No, someone did not diarrhea all over my pedicure.

My friend Leigh, surprise to no one who has met her, is a regular at a salon. She has a 17-step face washing program, spends $100 a pop on facials, custom orders her makeup, has her toenails professionally painted, and, of course, hair treatments galore.

I go to Leigh's salon to buy headbands that her stylist makes and then feel like I don't take care of myself nearly as well as I should. I barely remove my eye makeup after a couple days.

Recently, though, I joined Leigh for a beauty treatment that I'd never heard of before... not because I need my feet to be beautiful (the African bed bugs took care of that for life) but because I am a little bit of a scientist.

Her salon had just invested in some detoxification foot machine called IonCleanse. It's supposed to pull toxins in your body out through the soles of your feet, and since a few years ago I made a promise to always try everything that won't kill me at least once, I decided to try detoxing through my feet.

So, in went my feet, a few sprinkles of salt, and this weird contraption into a foot bath.
Then, they turned it on, and instantly the gross start accumulating in the water. Here's a closer look of the process, and I'm sorry if you're eating... not just because of the water but also because I know those feet are nauseating.
I was awake the entire time and no one, me included, took a crap in that bag. It smelled mildly like cap guns used to smell when you'd "bust a cap" playing cops and robbers, which was a relief considering how it looked. I didn't feel any differently, except I did have a little headache when we started and my headache was gone by the time we were done. Of course, taking 30 minutes to sit and soak my feet anywhere would have probably had the same effect.

You're supposed to compare your foot doodie color to a chart to find out where most of your toxins are and mine were definitely liver flavored. I also had some weird blackish flakes/clumps floating in my water that were allegedly heavy metals that had been drawn out thanks to the ionic charge difference.

My scientist self isn't as interested in research as it is in foot-soaking experiments, so I brought the evidence home to Mr. Wizard Thomas and intrigued him with my story just enough to get him to find answers on the internet. He's the best when it comes to research... and fixing flat tires.

He managed to find these skeptics who are also scientists who found a way to extract toxins from a wire hanger, proving that actually no, those are not toxins coming out of my feet, they are rust pieces from the wire in that little cylinder contraption in the water.

Interestingly, Mack had tried to use a similar technique earlier this year to get rust off of the inside of a motorcycle gas tank. His experience involved a battery and a hanger and what could have been 10 years if he had seen it through to the end. And it wasn't even close to relaxing.