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Do detox juices and cleanses remove toxins?
No good trials show juices or cleanses remove toxins; any weight lost tends to come back.
What you hear: “Celery juice, juice cleanses and detox drinks flush toxins out of your body.”
What the studies found
A 2015 review found no randomised trials of commercial detox diets in humans and only a handful of small, flawed studies. The US NCCIH notes juice detoxes cause early weight loss from eating fewer calories, which tends to return once normal eating resumes. We found no human trials of celery juice for detoxing.
Take care: Unpasteurised juices can cause food poisoning, and high-oxalate green juices have caused kidney damage in susceptible people.
What you could do
Your liver and kidneys do the detox work; fruit and vegetables are good to eat, but a cleanse adds no proven benefit.
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Not medical advice. General information from published studies, not a diagnosis or a treatment plan. Talk with your doctor before starting a supplement or changing a medicine, especially if you are pregnant, take other medicines or have a health condition.
How we judged it
Not proven: Not enough good human evidence yet, either way. We judge the claim as it is usually said online, not the habit itself. Trials assign people at random, so they can show cause; observed studies follow people and show a link, not proof. Last checked: October 2026.
The studies, in their own words
- Klein and Kiat. J Hum Nutr Diet 2015
no randomised controlled trials have been conducted to assess the effectiveness of commercial detox diets in humans.
- NCCIH. Detoxes and Cleanses: What You Need To Know
juicing and "detox" diets can cause initial weight loss because of low intake of calories, but they tend to lead to weight gain once a person resumes a normal diet.
- Makkapati et al. Am J Kidney Dis 2018
a case of acute oxalate nephropathy in a 65-year-old woman, temporally associated with the consumption of an oxalate-rich green smoothie juice "cleanse"
More claims, checked
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- Not provenColostrum heals your gut
- Doesn't hold upSeed oils are toxic
- Doesn't hold upRaw milk
- Doesn't hold upAlkaline water and alkaline diet
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