Detox Culture Under The Microscope

Detox teas. Juice cleanses. Colon flushes. Charcoal smoothies. If you’ve ever scrolled past a “7-day reset” and wondered, Wait, am I actually full of toxins, we’re talking to you. We dig into what detoxification really is in human physiology and why the wellness industry can make normal symptoms like fatigue, bloating, and brain fog feel like proof that you need a product. 

We walk through your body’s real detox systems: the liver as the metabolic powerhouse, the kidneys filtering waste into urine, the lungs clearing volatile compounds, and the GI tract eliminating what you don’t absorb. Then we compare that science to the claims behind popular detox programs and why solid clinical evidence for commercial detox diets in healthy people is so limited. You’ll hear why some people still “feel amazing” after a cleanse, and how that’s usually explained by basic lifestyle changes like better hydration, fewer ultra-processed foods, less alcohol, and more fruits and vegetables rather than any special toxin removal. 

We also get specific about trends: juice cleanses and the fiber problem, colon cleanses and real risks (including microbiome disruption and electrolyte issues), liver detox supplements like milk thistle and turmeric plus the rising issue of supplement-related liver injury, and the truth about activated charcoal and heavy metal detox claims. We end with what actually supports detox pathways with evidence-based lifestyle medicine: sleep, exercise, high-fiber whole foods, stress reduction, and knowing when symptoms deserve medical care instead of a “cleanse.” 

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Dr. Jules 

Transcript

Welcome Back And Detox Hype

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Yo, plant based buddies, welcome back to season three of the podcast. This year's gonna be amazing. We'll be talking about all of the different pillars of lifestyle medicine, from nutrition to exercise to stress to sleep and everything in between. Yo, plant-based buddies, welcome back to another episode. Today we're gonna be talking about one of the biggest wellness trends on social media, and that's detoxes. So, whether it's detox teas, liver cleanses, juice fast, colon cleanses. I've seen posts online about activated charcoal drinks and heavy metal detox powders or green juice resets or 7-day, 30-day, 10-day purification programs. The detox industry is worth billions of dollars and their marketing is brilliant. And that's because detox products prey on something that many people already have or already feel. They feel fatigued, inflamed, overwhelmed, sometimes even guilty about their eating habits and concerned about chemicals and toxins in our environments. And honestly, I understand why detox culture becomes important and very popular for a lot of people. I mean, modern life exposes us to a lot of different things that our bodies are were never really designed to handle in such high quantities, like ultra-processed foods or air pollution, alcohol, smoking, microplastics, poor sleep, chronic stress. So people naturally wonder maybe my body does need a reset or a detox. But most commercial detox programs, they dramatically oversimplify human physiology, and many of them sell fear more than they sell science. So today we'll break down this science of detox very carefully and scientifically. We'll talk about what detox actually means, whether they work, detox supplements, if they're worth taking.

Your Built In Detox Systems

SPEAKER_00 2:20

We'll skim over juice cleanses and colon cleanses and liver cleanses and activated charcoal and heavy metal detoxes, and why some detox supplements will actually put your liver at risk for damage. And what truly supports your own body's detox systems? Because yes, your body already has a detox system. In fact, you have several detox systems: your liver, your kidneys, your lungs, your GI tract, your gastrointestinal tract, even your skin has its own built-in detoxification system. These systems work continuously every single day, and they don't need a $20 subscription for a tea or a supplement that's endorsed by an influencer. But when it comes to our own detox systems, the liver is the superstar. Your liver is extraordinary, and inside of your liver, there's already complex detox systems that are able to chemically transform substances so they become easier to eliminate. And then your kidneys will filter many of these waste products and put them into your urine. Your lungs are even able to remove volatile compounds when you breathe, and your GI tract removes most of the waste that you consume through food in your stools. And this is happening all day long, right now, without you even noticing. Now, when when you look at the scientific literature, there's actually very little clinical evidence that show that commercial detox products do anything or improve any of these detox processes in healthy individuals. In fact, there's one critical review that found that there were no randomized control trials. The gold standard in scientific research, no randomized control trials actually looking at the effectiveness of commercial detox diets in humans. Now, that's pretty impressive when you consider how massive this industry has actually become. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean that everything that's labeled as a detox is automatically useless. Some detox programs they accidentally improve health for reasons that were completely unrelated to eliminating toxins. Now, for example, if someone normally eats fast food three times a day, drinks alcohol, barely consumes vegetables, and suddenly switches to a juice cleanse or to a fruit, vegetable, and hydration strategy, they'll probably feel better, but that doesn't mean that toxins were being flushed out. Probably means that they reduced their calories, they improved their hydration, they ate more micronutrients than the diet they consumed before. They may be cleansed from alcohol, which is which is great. And many of these people are increasing

