To read the Internet ads, you'd think that our bodies were awash in "toxins" -- usually unspecified -- and that we should therefore go to dramatic lengths, such as "colon cleansing" and chelation, to get rid of all this bad stuff.
Don't believe it. Or to put it more gently, don't risk your health or your pocketbook on programs that promise to "detoxify" you -- not without doing your homework first. For starters, ask exactly what these supposed "toxins" are. And think twice -- or 20 times -- before undergoing chelation, a procedure that uses powerful drugs to rid your body of heavy metals, such as mercury and lead.
Some alternative medicine practitioners, such as Dr. Glenn Rothfeld, medical director of WholeHealth New England in Arlington, Mass., believe that cleaning out the colon occasionally may help some people, particularly those with irritable bowel syndrome, "though whether it helps by getting rid of toxins is not clear."
And there's some evidence, Rothfeld said, that the digestive tracts of people who eat typical Western diets may move wastes along more slowly than those of people who eat more fiber. In theory, this longer "transit time" could mean that some substances, like nitrosamines, which are found in preserved meats and are carcinogenic in animals, have more time to cause trouble.
But, generally, people don't need to take dramatic steps to "detoxify" themselves because human bodies have multiple systems for getting rid of wastes: by sweating, exhaling, urinating and defecating. If you really want a "clean" system, eat more fruits and vegetables and less junk food, all of which we're supposed to do anyway.
One testimonial ad, next to a truly gross picture on www.drnatura.com, reads, "How would you feel if long pieces of old toxin-filled fecal matter were stuck to the inside of your colon for months or even years?" But it's simply not true that waste material gets stuck indefinitely in the colon -- though the cleansing products themselves can form the gels that look like huge stools.
"I've heard my kids say that there's stuff in the GI [gastrointestinal] tract for seven years," said Dr. Douglas Pleskow, a gastroenterologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. "That is the urban legend. In reality, most people clear their GI tract within three days."
Fuzzy science
