Detox diets do they works?
Manama : It is really difficult not to get lured by the detox industry which claims that eating a pile of vegetables will wash away all our caloric sins.
The idea sounds too good and easy that many simply believe that drinking a ‘lemon cleanse’ for a week will flush out all the toxins from their body and will leave their organs squeaky clean.
However, experts differ and reject the idea and call it a scam or pseudo-medical concept to sell things, as they believe diet and exercise are the only proven way to get healthy.
“There is no scientific evidence for all of this advice,” says Dr Mathews Joseph Chooracken, a Gastroenterologist, as “these are all based on anecdotal evidence.”
The reason for the popularity, he says, might be “someone has tried it and it worked for them so they may be advising others.”
Some may have found results, he says, but may not hold true for the patients on a large scale.
“We still don’t know anything about the effectiveness of the methods, for they haven’t been studied properly.”
Contrary to the popular belief, Dr Chooracken, who recently joined Middle East Hospital (MEH), says, following detox diets may not have any a miraculous effect on the body though it has been gaining some popularity among those who wish to live a healthy lifestyle or to heal from diseases.
“The assumption behind detox is that you consume a particular food and it goes through the body cleaning the body in the process,” he says “I don’t think it works like that, in reality, it is far more complex than that.”
Dr Chooracken also rejects the idea of superfoods. “Instead of following an extreme diet, one needs to adopt healthy lifestyle choices to remain healthy,” he says.
Most importantly he also points out that to live healthier “one needs to exercise”. “One should also make sure that the dietary intake is varied.”
“You need to take vegetables, fruits, proteins and all nutrients the body needs,” Dr Chooraken says. “Mediterranean diet is a classic example of a healthy diet.”
Dr Chooraken also explained how unhealthy eating impacts the body. “Unhealthy eating is when the constituents of a diet are from one food group only such as a high protein diet or a high carbohydrate diet or when there are a lot of chemicals in what you are eating,” he says.
“All these can give rise to a heavy metabolic load into the liver, besides you are not getting many antioxidants.
So we develop something called oxygen radicals, he says, which can cause damage to the cells
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