Kinoki Foot Detox Pads Scam

Have you ever been up late at night and watched the infomercial with the little Kimono-clad Japanese woman for the Kinoki foot detox patches and wondered if they really work?   Well, I have.. so I decided to check into it.  Not because I ever thought of actually ordering them...if I were going to detox, I'd prefer to do it by diet and cleaning out the "ick" in a more natural way.  But, that's just me.  I'm awaiting the results of Faith's detox experiment, maybe I'll try something like that, but I'd never buy any kind of foot pad that claimed to clean toxins...I'm not that gullible.   LOL    I may not be gullible, but I am curious, and I was wondering if people were buying them, and if so, what kind of results were they getting. 

Call me a skeptic, but I just found it really hard to believe that anything you applied to the sole of your foot could suck out toxins and some of the things they claim these pads clean out.  What could possibly be in them that would remove harmful toxins, chemicals, mucous, and all kinds of things they claim they will remove, and make them be able to pass through the soles of your feet?   In the commercials, the people put the pads on their feet and they are clean and white, and in the morning the pads have turned black.  This, they claim, is caused by the toxins being removed..but what about the other things?  what about the mucus and the asbestos.  If these things were truly sucking these things out of your body, there would be some kind of evidence of something on your feet. .. some kind of color change or sign that toxic things were leaving your body through them.  The pads turn black.. why is there no visible evidence of anything like that on the foot itself from the stuff passing through it? 

To the best of my knowledge, the only thing that leaves the body through the skin is sweat.  If anything else wants to leave and can't find a way out.. things like blood, pus or mucus of any kind for instance ..the skin must open up, form a blister or a lesion of some sort, to allow this stuff to come out.  They don't come out through the skin on their own, so why would these toxic chemicals and stuff be able to leave through the feet?  The human body is a wondrous and amazing thing that has been doing it's job for quite a long time now.. it ain't always perfect, and it has it's problems, but it's pretty efficient at waste management.  If a pad on the foot could suck them out, then why wouldn't the skin just be emitting these things on it's own under the right circumstances?   I dunno.. just some stuff to think about, doncha think?

As for the ingredients, reportedly, the pads contain  "a mixture of herbal products that can have an effect on the body. This includes bamboo vinegar, tourmaline and chitin. There is also a mixture of herbs that help in the detoxification process. All the products used are natural and there have been no known side effects"   Do these ingredients sound like they would be able to enter your body through the soles of your feet while you sleep and flush out all the evil little toxic creepy crawlies in your system and draw them down through your system, so that they end up on the pads stuck to the soles of your feet?  I think not!

These people should be sued for some of the claims they make, and the product taken off the market. They claim to help with diabetes, arthritis, headaches, high blood pressure, weight loss, and insomnia.  How can simply removing toxins, even if they did remove toxins to start with, help with these things?  It's ridiculous!   They are just a complete ripoff.  They deserve the Golden Snake Oil Award..if there were such a thing.

Well, all of this is just my personal opinion on these things, and I haven't bought them or tried them, so I had to go searching for someone who has.. As it turns out, there have been a lot of people who have tried them and written of their experiences, and one of them even ended up on 20/20 with their findings.. but I couldn't get to the links to any of that stuff to work.. so I found this article here on Does it Work at MSNBC,  which tells of the experience and findings of a woman named Paige West.  Her findings were pretty much what I expected.  They don't work!   She says in her article

"Putting it on, I discovered, is a little like building your own foot-sized Band-Aid. I followed the instructions by placing the pad in the middle of an accompanying piece of adhesive, pressed it on to the sole of my foot and went to bed. 

The next morning, my ticklish feet gamely endured my peeling the pad off when, to my surprise - and utter disgust - I found it had turned completely black. Worse yet, it smelled like a vile combination of sweat and the acrid smoke of a campfire. But that day at work I was oddly perky.  Maybe there was something to this detoxification system.

Alas, no.  The directions say that continued use is supposed to result in the pads becoming less and less black over time due to the gradual elimination of toxins from my body, but mine continued to be dark and smelly every morning.  The only pattern I saw was related to how long I'd slept - longer equaled blacker (though, luckily, not smellier).

And my higher energy level? That vanished, and I found myself in an ugly funk a few days into my experiment, but I blame that more on the gray Seattle weather than Kinoki.

Growing increasingly suspicious, I decided at the end of the two weeks to test a theory.  I held one of the foot pads over a kettle of boiling water, and within about 10 seconds, that familiar blackness and smoky odor became obvious".