to sell a bogus treatment that allegedly detoxifies your body of toxins you’re supposed to have accumulated.”

A healthy human body already has organs that are designed to do the “detoxing” for you. Your kidneys, liver, skin and lungs are constantly working to detox your body of those things that are bad for it. And according to Ernst’s research, there is no known way to make “something that works perfectly well in a healthy body work better.”

Most people think of detoxing after a particularly boozy weekend or after eating and drinking a lot over the holidays. But there is nothing that you can take that will in any way “cleanse” your liver or make it work faster.

So what’s the ultimate “detox” that actually works? Not smoking, eating a healthy well-balanced diet (like a Mediterranean diet), and exercising often.

Read more about this fascinating topic over at The Guardian.

Photo credit: Healthy Holistic Herbalist