The subject of “toxins”, those mysterious poisons that people feel the need to get rid of by any means necessary, has been bobbing to the surface on Facebook lately. Lots of angry atheist types are enjoying themselves far too much as they crow about how there is “no such thing as a toxin” and “no scientific proof that toxins exist or that the products sold to cure them do anything” (well duh, you can’t cure someone of something that doesn’t exist) and as usual with these assholes, they have things entirely wrong and are too stupid and hateful to know it.

It’s been said that those who love something the most are often those who understand it the least, and so it is apparently up to me to school these schoolboys in some basic science.

Let’s start from the root idea of toxins. It’s a simple idea : we modern human beings live our lives surrounded by unique manmade materials and environmental pollutants that our bodies do not know how to handle. As we live amongst all these substances, even ingesting some of them in our artificial foods, our body takes care of most of them, but small amounts accumulate in our bloodstreams and tissues and impinge upon our health.

An anti-toxin purge, therefore, is simply a procedure of whatever sort that flushes these unnatural substance from out bodies.

None of that is controversial science. Science knows that these substances exist and accumulate within us. Whether in our bloodstreams, bones, or bowels, we accumulate toxic junk.

Not in large quantities, of course. If a substance makes people markedly ill in a short period of time, we tend to find out and get rid of it, sooner or later. Those substances are known toxins in the full scientific sense of the word.

But what about something that just makes you feel vaguely tired and depressed, something that suppresses your immune system a little, or that only leads to a very mild sense of being ill? And what if the cause is something so common that there is no way to distinguish it from the chemical background noise? What if it’s the plastic they use in the lids of disposable coffee cups? Or the residue left behind by organic farming methods? How would we know?

Now multiply that by all the new substances invented in the last century, and it is no big leap to think that there must be some of them our body does not know how to handle quite right. Every moment of our lives, we breathe in trace amounts of everything that is in the room with us (and a lot that isn’t), not to mention the things we eat and drink that eventually become a part of us, and so a “flush” or a “purge” might well make people feel better.

And that’s the idea. To make people feel better.

And no, it’s not just the placebo effect. It’s the purgative effect. These herbal concoctions that are sold as anti-toxin have many impressively natural sounding ingredients, but they all boil down to the same things :

Diuretics, to flush out the kidneys and bladder. Laxatives, to do the same for the bowels. And a mild muscle stimulant to help everything along. Maybe some known herbal painkillers or mood elevators to heighten the effect.

And the thing is, when people have purged like this, they will feel better. Partly because the very nature of the event makes a strong impression on people. Going through a week’s worth of trips to the bathroom in one evening is a very intense experience.

And because it is so intense, it will also get your endorphins pumping, and that means that once the seas inside have calmed, you will experience a sense of euphoria that leaves a profound, almost religious, impression on your mind.

Then there’s the effect of being empty. Most of us will never be as empty as someone who has just been through a purge. It’s a very unusual sensation (been there once) and something that maps extremely well to our sense of innocence and purity (just look at all the bad stuff that is no longer in me) and this further cements the feeling that something profound has occurred.

And who knows, it’s entirely possible that these purges actually do clear unnatural substances from our bodies. Maybe the tsunami of purging is just what the body needs to wash loose the stubborn substances that it otherwise cannot handle. Things that are not severe enough to cause a full body reaction, but that taken as a whole, you’re better off without.

Again, none of this is controversial science. It is all rooted in scientific fact. The fact that many of the people buying and using these purgative products do not understand (or improperly understand) the science does not mean that the science does not exist. Neither does the fact that these products are often marketed in such a way as to rouse people’s superstitious fear of the modern world rather than sound rational reasoning.

A flashlight works just as well for the person who thinks it runs on fairy dust as the one who knows it runs on a battery.

Can I say for sure that these purgative products do what they say? No, I can’t, But I can say that, for most people, they do no harm and probably even do them so good.

We could all use a hard reboot of our systems once in a while, ya know what I mean? Both mental and physical.

So to all you people shouting “ha ha, stupid hippie, toxins aren’t real!”, I trust that I have sufficiently established that science far from precludes their claims from being true.

Of course, there is nothing stopping you from going right along believing the comforting lie that preserves your hate-fun.

But know that to do so makes you just as superstitious and irrational as those over whom you claim superiority.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.