Do You Need To Detox?

do=you-need-to-detox

So you’ve enjoyed yourself over Christmas and now it is time to detox, right?  Well no.  The Christmas period brings inactivity, heavy food consumption and prolonged exposure to one’s family.  These are all bad things and you are no longer at your best.   But none of them lead to any kind of build up of chemical toxins in your body.  In fact, the very concept of a toxin is a strange one.  A toxicologist refers to toxins but only in a very specific sense.  It means chemicals that interfere with the normal functioning of the body.   The original definition was restricted to substances produced by the body itself.  It was later extended to other natural materials with similar effects and synthetic ones.

So when you say toxin you are really simply saying poison in everyday language.  So take for example lactic acid.   This is the material that makes your muscles painful if you exercise for a long period of time.  It is released while you are moving your muscles.  Most of the time the lactic acid level is normal and it gives you no trouble.  But at high levels it becomes a toxin, preventing you from operating efficiently.   So in a sense you need to detox.  First stop running, and then take a rest.  But this is a process your body copes with just fine on its own.  There is no need to take any action to detox your muscles.  You don’t need to buy any product or follow any regime.

The same is true of most natural and synthetic toxins.  We have detox capabilities throughout the body with special capabilities in the liver.  These are on the look out for anything out of the ordinary and will take action if they find it.  There is very little that can beat these protective systems built up over our evolutionary history.

So there is no need to invest in proprietary drinks or special diets.  As for the various skin patches and foot pads that are supposed to absorb toxins, well the idea is laughable.  We simply have no practical way of selectively extracting anything from the body across the skin.  We certainly can’t pick out the toxins.  It isn’t even possible to work out what they are.

So basically, the only way to detox after Christmas is to get back to a normal routine.

Photo credit: ZionNPS via photopin cc

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