Rhonda Bracey: At Random

While I was waiting for some boots to be resoled the other day, I spotted a nail bar next door, so decided to have a look. They offered an ‘ion cleanse’ treatment for 30 minutes, so I decided to have one, being very skeptical of the claims made on the sign.

I’ve seen these foot tubs before at markets, and have been amazed — like others before me — at the change in water colour over time as ‘the toxins are eliminated from the body’. Yeah, right.

My feet were placed in lukewarm water in a special tub, wires were connected, and some salt was sprinkled into the water. The attendant then turned on the machine. And almost immediately rust coloured water and particles started coming out of the round black thing in the water. NOT out of my feet, but out of this container (the arrow shows this happening).

In short time, the water turned rusty brown, and over the 30 minutes my feet were in the water, that water got progressively darker and more rusty and more horrid; there were even small particles of ‘rust’ floating on the surface and attaching themselves to my ankles where the barrier was between my feet and the water.

Did this process remove toxins? I doubt it! It seems a simple case of take your money for putting your feet in water with some salt and a simple electrolysis (?) process. Money for jam as the attendant only has to deal with you at the beginning and end of the process, unlike nails, where they actually have to work.

Did I gain anything from it? Well, surprisingly, my feet weren’t wrinkled like prunes when I took them out, and they did feel good for the next few hours. But that’s it.

Never again.

Supplementary reading:

• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3228292/: Objective Assessment of an Ionic Footbath (IonCleanse): Testing Its Ability to Remove Potentially Toxic Elements from the Body. J Environ Public Health. 2012; 2012: 258968. Published online 2011 Nov 29. doi: 10.1155/2012/258968