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George Washington spent December 12, 1799, overseeing his farms. It was an ugly day.

Wind, rain, hail, and snow. He came home wet with snow hanging upon his hair.

About a day later, he started feeling sick. His wife Martha observed that he could barely speak and had trouble breathing.

He developed horrible throat pain and a fever, so his assistant sent for doctors.

Three doctors arrived and recommended a medical treatment that was common at the time. Bloodletting. That's the process of cutting open a vein to drain blood.

At the time, they thought fever was related to a buildup of blood. If you have too much blood, you drain it to get back into balance.

George Washington went through four rounds of bloodletting that day. During one of them, a quart of blood that's a standard milk carton, not the skinny one, was removed from his body.

Washington got worse and worse and worse. He died that night.

Even at the time, his doctors got some criticism for all the bloodletting and Martha Washington objected to it.

But this was an accepted treatment. In fact, for thousands of years, medicine focused on getting the bad out by bleeding or recommending medications that might make you vomit or sweat.

As we learned more, we realized bodies don't need to be cleansed like this.

So this idea of getting the bad out has been abandoned by medicine.

But it lives on elsewhere in the world of wellness through cleanses and detoxes.

Cleanses and detoxes are like bloodletting 2.0. They're based on the same old ideas and they've added in a new twist that your organs need to be supported to deal with the hazards of everyday life.

These days, there are juice and smoothie cleanses, detoxifying teas, milk distal supplements, there's so much stuff like this out there.

Social media influencers, celebrities, naturopaths, and even some physicians try to sell us all kinds of products like this.

They tell us toxins build up on our bodies like evil humans and we need to cleanse and detox regularly to flush them out.

Makes sense, right?

Now, the only thing these cleanses and detox removed from your body is your money.

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