Inside story

DO a quick poll among your colleagues or friends right now and chances are some will be attempting (or talking about attempting) some sort of detox.

It’s no surprise really. The average person in the UK reportedly consumes around 6,000 calories on Christmas Day. No wonder many of us are feeling monumentally sluggish and bloated come January.

Detoxing may seem like a recent celebfuelled phenomenon, or just a fancy word for dieting, but that’s not really the case. Celebrities have no doubt helped make the detox more mainstream (sales of Madal Bal syrup, used to create the maple syrup/lemon detox drinks, sky-rocketed after pop star Beyonce revealed she’d followed the regime to shed weight for her Dreamgirls film role in 2006), but many of the principles and methods can be traced back thousands of years, for instance in Ayurvedic Indian and Chinese medicine.

The Ancient Egyptians were fans of colonic irrigation (the ultimate internal cleanse), and fasting has been around since the dawn of time, for religious and health reasons.

While weight loss is often cited as a key motivation, and indeed one of the rewards, detox devotees will tell you the benefits are far wider.

As the name suggests, the basic principle is to eliminate toxins – chemicals absorbed through food and drink, cosmetic and cleaning products, the atmosphere around us – from the body. Methods of achieving this range from more extreme (like ten-day liquid-only fasts) to moderate three or seven-day plans, with specific food types, alcohol and caffeine banned.

And while elimination is often the focus, adding more “good stuff” to the system features in many plans too, such as juicing, where nutrient-packed juices replace meals.

As well as feeling and looking physically better and healthier, fans say they feel mentally re-charged after a detox.

‘‘The key principles for me are to clean the system,’’ says Fiona Robertson, 48, who runs detox holidays at Retreat Biarritz (etreatbiarritz.

com), ‘‘firstly, by returning to a simple cleansing diet, introducing more vegetables and fruits in the way of juices and secondly, to clean the digestive system and re-set your body’s way to eliminate old waste and toxins from you on a cellular level.

‘‘Once you eliminate toxins and old waste successfully, your skin will glow and your eyes will sparkle; your insides are the barometer for what you see and how you feel on the outside.’’ As well as running a retreat, Robertson sells Home Detox Box DIY kits (homedetoxbox.com).

Robertson isn’t a qualified dietician, but she’s so passionate about detoxing that her holiday experience has become a way of life.

‘‘Weight loss is often the initial interest for people who want to detox at this time of year, but there are so many benefits,” she says. “As once you start to clean up your act, everything changes and gets better and falls into place including your weight, which naturally balances out.’’ James Griffiths, founder of Wild Training (wildtraining.co.uk), a fitness franchise which also runs retreats incorporating exercise, detox and relaxation, is another advocate.

‘‘Detoxing does work but there are healthy ways to reduce the level of toxins in your body,’’ he says. ‘‘Your liver deals with a lot of toxins and can swell up to four times its normal size if we consume the wrong nutrition.

Once your liver can’t take anymore, your body starts storing toxins you can’t process in your bottom, thighs and, most often, abdominal area. There is a reason it’s called a beer belly.

‘‘If you reduce or cut out alcohol, caffeine and refined sugars, you might feel heavy for a day or two, depending on how bad you normally are, but before long you will feel awesome.

Clear head, better sleep, more energy, clearer skin and eyes.

‘‘You can also look at reducing dairy and grain intake because these foods can often slow down your digestion because we aren’t very good at digesting them. We eat these foods way too often, so giving your body a break can add variety to your nutrition and help kickstart your metabolism.’’ If the idea of fasting or eliminating whole food groups doesn’t appeal, even incorporating some of the basic principles could give your health a good new year boost.

Leading dietician Dr Carrie Ruxton, from the Tea Advisory Panel, (teaadvisorypanel.com) says: ‘‘Following a detox plan can be more straightforward than people think, it does not need to be extreme. It is important to make sure you are getting the right nutrients and antioxidants with your food combinations."

For lots of people, in January especially, reducing alcohol intake is another big appeal of the detox, which in itself can be a great health boost – both inside and out.

Dr Sarah Jarvis, medical advisor for Drinkaware (drinkaware.co.uk), says: ‘‘Depending on how much you’re drinking, you may notice numerous benefits from stopping, even for a short time. You’re likely to sleep better and feel more rested when you wake up; you may have more energy; your skin will look less sallow and tired.

‘‘It also won’t take long for you to lose weight – a large glass of wine has almost 200 calories, and a new report by the World Cancer Research Fund suggests that about ten per cent of the average calorie intake among people who drink comes from alcohol.’’ But Dr Jarvis warns that people shouldn’t be fooled into thinking that a short-term detox “undoes” the damage of longer-term bad habits. ‘‘One of the problems of detoxing from alcohol is that many people believe that if they stop drinking for a month, it cancels out any ill effects from drinking over the recommended limits for the other 11 months a year. That’s simply not how it works,’’ she says. ‘‘If you’re drinking within recommended limits, your liver is detoxing – filtering the toxins in alcohol from your body – all the time, and you don’t need to stop for a month.’’