6. Vitamins and other supplements can replace real food.
You can buy a supplement for pretty much anything these days: fibre, fish oil, melatonin, creatine, colostrum, vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin D, vitamin E — all the way through the end of the alphabet. With so many nutrient-packed pills, capsules and gummies at your fingertips, you might naturally start to wonder if you even need to bother eating healthy — and you wouldn’t be alone. “People will often reach for a supplement instead of examining the lifestyle factors that could actually be the root cause” of any digestive symptoms, Nielsen said.
Tempting as it might be to toss back some psyllium husk powder rather than choke down a bunch of broccoli, however, supplements aren’t a perfect substitute. In fact, research indicates they can’t fully replicate the health benefits. Evidence suggests that most vitamins and minerals in supplements aren’t as well absorbed as those in food, according to a 2019 article published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine. What’s more, a 2019 study in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine found that diets adequate in vitamin A, vitamin K, magnesium, zinc and copper were associated with a lower risk of premature death — but only if those vitamins came from food rather than supplements. Compared to food, supplements are also more likely to cause a vitamin overdose — which can come with its own health implications — because they are so much more highly concentrated.
What to do instead: Focus on the basics — and put down the pill bottle: “No supplement is going to replace good healthy living — eating a healthy, whole diet rich with fruits and vegetables, managing your stress [and] sleeping well,” Dr. Ganjhu said.
7. Detoxing is essential.
To some extent, the concept of “detoxing” makes intuitive sense. “We live in a stressful, polluted world,” and we aren’t “always eating all the things we should,” Nielsen said. But if you think you need to do a juice cleanse or water fast to “purge” harmful substances from your body — which, to be clear, almost always just means signing up for a bout of prolific pooping — you’re probably not giving evolution enough credit. “Our bodies are really quite miraculous. They know how to handle our food and digest it,” Van Eck said. “Your liver, kidneys and lungs do all of the detoxing you need.”
Not only is detoxing not necessary, it’s likely to do more harm than good. In fact, it’s “actually the opposite of what you would want to do,” Nielsen said. Most cleanses do one of two things, according to UT Southwestern Medical Center: expelling fluids from the body or irritating your GI tract, causing it to release its contents. Either way, you could end up worse than you started — dealing with electrolyte loss and dehydration in the case of the former, or struggling with diarrhoea in the case of the latter.
What to do instead: Prioritise foods that support your body’s natural detoxification processes (like beets, broccoli sprouts and Brazil nuts) — and skip the green juice cleanse that influencer in your feed is always pushing. When you’re not eating any solids, you’re “eliminating a lot of the normal physiological triggers for motility,” Nielsen said, referring to the contractions that break food down into smaller particles so it can advance through the digestive tract. By sticking to liquids exclusively, “you’re also eliminating that normal stimulus for the gut to move, which could make things feel much worse once you start eating solid food again,” Nielsen said. Cue the bloating, gas, and constipation that might be sending you to social media in search of a quick fix in the first place.
This article originally appeared on SELF.