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We gave you lots of suggestions for sneaky cheats for a January detox earlier in the month, and to be honest, what we left out was pretty telling.
Namely, detox patches. These things are the sort of snake-oil product that give beauty and cosmetics a bad name. Trumpeting their amazing powers from the rooftops, it’s just smoke and mirrors. Place them on your feet at night and in the morning, OMG WTF, the pads will be toxin-tastic, from all the nasties that apparently ran out of the soles of your feet during the night.
Yeah. Right.
Don’t believe me? Place a detox pad over the steam from a boiling kettle (or any damp, hot source) and hey presto! It’ll turn dark as a pint of the black stuff. The secret here is heat and moisture, which is why you often put them on your feet – during the night, the sweat and warmth from the soles of your feet cause a chemical reaction to take place, darkening the pad. There’s no detox benefits here. None.
It’s also important to remember that if you’d that much gunk coming out of your body it would mean your liver (the organ that efficiently handles toxins in the body) wasn’t working, and to put it very simply, you’d be dead.
One word: AVOID.
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OMG, what a shocker!! I actually thought they were working. I’d never have tought of putting them over a kettle, good on ye girls.
They’re not exactly condusive to a bit of spontaneous, er, action, are they?
“Come here, big boy… oh, just mind my black, stinking, damp foot patches…”
I’m shocked! the detox pinky one, angel something?they were at billion dollar babes seemed v convincing
Big eyes – in truth, they may well believe it themselves. I didn’t, so looked into it a bit more and found that the US 20 20 programme had researched them and found out that they’re not remotely effective. Plus there;s lots of anecdotal evidence on the web about people who’ve sent them off to be tested in labs and found that there’s no evidence of toxins on them post-use.
These thing and their claims have annoyed me for years. Very nice to see the AVOID advice here!
I am actually reading this blog every day now, and very good it is too. Keep up the good work!
thanks Diz!
Thanks for the eye opener, they do say that they get lighter if you use them a few days in a row wetc and thats it working?saying that they never get any lighter just sludgy!
not sure what i meant by wetc!hehe
interesting video here:
http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=4639080
I’ve often wondered about that and how if the liver was meant to be tackling toxins they were coming out your feet…main way to rid yourself of toxins is to eat healthy and get exercise..
I read about this recently in the Bad Science book,I think there’s sugar in the patches that react with the moisture from your foot.
Oh thanks for this post; I was debating buying them when I was in Mink at the weekend! They (Mink) were proudly trumpeting the “featured on Xposé” status of the patches.
Lynnie – excellent point
ha,ha, we got them with my bfr once aswell, it was soooo funny, the smell of them in the morning nearly made me sick, so for a while we were feeling like there must be something happening, but then I did a proper research on the internet and found out what a scam is this. But I have to say that we had a really good laughs putting them on before going to bed
))) two lunetics….. we were even fighting over the last pair and ended up putting on only one each 
))))))
I found a good detox is Flor Essence Detox Tea available in most health shops. I think you take it over 7 days and I slept like a baby each night.
I know they are no good for detox (sounds like complete nonsense!) but these patches make me sleep. No idea why but I used them twice and I slept like a baby. Read up on them and found other people have said the same. It was the toxic twins detox ones. Sadly I was not detoxed in any other way – skin looked the same, my @ss is not any smaller and I still want chocolate like now
Toxic twins thats what i meant! angels hehe!love the packaging soo disappointed to hear they are a waste!
i rem when those things came out.. i was thinking of trying them.. didn’t.. then a friend told me how they’d really helped a friend of hers sleep, like you, little miss muppet!
i decided to try them at that point as i don’t sleep well at all
then it came out that they were a big scam.. so how does the sleep thing work? psychosomatic, methinks?
they’re still in a drawer somewhere..
and for a gentle detox, i really like the dr vogel’s box of stuff..about €30 in any health shop
For the sleep effect, keeping the feet warm would result in better sleep. So maybe try wearing some soft socks in bed (not the sexiest thing in the world, mind, but then neither are the foot patches…)
What a difference a year or two makes….
http://beaut.ie/blog/?p=1015
Or even for that matter a couple of weeks…
http://beaut.ie/blog/?p=7268
yeah, it was after that I looked into them! One of the best things about doing beaut.ie is you really find out so much along the way. I’ve changed my mind about so many things at this stage.
Are you serious??? I was so tempted to buy some on a flight yesterday ‘cos I was feeling a bit shit. Well now I know…
In a sort of related topic, what about the things that look like foot spas and they turn brown from the toxins, they were at the Holiday World expo at weekend?
Do they work?
carolinej – apparently it’s more of the same, a chemical reaction.
yeah those foot bath things are meant to be a gimmick too.
I cant wear socks in bed i hate it.
but the patches are handy to get a good sleep. I used them tuesday night and slept well and then had a great sleep last night even though I didnt use them – strange but im not complaining!
for detox i used those bio firm danish detox tabs before and they were not bad. bit pricey though.
[...] (but not with Foot Patches) – The Irish beauty blog Beaut.ie has an article about detoxing. That is, what NOT to do when detoxing. If you’ve been to a drug [...]