January; the season for detoxing, fasting, and dieting.
Whether it is trying to give up that ‘unhealthy habit’ or joining the gym, the
New Year always welcomes in healthy lifestyle changes...(or attempts at least).
It is always encouraging to see new, exhausted, sweaty faces
working hard in the gym in the New Year. It’s certainly great to see friends
and family have a shot at healthy eating. I hope that all the healthy New
Year’s resolutions have manage to sustain themselves into February! Keep up
that good work!
Personally, I always saw detoxing as a good concept, ‘flushing
out the system’ or ‘cleaning out your body’ type of thing but I recently
discovered….is all a myth. In fact it is impossible to detox your body when it
already successfully does it by itself.
This dieting stuff gets more and more scientific, the
more you get into it. And the more you realise how much of what you always thought
was true is just hearsay.
However, come to think about, if toxins were able to ‘build
up’ in a way your body could not eradicate them without detoxing every so
often, surely we would be in serious need of medical attention. Our bodies
wouldn’t be very sufficient would they?
Edzard Ernst, emeritus professor of complementary medicine
at Exeter University said “the healthy body has kidneys, a liver, skin, even
lungs that are detoxifying as we speak”.
In short it is all just a marketing swindle. Much of the detox
sales orbit the idea of “toxins”. Those people, myself included, that are silly
enough to believe that you can cleanse your system of any impurities is a
concept to sell you things. Nevertheless, let this myth be encouraging to maintaining
other truthful healthy choices you have made…and be sure to research before
embarking on diet fads!
By Jasmine Wing,
Journalism student and SportsDock member
