The Truth About Detox Treatments

Good article in TIME:


Witty super bowl ads these are not. The commercials for foot pads that suck the toxins from your body are very straightforward: smack the cushions onto the soles of your feet, and overnight, the ads claim, you will sweat out metals, minerals and any other accumulated nastiness. Who wouldn't be appalled by the brown footprint left the next morning by a body newly unburdened of pollutants? And who wouldn't dial that toll-free number right away, credit card in (toxin-laden) hand? (See the best and worst Super Bowl commercials of 2009.)


Hopefully, you. There's a seductive power to purging, particularly since most of us don't eat or exercise as we should. The lure of easy fixes helps explain why interest is surging in detoxing and deep cleansing. More than 40% of people searching online for spa services are hunting for something to clean out the pipes, according to SpaFinder, a consumer resource for spa information; that's almost 50% more than in 2007. Most spas now offer some type of detox, with services ranging from colonics--water-injection enemas that literally flush out your system--to Calgon-take-me-away treatments meant to detach you from financial worries, family, work and other sources of stress. There are also thousands of do-it-yourselfers who swear by those detoxing foot pads, which use tree vinegars, tourmaline and reflexology to allegedly stimulate acupuncture points in the feet. This helps the lymphatic system drain pollutants down to and out of the feet.


But it turns out that detoxing does very little de-anything. The brown color on those foot pads? That comes from chemicals in the pads that change color whenever they get wet--even if the moisture comes from something as toxin-free as distilled water. "There is no science behind these detoxification services," says Dr. Christine Laine, deputy editor of the Annals of Internal Medicine. Says Dr. Bennett Roth, chief of gastroenterology at UCLA: "This is the 2009 version of the snake-oil salesman."


So why the growing popularity of detoxing? The idea of cleansing is appealing enough that many customers may not stop to ask if there's any scientific proof that these treatments will benefit their health. "People are not coming to a spa and saying, 'Does your detox program really work?'" says Susie Ellis, founder of SpaFinder.


Researchers note that colonics, a staple of detoxification, can result in punctures in the intestinal wall--and moreover serve no medical purpose. On the other hand, chelation therapy, which removes heavy metals such as mercury and nickel in cases of metal poisoning, is an accepted treatment. But medical studies have yet to demonstrate the benefits of frequent chelation to rid the body of the tiny amounts of metals we take in from food and air. "There is a big leap from finding traces of mercury in the blood to supporting the need for detoxification therapy," says Laine.


Even detox practitioners acknowledge that there is little evidence of the effectiveness of their work. "We would love to have that kind of good research, but that takes time and money, " says Mark Toomey, director of the Raj spa in Fairfield, Iowa, which offers cleansing oil-based massages, enemas and diets. The problem is, without those studies, you may never know if you have really done something to improve your health or if you feel better simply for having done something. If it's the latter, you might as well just take a nice relaxing bath in your own tub. For free.


http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1877382,00.html

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