Are Detox Diets Good For You?

Article by Phil Tucker

It makes sense in a way—just as our car engines need to be washed clean of gunk that’s accumulated over the tens of thousands of miles we’ve driven, so do our intestines and livers need to be cleansed of all the toxins that have built up there as well. It’s easy to imagine our stomachs full of crud, all these built up toxins that have slowly accumulated over time until we’re lugging around pounds of it. There are apocryphal stories of John Wayne having over twenty pounds of red meat in his colon, of people getting sick from the buildup of pesticides and worse. So wouldn’t a good detox diet be good for you?

Many people think so, and as a result all kinds of crash diets have sprung up, instructing you to cut the amount of calories you eat by a huge amount and subsist instead on a liquid diet composed mainly of one substance or another. A massively popular diet is the Master Cleanse, or lemonade diet, that has you drink nothing but lemon juice, cayenne pepper and maple syrup for ten days. Or there’s the fruit diet, or the protein diet, or any other number of diets that are supposed to clean you out.

However, where did we get the idea that we’re so full of crud to begin with? Unless you drink excessive amounts of alcohol or take a look of Tylenol, your liver will be functioning optimally. A bowl of high fiber cereal will cleanse out your intestines better than any fruit juice, and in fact, healthy individuals actually have perfectly functioning digestive systems that are in no need of extra help.

That’s where we can get in trouble. For example, any diet that lasts longer than a day will start to rob you of muscle tissue as your body begins to seek energy supplies from anywhere it can get it. You will lose weight, sure, but not all fat, and then when you begin eating normally once more you will put it all back on as fat. Further, these diets don’t provide you with essential vitamins and minerals, meaning that you will lose a lot of key elements that your body can’t provide for itself, further weakening it. Even colonics that are supposed to be wonderful for you can result in bacterial infections or wipe out the healthy bacteria in our stomachs. So when it comes to detox diets, just eat better and don’t do anything radical.

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