Detox Foot Baths: Are they any good?
You can’t miss them whether you are roaming on the street or surfing the net. The ads are everywhere. Getting a foot detox therapy is beginning to be considered the in-thing these days. No wonder. What can be more appealing than letting ions from an ionic detox foot bath chase away toxins from your body while you sit idly with your feet in a tub of hot water? But detox foot therapy is getting some people all wound up. They believe it’s just one more scam.
Health officials, for one, are skeptical and fear people might be misled about its efficacy. Sharing their concerns, FDA ordered an enquiry last month to study the effects of such therapy.
How an Ion Detox Foot Bath is supposed to help you
Practitioners of the therapy claim taking a foot bath cleans your body of harmful chemicals. Repeated use is claimed to bring relief from such ailments as cancer, fibromyalgia and arthritis. Our feet have 2000 pores and, they claim, toxins can be flushed out of these pores by using the right technique.
The bath is a simple affair: the feet are put in a special tub filled with saltwater. After a while they pour in what is called an electrolyte. The ions in this electrolyte are said to be able to penetrate layers of skin and fat and jettison out waste through the pores.
You are chatted to while waiting for things to happen in the tub. In a few moments the water changes color. This is given proof to believe that toxins have been thrown out of your body.
Here is an explanation for why the water changes color.
It’s a Scam, scientists and doctors cry out!
The therapy, in principle, works at cleaning out toxins by targeting fat in our bodies. While it is true that fat is the place where toxins find refuge, there is little scientific basis for the rest of the practice.
In fact, it could be a cause for worry, feel doctors. The perceived improvement of their condition felt by users of the therapy could be just the effects of a placebo, they warn. Strong faith in a treatment, after all, does make us believe sometimes that it works.
Doctors fear that temporary feelings of well-being can give wrong signals to users about their true medical condition. It may prevent them from seeking proper medical help at early stages of an illness and stick with such therapies, instead.
Now that the FDA has taken up the issue, the question of whether the therapy is fraud or not, looks set to be resolved once and for all. Meanwhile, if you are now wondering whether foot pads are any good, here is an informal experiment that shows that it too happens to be a scam.
And while we are at it, here are 10 scam health accessories also you would do well to avoid.
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I hope the FDA goes beyond the question of detoxification. These machines rather let negative ions in than flush out toxins.
March 30th, 2008 at 1:59 pmThanks for this post!
May 9th, 2008 at 1:25 pm