The concept of ‘releasing toxins’ or ‘drawing out toxins’ from the body is strange to me. I’m…just a caveman, and it strikes me as utter ‘new age’ crap. And yet, last week I went to a ‘hot box’ yoga class, where the room was much warmer than normal and we twisted our bodies into agonizing pretzels for an hour and a half. One of the benefits, our instructor said, was that through the sweat and the stretching, we would release ‘long hidden’ toxins into our bloodstream to be flushed out.
I laughed internally, looked around smugly, gave everyone the ol’ high eyebrow and continued to work.
And I’ll be damned if the next day, I didn’t feel sicker than a dog. I had no symptoms of a cold or flu the day before and the next day I was FLOORED with a runny nose, aching, stomach upset, sore throat…in speaking with other yoga and massage enthusiast (my sister being one), they said, “Oh sure, that’s the toxins working their way out, it’ll be a few days.”
I did a dogpile search on ‘flushing toxins’ and just found a bunch of colon cleansing and digestive tract projects (three of which I’ve taken) and snopes.com reveals that a lot of things that we think are toxins really aren’t.
But are there ‘toxins’ that can be drawn out and flushed out to make us feel better, weigh less, and poop more? Or did I just coincidentally catch a cold? I’m all ears.
Signed,
the toxic jarbaby
jarbaby,
This doesn’t relate directly to yoga or toxin release due to exercising muscles, but last month in Men’s Health (I can look up a cite if you like) they posted the results of a study of the dietary habits of the residents of the Biosphere. Essentially, they were put on very healthy diets consisting mostly of fruits and vegetables, with very little meats and low carbohydrates. Also, the food that they ate had been grown inside the Biosphere and not obtained from outside sources. What was found was that after several months of this diet, low levels of DDT and other pesticides and toxins were discovered in the residents’ bloodstreams and waste processes. (I believe the study also mentioned that these levels were typically not found in non-Biosphere residents.) This led the researchers to speculate that these toxins could be flushed out of the body in the absence of new toxins being ingested. So it appears that there it is possible to release toxins (possibly fat-soluble) from the body.
Let me just say that I’m by far NOT a biologist, and I’m simply relaying what I’ve read. If anyone has different (or more correct) information, please correct me.
The human body, as other living beings, has the ability to eliminate toxins due to the liver and kidneys. You can stretch youself into a pretzel, if you like, but you’ll not eliminate any toxins. You will get a good stretch.
People stay in saunas (and it sounds like you were in one for 90 minutes) and steam baths, purportedly to sweat and eliminate toxins. Nonsense. All you do is become dehydrated. This appears to be what happened to you, accounting for your temporary malaise. You may have also suffered from a heat syndrome, not amounting to a heat stroke.
barbitu8, actually, I think I just got a wicked cold. In any event, so when I go get a massage each week and they say “make sure to drink a lot of water today to flush out these toxins”…they’re full of crap (so to speak)?
jarbaby
I took a look at quackwatch, but they don’t have an article on massage therapy yet - it is “to be posted”. I did find a link to a description of where the notions of toxins locked in the body comes from - here’s a link on naturopathy.
naturopathy
You can read some of the interesting notions of disease, like the idea that bacteria and infections are actually harmless agents that only show up when our body is too full of toxins for it to process on its own. Needless to say a lot of this stuff flies in the face of conventional medical theory.
There is no medical justification for the idea that massage releases trapped toxins. Your body naturally processes the waste products with the liver and kidneys, and flushing with water is a good thing. The body needs water, and having a full load of water (especially after a shortage) will aid the body in removing wastes. So exercise and then drinking water will flush your system.
I had a massage therapist tell me something similar. I got a chair massage, and at the end, the guy was telling me to drink a lot of water and I would need to urinate within the hour to flush out the released toxins. And just how soon would I need to urinate if I hadn’t had the massage?
Catching a cold may not have been a coincidence. The heat and fatigue, along with dehydration, may have lowered your resistance to the virus.