We’re a week into the new year, most of us in the office haven’t broken our new year’s resolutions yet! Every year, around this time, people talk about cleanses and detoxing. It always sounds so nice — a way to get your body back to ground zero and build up your healthy new lifestyle around it. After overeating, traveling and not following your regular sleep or exercise routine, it’s easy to feel a little unhealthy and a desire to get back to normal.

When most people start talking about detox, they’re talking about juice and water cleanses and other unhealthy things. Intermittent fasting has been shown to aid weight loss and some other medical problems. However, starving yourself or just pouring sugar-heavy juice into your system is not good for your blood sugar and it’s not helping your blood clear anything. Other people talk about eating one food or one specific, semi-science-based diet. While it’s sad news that there is no secret magic bullet to feeling wonderful and optimizing your gut health, it’s nice to know that imbibing nothing but water, honey, lemon and cayenne pepper isn’t going to do a darn thing.

The body is designed to clear things from its system. Through exhalation, urination, defecation and sweating, the body clears waste. If that were not so, you would be unable to drink alcohol. The feeling of intoxication would never leave you. While your body can go through a genuine detox and get unhealthy things through your system fast, that is performed at a hospital after poisoning. Anything else, from cleansing tea to healing footbaths, is nonsense. The widely circulated idea that toxic sludge in your colon termed “mucoid plaque” is a fiction according to gastroenterologists. They have yet to document a single case of the sludge being seen. Dr. Bennett Roth goes so far as to call it “baloney.”

So, what can you do to recover from the holidays and feel healthier within your own skin? The doctors say it's the same thing you’re already doing: stop smoking, put down the cookie and glass of wine, eat more vegetables and get out for some exercise. It’s not as fast as drinking just juice for 72 hours, but the slow and steady lifestyle changes — or return to your normal healthy routine — are the only way to go.