Juice Cleanses And Missing Fiber

SPEAKER_00 5:35

fiber intake, reducing sodium, reducing ultra-processed foods. Now, these are legitimate improvements in your physiology and in your lifestyle. But that's very different from the dramatic detox marketing claims that we see online. So if we look at one of the most popular detox trends, a juice cleanse, this program typically involves drinking only fruit and vegetable juices for several days in a row. The claims that are surrounding this type of detox program are typically dramatic, like you flush your toxins or reset your gut health, or you're cleansing your liver or boosting your metabolism. But the scientific evidence that supports these actual claims is pretty weak, and the American Cancer Society states that there is no scientific evidence that juice cleansing reduces cancer risk or provides any unique health benefits beyond a normal healthy diet. Now, for a lot of people, juice cleanses means that they're actually having more minerals and vitamins and phytochemicals, maybe, than they are on their base diet. So for some people, it's actually an improvement when compared to the baseline diet they were consuming before. But the irony is that juicing often removes one of the healthiest components of fruits and vegetables, and that's fiber. When you produce juice, much of the fiber actually gets stripped away. So now you're just consuming rapidly absorbable sugars without the same satiety or the same benefits that you would get for your microbiome that you would find in whole foods. Now and some juice-only diets may actually become nutritionally inadequate. In some cases, excessive intake of certain juices has been associated with like kidney injury from kidney stones or oxalates. There's one small study that involved 20 adults on a three-day juice diet that showed temporary weight loss and microbiome changes. Now, these could be perceived as useful when compared to a baseline diet that was unhealthy, but these effects are really short-lived because people go back to their normal way of living. And importantly, these studies did not demonstrate any actual detoxification. Now, juice cleanses have no magical properties, and I'd much rather people blend their fruit into a smoothie where the fiber, the minerals, the phytochemicals that are attached to the fiber are maintained, whereas people who are juicing are typically removing the most important nutrient in the human diet, which is fiber. Now,

Colon Cleanses And Real Risks

SPEAKER_00 8:35

I know people that even have done colon cleanses, and this one always fascinates me because the marketing is very aggressive. The idea is that there's waste or stools rotting inside of your colon and you need to flush it out. So people will undergo colon hydrotherapy, enemas, or laxative-based cleanses. But a systematic review in the American Journal of Gastroenterology found that no well-done, no rigorous evidence supports colon cleansing for help promotion. But some of the documented complications that people can put themselves through with colon cleanses are often minimized. Now, people can get bowel perforation, bowel infections, and even abnormalities of their electrolytes. Now, your colon is not designed like dirty kitchen drain pipe that accumulates sludge. Your intestinal lining continuously renews itself and your body already removes waste effectively through normal bowel movements. And when people are doing these colon cleanses, they're flushing away a lot of the good bacteria that actually make up their microbiome. So colon cleanses, although it might make your waste feel slimmer for a few days, or might actually remove bloating for two to three days, may actually be doing more harm than good. And ironically, one of the best ways to support healthy bowel function is something far less glamorous than a colon cleanse. It's eating more fiber, fiber of an adequate quantity and of wide variety, eating beans and lentils and vegetables and whole grains or fruit. It's not an expensive colon irrigation package. Now, a lot of people ask me about liver detox supplements, and what I find especially bizarre is that people typically start taking these supplements after they've they have a documented liver injury. So people will go for routine

