Detoxification, or detox for short is the removal of toxic substances from the body.
Detoxification can also refer to the period of withdrawal during which a person’s body returns to homeostasis after long-term use of an addictive substance.
Many alternative medicine practitioners promote various other types of detoxification such as “diet detoxification,” but there is no evidence that detox diets have any health benefits.[ Furthermore, It has been determined that most commercial products’ “detox” claims lack any supporting evidence and can be considered a “waste of money”.
Certain approaches in alternative medicine claim to remove toxins from the body through herbal, electrical or electromagnetic treatment.. These toxins are undefined and have no scientific basis, making the validity of such techniques questionable.
Certain diets have an underlying assumption that the body accumulates toxins that must be removed, especially after periods of over-eating or the consumption of non-nutritious and processed foods. As with alternative medicine, the ‘toxins’ removed are undefined and are ascribed to foods, the environment and the body’s own wastes, and there is no scientific basis for the hypothesis.