When it comes to dieting, there are many different ways to approach it. Some people prefer to have an all green diet, while others simply remove certain aspects from their current eating habits (such as cholesterol or carbohydrates). The method of detoxing through liquid diets have been around for a while, but have been gaining more and more popularity over the more recent years. There are obvious downfalls to participating in this type of cleanse (such as spending all day in the bathroom), but the real question is: how safe is it?
Although doing a cleanse of this sort is proven to help lose a few pounds of water weight, it is very controversial because it is quite literally cleansing your system, which includes not ingesting anything besides the cleansing mixture for a prolonged period of time. The majority of the detox teas are sold in packages of seven, fourteen, or twenty-four days. This basically means that the customer, when deciding which package of tea to get, is deciding how long they are willing to give up eating and drinking for. This may seem like a quick fix for people who want to lose a few pounds, but it is not, in fact, that easy.
There is not hard evidence backing the idea that detox teas cleanse cells, and the truth is that the weight that may be lost from drinking these magical fix teas is simply water weight. Along with losing all of the water weight in your body, these teas are also causing your body to become dehydrated. The Senna leaf, used in the majority of detox teas, is a known laxative, which not only causes dehydration, but is not suggested for long term use, just as the "teatox" companies have been selling them for. The human body does a perfect job of cleansing itself, and there has been no regulated "detox" method, which means that the customer really does not have any idea what to expect.
When it comes to certain brands such as BooTea, the product flushes out the digestive system at an alarming rate, which then flushes out contraceptive pills before they have the chance to be absorbed in the blood stream. This lead to a very sizable rise in pregnancies, with no warnings on the package to advise the consumer of this risk.
Although detox teas are endorsed all over social media as being an easy fix, it is not so. It is safe to say that one should exercise extreme caution should you decide that this is the way you want to go. There are many more side effects than there are benefits (that are temporary anyways), so I will not encourage or endorse the use of them by any means. As a teenage girl that lives in a world of body expectations and fitness gurus, I have considered purchasing a few of these at one point or another, until I did more research and figured out just how unsafe they are for your body. Don't do this to your bodies. Stay healthy, safe and go with an alternative such as working out and limiting junk food in your daily diet.
