Wednesday, February 06, 2008

The Truth about “Cleansing” Diets and Liver Health

Every day, our bodies are exposed to toxic chemicals. Not only are their pollutants in the air around us, there are also toxins in the food we eat and many produced by our own bodies. Many of these toxins are flushed out, but some stick around in the colon, liver, and fat stores of our system. A fast, detox, cleansing diet is designed to remove these toxins.

The requirements of a detox diet can vary. They can last from a week to 10 days. Some require you to stop eating and only drink water. Others allow you calories, but only from certain fruit or vegetable juices, or other liquids that encourage the flushing of toxins. More moderate diets allow you to eat a vegetarian diet and juice, while some of the more drastic diets encourage laxatives and enemas for colon and liver cleansing.

So why would someone want to put themselves through this on an annual or semiannual basis? As I’ve already said, these procedures are believed to remove excess toxins the body can’t get rid of itself. Removing toxins helps prevent or stop their harmful side effects like headaches, nausea, and disease. When the body is clear of toxins, it can function more efficiently. This means you should have more energy and lose weight once the fasting diet is done.

As with any drastic diet plan, there are many people who doubt these claims. While they agree that there are toxins present in the body, they believe the body can get rid of most of these toxins itself. Also, while this method can remove toxins from the digestive tract, they doubt it does anything to remove toxins from the liver and fat stores in the body.

Another debate is whether these treatments are even safe. If done improperly, many colonic treatments can actually damage tissue and should only be done by someone who has been trained.

It is also questionable whether fasting itself is safe. When your body goes for more than a day or two without food, it switches into “starvation mode”. Your metabolism slows, so weight loss decreases. At this point, you can experience symptoms such as headaches and anemia. You may also suffer from low blood sugar, which has its own set of symptoms.

While your body dips into fat stores, it also eats up muscle tissue. This will slow your further slow your metabolism and prevent you from losing more weight once you start eating again. You may even gain the weight back that you lost while fasting.

If you’re considering going on a detox diet, talk to your doctor first. You may also want to read up on the subject and find a less drastic version of the diet. Switching to an organic, vegetarian diet for a period of time may provide many of the same benefits. There are also products on the market that cleanse your body of toxins without requiring an extended fast.


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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I am not sure about the effectiveness of detox diet, but I have been using detox foot bath, which I feel is more effective and helpful.

Foot detox patches filter out toxin from body eliminating harmful metals in the body. Detox Foot Bath can be helpful in many medical conditions such as relief from headaches, poor circulation, constipation, digestive problems, high blood pressure, arthritis, diabetes symptoms of menopause, etc.