this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2026
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I'm a personal trainer with certifications in fitness nutrition (I'm not a dietitian, those are actual licensed medical practitioners you go to see about dietary needs. I can legally provide guidelines, but I can't prescribe meal plans.)
Our body is great at getting rid of toxins and waste products. It's almost as if we've evolved ways of dealing with such things. Anyone talking about "toxins" and "waste products" as if they're 'stuck' in your body is either very ignorant, or trying to sell you snake oil. Probably both. I've seen a lot of it, especially in my profession. People making up bullshit to sound knowledgeable and sell you something you don't need. And yeah, a lot of trainers are just as ignorant and just trying to sell you something you don't need.
EDIT: In case anyone wants to sink their teeth into the topic, there's a very good book I read as part of my course work, called "Nutrition, 6th Edition" by Dr. Paul Insel; Don Ross; Kimberley McMahon; Melissa Bernstein. It's all very well sourced and kept up to date as modern science catches up. Available on AA if you don't want to buy it.
Unless, those are microplastics, which are probably something that will always be there for us.
They've detected microplastics in breast milk. You know what that means? It's time to start living up to our name as mammals.
We hormonally induce lactation for everyone. All the time. Just leech out those microplastics. Nips into 3d printers.
Sadly, the energy cost of making all that milk would require us to eat more, taking in more plastics.
I walked into my break room at work a couple of years ago and overheard some of my female coworkers complaining about the formula shortage. I asked if they'd ever thought about breastfeeding and they looked at me like I'd just grown a second head. I get that some women here and there might need a supplement for this, but the idea that feeding babies canned formula should be the norm is completely insane.
Breast feeding is a huge amount of work, asking a person to do that and have a job is a big deal. Pumping breastmilk is incompatible with lots of jobs. If they have already stopped breastfeeding they may not be able to restart.
It would be great to live in a society where breastfeeding was normal and easy. Society is crazy and women shouldn't be criticised for trying to exist within it.
We're bus drivers lol. We work four hours a day.
The hucow revolution awaits!
Potential downside: For a while the world is gonna smell like curdled milk.
When life hands you curdled milk it's time to make cheese
I have nipples, Greg. Could you milk me?
That is not what I wanted those used for.
Plan B is blood letting. I don’t have the source but they have measured a decrease in PFAS blood levels for people who donate blood.
Don't forget the heavy metals!
Those are also worth taking into account. Mercury in seafood, for example. Some can be excreted by the human body, others can't.
You contradicted yourself. The latter quote is true.
https://www.quora.com/How-long-does-it-take-for-heavy-metal-toxicity-to-clear-up/answer/Harri-K-Hiltunen
You're right, I did contradict myself. I meant to say one thing and ended up making a silly statement that doesn't make sense given the values I espouse myself. Thanks for pointing it out.
Heavy metal is good for you. Gets you moving and can be cathartic. I prefer stoner, doom, or deathcore myself though. Load my body up with those types of metal.
Eh, the Moebius stuff was great but a lot of the material just pandered to adolescent boys.
Moebius and Giger and Jodorowsky!
You should to regularly ~~let~~ donate blood to expell the ~~bad humors~~ microplastics.
That's right, pass those microplastics along to the cancer babies! (Seriously though, DONATE BLOOD.)
In serious, most ways to loose blood and need blood infusions will loose the plastics too, so the donated blood just maintains the concentrations, the samw way it does for the other components.
Everyone has plastics in their blood.
But then if you donate frequently your blood will have lower concentrations due to all the previous donations, so don't just donate, donate often.
Yeah, valerian root ain't getting rid of your microplastics buildup.
Yeah the dude is really wrong.
Your body is good at filtering out hydrophilic toxins. But for just about every other toxin... Not so much. Most hydrophobic toxins and other toxins, like heavy metals, VOCs, pesticides, micro plastics, etc., are man made and your body hasn't had millions of years to evolve natural filters.
But what "cleanse" does anything for those? The MAHA Moms and podcast bros aren't talking up chelation therapy.
I think the point still stands that anyone selling you a way to rid your body of "toxins" is a charlatan.
I'm an environmental engineer and environmental scientist and I specialize in industrial hazmat waste issues, but I recognize even I'm a bit out of my professional lane on this.
But if you were to identify specific "toxins" that you are interested in "cleansing" there are often methods to do that. But first, I would recommend talking to a health professional. And those cleanses are going to vary significantly based on the toxin of interest.
But your best general "cleanse" is to eat more green leafy vegetables and exercise regularly. And feel free to drink a 4oz glass of milk a couple times a week.
I think we're talking past each other here.
The original post is talking about people with "a systemized non-scientific theory of anatomy and nutrition."
The comment that we're responding to says,
The people who blog about "toxins," as a generalized word without a specific meaning that could reasonably be replaced with "evil ghosts" in a sentence, are not interested in listening to doctors or scientists. They are "health" influencers on par with the current US secretary of Health and Human Services. I specifically called them "MAHA moms" in my previous comment for this reason.
I would hope that all reasonably educated people recognize that there are actual toxic substances that our bodies absorb that are harmful to us. But anyone who is identifying a specific toxin, much less a medically appropriate treatment plan for removing it, is leagues away from the snake-oil peddlers this post is talking about.
If you have not encountered these charlatans, more power to you. They used to be relegated to specific corners of the internet, but they're becoming more mainstream with help from powerful figures in Washington.
I, unfortunately, had a loved one who followed some of these influencers with deadly effects. It turns out that juice cleanses and energy healing can't cure cancer.
