Anyone else here a fan of the brilliant Ben Goldacre? I bet this unfortunate brain-damaged woman wishes she was now. But not to fear, some people who started out brain damaged are here to challenge the notion of evidence as we know it.
Yes I detoxed about 5 yrs ago. The side effects were not good. Dizziness, headaches, blurred vision, feeling faint and weak. I had three 4 day sessions every 10 days. I lost a dress size and felt wonderful afterwards. But it is short lived and not worth the expense. Better off re-assessing your lifestyle!!
Kim, Lichfield, Staffordshire
So it’s terrible but great but terrible. Got it.
The detox industry is entirely unregulated. A lot of detoxes don’t work at all. But some certainly do. Like thousands of others I went (abroad) to a spa offering a detox regime of a week of fasting, daily colemas and at the end of the fasting a diet high on fruits and raw vegetables. It did all and more than I hoped - not only did it make me feel better than I had for years, it also broke my previously bad food addictions - tea, coffee, cola. I’ve gone back now 7 times in 5 years. If it hadn’t been very good for me I certainly wouldn’t have gone back again and again.
Bob, London UK
So you have to go abroad in order not to eat junk food? God, the planet really is fucked, isn’t it.
And yes, I looked up colema, and yes, it is just a fancy word for an enema. I don’t know about you but to my mind “a condition requiring your barking spider to be violated by a rubber hose for a week” is pretty much the exact opposite of “good health.” Doing it voluntarily for fun, now that’s fine.
I have recently returned from Thailand having done a 9 day detox diet. It was properly overseen. There was no suggestion of drinking VAST amounts of fluid. There were lots of fruit and vegetable dishes and protein drinks. Yes, it was a little rough for the first few days with headaches etc. But I felt indescribably fantastic and so much better. I lost just over half a stone - which I have kept off. My skin improved and has only now started worsening with the introduction of small amounts of sugar in my diet! At the end of the day, FAD diets don’t work. They are, in my view, dangerous and don’t teach the person to eat a proper, reasonable, balanced diet.
Sally Jenkins, Bedale, North Yorkshire
Yeah, they come off them and start eating sugar and their skin goes all wonky again. And again with flying halfway around the world to eat fruit. Or are you just too embarassed to admit you like a bit of rubber hose backdoor action in the UK?
I started a Lipotrim diet in 1997. It consisted of 3 sachets of ‘food’ mixed with water per day and plenty of water. The weight loss was amazing. The diet was given to me by private prescription and I was weighed and monitored each week. Within a few days I became constipated and was advised to drink more water. At the end of three weeks I was drinking apporx 3L of water per day. I then had an epilectic fit. The following month (by now I was on 5L of water per day and still constipated) I had a series of about 8 fits over 24 hours and was taken into hospital. I lost my memory, was unable to drive for 18 months, had difficulty in making decisions, panic attacks an inability to do everyday things like shopping, washing and looking after my two young children.
Pauline Major, Looe, UK
This is a very sad story, but did it not occur to you to maybe give the diet a break after it broke your fucking brain? Gosh, this “hitting my hand with a mallet” diet seems to be causing a large amount of tears to flow from my eyes. Shall I stop, or shall I start hitting my hand 66% faster? I mean, I need the hand and all, but this blood just goes so well with this outfit!