Liver Supplements And Hidden Harm

SPEAKER_00 10:55

blood work, will find a fatty liver or uh inflammation, increase liver enzymes, and that's when they start liver supplements. I'm like, that's probably the last thing you want to do when your liver is already inflamed, is to give it more chemicals to metabolize. Now, liver detoxes are one of the biggest supplement categories online, and many ingredients will contain like milk thistle or turmeric or dandelion root, green tea extract, or activated charcoal. And milk thistle is probably the most famous of all liver supplements. And unlike many supplements, it actually has been studied in liver disease. Now, in certain specific liver conditions, some studies show modest improvements in liver enzymes in people who are using milk thistle, while other studies show no meaningful improvement in survival or in disease progression. Remember that hard outcomes, liver disease, liver death, liver progression, are much more telling than studies that show changes in enzymes. Now, there's no evidence that milk thistle meaningfully detoxifies healthy people. And often this type of data is exaggerated, and turmeric is another fascinating example. Turmeric contains curcumin which has it has antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. And there's legitimate scientific interest in curcumin research. There are great studies showing antioxidant, anti-inflammatory inflammatory potential, and maybe even reducing pain in people who have arthritis, but a lot of people assume that because it's natural, it means harmless. That's not true. Turmeric and curcumin have legitimate pharmacological potency, and some of these supplements have actually been implicated in drug-induced liver injury. In fact, herbal supplement-related liver injury has risen dramatically over the last few decades. And one of these one of the biggest issues is with the supplement industry. People assume that supplements undergo the same type of rigorous safety testing as medications do, but they do not. And the FDA or Health Canada doesn't require prospective clinical trials before many of these dietary supplements reach the market. Now, some supplements are mislabeled, some contain contaminants, and we have studies showing that some of these supplements contain completely different ingredients than what's listed. Natural doesn't automatically mean safe. So if you are going to go try these supplements, make sure to talk to a naturopathic doctor, to a pharmacist, or to your physician to make sure that it's not interacting. A lot of these patients, they're taking a whole lot of herbal extracts that have that are potent and that can absolutely interact with medications like blood thinners or anti-inflammatories or other medications that are metabolized by your kidneys

Charcoal Drinks And Heavy Metal Fear

SPEAKER_00 14:25

or liver. Now, one that I've seen lately online is activated charcoal. Now, activated charcoal absolutely has a legitimate role in medicine, and in emergency departments, it's used after certain acute poisonings if it's administered quickly after ingestion. But social media transformed this medical therapy into a daily detox charcoal smoothie. And there's no good evidence supporting routine charcoal use in healthy individuals. But meanwhile, activated charcoal may interfere with the absorption of medications and can actually carry a risk like GI obstruction and problems with your electrolytes. So and I see a lot of these detox is used to detox heavy metals. And this is another area where fear will spread a lot faster online than the actual scientific proof. And it's true that heavy metal poisoning actually really exists, right? Lead poisoning, mercury poisoning, arsenic poisoning, these are real medical conditions that we see in the clinic. And shellation therapy has real medical indications in documented toxic exposures. But many people are being convinced that vague symptoms like fatigue or brain fog or bloating or headaches automatically mean that you have a high heavy metal load or even heavy metal toxicity. But that's usually not the case. An inappropriate chillation therapy can carry risks like kidney injury, mineral deficiencies, and even redistribution of metals within your own body. And that nuance is really important because medicine and modern medicine absolutely recognize that toxins does they do exist and it does require medical therapy in certain specific conditions, but there's this detox culture that uses the word toxins very vaguely and even emotionally, and they create fear. And by creating fear, they can sell their products. Now, if you ask someone selling these detoxes, what specific toxin are you actually removing with your product? How are you measuring the presence of this toxin or its removal? What biochemical pathway is actually altered,

Evidence Based Detox Support Habits

SPEAKER_00 17:05

or what clinical outcomes are you looking to improve? You'll probably hear the answer becoming surprisingly vague. Now, the part that I find most interesting is that many of these detox programs actually accidentally point people towards genuinely healthy behaviors. Now we all agree that people should be hydrating more and eating more veggies and limiting alcohol, reducing ultra-processed foods, sleeping better, and being more mindful. Because these things absolutely have been shown to improve health. But we don't need to be making pseudoscientific detox claims. And one of the best ways to support your body's natural detox system is honestly pretty boring. It's sleeping adequately, exercising regularly, not smoking, limiting alcohol, eating high fiber whole foods, maintaining a healthy body weight, reducing ultra-processed foods, and drinking water. But that's not sexy, it will never go viral, but it contributes to probably 99% of support that your natural detox systems need. Fiber deserves a special mention here because your GI tract, your gastrointestinal tract, plays a major role in eliminating toxins. Fiber helps you promote bowel regularity, it feeds beneficial gut bacteria, it helps produce short chain fatty acid production, and it actually binds certain compounds in the gut. And whole plant foods support all of these systems naturally. Cruciferous veggies like broccoli, kale, brussels sprouts, and cabbage, they actually contain compounds involved in liver enzyme activity and detox pathways. Again, not because they cleanse the liver, but because nutrition provides chemical compounds that supports your own physiology. And if your liver can't detox properly, you do not need an Instagram detox tea. You need urgent medical attention because real liver failure is life-threatening. And that's one of the main reasons that detox marketing becomes problematic, is that when people have liver injury or elevated liver enzymes or a fatty liver, that's when they tend to reach for liver supplements. You're kicking your liver while it's down, and all of this actually trivializes actual toxicology and liver disease. Now, the bottom line is that your body has a highly sophisticated detox system and it has multiple systems, and most commercial detox programs they don't have strong clinical evidence showing that they're useful. And some of these detox supplements, they may even cause harm, especially liver injury. And any people that experience benefits from detoxes, that's probably more likely explained by the temporary improvement in overall lifestyle habits. People don't need expensive teas or a juice-only fast or a colon irrigation. The best thing you can do for your detox systems is to leave them alone and stop overwhelming them and supporting

