“Wellness” entrepreneurs, such as Gwyneth Paltrow, sell products that supposedly cleanse your body of harmful toxins. (According to MedlinePlus, toxins are substances created by plants and animals that are poisonous to humans, including bacteria, lead, and other chemicals.) Most detoxing regimens consist of liquid diets consisting mainly of vegetable and fruit juices. (Paltrow’s includes milk thistle extract.) As a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins says, “People have this magical impression that what’s in the body are weapons of mass destruction, and somehow flushing them out is going to make them better.”
One popular cleanse, the Master Cleanse, combines lemon
juice, cayenne pepper, and maple syrup. As the promoter of this cleanse reports
on his Web site, “If you experience symptoms like cravings, fatigue,
irritability, headaches, pains, nausea, vomiting, hot bowel movements...
congratulations! That means you were supertoxic, and the cleanse is working.”
Judith Newman, a New York Times journalist tried a juice cleanse: “I believed that for $65 a day, BluePrintCleanse would set me right. …That green juice? It was like drinking everything bad that ever happened to me in high school. …The next three days could be summed up thus: 1. I need food. 2. Hey, this isn’t bad! 3. Kill me now.”
The thing is, we don’t need to cleanse and detoxify. As a dietician at Cleveland Clinic tells us, “Our body’s such a beautiful machine that it self-regulates.” Our bodies have plenty of filters. Our kidneys livers, skin and bladders all work to remove toxins and waste. Dr. David Colbert, New York interest says, “You have to ask yourself this question: With a juice cleanse, what are you really cleaning? Really, nothing. The bowel self-cleans. It’s evolved over millions of years to do this.” Besides, our bodies want and expect food.
For an introduction to this blog, see I Just Say No; for a list of blog topics, click the Topics tab.
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