Who says you can't detoxify your body?

“There is no known way – certainly not through detox treatments – to make something that works perfectly well in a healthy body work better.”

Edzard Ernst, emeritus professor of complementary medicine at Exeter University

Read the article here:

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/dec/05/detox-myth-health-diet-science-ignorance?

This article is hilarious because it quotes a couple of professors who are in the profession that is most responsible for the worldwide epidemic of drug-induced liver failure and consequent premature deaths.  

Cartoon by Colin Livingstone

I attended a practitioner education course earlier this week on the topic of iatrogenic disease which dealt in detail with how the liver and kidneys metabolise (or should I say "struggles to metabolise") prescription medications into less toxic substances in preparation for excretion. In popular terms this is called "detoxification". I learned that there is a medical crisis with drug-induced liver toxicity. Liver damage caused by drugs such as NSAIDs amounts to tens of thousands of people being killed or maimed annually (Paracetamol, for example, is the leading cause of acute liver failure in the Western world 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracetamol).  

The liver is an astonishingly complex organ that does a number of critical functions including filtering the blood and cleansing the body of wastes and toxins. When it comes to pharmaceutical drugs, we must bear in mind that the liver never had to deal with any of these toxic substances until less than a hundred years ago! It is hardly a surprise that the liver of even the most healthy person struggles to detoxify these alien chemicals. Here is a review of the huge problem of drug-induced liver damage, as well as it giving an overview of how the liver detoxifies drugs and other toxins: 

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMra021844 

Here's a Youtube video about liver health:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bx6kj6xLCZw 

Detoxification processes can be supported and the liver given some protection from harm by supplementing the healthy diet with a variety of nutritional compounds ranging from glutathione to milk thistle. The only debate we should be having about detox is whether or not a person needs to support this natural, ongoing body process with special diets and supplements? I accept that there is no shortage of quackery out there which is why one is best advised to seek the assistance of a knowledgeable health professional, rather than a shop assistant, especially if one suspects harm is being caused by prescription or over-the-counter drugs.

While being laughable, it is still very sad to read articles like these which come across as a blatant and sensational attempt to bag anybody who wishes to promote health beyond the simplistic message:

"Eat healthy, exercise regularly and don't forget to take your meds" 

Rest assured that we can do much better than that!

Foods that help the liver do its work:

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