Detoxing, and the organs already doing it
Learn · Nutrition basics · Explainer, Typed Supps
You already own a detox system: a liver and two kidneys. Nothing in a juice bottle helps them do it.
Stage by stage
- The factory (Two-phase processing): The liver chemically converts unwanted compounds into water-soluble forms, continuously, and scales up with demand.
- The filter (~180 litres a day): Kidneys filter your plasma dozens of times daily and excrete the processed waste. There is no queue for a drink to jump.
- The “results” (Glycogen water): Cleanse weight is stored carbohydrate leaving with its bound water — the standard first-week water loss, rebranded.
- The question (Name the toxin): No maker has named one; no trial has measured a removal. Real detoxification — chelation, NAC, dialysis — is medicine, not retail.
What the evidence supports
- commercial detox products remove identifiable toxins — insufficient evidence. The category’s core claim: reviewed in 2015 and unsupported by any randomised trial, with makers unable to name a target compound.
- For context: the liver and kidneys clear metabolic waste and foreign compounds continuously — strong evidence. Foundational physiology — inducible hepatic biotransformation plus renal filtration.
- For context: cleanse weight loss is glycogen-bound water — strong evidence. The same first-week arithmetic as any crash diet, and it reverses on refeeding.
- Evidence that it causes Harm from charcoal and prolonged juice protocols — moderate evidence. Charcoal binds oral medications including contraceptives; prolonged juice-only protocols have produced documented kidney injuries.
Timing
Nothing to schedule. If the goal is feeling better, the active ingredients of every cleanse testimonial are available separately: less alcohol, more plants, earlier nights, cheaper receipts.
Time to effect
- Hours–days: How fast your liver and kidneys clear typical compounds, all the time.
- Days: How fast cleanse “results” appear and reverse, being water.
Common myth
“A juice cleanse flushes out the toxins that build up in your body.” In reality: Which toxins? No manufacturer has named one and no trial has measured one leaving. Compounds that genuinely accumulate need clinical treatment, not juice. The glow is a week of not drinking and eating better — which never needed packaging.
In the glossary
Sources