I've been Googling like crazy trying to find out how much truth there was in the Detox Seminar I took on the cruise.

The leader started by drawing a triangle and saying that in order to lose weight you had to pay attention to exercise, nutrition and detox. You will not be able to lose those last few pounds or inches without detox, she emphasized. Then she talked about all of the ways that toxins get into your body and where they are stored. The liver, kidneys and colon are three major areas. Cellulite, she said is when toxins are stored around fat cells.

She said that water alone would not flush toxins out of your body. If toxins are in your blood stream, water will flush them out of your system, but water alone will not release the toxins from the places where they are stored. The natural purifiers, she said, are algae and seaweed. There was a tendency to believe her because outside we could see our ship moving through beautiful blue water.

That was all she would say at the seminar. She wanted people to sign up for a test (using electrodes) to analyze their body composition. Then she would sell them the kind of seaweed they needed to cleanse their system. I'm not the kind of person who lets a stranger run electric currents through my body in order to convince me that I need to spend hundreds of dollars on her products. But I was curious about her theory.

When I Google seaweed and detox, I get hundreds of responses. Most of them are for seaweed plasters, creams or soaps. It does not seem logical to me that seaweed applied to the outside of my body would release toxins stored in my internal organs and fat cells. When I Google cellulite the consensus seems to be that it is hormonal and/or inherited rather than caused by toxins.

However I know seaweed and kelp are beneficial for Type Os. So I looked up Bladderwrack (a kelp) in the BTD encyclopedia and read that Dr. D. recommends it for detoxification in Type Os! Under primary action, it says "Traditional herbal medicine for weight loss."

I don't need to lose weight, but I do have some stubborn cellulite that no amount of exercise (and no amount of body brushing last summer) has had any impact on. I am increasing the amount of seaweed I eat and I'm taking Bladderwrack. I'll let you know if it changes the appearance of my legs.

Here are two pictures from the cruise. The first is me in a hurricane damaged part of Cozumel. The second is me snorkeling in Progresso.





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