There are several problems with the charlatans.
if you haven't taken a science class since high school, then their advice often right. I'm amazed at how quickly the medical pseudo-science that flipped politically in my life time. I was raised in a deep red conservative Christian community and I don't remember anti-vaccines ever being a thing for my community (we definitely had our issues, just not that one). The medical pseudo-science thing back then was firmly in the far left liberal sphere. The anti-vaxx movement was a hippy-liberal thing. (I'm not really sure when that flipped.)
The medical industry -including academia- is very much at fault in burning trust. There are many instances of the medical industry intentionally withholding treatments because a different treatment made them more money. Or doctors over prescribing in order to charge insurance companies more money.
A lot of what RFK jr says. Starts off good. He's all like "Hey, we medicate too much. We should all focus on eating healthier and exercising. That's what the government should encourage." And even I'm like, "Yeah, okay. I agree." Then he goes on to say "And that why you should shove a bowling ball up your butt." That's when he loses me.
AFAIK, still no conclusive studies that show microplastics having an overly adverse affect on the human body. I've seen one linking it to lower sperm counts, but that's not particularly bad to me. We don't need more people.
The big scare with microplastics is that they are everywhere and that certainly isn't good; and I think we're all just waiting for the shoe to drop and some study to come out that shows something majorly negative with them. But for now, there's nothing obvious sticking out that shows an immediate concern. Which makes sense. We use plastic for so much because it tends not to react to stuff.
The problem is that we'll never know because there's no control group. Everybody has them, even fetuses still in the womb. You would have to build bunkers with perfect air filtering, and then go through, like, four generations of humans to breed microplastics-free specimen, which you could then use a the control group for the rest... Only them never leaving the bunker would already invalidate the tests... So, yeah...
If micro plastics were a problem then we should expect to see rapid increases in cancers in younger adults.
Handed a note
Huh. No shit.
Though even that is complicated by 50 or so years of nuclear weapons testing, which likely also increased cancer rates. Not to mention all that lead everywhere. Produce gradually losing nutrients because farming mostly just focuses on the big three with fertilizer and the others are being mined out of the ground and sent to landfills, septic tanks, waste processing facilities, cemetaries, and crematoriums also doesn't help (though I'm not sure waste processing and crematoriums remove those nutrients from the cycle like the others, since the one could produce fertilizer and the other might be sending it out into the atmosphere where it could eventually end up back in the soil).
There's so much chaos that it's hard to isolate causes, which then makes all the causes kinda "hide in plain sight" because they can perpetually blame the others and shit only gets worse over time.
Let's not forget the industrial pesticides, which are also everywhere.
Yeah, microplastics, too. And "pollution" being still broader than the list either of us have given so far. A car goes by smelling like gas? They are running their motor too rich and you're literally inhaling unburnt gasoline. A car whose exhaust stinks but not like gas? Running too lean and now you're inhaling various nitrogen compounds that aren't great for inhaling. Ratio is correct? Still inhaling more CO and CO2 than normal, but everyone is doing it so there might not even be a control population to compare the effects against.
Oh also all the food additives that get tested for acute safety but not so much chronic (as in "will it kill you or make you obviously sick if you eat it once or a few times?" gets studied but "will eating it twice a week for 30 years have any long term effects?" is ignored).
We haven't noticed much in the way of short term effects, but there's no way to know what long term effects there will be except to wait.
In the meantime, since the effects are... unlikely to be beneficial, the best thing to do is reduce exposure as much as possible.
Because they are so ubiquitous that it is impossible to find a control group. Quite literally every single person on the planet has micro plastics in them.
Good point, those exist. I don't think we know yet what all of the consequences are, but they're obviously not good for us.
There are bio-accumulative toxins that really do get stuck in your body. Lead is a good example. Not that the supposed cures being peddled by these people can actually do anything about those.
Also, for the normal kind of toxin, the biggest factor keeping the levels in your body high is continued intake. Reducing that totally makes sense. However, you need to first have a real, based on science, understanding of what those toxins are in the first place and not just randomly blame junk food or 5G radiation, and it needs to be a permanent life style change. A two week "cleanse" does nothing. A juice will not detoxify you. (Depending on the juice, especially how filtered and how sugary it is, it may be healthy for other reasons. Standard orange juice is not, it's way too sugary.)
You make good points. I guess what I really wanted to say is that 90% of the time when people talk about toxins and try to offer up a solution, they don't even know what they're trying to talk about. There certainly are substances that bio-accumulate. And as you say, understanding what is actually there, what can be measured, what is problematic, and then reducing intake should be key in solving the issue.
Another thing I think is important to understand is that the science is continually evolving. I've encountered plenty of doctors who insist you should eliminate saturated fat from your diet as much as you can, and that's key to reducing your odds of heart disease. This is the old hypothetical model of heart disease. Modern studies tend not to agree. But people are still being told the same old things.
There are bioaccumulative toxins, but nothing over the counter sold in a plastic tub by some guy in a tank top will get rid of them. And some, like lead, have symptoms that are not reversible. Lead poisoning is a lifelong condition. So a magical "detoxifying" shoe insole or smoothie additive isn't going to do much. I think @nightshade@piefed.social 's point remains that any toxins that stay in the body are either gone for good after a short time, or there to stay.
Chelators are sold over the counter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelation_therapy
https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-best-way-to-detox-from-heavy-metals/answer/Harri-K-Hiltunen
In a plastic tub by a guy in a tank top at a store that sells more than 1 product with "swole" in the name?
Wouldn't the only really possible "cleanse" be something like water fasting or similar since you wouldn't be taking in more of the so-called "toxins" (well I guess it does technically exist like alcohol but that gets metabolized)?