SHOULD YOU TRY A DETOX TREATMENT?

It's a popular new-year health habit. But science doesn't support it

- Adrienne Matel

This past April, at a TED conference in Vancouver, Canada, I watched T a woman pull a variety of mushroom powders from her purse, scoop them into a thermos and add hot water from a nearby tea station to make an earthy beverage. Intrigued, I asked about her favourite health practices, and she started describing a recent trip to Costa Rica to get plasmapheresis.

"It's when they take your old plasma out, and they replace it with new, fresh plasma," she explained.

"Donated plasma?" I asked. She said it was synthetic plasma, as a detox treatment intended to manage an autoimmune disease.

Plasmapheresis can effectively remove contaminants, such as some heavy metals, from the blood of people with specific health conditions, including autoimmune diseases, blood disorders and organ failure, and those who have recently undergone organ transplants. However, for healthy individuals, plasmapheresis cannot improve on the body's natural detoxification processes, which are efficiently handled by the kidneys, liver, skin, lungs and other organs.

Plus, most heavy metals of concern accumulate in our organs, and only trace amounts can be removed from blood.

Elective plasmapheresis for healthy people represents one manifestation of the myth of detoxing. Private clinics with varying degrees of oversight offer it, attracting rich medical tourists, even healthy ones.

In an April 2023 Instagram post about her plasma detox treatment, the former professional race-car driver Danica Patrick described the $10,000 [₹8.6 lakh] treatment as one that "cleans a vast majority of the blood," and can "get rid of metals and mould."

IT CAN BE HARD TO OVERRIDE THE IDEA THAT CLEARING OUT OUR BODIES IS A GOOD THING.

To illustrate, she held up a sack of dark amber liquid. "The dark bag is my old plasma," she wrote.