Recently a group of my friends undertook a group 'cleanse'.  They didn't shower or bathe together - they all purchased large bottles of Acai pills and followed the bottles' instructions for a week long cleansing of the toxins in their cells... (if you can already sense my skepticism, you're correct).   They ate only fruit and vegetables (cooked or raw, no salt) - no dairy, no meat, little protein.  They drank extra water, and they gave up their vices: no cigarettes, no caffeine, no alcohol.  After a few days all of them felt fantastic - they were sleeping better, they had more energy, their minds felt more alert - in short, they were happy and they felt healthy.  But, is the marketing claim accurate?  Does this type of diet (complete with Acai supplementation) really 'cleanse the toxins from our cells'??

 The facts are this - yes, cutting out cigarettes/alcohol/caffeine or increasing water consumption can make you feel great and sleep better all on their own.  And yes, increasing your intake of fruits and vegetables and decreasing your intake of less healthy foods (fillers like processed carbohydrates, trans fats, sugars, excess salt, saturated fats from dairy and meat, etc) will also make you feel fantastic.  That's why nutrition is a science - because the nutrients we take into our bodies have a physiological effect, so some things we ingest are better for our health than others.

But the pseudoscience is in the marketing claim that this type of diet does a better job at cleansing or detoxifyng our body than our naturally occuring pysiological systems: our digestive system, immune system, the liver and kidney, the circulatory system - in short, our body has a well-evolved system of maintaining homeostasis, despite the hurdles we throw at it like being drunk (and then hungover), ingesting harmful smoke, taking medications that need to be broken down, or eating poorly (or too much).

 In recent times, people who are desperate to feel or look better are often lead astray by marketing instead of following the advice of trusted medical science professionals.  The FDAs regulation of the growing number of fad diets, trendy health practices, and supplements is sorely lacking.  Claims are often made and then eventually retracted once the FDA catches up.  Recall the bottled water with all those little oxygen bubbles, which claimed to boost the oxygen consuption of your cells if you drank the water?  Well, scientists quickly pointed out that the oxygen in the water either dissipates when the bottle opens, or disappears in our mouth and digestive tract - much before it can reach the cellular level.  These bottles of water are now very difficult to find on grocery store shelves.

 Sometimes our body's homeostatic systems and our hardworking liver and bloodstream are overwhelmed.  Too much alcohol or too many paracetamol or acetaminophen (ie: Tylenol) tablets are two examples that have hit the lay press - each can be fatal when the body's systems are overwhelmed with trying to break down and dispose of too much of a foreign substance.  But there is absolutely  no data to show that a detox or cleanse diet (or the supplements) can assist our body in this fight, and it might even create additional products needing disposal, further overwhelming the system.

 As for the Acai pills in my friends' cleanse and detox regime - these pills are a mix of Acai/blueberry/cranberry extracts, all very high in Vitamin C, one of the best antioxidants in nature.  'Antioxidant' has sadly become a buzz word in our society.  Yes, antioxidants in our bodies are necessary to scavenge the harmful free-radicals that are created during our normal metabolic procesees.  However, antioxidants are a classic example of having too much of a good thing- high levels are now linked with poor health outcomes.  And there is no proof that taking these pills will help cleanse our cells of toxins beyond what our body is doing already.  The liver is a fantastic organ, and can accomplish most of our body's detoxification itself.  Regardless of marketing hype which warns that modern society bombards us with toxins that our body can't handle (pollution, smog, smoke, etc, etc, etc) - a healthy liver can and does keep up with this all by itself.

I attempted to find a good website with information on how the liver (and other of our body's homeostatic systems) accomplish physiological detoxification - but any search term I typed into google resulted in hundreds and hundreds of bogus websites promoting a detox product! While I can't copy any textbook diagrams here, the best I could find on the web was from WebMD:

"The liver and kidneys do a good job of processing chemicals and eliminating them in sweat, urine, and feces. For example, the colon's natural bacteria detoxify food wastes and its mucus membranes prevent bacteria and toxins from reentering the body. The liver combines its own chemicals with other chemicals, making water-soluble compounds that your kidneys can excrete in urine."

In summary, while there are some things to be gained from so-called cleanse/detox diets, such as helping to determine a food allergy or insensitivity (ie: lactose, gluten), cutting calories, increasing intake of healthy foods, or cutting out bad habits like smoking, these diets should be undertaken with utmost scrutiny and care.  And hopefully an understanding that you are not in fact cleansing your body's cells - in most cases, you are undertaking a more nutritious regime. (Note: some diets/regimes  sold as 'detox' or 'cleanse' have been shown to be quite harmful, so you should always consult a doctor before undertaking any new diet or exercise plan.)

++WebMD, a trusted online medical resource, offers these detox myth busters:

http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/detox-diets-purging-myths

++Another great blog post on a related topic can be found here:

http://www.badscience.net/2007/01/science-and-fiction/#more-352