The big meal holiday is over, but the eating season has just begun. All through the holidays I’ll offer up some pro advice on how to enjoy the festivities guilt free.
A notion I commonly hear in Hollywood circles is that after a big binge, the body needs to purge with a detoxification process.
Detox proponents say the body is under constant assault from toxins such as smog, pesticides, artificial sweeteners, sugar, and alcohol. Without a periodic cleansing, these poisons accumulate in the body and cause headaches, fatigue, and a variety of chronic diseases.
But the science behind the detox theory is deeply flawed, says Peter Pressman, MD, an internal medicine specialist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. The body already has multiple systems in place — including the liver, kidneys, and gastrointestinal tract — that do a perfectly good job of eliminating toxins from the body within hours of consumption.
“There’s no evidence at all that any of these approaches augment the body’s own mechanisms,” Pressman tells WebMD.
Maybe you scarfed down 2nd and 3rd helpings, but starving by detoxification is not the way to bounce back. Your body needs food to fuel, so put something good in there today!
