Which of us didn’t have a thought after abundant New Year feasts: maybe it’s time to cleanse the body, otherwise the Olivier salad, along with a herring under a fur coat, is already dancing a jigu-jigu?
Further events develop according to the same scenario. A man tormented by champagne and dishes with mayonnaise, opens the sites of detox experts and finds out the terrible. For example, our liver is a storehouse of hazardous toxins.
Moreover, over the long years of an unrighteous life, they have accumulated in the intestines, and there they are made up of malicious plaques that cannot be easily removed.
Many healthy lifestyle adherents sincerely believe that our body is like a garden in the subtropics. And you should relate to it accordingly: fertilize with vitamins and constantly cleanse from harmful toxins. But do most of us really need this?
Well, then come the offers to take part in weekly detox programs, during which you will wake up at five in the morning, meet a new day in the yoga pose “salutation to the sun”, drink celery juice, eat like a bird, walk a lot and do cleansing enemas for the coming dream. All this is supported by enlightened stories of eyewitnesses about how, after a couple of weeks of intensive detox, they lost ten extra pounds, and at the same time ten years.
I want to say right away that there is nothing wrong with giving up bad habits for a couple of weeks, starting to eat more products of plant origin and exchanging your favorite sofa for hours-long walks, of course, no. On the contrary, one sheer benefit. That’s just the term “detox” all of the above has no relation. It appeared ninety years ago, and detoxification medicine arose to maintain the health of people exposed to powerful toxic effects.
In the case of, for example, many years of work in the chemical industry, the liver can indeed cease to function normally. And this body is multitasking. In addition to the synthesis of bile, bilirubin, cholesterol, replenishment of glycogen and vitamins A, D and B12, its main property is the neutralization of xenobiotics, chemicals that are foreign to our body, as well as the neutralization and removal of hormones and toxic metabolic products from the body: ammonia, acetone, phenol and ethanol. Already from the description of the functions of the liver it is clear: if it is healthy, toxins cannot accumulate in it.
If this happened, it is too late to drink dietary supplements and Borjomi, then just think about urgent hospitalization. Intestinal plaques are still more interesting. None of the doctors have ever seen them. There was even a scandalous story when patients of one detox center were sold pills, supposedly removing them.
In fact, the pills contained a plastic-like substance. She left the body, but the placebo effect was achieved – people believed that now they would live happily ever after. At the same time, constantly flushing the intestines is a risky occupation, there is a serious risk of disrupting its natural microflora.
In a word, it would be more honest to call modern detox programs health-improving. You are kept on reduced calorie, and you are losing weight. Spend more time outdoors and increase physical activity, which helps restore sleep function and improve complexion. The rest is pure marketing. After all, no one is ready to pay honestly earned money for a teacher who kicks you out for a walk in the morning, but to invest in a new-fashioned miracle detox technique and salad compositions made of broccoli, chicory leaves and celery stalks is completely different.
