What is detoxification?

Among the more popular but nonetheless controversial topics both within and without the field of natural healing is the concept of detoxification. Whereas advocates swear by detoxification as a kind of panacea in the treatment all disease, skeptics dismiss as fanciful nonsense. In part both are right, and both are wrong – and I shall explain why.  Detoxification itself is a precise scientific word that can be used in a number of contexts – cellular detoxification, hepatic detoxification etc. Although discrete biological factors are at play in each separate process, the basic nature of what is meant by detoxification is nonetheless the same – the rendering of actively toxic compounds into relatively inert ones.  Once these compounds are so transformed they can be easily eliminated from the body, dumped from the tissues into the lymph and blood, and from there into the mucus, sweat, urine, bile and feces.