Do I Need A Detox?

This week we are keeping it short with another frequent question we get about nutrition: Should I do a detox? 

The short answer is no. There are no quality studies done that show a detox to be helpful. There are a few studies where they do a detox with a low calorie diet and people lose weight and various health markers improve. However, when we go on a low calorie diet, people lose weight and health markers improve so the detox portion has no significance over the data. Our bodies are set up exceedingly well and any “toxin” will be taken care of by your liver, kidney and immune system. 

There is one small caveat that I would like to acknowledge. When you study people who have lost a significant amount of weight and kept it off, there are a couple trends there. One is they have to change how they perceive themselves. Actor Ethan Suplee, most known for his role in Remember the Titans, has lost 200+ lbs. He uses the phrase “killed my clone” where he describes his previous body as a clone of who he was. This is how he separates his past self and his past relationships with food and exercise from how he currently is and wants to be. Some individuals (anecdotal evidence, no hard studies) have found it beneficial to mark the beginning of a change with something like a detox. This can have more psychological benefits than physiological but can help someone along the process. 

So no don’t do a detox unless you are using it as a mental tool or to mark the beginning of something or as a fun challenge to do. Just understand detoxes have no physiological merit.