In a second-floor classroom at the American University for Complementary Medicine, 15 adults are feasting on a vegetarian potluck dinner of plantains, tomatoes, lentils, avocados and dairy-free brownies. They’ve spent the last week on a liquids-only fast, part of a 21-day “detoxification” program.
They are jubilant that their ordeal is over.
They feel cleaned out.
They feel pure.
Detoxification has become an essential feature of the holistic health movement. It is based on the controversial premise that people’s bodies accumulate toxins that result in poor health and disease. According to proponents, humans are bombarded with substances that can poison them, ranging from food additives and other dietary culprits to hormone replacement therapy, chlorinated water, microwave radiation, even anger and other negative emotions.
The concept has struck a chord with a public besieged with warnings about the dangers of “mad” cows, Alar-laced apples, smog alerts and sugar substitutes.
“This is a movement that has no choice but to pick up steam because we live in a toxic environment,” said Dr. Richard DeAndrea, the instructor for the program held at the school. “The water doesn’t taste right. The air doesn’t look right. It’s intuitive.”
That message has spawned a mini-industry of books, seminars, health and beauty products and other treatments that are based on the idea of enhancing health by cleansing, or detoxifying, one’s body. “It’s sort of like a spring cleaning,” said Todd Runestad, managing editor of Nutrition Science News, a trade publication in Boulder, Colo.
Detox therapies run the gamut from sweat lodges and herbal supplements to invasive medical treatments, such as chelation, in which a chemical is infused into the blood to purify it. Another technique is colonic irrigation, a delicate procedure during which a rubber tube is passed through the rectum and warm water is pumped in to flush the large intestine.
Detox diets, typically featuring juice fasts and a reliance on fruits and vegetables, are the most popular of the various methods.
Dr. Elson Hass, a Marin County, Calif., physician who has written several books touting detoxification, explained the concept this way. Toxins, he said, “get into the fat tissue and the liver and connective tissue and cause the body to become less elastic or inflamed or congested or deficient of nutrients. Detoxification is about giving your body a rest from something, whether it is sugar or nicotine, alcohol, caffeine or chemicals in foods or drugs.”
Controversial claims
It’s hard to argue with the idea that the environment is not as healthy for humans as it used to be. And the recommendation to eat a diet rich in fresh vegetables and fruit is widely accepted by medical experts. Though these two ideas provide a certain logical appeal to the detoxification movement, other aspects are controversial.
The claim by detoxification proponents that our bodies stockpile a range of toxins–and that treatments and products can purify the body–is strongly disputed by many medical experts. They contend there is no scientific basis for the claims made by some doctors and other health practitioners who promote detox therapies.
One detox program marketed on the Internet makes the claim that people can suffer from “intestinal toxemia,” a condition in which “food can literally rot inside the digestive tract and produce toxic byproducts.” Another Internet site, www.fasting.com, advocates juice fasting for “removing the 5 to 10 pounds of toxic chemicals now locked into the average adult’s cell, tissue and organ-storage areas.”
Though exposure to dangerous chemicals is associated with several illnesses, there is no evidence that widespread poisoning is causing things such as headaches and allergies, said Dr. Michael Hirt, director of the Center for Integrative Medicine at Encino-Tarzana Regional Medical Center in Los Angeles. “A lot of people lack sleep, eat too much sugar and have too much stress. Toxins are not their problem. Their lifestyle is their problem.”
Hirt believes that some people are turning to detox programs because they are not getting enough advice about dietary and lifestyle changes from their doctors or government health officials.
Getting government attention
Believing that a person can rid themselves of poisons through detoxifying, he said, “is magical thinking. Toxins in the environment may be causing you trouble, but you won’t necessarily be helped by these therapies that are loosely based on science.”
Rich Cleland, a senior attorney at the Federal Trade Commission, says the word “detoxify” rings alarm bells with government investigators. The FTC challenges detoxification claims only if the manufacturer also says the product treats or cures disease. But many detox product claims skirt the law, Cleland said.
“If [consumers] interpret detoxification to mean that this treatment is going to remove all the harmful substances from their body, then a company would have to substantiate that,” he said. “If they couldn’t, then the claim could be considered deceptive.”
In August, the FTC announced that Liverite Products Inc. of Tustin, Calif., will pay $60,000 to settle FTC charges that the company made unsubstantiated claims. Liverite claimed the supplement, which contains extract of beef liver, detoxified the liver and helped treat alcohol-induced liver disease, hepatitis and cirrhosis.
Other detoxification therapies, though not unlawful, are not based on science, critics say.
Chelation, for example, is an accepted medical practice for removing heavy metals from the blood in clear cases of poisoning. But chelation also has become popular among some medical doctors who claim it helps remove from the blood substances, such as calcium, that cause heart damage.
The American Heart Association, for one, has said there is no evidence for such claims. In 1998, the FTC fined a Laguna Hills, Calif., company for making claims that chelation therapy is effective for treating heart disease.
A natural process
Another popular detox practice, colonic irrigation, is said to remove toxins that reside in the colon. But many doctors say there is no evidence that the intestines build up waste and that the colon naturally sheds its lining about every seven days.
Despite ancient traditions, the major flaw in the detoxification theory is that no one can identify specific toxins that are stored in the body, causing illness, critics say.
Haas, the Marin County doctor who was an early proponent of detoxification in the 1970s, acknowledged that there is little evidence for many detox claims. “I wish I could give you the science behind it, but there is very little,” he said. “It hasn’t been studied.”
Other detox practitioners say that studies linking certain foods to allergies, asthma, ear infections and migraines demonstrate that food can cause toxicity. They also contend that fat biopsies, hair analyses and caffeine clearance tests (tests to measure how rapidly the liver removes caffeine from the blood) can prove toxicity.
“We don’t use these tests very much anymore because they are more expensive than just getting the treatment,” said Kevin Conroy of Bastyr University, a naturopathic medical school in Bothell, Wash. Even without diagnostic tests, he said, 90 percent of all his clients need detoxification. He said the symptoms of toxicity include bad breath, fatigue, sensitivity to chemicals, allergies, headaches and itching.
“People feel horrible as things are coming out” during the detox, Conroy said. “But after two or three weeks they feel wonderful. They have high energy. Their gastrointestinal and arthritic symptoms are resolved and they have mental clarity.”
