Whether
it’s cucumbers splashing into water or models sitting smugly next to a
pile of vegetables, it’s tough not to be sucked in by the detox
industry. The idea that you can wash away your calorific sins is the
perfect antidote to our fast-food lifestyles and alcohol-lubricated
social lives. But before you dust off that juicer or take the first
tentative steps towards a colonic irrigation clinic, there’s something
you should know: detoxing – the idea that you can flush your system of
impurities and leave your organs squeaky clean and raring to go – is a
scam. It’s a pseudo-medical concept designed to sell you things.
“Let’s be clear,” says Edzard Ernst,
emeritus professor of complementary medicine 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.”
If toxins did build up in a way your body couldn’t excrete, he says,
you’d likely be dead or in need of serious medical intervention. “The
healthy body has kidneys, a liver, skin, even lungs that are detoxifying
as we speak,” he says. “There is no known way – certainly not through
detox treatments – to make something that works perfectly well in a
healthy body work better.”
Much of the sales patter revolves around “toxins”: poisonous
substances that you ingest or inhale. But it’s not clear exactly what
these toxins are. If they were named they could be measured before and
after treatment to test effectiveness. Yet, much like floaters in your
eye, try to focus on these toxins and they scamper from view. In 2009, a
network of scientists assembled by the UK charity Sense about Science
contacted the manufacturers of 15 products sold in pharmacies and
supermarkets that claimed to detoxify. The products ranged from dietary
supplements to smoothies and shampoos. When the scientists asked for
evidence behind the claims, not one of the manufacturers could define
what they meant by detoxification, let alone name the toxins.
Yet,
inexplicably, the shelves of health food stores are still packed with
products bearing the word “detox” – it’s the marketing equivalent of
drawing go-faster stripes on your car. You can buy detoxifying tablets,
tinctures, tea bags, face masks, bath salts, hair brushes, shampoos,
body gels and even hair straighteners. Yoga, luxury retreats, and
massages will also all erroneously promise to detoxify. You can go on a
seven-day detox diet and you’ll probably lose weight, but that’s nothing
to do with toxins, it’s because you would have starved yourself for a
week.
Then there’s colonic irrigation. Its proponents will tell you that
mischievous plaques of impacted poo can lurk in your colon for months or
years and pump disease-causing toxins back into your system. Pay them a
small fee, though, and they’ll insert a hose up your bottom and wash
them all away. Unfortunately for them – and possibly fortunately for you
– no doctor has ever seen one of these mythical plaques, and many warn
against having the procedure done, saying that it can perforate your
bowel.
Other tactics are more insidious. Some colon-cleansing tablets
contain a polymerising agent that turns your faeces into something like a
plastic, so that when a massive rubbery poo snake slithers into your
toilet you can stare back at it and feel vindicated in your purchase.
Detoxing foot pads turn brown overnight with what manufacturers claim is
toxic sludge drawn from your body. This sludge is nothing of the sort –
a substance in the pads turns brown when it mixes with water from your
sweat.
“It’s a scandal,” fumes Ernst. “It’s criminal exploitation of the
gullible man on the street and it sort of keys into something that we
all would love to have – a simple remedy that frees us of our sins, so
to speak. It’s nice to think that it could exist but unfortunately it
doesn’t.”
That the concept of detoxification is so nebulous might be why it has
evaded public suspicion. When most of us utter the word detox, it’s
usually when we’re bleary eyed and stumbling out of the wrong end of a
heavy weekend. In this case, surely, a detox from alcohol is a good
thing? “It’s definitely good to have non-alcohol days as part of your
lifestyle,” says Catherine Collins,
an NHS dietitian at St George’s Hospital. “It’ll probably give you a
chance to reassess your drinking habits if you’re drinking too much. But
the idea that your liver somehow needs to be ‘cleansed’ is ridiculous.”
The liver breaks down alcohol in a two-step process. Enzymes in the
liver first convert alcohol to acetaldehyde, a very toxic substance that
damages liver cells. It is then almost immediately converted into
carbon dioxide and water which the body gets rid of. Drinking too much
can overwhelm these enzymes and the acetaldehyde buildup will lead to
liver damage. Moderate and occasional drinking, though, might have a
protective effect. Population studies, says Collins, have shown that teetotallers and those who drink alcohol excessively have a shorter life expectancy than people who drink moderately and in small amounts.
“We know that a little bit of alcohol seems to be helpful,” she says.
“Maybe because its sedative effect relaxes you slightly or because it
keeps the liver primed with these detoxifying enzymes to help deal with
other toxins you’ve consumed. That’s why the government guidelines don’t
say, ‘Don’t drink’; they say, ‘OK drink, but only modestly.’ It’s like a
little of what doesn’t kill you cures you.”
This adage also applies in an unexpected place – to broccoli, the
luvvie of the high-street “superfood” detox salad. Broccoli does help
the liver out but, unlike the broad-shouldered, cape-wearing image that
its superfood moniker suggests, it is no hero. Broccoli, as with all
brassicas – sprouts, mustard plants, cabbages – contains cyanide. Eating
it provides a tiny bit of poison that, like alcohol, primes the enzymes
in your liver to deal better with any other poisons.
Collins guffaws at the notion of superfoods. “Most people think that
you should restrict or pay particular attention to certain food groups,
but this is totally not the case,” she says. “The ultimate lifestyle
‘detox’ is not smoking, exercising and enjoying a healthy balanced diet
like the Mediterranean diet.”
Close your eyes, if you will, and imagine a Mediterranean diet. A red
chequered table cloth adorned with meats, fish, olive oil, cheeses,
salads, wholegrain cereals, nuts and fruits. All these foods give the
protein, amino acids, unsaturated fats, fibre, starches, vitamins and
minerals to keep the body – and your immune system, the biggest
protector from ill-health – functioning perfectly.
So why, then, with such a feast available on doctor’s orders, do we
feel the need to punish ourselves to be healthy? Are we hard-wired to
want to detox, given that many of the oldest religions practise fasting
and purification? Has the scientific awakening shunted bad spirits to
the periphery and replaced them with environmental toxins that we think
we have to purge ourselves of?
Susan Marchant-Haycox, a London psychologist, doesn’t think so.
“Trying to tie detoxing in with ancient religious practices is clutching
at straws,” she says. “You need to look at our social makeup over the
very recent past. In the 70s, you had all these gyms popping up, and
from there we’ve had the proliferation of the beauty and diet industry
with people becoming more aware of certain food groups and so on.
“The detox industry is just a follow-on from that. There’s a lot of
money in it and there are lots of people out there in marketing making a
lot of money.”
Peter Ayton,
a professor of psychology at City University London, agrees. He says
that we’re susceptible to such gimmicks because we live in a world with
so much information we’re happy to defer responsibility to others who
might understand things better. “To understand even shampoo you need to
have PhD in biochemistry,” he says, “but a lot of people don’t have
that. If it seems reasonable and plausible and invokes a familiar
concept, like detoxing, then we’re happy to go with it.”
Many of our consumer decisions, he adds, are made in ignorance and
supposition, which is rarely challenged or informed. “People assume that
the world is carefully regulated and that there are benign institutions
guarding them from making any kind of errors. A lot of marketing
drip-feeds that idea, surreptitiously. So if people see somebody with
apparently the right credentials, they think they’re listening to a
respectable medic and trust their advice.”
Ernst is less forgiving: “Ask trading standards what they’re doing
about it. Anyone who says, ‘I have a detox treatment’ is profiting from a
false claim and is by definition a crook. And it shouldn’t be left to
scientists and charities to go after crooks.”
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