Technology & Innovation

Apart from divorce lawyers, the other industry that gets properly into gear this week is the 'detox' business. After all the gross excesses of the festive season, we all feel the need to do penance and make amends for the appalling liberties we’ve taken with our bodies over the last fortnight. The easy way out is the detox purge, with all its daft potions and lotions.

This year, rather amusingly, the old-fashioned science lobby is ready for alternative medicine pushers - or quacks, as we shouldn’t be afraid to call them. The charity Sense About Science has been on a publicty blitz which reminds us: 'Our bodies have their own ‘detox’ mechanisms. The gut prevents bacteria and many toxins from entering the body. When harmful chemicals do enter the body, the liver acts as an extraordinary chemical factory, usually combining them with its own chemicals to make a water soluble compound that can be excreted by the kidneys. The body thus detoxifies itself. The body is re-hydrated with ordinary tap water. It is refreshed with a good night’s sleep'.

'These processes do not occur more effectively as a result of taking 'detox' tablets, wearing 'detox' socks, having a 'detox' body wrap, eating Nettle Root extract, drinking herbal infusions or 'oxygenated' water, following a special 'detox' diet, or using any of the other products and rituals that are promoted. They waste money and sow confusion about how our bodies, nutrition and chemistry actually work.'

One especially amusing hit is scored with a volley at Boots. The product criticised is Boots' 'detox brush', which the company claims will 'brush away impurities' and 'stimulates the lymphatic system to help remove impurities and toxins from your skin'. The charity argues that the brush simply cleans the skin.

Boots said the brush works by stimulating the circulation to remove blockages in the body's lymphatic system. 'All Boots products go through extensive scientific trials and testing with human volunteers. Our evidence is based on customer feedback and the results they saw and how they felt,' said a spokeswoman. Just as well those who work in the pharmacy at Boots selling proper drugs believe in the double blind trial as a method of proving efficacy, rather than how patients 'felt'...

The quacks won’t take this laying down. There’s too much money at stake in all this unsubstantiated, unscientific guff, as I discovered when I attacked it in The Observer years ago. I received the most virulent post bag I’ve ever had in my life - including one charmer who, when I dared to question aromatherapy, wrote that she hoped I broke my leg and was failed by conventional medicine.

In today's bulletin:
Debenhams and Next see sales fall - and their shares rise
House prices fell at record rate in 2008
FSA lifts controversial ban on shorts
Editor's blog: Down with detox
SMEs still surprisingly perky about 2009