Ridding Yourself of Toxins, or Money?

April 11, 2008— -- Did you know that your body may be crawling with poisons and toxins? Heavy metals like arsenic and mercury? Parasites, metabolic wastes, even cellulite? Maybe that's why you're tired or stressed out or your back hurts. Well, someone has a cure for you.

"Kinoki foot pads, the incredible detox system that naturally captures toxins from your body while you sleep!" That's what the TV ads blare, and they're persuasive. After all, we've been told that poisons are everywhere.

"Are you poisoning yourself with unavoidable toxins from the food, water and air we breathe?" the spokeswoman asks. The foot pads, they say, will drain toxins right out of you. "Kinoki foot pads collect heavy metals, metabolic wastes, toxins, parasites, cellulite and more, giving you back your vitality and health."

How do they work? The pad is an adhesive patch with a small bag of ingredients that include things like wood vinegar. You apply this to your foot like a Band-Aid. Supposedly, the pad then drains the toxins out while you sleep.

The "after" pad shown in the ad is covered with what you'd expect toxins to look like -- brown, muddy, kind of a mini-Superfund site. But don't despair.

"Use a fresh pad each night until the pad becomes lighter and lighter," the ads claim. It's supposed to get lighter because after several days' use, you have fewer toxins in your body.

The ads boast that an "independent study proves Kinoki foot pads absorb toxic materials from your body. Isn't that amazing?"

Yes, and maybe that's why the Internet is buzzing about Kinoki, with bloggers wondering if they really work. At TheMockDock.com (their motto: "Unloading a fresh load of scoff, daily!") a blogger videotaped her test of Kinoki pads.

On the first night, she applied a pad to her foot, "and went to bed hoping for the best, wanting to see what happens in the morning and whether or not the pad was going to be as disgusting as the commercial promised and sure enough when I turned on the light and took this pad off… it was every bit as heinous as the commercials promised."

We were curious too, so we ordered some Kinoki pads and similar ones made by Avon called "detoxifying patches," and ran an ad asking for people who wanted to try them. We put together a group of people who had heard of detox foot pads -- some had even tried them -- and were willing to participate.