The Dangers of Detox Diets

The body is designed to rid itself of most toxins quite naturally by itself. Our livers and kidneys will remove some toxins within minutes and MOST toxins within 48 hours of them entering the body. Put simply, the livers and kidneys don't need to rest and simply flushing them with water and juices won't speed up the bodies' natural detoxification process.

While each person's experience is different, a lot of these diets adopt a simplistic view of something that requires a degree of complexity. What's even worse is that there are a lot of pseudo nutritionists out in the wellness space providing dietary advice and diets, when that type of intervention should be handled with the guidance of a registered dietitian or physician.

Keep in mind that healthy weight loss requires long-term lifestyle changes in eating and activity habits—not quick, short-term fixes. A healthy plan may not be quick, but it allows for flexibility and a variety of foods, including some favorite treats on occasion.

New fad diets can keep making outrageous claims because no one requires their advocates to prove what they say. Fad diet gurus do not have to conduct credible research on the benefits or dangers of their diets. They can simply make recommendations and then later, if questioned, search for bits and pieces of research that support the conclusions they have already reached. That’s backward! Diet and health recommendations should follow years of sound scientific research before being offered to the public.

Because anyone can publish anything, in books or on the Internet, advocates of fad diets can make unsubstantiated statements that fall far short of the truth but sound 'impressive' to the masses. They often offer distorted bits of legitimate research. They may start with one or more actual facts but then leap from one baseless conclusion to the next. Anyone who wants to believe these claims has to wonder how the thousands of scientists working on obesity research over the past century could possibly have missed such obvious connections.