I’ve long heard these detox foot pads can make for a better night’s sleep:
But is it truly possible to evict toxins through your roots?
Some speculate… not so much. Not only do they say these pads make ’em wake up smelling like bacon, but the debris left on the strip isn’t necessarily even evidence of pulled pollutants. Plop a water droplet on there, and you’ll get the same color change, they claim. Then again, there are others – lifelong complainers – who swear by the stuff. It’s been said to relieve everything from TMJ pain to overall cognitive fog. All malevolent aspects of daily living that can serve as behemoth slumber barriers. In fact, a patient came into my P.T. clinic the other day and (seeing as she was being seen for foot pain, and seeing as we’re both womenfolk) we got on the topic of fleshy flippers and pedicuring them. That was when she told me about a place down the way that does foot detoxes between making your cuticles cuter. The whole mood of her visit was typical for someone suffering from a chronic pain condition. She’d just had a long day, was in a bad mood, and was hurting somethingawful. Her countenance was grim at best. The moment I got her talking about sucking sludge out her southerly appendages, though, she lit up like a schoolgirl on a snow day. I asked, “So did it work?” For the first time ever, I saw her smile with relief. I was legit afraid she was gonna pull a face muscle from the foreign expression of joy she was employing, when she told me:
“I’ve never slept better.”
So, I was intrigued.
I mean, I’d heard about it – but never did much research before. So, I tried looking it up. The idea dates back to this ancient Eastern concept. And what it does is work on your meridians (thos’re like “energy highways” in your body – unconfirmed by Western science) through the reflexology points on your feet. In a way, it’s meant to be like a remote Drain-o – unclogging toxins affecting your different organ systems from afar, and then sending said pollutants out through your lower limbs. How? Probably from those stinky ingredients the naysayers describe. Some function using this stuff called “wood vinegar” – which is like a holistic magic bullet – seeing as it not only detoxes, but is also notorious for smiting digestion, swelling, and pain problems. Some use others. Either way, more often than not, I’m hearing about how well the effects are in application.
Now, this is the part where the scientist in me wants an explanache.
Because nothing on our side’ve the world seems capable of confirming that you can vacuum out daily ingested venom via your feet. So, I thought, maybe what’s happening isn’t removal but absorption. If these pads’ve got some good hippie medicine in ’em, then maybe we’re drinking it in like a tree. Or – mayhaps its placebo effect. But, then, why were even the skeptical, pessimistic d-bags of the world feeling the effects? When I couldn’t find any good scientific evidence to either prove or disprove that the feet are any better at absorption than anywhere else on our bodies, I remembered that thing I mentioned above: reflexology.
See, those reflexology points I touched on above are a biggie out East. By hitting on certain points of your plantar fascia, through some sorcery, you can effect everything from mental clarity to when you’ll drop your next deuce to – of course – how well you’ll sleep. And you know what? Though this practice’s proven itself in a significant amount of studies on sufferers of insomnia and miscellaneous other maladies, no Western science can seem to explain why. No one’s certain about the biological details, but even the Mayo clinic can confirm it works. And as much as I loathe not knowing why, you wanna know what that tells me? That – much like a lotta life mysteries out there -there’s a whole helluva lot about the bottom of our stems that we straight up dunno about. And when that happens with anything, we’ve got a couple choices. We can either be afraid of fixes we can’t dissect to understand (and carry on suffering). Or we can accept, try, an benefit from the tools that’ve been safely working for ages in other cultures.
Which is why I say, don’t let lack of lab evidence deter you from detoxing.
Especially if you’ve seemingly tried everything else already.
’cause when things work and we aren’t sure why – it’s usually just science that hasn’t been proven yet.