14 DAY TRIAL // Detox diets are more than just regular diets, in the sense that they don’t merely tackle and efficiently solve one’s weight problems. A cleansing regime also boosts health, by improving digestion, purifying the organism, ridding the skin of spots and imperfections, and being nothing short of a blessing in the long run. Speaking with the Daily Mail, Ursula Arens, a registered dietician and spokesperson for the British Dietetic Association, debunks all the myths associated with detox diets, one by one.
No matter how much nutritionists strive to point out that detox diets are not only inefficient but also potentially very dangerous for one’s health, they still get millions of followers. It’s an industry that moves millions of dollars, precisely because it appeals to customers on more levels than just simple, “traditional” weight loss, Arens believes. At the end of the day, though, these cleansing regimes are nothing but a huge waste of time, money and health.
“If you’re starving yourself for anything from four to 14 days, of course you’re going to lose weight. But as on any diet, if you cut your calorie intake, the first thing you lose is not fat, but stored glycogen, which binds to water, so you do appear to lose a lot of weight fast,” Arens says of the number 1 claim of all diets, detox or not: that it guarantees fast weight loss. A cleansing regime consists, as it’s already known, of drinking a mixture of liquids and generally avoiding all solid food for an entire fortnight. This is meant to help the organism detoxify by purging.
On the other hand, “Almost anything can be toxic in a high enough dose,” Arens points out. “But the body has an amazing capacity to deal with this. If there’s something that the body perceives as toxic, the liver will get rid of it and if the toxin is water-soluble waste, it’s excreted via the kidneys. But if it’s fat soluble – and many of the toxins that concern the healthy living brigade are – it cannot be excreted and is stored in the body’s fat reserves. This means no amount of water can remove it from the body,” she further explains.
One claim of all detox diets that Arens can’t quite put to rest is the “I’ll feel amazing” one because it’s highly subjective. This feel-good sensation can be either induced or a result of the body releasing more endorphins as it tries to protect itself from the effect starvation has on it. To see the other claims debunked, please refer here.