Do dietary "cleanses" work, or are they pseudo-science?

Anything that contains the words “rid your system of toxins” reeks of scam, not just mere pseudo-science, because the latter implies that the seller at least believes it to work.

Junk and potentially dangerous. Our GI tract is designed to clean itself; messing with the beautiful design is bad, uncomfortable and perhaps seriously not-a-good-idea.

Eat more bran, fruits and vegetables and less white bread, meat and pasta.

That would be a no-go.

Total crap. In more ways than one.

Oh, and here’s an article specifically on the regimen that you mention.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard

Actually, it would be a go-too-much!

Complete and utter crap. The only thing they are perhaps good for is making you (quite temporarily) lose weight. And that’s because you’re either starving yourself, poisoning yourself, or both.

A colonic of warm water (you can add a little soap if you must) would be a much safer, and quicker, method of cleansing the colon.

Watch this
http://infactvideo.com/episode/02/02/

Junk science.

I don’t have much experience on this subject, but I have heard that you really have to be very careful before embarking on one of these ‘colon cleanses’. It’s not a bad idea to try to filter toxins out of your body, but these drastic diets themselves can be unhealthy. There’s probably safer ways out there to cleanse your body, & even then you need to consider carefully what you do & how. Less major dietary changes, like reducing or cutting out refined foods, would probably be much safer and healthier if its feasible for you. If you can, see a good doctor about it or the health issues that lead you to consider this.

Unnecessary stuff. There is bacteria in your guts for a reason. Colonics are like douches, they disrupt the chemical balance of your innards.

It’s a big, big BIG scam.

Yep, not much truth to those products.

Here, I’ll share my cleanse plan.

Fruit for breakfast

Fruit for lunch

Dinner: 3 large glasses of Champagne with raw Cherry juice and a big raw salad.

Viola! You will be very cleansed the next morning. lol

Always struck me as being a bit off, particularly the part about ridding you of unspecified boogey-toxins.
I would be hesitant to call it an outright scam, since there isn’t really a way to profit from it. Rather, it is misinformation gone viral, in the manner of the urban legend.

This is all generally what I thought, and everyone has basically corroborated my instincts. Thanks for that. A while ago I saw the most outrageous one, where people were taking some supplement that would supposedly rid you of fecal matter that was stuck in your intestines for years. There were photos on the site of people holding up their poop to show how unusual it looked. It looked unusual all right.

On a related note, my wife used to buy into that stuff (still might, not sure), and she went to a colon cleansing “doctor” in a clinic. There was actually a clear plastic tube in the waiting room in which poop removed from patients would pass by for all to see. This was supposed proof that the service was beneficial, seeing some freaky shit floating by in a tube. That made me laugh for a long time.

@cockswain If you watch the video I posted, you can see that freaky tubey stuff. It’s really disgusting.

I haven’t got to it yet, I will later. Or maybe now I won’t, tough to say. I just asked my wife about it again, to ensure I had the details correct. Sure enough, I was spot on.

Snake oil!

Let’s not forget our master cleanser: our liver. Designed to deal with toxins. Within limits, of course…

So: yes, pseudo-science.

Pseudo science.