Popular detox diets promise to flush poisons from your body, purge pounds of excess fat, clear your complexion and bolster your immune system, but experts say there’s little evidence that extreme regimens such as the Master Cleanse or Fruit Flush do anything more than lead to unpleasant, unhealthy side effects.
That has not stopped these programs from flying off the shelves. Removing unwanted chemicals is not a new idea, it is something that is well established but it becomes the thing to do for a short period of time. We are inundated with choices of how we can detox our bodies, and many of us are looking to do this more and more.
That is what has nutrition experts sounding the alarm over possible risks from lengthy or repeated fasts. Vitamin deficiencies, muscle breakdown and blood-sugar problems not to mention frequent liquid bowel movements are some of the seriously unpleasant drawbacks to these plans, which are skimpy on solid foods and often call for laxatives. Depriving the body of the vitamins and minerals we get from food can actually weaken the body’s ability to fight infections and inflammation.
The scores of detox diet books and kits out there each have their own take on how to cleanse the body, one calls for spices and fruit juices, another for only vegetable purees, and many of them claim to help a person lose fat naturally, but most of them boil down to extremely low-calorie, primarily liquid diets.
The idea behind a detox diet, which can last anywhere from three days to about a month, is to rid the body of toxins absorbed from the environment and the less than healthy foods we eat, and this cleansing is supposed to leave you feeling energized.
The restrictive nature of some programs is so extreme that a person will only take in fluids and supplements for a period of time to cleanse their body. Many intestinal experts say we don’t need an extreme diet to cleanse our insides. We have a way to flush these poisons out of us through our waste and sweat that does not require a person to do anything special unless these are stopped by something else that is wrong. And by attempting to flush out the bad stuff from our intestines you’re also flushing out the good bacteria that keep the intestines healthy.
The side effects from prolonged, severe calorie restriction can include headache, fatigue, irritability, aches and pains.
Another side effect of the cleansing system is the increased frequency of loose bowel movements, something that is never fun to deal with. Constant bouts of diarrhea will lead a person to many other unpleasant symptoms that might not be worth the effort.
One of the claims that is made by the makers of these programs is that they will boost the amount of energy a person has and this has not been shown to happen to everyone. If your body is not taking in enough calories for an extended period of time, it will go into a conservation mode that actually makes you feel less energized. The fact that a body is not getting the nutrition it needs also makes it take whatever it can from any source, which means it doe not just burn fat to create energy.
The idea of these cleansing system is not to create the ability to permanently lose the fat on their body, they are meant as a way to jump start a more healthy lifestyle that does not allow the fat to return. This is especially true for the highly restrictive varieties. The detox plans are a great way for a person to get into a weight loss plan, but if they don’t change their unhealthy habits they will regain the weight and probably more over the long term.
The reality of losing weight is that there are no quick fixes, no matter how famous the person is who is telling you about their program a person still needs to follow a proper diet while they exercise on a daily basis to keep their body working the way it is supposed to.
Read More About: A Detoxing Program Is Not Always Safe
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