To Detox Or Not To Detox...

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This is also an ideal time for most of us to start a new health regime and perhaps give our bodies a good boost for the year to come. Which is why I was rather surprised to see reports in the mainstream media claiming that detoxing is a waste of money, which serves very little benefits at all!

Sensible Scientists... or slightly mad?

The UK charity Sense About Science compiled a dossier of information on claims made about detoxing. The dossier says: "The multimillion pound detox industry sells products with little evidence to support their use. These products trade on claims about the body which are often wrong." The scientists argue that our bodies are capable of recovering from binges on their own. And it seems that many learned men jumped on the same bandwagon...

The chemical scientist and award winning science author Dr John Emsley said: "There is no scientific reason for people to waste time and money on so-called detox regimes, fancy diets, or expensive remedies, none of which can compare to the detox system that is already inbuilt into our natural system." My question is, is there perhaps a medical reason (instead of scientific) for people to help their bodies to cope after binges?

Sir Colin Berry, professor emeritus of pathology at Queen Mary, University of London, seems to agree with Dr. Emsley: "It's easy to detox; just let your body use the great systems it has evolved over thousands of years to get rid of whatever is harming you. But if it's booze, drink less as well."

Hmmm – perhaps you did not think your comment through Sir Colin Berry.

Drink less as well!?

Is that the only insightful advice you can come up with?

When people go on a binge or ‘feeding frenzy’ or simply have an unhealthy lifestyle (eating fatty foods, not exercising, smoking and drinking excessively) the onslaught of toxins, preservatives etc. entering the body is much faster than what the bodies natural detoxification system was designed to cope with.

Sometimes drinking less is not the answer. Sometimes taking a complete break from alcohol is the necessary option for the sake of your liver, kidneys, skin, heart, immune system ... and the list goes on.

Common sense not scientific hogwash

As for the remark ‘...just let your body use the great systems it has evolved over thousands of years to get rid of whatever is harming you...’ I am inclined to think: Hang-on, thousands, or even a hundred and fifty years ago, there weren’t as many cases of cancer, heart attacks, diabetes, COPD, etc. So where is the evolution as observed by Sir Colin Berry? (Sounds more like delusion.)

There’s no doubt that we have amazing and resilient self-healing and cleansing systems in our bodies. The truth, however is that 10,000 years ago there was simply no man-made environmental toxins, drugs, preservatives, etc. and at that stage of our evolution, 99 per cent of our genetic makeup had already been formed. The body’s natural detoxification system has simply not evolved since then to deal with the man-made pollutants and toxins present in our environment today. Because of this these toxins sometimes overflow into the body, they start to build up and accumulate throughout the body causing it to malfunction (inflammation), resulting in the development of disease.

A helping hand

My common sense tells me that sometimes the body needs a bit of help to cleanse itself, or should we all wait until our bodies are inflamed and clogged-up with toxins and we require antibiotics and all-sorts to ‘solve’ the problem. (If that is the case then the pharmaceutical industry will probably thank the scientists for passing on some valuable trade...)

Detoxing is not a cure all for disease; it’s simply a cleansing process, which can be a preventative measure for infection and disease. It’s like cleaning your Dyson’s dust bag and it makes as much sense.
In a related article I wrote about the simple and easy steps you can take to start a detox.
Read the full article here