"Detox" has become a buzzword for the past few years, thanks to so-called health experts that sing praises as to its effectiveness to reduce weight and prevent or eliminate diseases, including cancer and type 2 diabetes.
However, according to one emeritus professor that specializes in complementary medicine, these benefits do not exist. In fact, he calls the entire detox phenomenon a scam.
In an article published by The Guardian on December 5, complementary medicine emeritus professor Edzard Ernst mentioned that there are actually two kinds of detoxing, and only one can be deemed "respectable." The other, meanwhile, has already been abused by commercial health care industry that offers products that cleanse the body even if they are ineffective.
He then gives a couple of reasons why those detox products are simply "bogus."
First, the body has a natural way of detoxifying. Many organs are responsible for that, including the skin, liver, and lungs. As long as you're alive, your body has been expelling these toxins and wastes out of your system. If the body already lacks the capability to get rid of these toxins, then the person should either be in a medical emergency or dead. In other words, as long as you are not either of those two, your detoxification ability is working fine.
The article also points out that there seems to be no proper way of measuring the effectiveness of these detox products. They are unclear as to the types of toxins they deal with. Otherwise, it would have been much easier to determine if they work by comparing before-and-after results.
Moreover, although detoxifying may help reduce weight, it's because the body is starved due to very limited calories. This also doesn't guarantee that the toxins in the body have been removed.
The article also calls out some tactics as "insidious" like detox foot pads that allegedly change color when submerged into the water after a period of use and tablets for colon cleansing.