What is a detox? Here's why you may want to think twice before trying one.
Supplements and diets marketed as “detoxes” claim to rid your body of harmful toxins, helping you to lose weight, feel less tired and gain more energy.
Trying a detox or cleanse may appear to be the solution to a variety of health concerns, but do they work, and are they actually safe to try? In practice, “there is very little evidence behind really any of the popularized gut detox trends,” says Dr. Josephine Ni, MD, a gastroenterologist at UT Southwestern Medical Center.
Not only are these “detoxes” unnecessary for maintaining health, but in certain cases, they have the potential to cause harm to the body. USA TODAY spoke with gastroenterologists to find out why.
What is a detox?
While there is no medical consensus surrounding the term “gut detox,” there are a plethora of supplements, trend diets and colonics that are marketed to detox or cleanse your body of harmful toxins, Ni says.
To the body, “toxins are bacterial products, viral fungal products, [or] plant and animal products,” that act like a “poison to human cells or nerves,” Dr. Sarah Kahn, MD, a board-certified gastroenterologist at Stamford Health.
Proponents of detoxing claim purported benefits, such as restored energy, weight loss, relief from constipation and less frequent headaches, fatigue or muscle aches, per Cleveland Clinic.
The use of colonics to cleanse the colon is a particular concern for Ni. Colonics “involve using either enemas or some sort of immersive to rinse ‘physical toxins’ from the colon,” she says. While this might sound like a good idea, there is little to no evidence to suggest that doing so provides benefits. “I'm not aware of any randomized clinical trials that have shown any long term benefits to colonic cleanses,” Ni says.
Are detoxes necessary?
Detoxes and cleanses are unnecessary to maintain health. “As far as I know, there's zero scientific evidence to support the use of these cleanses for proposed gut health,” Ni says.
It’s important to underscore that “our organ systems are programmed for detoxification,” Kahn says.
In the body, several processes naturally serve to eliminate “normal byproducts that can be toxins if they build up in large and high levels,” explains Ni. The kidneys, liver and gastrointestinal tract all play a role in guiding byproducts out of your body, she says.
Because the body is already designed to remove these toxins without additional help, “you don't need to introduce other exogenous compounds or mixes,” she says.
Are detoxes safe?
Dietary supplements marketed to detox or cleanse your body do not require approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, “so you have no idea what is actually in these particular products,” or what type of laxatives are being included, Ni says. “In fact, some laxatives can be detrimental to your health depending on their mechanism of action,” she says.
Additionally, while you might think there’s little harm in doing a detox diet, you actually risk depriving yourself of essential nutrients. Take juice cleanses, for instance, Ni says. During a juice cleanse, juices tend to be meal replacements. If you are solely consuming fruits and vegetables stripped of their natural fiber, your diet will lack fiber. Fiber is integral to digestive function, so by undergoing a juice cleanse, you’re actually “depriving yourself of a very natural part of your diet,” Ni explains.
Are there safe ways to detox your body?
“There is no universally safe way to do [a detox], because one, detoxes have not been well studied, and two, they're not regulated,” Ni says. “For that reason, it's very, very difficult for us to say that they're ever safe to use when you buy them from the market,” she says.
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Rather than resort to a gut detox or colonic, if you are experiencing health concerns, always seek advice from a healthcare professional, Ni emphasizes. Your primary care provider can tailor an individualized approach to meet your personal health goals, and ensure “that any modifications to a diet, and or lifestyle, are not just healthy, but also sustainable,” she says.