What Is Detox?

Less health-minded individuals are likely to continue to associate detoxification with the process of beating an addiction to drugs or alcohol with medical supervision and intervention. However, detoxification can mean many things.[/b]

For example, natural detoxification happens to your body anytime you eliminate the natural by-products of living. Anytime you oxidize chemicals that you’ve taken into your body or anytime you excrete waste, your body is naturally detoxifying itself. Your kidneys and liver specifically are constantly detoxing your blood and cleansing your body.

However, naturopathic and alternative medicine, health-minded individuals and others often refer to a different kind of detoxification when they refer to “detox.” This covers multiple methods of removing toxins, foods or environmental “build up” from their bodies. Proponents claim that removing these toxins using various methods (discussed below) helps the body to work more efficiently, due to its cleansed state. In addition, some have made claims about detoxification’s affect on specific diseases and ailments.


Detoxification methods vary considerably, and include diet-based detox (the most common method), herbal detox, electrical/electromagnetic, colon hydrotherapy, and organ-specific detox, among others.

Diet-based and Fasting Detoxifications

The most common form of detoxification, diet and fasting based detox, consists of altering or limiting your food intake in order to support your body or to remove contaminants.

Diet detoxifications vary amongst themselves, even, but most seem to have a few factors in common. For example, most rely on fruits and vegetables as the main source of nutrition during the time of the fast. Usually, one must also forego contaminants such as alcoholic drinks, caffeinated beverages, processed foods, and heavy sugars. This would also, obviously, include giving up smoking.

However, diet-based detoxifications can vary from this formula quite a bit. For example, the limitations can include all foods except for fruit and vegetables. Sometimes detoxifications follow a strict regimen of specifically combined foods. Some programs require adding in highly valued substitute foods, such as fish.

Another variation is raw food detoxifications. These require that the patient eats only uncooked, naturally occurring foods. The idea behind a raw food detox lies in the fact that consuming raw foods frees up your body’s enzymes to work on health issues within the body, as opposed to needing to work on digesting your diet.

Another variation of a detox is complete fasting, usually with water or juice available. Fasters and practitioners believe that the body benefits from the break in digestion and is therefore able to use its resources in other ways, such as healing and balancing.

One very popular fast is known as Master Cleanse or the Lemonade Diet (link). This diet consists of taking in only a liquid recipe that is purportedly a very specific balance of sugars, vitamins and minerals, along with a liquid laxative for at least 10 days.

All restrictive diets, detoxifications and fasts have some potential problems, and should, therefore, be entered into with great care.

Herbal Detoxifications

Instead of focusing on taking elements, foods and items away from the body, herbal detoxifications focus more so on adding supplements, herbs, or other elements into the body in order to help your body cleanse and detox itself.

For example, many specific products, materials and remedies are available for this purpose, and are heavily advertised in naturopathic or homeopathic circles.

Electrical/Electromagnetic Detox

This specific method of detox is generally a foot bath in which one immerses their feet (or hands) in ionized or electromagnetic water. Internet sites that peddle the machine indicate that the water turns a certain color after use, meaning that the toxins have exited your body and are now in the water. The foot bath is available both online and at times as part of a spa treatment.

Colon Hydrotherapy

Irrigating the colon by introducing copious amounts of water through the rectum is called colon hydrotherapy or colonic irrigation. Proponents such as naturopathic specialists and spas indicate that clearing and cleansing the colon in this manner detoxifies the GI tract.

Sometimes colonic hydrotherapy detoxification involves introducing herbal mixtures, wheatgrass mixtures or added oxygen into the water used for the process. Some internet gurus and spas even advocate a specific coffee mixture be added to the enema for added detoxification.
This process of detoxification has a lot of critics, with some medical authorities advising against it.

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