Detoxing Is The Health 'resolution' You Should Avoid This Year, Business Insider

It’s no surprise that detoxes and cleanses are all the rage this January. Who didn’t spend the holidays wishing for a way to rid their bodies of some of 2017’s toxic content? The idea of a food or drink that can detoxify the body has a practical ring to it.

Plenty of foods and beverages can speed up our digestion. But simply ingesting large amounts of these products - not to mention skipping out on solid foods altogether - doesn’t result in a cleaner system. The original detox diet, called the Master Cleanse, was thought up in the 1940s by Stanley Burroughs as a “natural” way to treat stomach ulcers.

It consists of a daily regimen of 6-12 glasses of water mixed with lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and maple syrup, plus a laxative at bedtime. The method was never substantiated by any research. We could think of other words to describe the sensations of incipient starvation. Other less-extreme alternatives to the Master Cleanse include juicing, but studies suggest that the costly regimen is has not been linked with any significant health outcomes and may instead be bad for you.

Practices like juicing remove the most nutrient-dense components of fruits and vegetables and may even set some people up for disordered eating habits. When you turn produce into juice, you remove all of its fiber, the key ingredient that keeps you feeling full and satisfied until your next meal. But you keep the natural sugar - a bottle of one type of bottled green juice has more sugar than a can of Coke. The effects of a diet that’s high in sugar, low in protein, and low in fiber can be felt quickly.

You’re constantly hungry because there’s no fiber to fill you up. Meanwhile, the sugar you’re consuming temporarily raises your blood sugar, but with no protein to stabilize it, you wind up on a roller-coaster ride of high and low energy. And since your muscles feed on protein for energy, not ingesting any of it for long periods may cause you to lose muscle, according to an article in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism. 120 at the grocery store.

Take the list of ingredients for this three-day juice cleanse from the “Dr. 40 - and it represents just a single day on the three-day plan. Premade juices cold-pressed juices also exist. Another concern with detoxes is the way they can mimic unhealthy eating patterns. Some psychologists and dietitians worry that by having people severely restrict their eating or refrain entirely from some food groups, cleanses and detoxes can set people up for an eating disorder or worsen one that already exists.

Eating nothing but juice for several days may also bring back past eating problems, according to Megan Holt, a registered dietitian who wrote about cleansing in a recent post on her clinic’s website. “I tend to discourage fasting because it can reactivate disordered eating behaviors, whether that’s restriction or feeling out of control with food or feeling disconnected from hunger and fullness cues when one does start to eat again,” Holt said.

Fortunately, detoxes and cleanses aren’t necessary. Our kidneys filter our blood and remove waste from our diet. Our liver processes medications and detoxifies any chemicals we ingest. Together, these organs make our bodies natural cleansing powerhouses. “Unless there’s a blockage in one of these organs that do it day and night, there’s absolutely no need to help the body get rid of toxins,” family physician Ranit Mishori of the Georgetown University School of Medicine told NPR. Mishori has spent years reviewing the medical literature on cleanses.

The key is to eat the right types of fats. The “good’ fats are monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats like olive oil, canola oil, sunflower oil, safflower oil, and avocados, to name a few. The “bad” fats are partially hydrogenated oils, and trans fats. Most processed foods contain large amounts of these bad fats.

13. Drink plenty of fresh, clean water. Yes, I know that you have probably heard this one over and over again. But there’s a reason for that - it’s that important! The recommended daily intake of water is 8 glasses, or 64 oz. You should even be drinking even more if you are active or exercise regularly.

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