A Detox Diet That Pushes Bacon

SPEAKER_00 20:45

them with lifestyle medicine. A focus on sleep, stress reduction, social connection, eating more healthy whole plant foods that are high in fiber, and making sure to exercise regularly. Now, somewhat the reason what spawned this whole episode is that I received an email. Now, what I found fascinating about this email and really prompted me to do this episode is that they the email asked me if I ever did a podcast episode on detoxes. I really didn't think that detoxes deserved any airtime. So I had never until now. But the email said, look, I just registered for a three-week detox, and I find it very restrictive. And they're recommending that we eat a lot of red meat, a lot of processed red meat, even bacon, but no whole grains, legumes, dairy products, or sugar. Now, first of all, I probably agree with reducing the amount of added sugar that people have on their diet, but people tend to include fruits and veggies when they they detox sugar, which just makes no sense to me. And it doesn't make any sense to anyone with Any scientific background. Reducing dairy products, although I do not consume dairy products, low-fat dairy and fermented dairy has been shown to be beneficial for most people in their diet. So if you're talking about reducing hard, high saturated fat cheeses or ice cream, I think I would agree with that. But reducing whole grains and legumes, the foods that are the most associated with cardiovascular and cancer protection, I don't really get it. Now there's a reason that whole grains occupy 25% of the plate on our Canadian food guide, because eating more whole grains have been associated with disease risk reduction. So restricting them as a part of a detox diet would make no sense to me. And the same thing as legumes, beans, chickpeas, lentils, and soy products are absolutely help promoting. They're high in fiber, vitamin, minerals, low in saturated fat. I mean, it just makes no sense to me that we would say this detox should include red and processed meats, class one and two carcinogens. They don't restrict bacon, but they restrict whole grains and legumes. So I get the point of the detox. If the detox is simply to also focus on other lifestyle habits like sleeping better, reducing alcohol, reducing ultra-processed foods, I would agree with that, but I'm guessing that this detox is not based on science at all, because any detox that would restrict legumes and whole grains, but recommend bacon and red meat would just not be based in reality or in any high-quality science. But that being said, maybe that detox is also recommending 30 minutes of walking and no alcohol and better sleep and stress management and mindfulness. So that's why there's always a glimmer of truth in most of these programs. But I I would just love to see a detox program based on science, number one. And if so, it would be called healthy lifestyle habits. The term detox is highly marketable online, and people really think that they're buying a solution to one of their problems. And for a lot of people, unfortunately, those who purchase these detoxes do so because they're vulnerable and because they're looking for a hack or a quick solution that will magically take care of their problems. And unfortunately, the reality is if we're looking at the top most important pillars based on the hungest quality scientific literature, it is not tea or a juice fast or a colon cleanse. It's healthy lifestyle habits, it's exercising, eating more plants to get more fiber, to get less saturated fat, less dietary cholesterol,

Key Takeaways And Free Resources

SPEAKER_00 25:10

and have more phytochemicals. And it's sleeping and connecting and stressing less and avoiding known toxins. So when one of your recommendations is eating red meat and bacon as part of your detox, you are not based in science at all. Anyways, that's my episode for today. I hope this makes sense. I hope it helps clear out that not all detox programs are negative, but most of them are not based in high quality scientific literature, and that's where influencers thrive. Cool. I hope this makes sense. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you at the next episode.

unknown 25:52

Peace.

SPEAKER_00 25:57

Hey everyone, go check out my website, plantbased drjewels.com, to find free downloadable resources. And remember that you can find me on Facebook and Instagram at Dr.JulesCormier and on YouTube at Plantbased Dr.Jules.