What Are The Health Benefits Of A Stomach Cleanse?

Cleanses, be they in the form of juices or other expensive liquids, are popular these days thanks to their supposed abilities to "detoxify" the body. And while some, like juice cleanses, can be a nice change of pace for someone who's been eating nothing but junk food and drinking like a fish, in reality there aren't many health benefits to a cleanse that can't be achieved through a healthy balanced diet.

According to physician Kim-Giám Huỳnh, who posted a lengthy explanation on Quora, there are several reasons why stomach cleanses are essentially worthless. One, almost everything (except for, say, glass) passes through the stomach within a few hours of consumption, so there's not much to clean out. Also, the stomach is lined with mucus and filled with powerful hydrochloric acid, which breaks down just about everything it encounters. Third, liquid (which is the form nearly all cleanses take) doesn't spend much time in the stomach at all; certainly not long enough to have an effect on the stomach as a whole.

Also, don't forget that there are organs in our bodies whose primary purpose is to detoxify, like the liver and kidneys. So in the end, stomach cleanses don't work because there's basically nothing there to cleanse. As long as you drink lots of water and eat healthy, you'll be fine.