Detox diets toxic

[Eos of the Eons]

The dangers of hyponatraemia and detoxing were seen in a case in Britain last year when The Times reported a 23-year-old man going into a coma for four days after a 21-day detox diet of fruit, vegetables, juice and water. The lack of sodium combined with at least five litres of water a day caused his sodium levels to drop and his brain to swell...

recent US trials of detox plans at the University of Southern
California found that
none
of the prominent detox diets, including a version of the popular liver-cleansing diet and the fruit-juice diet, lived up to the claims that they would purge environmental toxins over and above what the body does naturally...

The irony, Collins explains, is that the fasting can actually slow down the rate of the natural elimination of toxins by the body...

the group taking the supplements (anti-oxidant) had a higher incidence of cancer than the placebo group and the trial had to be
terminated.

Ferraretto claims that people need to understand that food is not going to detoxify the body and should stop seeking answers in ready-made solutions.
"Many of the claims made by the now famous liver-cleansing diet are fairly unsubstantiated," she says. "Your liver, like the rest of your body, does its job best when you are eating a balanced diet, including carbohydrates
and protein."

The Weekend Australian
The dangers of detox diets
By Emily Smith
May 08, 2004


http://tinyurl.com/2a5p3

 

[Iconoclast]

Thanks for that Eos, I've been meaning to look for an article on this for a while, every year or so my mother goes to one of those health farms for a month to do this detox rubbish and comes back looking like a skeleton.

 

[Eos of the Eons]

That's pretty gross. And how much does she pay to get malnourished?

 

[Iconoclast]

That's pretty gross. And how much does she pay to get malnourished?

Yep, she pays a fortune for the privilege of not eating, though apparently this place is in a beautiful part of the Blue Mountains, so at least she gets a nice view while she starves.

 

[Zep]

And to consider that the Blue Mountains has some of the best restaurants in Australia for all sorts of beautiful fresh produce including "organic", and she goes all the way there just to AVOID it?

How utterly tragic.

 

[Jas]

You mean drinking water with lemon juice and cayenne pepper (and nothing else for three weeks), might actually be bad for me? Of course, that might explain how we've managed to survive for tens of thousands of years in areas of the world which don't have any citrus trees.

 

[Zombified]

Although I've heard of these crazy diets I don't really know much about them. But I've heard 'toxins' referred to in a number of different contexts.

What are these mysterious 'toxins' that need cleaning out? Every time I hear about 'toxins' there's never explanation of exactly what chemical needs to be cleaned out. Do they even have an idea of what these toxins are supposed to be, or are they just some mysterious, unnamed vapours?

 

[The Don]

It depends on the brand of quackery the detoxer happens to adhere to. In some cases they talk about physical, named toxins which have built up in the [insert name of organ or organs here] ans which need to be purged. What interests me is how these will get removed when if they were temporary the kidneys would sort it out and if they were permanent (like heavy metals in fish) how they would get excreted.

Other detoxers go a stage further and talk about poisons which are spiritually harming which is of course complete *******.

One thing about detoxing, chronic undernourishment often leads to a state of euphoria. maybe that's the true effect.