Peter Lipson has a superb headline for his article:
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The science of purging, or the purging of science?Published by Peter Lipson
It's Thanksgiving in the U.S., one of my favorite holidays. Thanksgiving
habits get set down early in life, and the while I may find your lima bean
casserole execrable, to you it's just not Thanksgiving without it.
And speaking of excrement, you can expect to see adds encouraging you to
"detox" from all of your holiday excesses. Outside the field of substance
abuse, what the hell is "detox anyway? "Detoxification" is apparently the
pinnacle of modern health care, if you believe the dozens of adds on
late-night TV.
For me to explain to you why even the very idea is laughable, I have to
teach you a bit of human biochemistry - just a little, I promise.
My scientific readers will find this grossly oversimplified, but hopefully
they will forgive me.
Detox sounds so simple, but in fact, human biology is more complex and
beautiful than is dreamt of in the quacks' philosophies.
Your body is a complex biochemical machine, but not all that mysterious.
Human biochemistry is a fascinating area of research, and has been for
over a century.
In order to produce and use the energy that keeps us alive, the essential
substances of life must be taken in or produced, utilized, and the
byproducts of their metabolism removed. Among the substances essential to
life are water, oxygen, lipids (fats), carbohydrates (starches and
sugars), polypeptides (proteins), and nucleic acids (DNA and RNA).
There are other micro-nutrients that are essential to life, which early
scientists named "vitamins". Vitamins aid in the metabolism of the various
substances listed above. They are required in very small amounts to be
effective.
The intake, utilization, and production of these essential substances is
the meat of biochemistry. A large part of metabolism gives us the
horribly toxic byproducts of carbon dioxide and water. I like to think
that the detox folks are speaking of something else, but who know.
When speaking of "toxin removal" a few organs in particular deserve
mention.
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