Detoxing and cleansing are the rage but they may not tune up the body as promised

Cathy Smith often was tired and felt kind of crummy. Maybe another cleansing diet would help by clearing her body of all the excesses of modern life -- caffeine, sugar, alcohol and more.

So this past spring, the 43-year-old Minneapolis woman signed up with a chiropractor for a cleansing program. She gradually eliminated certain foods from her diet, one by one. First came sugar and caffeine. Then meat and dairy products. Finally she was eating only rice and vegetables, and a noxious supplement she drank twice a day. Then, slowly, she started adding foods back.

Four weeks and about $400 later, she felt worse than ever.

"I don't know if I would do it again," she said of her fourth and most recent detoxification regimen. "You are led to believe a lot of wonderful things will happen, and that wasn't the story for me."

Detoxing and cleansing are all the rage. Spas are doing them. Beyoncé and Angelina Jolie are doing them. Husbands and wives are doing them together. Bloggers describe them in excruciating detail. Dozens of detox diet books are on the market, and sales of herbal products that promise to clean your bowels, liver and kidneys reached $28 million nationwide last year, according to Spins, a market research company.

So what's going on?

"There is such a desperation out there to be healthy and trim and fit ... that people are willing to go to any lengths," said Dr. Joel Jahraus, medical director of the Eating Disorders Institute at Methodist Hospital in St. Louis Park, Minn.

A bit of so-called detox probably doesn't hurt you, say doctors and alternative-health-care providers. It could even make you feel better, if only because for a while you eat less and do away with alcohol and caffeine. But clean your insides? Hardly. "You can clean your carburetor," said Bea Krinke, a nutritionist who teaches at the University of Minnesota. "But you can't clean your body the same way."

Carol Denton, a nutritionist who works at the Institute for Health and Healing at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis, said she will sometimes advise clients to do what she calls a "gentle cleanse." In essence, it's a healthy diet consisting primarily of fruits, vegetables, non-meat proteins and lots of water. It excludes nicotine, caffeine and alcohol.

"Your body is an amazing thing," she said. "It's designed to detoxify, and given an opportunity to do that, it will."

Take alcohol, the most commonly ingested toxin of all. It gets into your blood and goes right to your head. But then the liver does the job it was designed to do.

"If you drink too much, you feel bad the next day because you have toxic products in your body," said Dr. Ken Roberts, who teaches anatomy at the University of Minnesota. "The liver clears them over the course of hours. It's metabolism." Refraining from alcohol, drugs or caffeine simply means the liver is taking a break from metabolizing those substances, he said.

But contrary to claims made by makers of so-called cleansing supplements, you can't flush your liver clear of toxins the way you flush a toilet, said Dr. Cliff Steer, a liver specialist and professor at the University of Minnesota.

"When you drink a lot of water, you urinate a lot of water," he said. "But it has little effect on the liver." And the same is true of kidneys, he said.

The regimen that Smith used last spring wasn't nearly as extreme as some that have become popular. Take the Master Cleanse, a program that celebrities such as Beyoncé have made famous, which is downright dangerous, experts say. It calls for a 14-day starvation diet of "saltwater flushes" and a concoction of maple syrup, lemon juice and cayenne pepper.

Smith said she learned that some foods didn't agree with her. But throughout the four-week experience she felt tired and depressed. Others in her cleansing diet support group did have good experiences, she said. Some went into it because they wanted to lose weight, and they did, Smith said.

When she began eating normally again she started to feel better and concluded that she simply wasn't eating enough to fuel her exercise routine and her busy life as a mom.

Monique Bush, 37, also of Minneapolis, said she felt clearer and more energetic after a 10-day cleansing diet. She cut out wheat and soy products, ate only organic foods and drank a supplement mixed with milk. Her husband wants to do it with her next time, she said.

"I feel it's the right thing to do," she said. "It gives your body a chance to regroup."

Morgan Luzier, co-owner of Balance Fitness, an exercise studio in Minneapolis, says she tells her clients that it's not just about the physical detox.

"You are also having a mental or emotional detox," she says of a regimen that she advises her clients to try. "You are trying on new ideas about the way you live your life, your routines, your addictions, attachments and habits." And now, detox is the buzz, Bush said.

"If you turn down a glass of wine and say, 'I'm doing a cleanse,' then people say 'I want to do that,' " she said.

But there is a fine line between temporary dietary discipline and a full-blown eating disorder, said Jahraus of the eating disorders clinic. He had a patient three years ago who refused to eat anything but root vegetables that had been out of the ground less than 15 minutes. The young man, who feared that if not eaten right away the vegetables would attract toxins, grew his own in a greenhouse.

"That seemed so extreme to me," Jahraus said. "But now it's commonplace." He is especially concerned about the rising popularity of so-called colonics, products that claim to cleanse the colon. They affect only the lower part of the colon, he said, and can lead to serious problems.

People who use them can develop electrolyte imbalances and chronic constipation. That forces them to move on to laxatives.

"We are seeing more and more of this because of society's message that we have to look perfect and feel great," he said. "The subtle message is that this will get you there."

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