Monday, April 16, 2007

What Is a Detox Diet?

Although detox diet theories have not been proven scientifically, the people who support detox diets believe that toxins don't always leave our bodies properly during the elimination of waste. Instead, they say toxins hang around in our digestive, lymph, and gastrointestinal systems as well as in our skin and hair. According to proponents of detox diets, these toxins can cause all kinds of problems, like tiredness, headaches, and nausea.

So the basic idea behind detox diets is to temporarily give up certain kinds of foods that are thought to contain toxins. The idea is to purify and purge the body of all the "bad" stuff.
Although detox diets vary, most of them involve some version of a fast: that is, giving up food for a couple of days and then gradually reintroducing certain foods into the diet. Many of these diets also encourage you to undergo colonic irrigation, otherwise known as giving yourself enemas to "clean out" your colon. (An enema flushes out the rectum and colon using water.) Still others recommend that you take herbal supplements to help the "purification" process.
There are tons of detox diets out there. Typically they involve 1 or 2 days on a completely liquid diet and another 4 or 5 days adding brown rice, fruit, and steamed vegetables to the diet. After a week of eating only these foods, you gradually reintroduce other foods — except for red meat, wheat, sugar, eggs, and all prepackaged or junk foods — into your diet.