We may have known someone who has tried to follow a detox diet , or even recommending it, and we have become curious to know what it is and how it can help us.
Detox diets are intended to be the solution to all those bad habits that some tend to carry out, such as drinking alcohol or smoking, which fill our body with toxic substances harmful capable of generating a large amount of free radicals and causing oxidative stress damage.
Can these diets be really useful to us to improve our health and help the correct functioning of our body?
Do detox diets work?
Detox diets are born by the food industry that aims to profit from the sale of juices, shakes and detox products. This type of industry sells its diets and products in a way that makes us believe that consuming them will cleanse our body. However, this is completely false.
The simple compensation effect they pursue is a crude ruse: “Have we gorged ourselves on food or alcohol? Nothing happens, a few days based on juices or smoothies and everything solved! “
Detox diets are sold to us as a tool to clean toxins from the body , when the liver and kidney already perform this function without any problem.
Why are detox diets recommended?
These diets are usually recommended by professionals totally outside the field of nutrition. And in 99% of cases they are also accompanied by some miraculous and exaggeratedly expensive product that, in the opinion of those who recommend it, will also help us lose weight while we purify our body .
Generally, these miraculous products are usually juices, shakes or smoothies, with a very low calorie intake since they lack protein and essential fatty acids.
This can cause us to lose a lot of weight at first, not only because our portfolio will be emptied due to the price of the products they sell, but also because the caloric intake is too low.
In this way, detox diets meet all or almost all the premises of a miracle diet :
- They are short-term diets.
- Nutrients or food groups are completely eliminated (based exclusively on vegetable juices, for the most part).
- They promise quick weight loss, often having to buy a specific supplement (shakes, pills …).
What danger are detox diets?
If the calories we consume are insufficient for a long time, we will eventually lose some of our muscle mass. If this happens, we will burn fewer calories when we return to our usual diet. Therefore, we will suffer a rebound effect : we will gain more weight than we had at the beginning of the diet.
Detox diets benefit from the ignorance of those who think they need them, since these people are willing to invest a lot of money to correct the bad habits they have followed.
Conclution
It is not necessary to follow a detox diet if we have had excesses in the previous days. What we really need is to try to avoid having to fight these toxins. We can do this by avoiding alcohol intake or eating foods with a lot of sugar, palm fat or vegetable oils.
Physical activity can also help us eliminate these toxins. Like consuming foods rich in fiber, which will help the bacteria that live in our intestines to defend us against harmful substances.
