Gwyneth Paltrow Reps $425 Cleanse, Do You Believe in Detoxing?

Gwyneth Paltrow gives health and lifestyle tips on her website Goop. Many of the health tips were discredited by medical science long ago, while others are just regular remedies spun into ridiculously out of touch rich-people instructions. An example of the latter is her hangover cure advice, which suggests that you “keep hydrating yourself with alkaline forming Italian sparkling mineral water i.e. Pellegrino” and “eat one or two Umeboshi Plums.” Hunh? You mean some water and some fruit? Girl, I guess.

But when I saw that Paltrow added the promotion of a detox system called Cleanse to her repertoire I had to take a closer look. What better time to think about cleaning house than in the new year, right? Then I saw the product itself…and its price tag.

All of these ambiguous elixirs for the low price of…$425. Give me a break! Clearly I’m not the target market for a product in that price range and I flat-out refuse to spend that kind of hard-earned money on helping myself poop better (sorry to be gross, but that’s essentially what it is). So thanks, Gwyneth, but no thanks.

The fact that there must be people out there willing to break the bank for a good detox got me thinking. I’ve been equal parts curious and frightened by the idea of doing a detox ever since I only lasted on that lemonade and syrup business for a whopping six hours, gagging after every sip of the intolerable drink. But that leaves other types of fasting, juice regimens, colon cleansing, and dozens of other forms of “detox.”

Western medicine vehemently rejects the idea that our bodies need or can benefit from detoxing; when I brought the idea of a colonic up to my doctor, she told me that colon cleansing is harmful, explained that the human body is self-cleaning, and looked at me like I’d just suggested I start a drug habit for kicks. In spite of her wisdom, I’ve had success with non-Western healing such as acupuncture, so why can’t there be merit to the holistic belief that our bodies are filled with toxins that we should release so we can “reset” our systems for optimum performance?

What do you think? Do you believe in detoxing?