We’ve all been putting toxins into our bodies for years, even if we don’t know it. Just being alive after the Industrial Revolution puts us all at risk for unnecessary toxins, weird chemical by-products, and various and sundry unnatural, ultimately harmful, materials into our bodies. While it’s true that none of these are in theory) at absolutely poisonous levels, it’s still been recommended that adults go through some sort of body cleansing diet plan once per year.

Part of the rationalization behind getting detox– one of the central arguments you’ll hear on health and fitness websites, on day-time talk shows, maybe even at the YMCA when you’re taking your kid to a swim class or something– is that these people want to be able to live longer. I don’t know whether that’s really a good thing. This is an over-populated country as it is, and in a certain sense it’s rather selfish for any of us to want to live longer.

The newly-minted era of health awareness is a good and important trend in contemporary society, and some people have been living such starkly clean lives for so long that they’ve forgotten how to talk to people like you, who have been smoking and drinking in direct proportion to your body weight since you dropped out of college. It’s for those of you that these clean livers hire self-destructive types like me to write for them.

So now that you know that we understand you (or at least we’d like to think we do,) consider this:

Life expectancy across the country is rising, due in large part to the dramatic decrease in infant mortality. On the other hand, obesity, Diabetes, and hypertension are all also on the rise. That means that there will be more people eventually in hospitals for things that– at least in the three cases mentioned just now– there will be more people in those hospitals. If you could decrease the possibility of being in that position just by following a a body cleansing program , would you?