Detox foot pads have been in the news since few months. The pads claim to drag out the toxins from your body and make you a healthier person. You can find detox pads in almost every online retail websites. These pads are getting sold like hot cakes. In this article, we have collected some useful information from various sources and penned down to help you know about these trends a bit better. Detox foot pads are there in the market for many years, but suddenly due to beauty bloggers and social media, these products have gained a sudden momentum.
Detox Foot Pad
Detox foot pads come in sachet form which contains some herbal materials in powdered form. These pads are accompanied with adhesive patches. Users are required to stick these adhesive pads under their feet and leave them overnight. Next day, the pads turn black and the material inside the pad turns muddy and gross. The pads claim to suck out the toxins from your body. The products say that these pads detoxify the body, maintains balance, reduces stress, improves sleep, blood circulation, unblocks lymphatic passages, etc. as a science and technology blogger, I wondered if these pads are effective or not. So, after a lot of reading and watching vlogs, I am writing down the I gathered and explaining it as much that I could.
What is Detoxification?
Detoxification has become a common term these days. When you search on Google about detoxification of the body, you will get hundreds of websites telling you about detox diets, another hundred of sites selling detox foods and some selling these foot patches. But is this how the body detoxifies? Definitely no. The body has the most advanced science of detoxifying itself. Detoxification is removing toxins or harmful chemicals from the body. The two major organs that take the most part in detoxification are kidneys and liver. The other two organs that also take part in detoxification are lungs and skin.
Liver:
The liver is a miracle organ in case you did not know. It can regenerate itself and functions to remove toxins from your body. That is why a person who donates liver can survive without any difficulty because liver do regenerate and turns into its normal size. Some important functions of the liver are
- Bile production: Bile helps in decomposing fats, cholesterol, vitamins into simple forms.
- The liver can break down carbohydrates and all vital nutrients into simplest form so that they are digested easily and it also helps in maintaining the blood glucose level.
- Liver stores vitamins A, D, E, K and B12.
- Liver any pathogens that enter the body, and the liver via guts. The liver accomplishes it with the help of immune cells called Kupffer cells.
- The liver filters out harmful compounds, toxins liberated as bio products of certain functions, external toxins, pathogens, etc. from the body.
Kidney:
- The human body has two kidneys. While one works, the other is kept aside as a backup. When the working kidney fails, the other starts functioning. The main and the foremost important function of the kidney is detoxification of harmful toxic chemicals from the body and release them through urine.
- The kidneys regulate fluid and electrolyte balance in the body, and helps in controlling blood pressure.
- It keeps the pH or the acid base balance of the body. The human body or any animal body should maintain the exact pH level in the body. If it alters, it can lead to death. So, the kidneys do have this amazing capability to maintain the ultimate pH by removing the unnecessary and harmful acid and alkaline chemicals from the blood.
- The kidneys are responsible for purifying blood and it is the most important detoxifying organ of the body. Kidneys purify 1200 ml of blood per minute.
- It secretes many chemicals that release certain important hormones such as antidiuretic hormone and aldosterone.
Lungs:
Lungs remove carbon dioxide from the blood and takes part in detoxification.
Skin
Skin filters out excess salt, dirt and toxins from the body through sweat.
So, now you know that our body has been made in one of the most amazing ways and it can heal itself on its own.
Detox Foot Pads Myths Busted:
According to an article shared by Healthline, doctors Dr. Debra Rose Wilson and Dr. Dena Westphalen have talked about detox pads. According to them, there are no bodily responses to detox foot pads, as found in researches and studies. Simple pads containing certain herbs and vinegar do not have the ability to drag out toxins from the body overnight. Even though sticking them under your feet won’t pose any serious risks, but these products make false advertisements and do not work the way they claim. The sticky mud that are produced are probably the substances’ reaction to sweat and water.
You can check the video by Richard Thornely who has tested the detox foot pads by reacting them with water, ester and some other harmful chemicals. The result showed that the pads’ reaction to the harmful chemicals made no change in the substances, whereas interaction with water made the material muddy.
So, after scanning through several journals and lab test videos, it can be inferred that the amazing qualities claimed by detox foot pads are quite a myth.
