Four of the most popular wellness trends and facts, and why they are a bunch of baloney
How many times have you seen an ad for Bloom Nutrition on your TikTok for you page? How many post-holiday meal conversations have you had where someone told you they were going on a juice cleanse? In today’s day and age, health and fitness is on everyone’s mind. Everyone wants to know how to get the flattest stomach, the clearest skin, and the most gains. In the last few years, wellness trends have flooded the internet like a tsunami, but are they truly helpful? These are four of the most popular health and fitness theories, and how they are all complete lies.
1. Everybody needs to be hydrated. Athletes and regular people alike cart around jumbo-sized water bottles, meant to ensure they drink as much water as possible during the day. And that’s great: water is vital to how human bodies operate. It carries nutrients and oxygen to your cells, flushes bacteria from your bladder, helps digestion, prevents constipation, protects your organs and tissues… the list goes on (3). However, water intake is not a one-size-fits-all concept. Typically, healthy male individuals should drink around 15.5 cups of water, while women should drink 11.5 cups. This number includes the amount of water you take in via coffee, tea, juice, fruits, or vegetables, meaning that the amount of plain drinking water healthy humans should drink is only around 4-6 cups per day (3). However, for some people, this rule does not apply. People with certain conditions, such as heart, kidney, liver, or thyroid diseases, can, in fact, consume too much water. In addition, those who take certain medicines, such as NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs), opiate pain medications, and some antidepressants can have the same issue. So, while it is certainly important to be hydrated, water intake is highly individualized, and is a practice that is actually best undertaken after consulting with a doctor (3).
2. Another classic myth, this time about the age-old objective to become as stick-thin as possible, is that exercising turns fat into muscle. This myth has a very straightforward explanation, as it is physiologically impossible for fat to turn to muscle (1). There are three different forms of muscle in the human body: skeletal, cardiac, and smooth. The first type, skeletal muscle, is commonly associated with exercise and body composition. Skeletal muscle is made of bundles of muscle fibers called myofibrils. These myofibrils consist of smaller fibers that are made of long chains of amino acids (1). For those who need a refresh of freshman year biology, amino acid chains are the building blocks of a protein, which contain a unique nitrogen group in its structure. Body fat, also known as adipose tissue, is made of triglycerides, a molecule that has a glycerol backbone and three fatty acid chains attached to it (1). Every variation of fat is formed by various constructions of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms. Therefore, because fat and muscle have entirely different chemical makeup, they cannot be converted into each other. As for what is actually happening during weight loss, it is typically a combination of losing fat, muscle, and glycogen stores: none of these components are directly transforming into another (1).
3. The third fitness fantasy is spot-targeted weight loss. Going back to triglycerides, they are one of the biggest sources of energy for our bodies. Around 95% of the fat we consume from food is triglycerides. After we eat, our bodies store any energy not immediately used in special fat cells called adipocytes (2). Adipocytes are then released into our bloodstream to be transported to adipose tissue, which is what increases when people gain weight or become fatter. Most fat can be found throughout the entire body, from subcutaneous fat under the skin to visceral fat around internal organs. These fat stores are an essential energy source, especially during prolonged exercise or during dieting and fasting (2). During exercise, the body converts the triglycerides from the adipose tissue into free fatty acids and a compound called glycerol to be used for energy. These products flow to the muscles through the bloodstream from fat stores all over the body, making it impossible to target specific areas of the body for weight loss (2).
4. Finally, we arrive at our fourth and final health and fitness fallacy: detoxes. Detoxing, or “cleansing,” is one of the most popular wellness trends. There are three main categories of detoxing: detox diets, periodic fasting, and colon cleansing (4). Detox diets are temporary diets that typically last for a few days to a month and predominantly restrict you to liquid vegetables, fruit juices, and added spices. Periodic fasting is the practice of “taking a break” from your typical, and theoretically harmful, diet to not eat anything at all. It is thought to erase a variety of toxins, synthetic chemicals, and other poisons from the body, and is often a part of the detox diet process (4). Colon cleansing, arguably the most invasive method of the three, is the process of cleaning out the colon by flushing water or other substances through a tube placed in the rectum. Currently, there are many brands and influencers advertising some variation of these three practices that are supposed to have a myriad of benefits (4). But are any of these practices truly beneficial? The short answer is no. There has been very little scientific evidence shown that suggests any of these detoxes have been able to achieve the results they are said to. On the flip side, there is not much evidence supporting the idea that any of them cause harm (4). Some side effects connected to cleansing are possible kidney failure, irritability, fatigue, diarrhea, and specifically with colon cleansing, dehydration, abdomen cramping, and nausea. However, these side effects have not been solidly linked to the implementation of detoxing in one’s lifestyle (4).
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/detox-diets-101
Most of these health and fitness trends are not overly dangerous, and are unlikely to cause serious harm to anyone’s body. However, it is always best to be informed about the processes happening in your body, and how they can be affected by the many trendy practices the internet is recommending you use. At the end of the day, everyone’s body behaves differently, so the most important thing to remember is to do what makes you feel happy and healthy.
- Davidson, K. (2021, March 2). Does Fat Turn into Muscle? What to Know. Healthline Media. Retrieved from https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/does-fat-turn-into-muscle.
- Fuller, N. (2023, November 7). Spot Reduction: why targeting weight loss to a specific area is a myth. Sydney University Press. Retrieved from https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2023/11/07/spot-reduction–why-targeting-weight-loss-to-a-specific-area-is-.html#:~:text=Spot%20reduction%20is%20a%20myth%20%E2%80%93%20we%20can’t%20control%20where,fat%20and%20preserve%20muscle%20mass.
- LeWine, H. (2023, May 22). How much water should you drink?. Harvard Health Publishing. Retrieved from https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/how-much-water-should-you-drink.
- Shmerling, R. (2020, March 25). Harvard Health Ad Watch: What’s being cleansed in a detox cleanse?. Harvard Health Publishing. Retrieved from https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/harvard-health-ad-watch-whats-being-cleansed-in-a-detox-cleanse-2020032519294#:~:text=Just%20as%20there%20is%20limited,including%20a%20green%20smoothie%20cleanse.