Jennie Agg for the Daily Mail
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From vegetable juice to Zumba classes and the latest ‘wonder’ vitamin, we can’t resist a new health fad — a recent survey found we spend on average £800 a year on new supplements, fitness classes and diet foods.
‘A lot of people are looking for a magic bullet,’ says Sian Porter, of the British Dietetic Association.
‘But this can lead to more confusion.Â
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Hot yoga — doing yoga in a studio heated to a sweaty 40c — promises to combine the toning and stretching of yoga with a cardiovascular workout
‘Fads often contradict themselves — for instance, there’s been a furore over high sugars in fruit juice — yet one of the most popular diet trends at the moment is juicing.Â
‘People end up not knowing what is or isn’t healthy.’
Furthermore, some of these trends do little for our health, and may even make it worse, say experts.
Here, they reveal the health fads they would most like to banish…
HOT YOGA
Risk: Damaged knees.
Hot yoga — doing yoga in a studio heated to a sweaty 40c — has many celebrity fans, from Andy Murray to Gwyneth Paltrow. It promises to combine the toning and stretching of yoga with a cardiovascular workout.
The hot temperatures kick into action your body’s cooling mechanism, boosting blood flow to the skin, so that heat from the blood can escape through the skin’s surface (this is why we go red when we’re hot).
This boost in circulation raises your heart rate, and can also loosen muscles. However, this can make you feel more flexible than you really are, so you are more likely to push your joints beyond their natural stop-point, warns physiotherapist Sammy Margo.Â
‘I’ve seen knee injuries as a result of a particular yoga pose, called virasana, which involves sitting in a prayer-type position, knees bent, with legs pushed out either side of your bottom.
‘It deeply flexes the knees and in a heated environment you risk going too far and tearing or stretching a ligament. I’ve even seen cases where the cartilage that cushions the knee has been torn.’
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