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Your body on a detox

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Before you halt all solids and bunker down with a 7-day plan of diet shakes or juices, consider what a detox does to your insides.

While pressing pause on the more-than-occasional takeaway dinners or stripping your diet of refined sugars can be beneficial for your health, quick-fix detoxes can be hazardous. We reveal how liquid detox diets can affect your body.


After the first sip

▶ Your brain’s hunger signals are answered with a hit of pure fruit-juice sugar. And don’t get any ideas – vegie-based cleanses aren’t any healthier.

▶ The sweet stuff prompts the pancreas to squirt out insulin, which moves sugar – now in your blood in the form of glucose – into your cells.


After 30 minutes

▶ As your cells suck up the glucose, your blood sugar level can start to plummet and you may feel dizzy.

▶ Meanwhile, lacking enough kilojoules, your body is operating off its supply of glycogen, a form of short-term energy stored in the liver and muscles.


After two days

▶ With each shot of juice, your insulin levels skyrocket… then crash. Your glycogen stores are pretty much gone, leaving your tank empty – and you feeling weak and listless.

▶ Since you’re getting only about half the kilojoules you need, your body draws on two long-term power sources: triglycerides, a type of energy stored in fat cells (woo-hoo!), and protein, taken straight from your muscles (oops). You begin to lose muscle mass, even if you’re still exercising every day.


After three days

▶ Your brain is not happy. It enters into semi-starvation mode and gobbles ketones – fuel that comes from the breakdown of fat. Ketones work, but they’re like low-grade petrol; as a result, you may feel unfocused or irritable. (Any “mental clarity” is more likely due to a strong placebo effect.)

▶ Without a fresh protein infusion, your brain’s also lacking amino acids, the raw materials neurotransmitters need to maintain your mood. If you’re prone to depression, you may start feeling down.

▶ The proteins in your shrinking muscles break down into ammonia and uric acid, unwelcome chemicals that invade your bloodstream. Now your kidneys are busy detoxing your detox.

▶ Stay close to a bathroom: the juice’s high carbohydrate load causes a flood of water to enter the intestines. That extra H2O in your gut means you may get diarrhoea.


After four days

▶ With no food to digest, your small intestine feels ignored. Its villi – the rows of tiny fibres that move food elements into the blood – start to waste away. Your diarrhoea may get worse, leading to dehydration... and there goes your rosy glow.


On the eighth day

▶ Solid food! But uh-oh – you’ve lost muscle. Even if you go back to normal eating habits, you have less muscle mass to burn those kilojoules; instead, the kilojoules are more likely to be turned into fat. One reason yo-yo dieting makes it harder to lose weight: a reduced muscle-to-fat ratio messes up your metabolism, making kilojoules harder to work off. Which is lose-lose really.