Detoxification

Detoxification, known informally as a detox, is the process of cleansing toxins, usually from the body.  The process generally involves fasting, or going without certain foods, or in some cases it can involve eating or drinking certain things which you do not normally consume in your day to day diet.  The ultimate goal of a detox is to give the body time to get rid of things which have built up, either on its own through its natural processes or with the aid of supplements or other remedies in order to encourage the process.

The concept of a detox isn't anything new, it's been around for centuries.  You can even argue that it has been around for thousands of years if you include ancient practices such as blood letting - the act of draining away part of the blood from the body with the intent being that it will drain away toxins.  Blood letting has widely been debunked as hokum by modern medical science and found in the vast majority of cases to actually cause harm to the patients to whom it was administered.

Nevertheless, the efficacy of the detoxification process in whatever form it is practised is mostly ignored, instead those who choose to go through a detox do so because of self-belief and their reasoning which leads them to conclude it must work.  Our reasoning is sometimes flawed by cognitive bias, the easiest example to make is that you are just as likely to win the lottery with numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, as you are with any other six given random numbers, our cognitive bias fights against this statistical fact because it seems less likely to us.  The same is true in reverse of the conclusions we draw when it comes to detoxes - we believe we are more likely to succeed if we make a change than if we make none at all, regardless of the underlying statistics.

I am not saying that a detox can't be beneficial to an individual, my point is if you return to the same practises after the detox is complete then there is no net benefit to you as an individual.  Most things we choose to detox from, like alcohol, or junk food, or any other vice you indulge in regularly, cause damage to our bodies that won't be repaired in one or two months going without them.  Our health may indeed marginally improve in that time but if you revert to the same practise at the end of the detox period that progress will be lost.  In fact in some cases the things we indulge in regularly have a physiological impact on our bodies known as tolerance, where our bodies build up a resistance to something that is harmful that we are exposed to regularly.  When it comes to tolerance, this is surprisingly less resilient.  Our bodies abandon this line of defence when it is determined to no longer be needed.  The consequence then at the end of the detox period is that the vice we indulge in causes far greater harm than it did in the first place.

Alcohol is a prime example.  Over time you develop a tolerance to alcohol based on how much and how often you drink it.  Take a long period such as a month or two without any at all and when you return to consuming it that tolerance falls quite low and takes some time to build up again.  This isn't limited to the mental effects of alcohol such as the feeling of inebriation, but also applies to the physiological effects - our stomachs and our bodies in general, find it harder to process things we have gone without for some time.

Still of all, we perpetuate the idea that going without something for a period of time will make us better able to control ourselves when we reintroduce it.  I don't believe that is true personally in fact I think the opposite is true, like someone who goes to a gym regularly and getting a pizza on their way home because they "earned it" I think most people after a detox period would feel emboldened to further indulge.  I guess the only conclusion I can draw about why we actually try to detox is because we want to feel better about our behaviour - more in a mental sense and emotional sense than the actual physical benefit of a detox.

I should point out if you do like to detox from anything, I am not trying to discourage you, I openly admit I do it myself and have done with many different things, mainly take out, fizzy drinks, caffeine etc but in all of these cases after the detox period ended I went right back to eating and drinking everything I did before and it had no overall impact on the rate of consumption in the long term.  This whole post is simply an exploration of the actual motivation behind the desire to detox and why I think despite doing it many times myself, it's not really worth it in the end.  It's January at the moment and it is perhaps the time of year when our attempts to alter our behaviour are most prevalent, the real question isn't what you have given up for January, or attempted to give up entirely, but rather, what long term change are you trying to enact, what are the motivations and objectives that inspired that change in the first place and if that detox didn't achieve either of those things, what else could you do that might?  Or will you just give up after you fall at the first hurdle and revert to your original behaviour as so many of us - myself included - inevitably end up doing.