While controversial, an ionic foot detox is said to work by pulling the toxins out of your body through your feet. Take, for example, the popular foot detox bath advertised as a safe and relaxing way to clear out the body, the ionizing machine works to ionize the foot bath water. It is thought that putting hydrogen in the water, a positive charge would then attract the negatively charged toxins in your body. In other words, the principal is such that ions in the foot bath water hold a charge that enables them to attract and bind to any heavy metals and toxins in your body, similar to how a magnet works. In turn, this allows the toxins to be pulled out through the bottoms of your feet.
One proof-of-principle study found no evidence to suggest that ionic foot baths help promote the elimination of toxic elements from the body through the feet, urine, or hair. However, another study found the opposite results. Thus, while unlikely to cause harm or result in any increased uptake, the use of Ionic Foot Baths may release minute quantities of potentially toxic elements into the aqueous environment.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3228292/
The authors are grateful for the support that they received for this study. This research was supported by a grant from the Canadian CAM Research Fund (CCRF), a partnership of the Holistic Health Research Foundation of Canada and IN-CAM.
I believe that this is another area where science can’t adequately measure the effectiveness of the therapy and therefore don’t recommend it. At the same time, there are more and more health spas offering the treatment and people who repeatedly have the treatment are convinced that they feel so much better after having it. Much of the positive reports are anecdotal, but we must remember that not everything can be measured in a test tube.
An interesting case I came across in Oregon, was with a spa that offered these foot baths. They had recorded a case where an older gentleman came in to their spa having been diagnosed with kidney failure, and his doctor wanted to put him on dialysis. He asked the owner of the spa if he would be willing to conduct a live experiment and give him regular foot baths instead of receiving dialysis. They both agreed that they would include the doctor in the decision and monitor regular blood levels of his toxins to make sure the foot baths were adequate. He stayed off dialysis for almost 10 years and only quit when he had some other major medical conditions, brought on by age, and decided that it was his time to “go home.” While I don’t have the documentation of the levels of toxins, I trust the source who told me this incident because he was directly involved with the gentleman.
We offer these Ionic Foot Baths in The Calming Store because of my positive experience with them. This is for those who experience the effects described or would like to try it out and take advantage of the many benefit mentioned above. The cost of our whole system is about the same as 3 treatments at a spa.
For transparency, I have included different perspectives for the use of Ionic Foot Baths. My conclusion is that many people have had positive experiences using Ionic Foot Baths because they find them effective in taking care of some of their health issues. Plus, they are completely safe. My personal experience is that there is value in utilizing this mode of therapy despite one negative review, which could have involved various factors, such as the type of water used. At the end of the day, this is another decision left up to you.