In my practice as a registered dietitian my patients sometimes ask me “does the gut need to be detoxed?”. On Instagram @AndreaHardyRD, I talk all about the gut and whether or not you need to do a detox!
The word detox makes me break out in hives 🤮
I get a ton of questions about ‘detoxing’ your gut. Some brainiac made up that we have ‘toxic sludge’ built up and stuck to the walls of our colons, and for some reason, this 💩sentiment still sticks around.
This is partially tied to diet and wellness culture and the assumption that there’s kilos of excess waste just hanging out stagnant in our guts, contributing to weight gain, fatigue, allergies, and could honestly probably be blamed for the reason why my husband doesn’t fold laundry.
FACT:
Your body is capable of removing waste and does so effectively each time you have a bowel movement. There isn’t anything ‘built up’ on your bowel walls – what goes in, must come out after all.
These crazy ‘detoxes’ are just a fancy word for laxatives. When you take them (in exchange for your hard earned money, BTW), you inherently are going to poop. a lot. Which then makes it feel like they worked! When in fact, they just sped up the natural process of having a bowel movement.
So if you can’t tell by now from this post… you definitely do NOT need a gut detox.
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