Cleansing

A trend that appears to have hit the mainstream a few years ago and has been around since at least the 1930's, cleansing is the process of restricting one’s diet to one or two - usually bizarre - foods for a period of time in order to “get the bad stuff out” of the body. It sounds great (and a little bit like folk healing), right? Right.

“But DW,” you say, “it helps some people feel better about their body image and may even get them on track to a healthy lifestyle! Why do you hate fat people? And children?”

While I hate children because they’re small, egomaniacal disease factories who need attention, I don’t actually hate fat people. Quite the opposite in fact. Getting in shape and improving one’s health are a worthwhile pursuit and something to advocate. That said, "cleansing” in order to purify your body and/or drop large amounts of weight are not only worthless, but dangerous.

The face of a monster

Why? Because “cleansing” does nothing for your body aside from starve it of essential nutrients and cause your metabolic system to feed on muscle mass and other parts of your body that you use and, you know, need. In short, there is absolutely no science behind the process of cleansing.

The creator of possibly the most popular cleanse, the Master Cleanse, is Stanley Burroughs. Burroughs, who was also known as Aaron Hayes, was nothing more than a snake-oil salesman. And when I say "nothing more" I mean he was a felon, murderer and apparently a nudist.

Ladies...

Drinking “Spicy Lemonade” or eating nothing but grapefruit for a week or two in order to fit into that dress is worthless because it isn’t making your body any healthier. Further, once you stop cleansing, you’ll put all of the weight back on. What’s the point? Starve your body, be miserable and gain all the weight back. It appears "cleansers" have been had.

Possibly the worst part about cleansing is that it is promoted but a multimillion dollar industry that flaunts pseudoscience and trots out “doctors” that have qualifications equivalent to Dr. Spaceman’s degree from the Ho Chi Minh City School of Medicine. I love capitalism, but it’s morally repulsive to make millions of dollars by endangering the lives of people who are honestly trying to get into better shape.

Comforting

So people, if you want to get in shape do what I did: diet, exercise and sleep more.

To cleansing, the 21st century descendant of ritual folk healing!

- DW