What Is an Ionic Foot Bath?

An ionic foot bath is a spa treatment offered by salons and homeopathic practitioners to aid in detoxification. At home, you can place a detox foot pad on the bottoms of your feet to wear overnight. Most salons and other providers have foot bath machines that use ions to draw impurities from the body and eliminate them through the skin on your feet. The clean water in the foot bath changes color, supposed proof that a chemical reaction occurred, but skeptics question whether the chemical reaction promotes better health or better sales.

Function

Ionic foot baths create a spa experience, cleansing the body of impurities such as toxins, wastes and metals to improve the immune system and allow the body to absorb vitamins better. Many users claim that they have improved skin tone, cured health conditions and aided weight loss efforts by regularly using an ionic foot bath. Users with arthritis or joint pain say that ionic foot baths helped them by eliminating pain and increasing their mobility and range of motion.

Theories

The body needs at least 36 to 48 ounces of water a day for its digestion, elimination and hydration needs. One theory suggests that the water is never safe or clean enough for the body, even if it's distilled, because the purification process removes the harmonizing and beneficial properties of water. Only after water enters the body and exchanges the vital life force properties can the detoxification process occur. Ionic foot baths promote detoxification and improve the body's use of water, proponents say.

Body Chemistry

Ionic foot baths have a high concentration of negative ions that attract positively charged ions such as metals and toxins in the body. The foot bath purports to bring the body to an alkaline state, in which cancer and other illnesses cannot thrive. Those who have a high concentration of toxins and impurities have an acidic body, a good environment for cancer.

Color Changes

Different manufacturers use different color codes for identifying the impurities drawn into the foot bath. For instance, black flecks in the foot bath indicate heavy metal elimination, and green colors indicate impurities drawn from the gall bladder. Blue water could indicate toxins withdrawn from the kidneys, and red could indicate blood clots. Each person has a unique combination of toxins in the body at any given moment, so your biochemistry and the effectiveness of the foot bath determines the overall success or degree of elimination during each session.

Considerations

The chemicals in the foot bath change colors as properties react with the toxins eliminated through the skin, but independent tests show that the color change occurs naturally during the electrolysis process, even without the presence of toxins such as bile, fats and cholesterol. Bubbles, temperature and other changes in water composition can make a solution change colors, depending on the properties in the foot bath. In addition, chemicals on the feet can impose unauthentic results, such as feet with nail polish, foot treatments, dye from shoes and natural substances such as fungi, potassium and other remnants.

No Guarantees

As with other alternative medicines and therapies, user results vary. Often, those in clinical trials and studies find that a placebo improves their symptoms, proving that when a user believes that an aid is working, it will work accordingly. Because of the ionic properties of the bath, there will be an ionic reaction in the body, whether it eliminates toxins or otherwise. The ionic foot bath assertion stands behind the generally known facts of science in the areas of disease, pH levels and ionization, but the effectiveness and accuracy stemming from the use of an ionic foot bath is something science may not be able to answer.

Resources

• User tests validity of foot bath claims
• Detox foot bath
• Detox foot pad