Is Your New Year Detox All it's Cracked Up to Be?

After the minced pies, chocolate oranges and turkey sandwiches of December, stepping on the scales at the start of January can be incredibly daunting. Most of us start off the New Year with the resolution that we’re going to lose our Christmas love handles and get healthier – even if we don’t all stick to this.

It’s no wonder then that a lot of diets start to become popular in January and numerous blogs and articles pop up giving advice on how best to shed weight and improve your fitness. This has led to an increase in people taking on drastic New Year ‘detoxes’ to try and make up for all the overindulging they did throughout December.

However, leading doctors have issued a warning about strict detoxes and herbal weight loss remedies as they can often cause harm and result in serious illness. They have highlighted one case that saw a woman hospitalised after turning to herbal remedies and drinking too much water in a bid to detox.

The woman required intensive care and got better with treatment, but not until after she had collapsed and had a seizure after drinking extra water, green tea and sage in a bid to get healthier.

According to doctors, she ended up with dangerously low levels of salt in her body, which can cause a lot of a damage. Other herbal remedies have also been linked to this result, so it is important to take care with your New Year fitness regime.

While it can be a good idea to eat healthy foods after Christmas, the idea of a detox – whether this is done with herbal remedies or extra water – isn’t actually backed by medical science, so you could be doing more harm than good.

“The complementary medicine market is very popular in the UK and the concept of the New Year ‘detox’ with all-natural products is appealing to those less concerned with evidence-based medicine and more with complementary medicine,” said the doctors in their report, which was published in British Medical Journal Case Reports.

They also highlighted that just because a product is marketed as being ‘all natural’, it doesn’t mean there aren’t possible side effects.

If you do want to lose weight after Christmas, it is a good idea to reduce portion sizes, cut down on unhealthy treats and exercise more. You might also want to talk to your GP to get advice on what could help you shed those extra pounds and improve your health, rather than turning to detoxes that may not be all they’re cracked up to be.