I mentioned briefly on Monday that I was starting a week-long detox regime with my colleague Flaminia. It’s a really mild detox because we still need to function in the office. Well, let me tell you, Flaminia has broken about 50 rules already! Turns out it’s hard to tell an Italian not to drink coffee.

I, on the other hand, have been (almost not really) faultless – until today when there was delicious Northern Thai Curry in the canteen. I think it was made entirely of food on the “must not consume” list.

Here’s the detox paradox. I’m beginning to feel pretty all right, but yesterday I could have killed an innocent bystander. I mean, how creepy is that! I just cut out a few things that I don’t think I eat much of anyway, and I go a bit crazy! And what’s even more twisted is that I suffered through yesterday only to erase the hard-won benefits with curry.

You know what I think, I think this “I don’t eat much of it anyway” idea is a falsehood. I think I (and maybe we all) overestimate the amount of junk I can ply my body with. There will always be someone (or in my case an entire office full of people) who is eating loads of crappy fake food, and always someone who’s drinking five cups of coffee a day, so you think, “I don’t come close to consuming what that person does, so I’m doing OK.”

It’s amazing how often, when someone offers me a coffee and I decline, it’s followed up with, “but one or two cups a day is OK.” Like it’s medical fact. Here’s the fact, all bodies are different, with different capacity to consume, and I use my tiny Thai colleagues as proof that size might count in this equation, but it’s not everything. These girls can eat.

If I can’t go a couple of days eating mostly vegetables without feeling like a pile of crap then something is not OK. But then, that’s considered standard process in a detox, Step 1: stop eating crap; Step 2: Collapse into a heap for a few days and pray that you’ll come out the other end.

Am I expecting too much? Is it just part of the deal that a normal diet contains some stuff that isn’t ideal? But wait, this is withdrawal symptoms! That’s not cool!

I think we should start “detoxing” not just to feel better after a week, but to remind ourselves of the evils of the food we think is fine. Imagine how much worse it would be after Christmas or some other period where you “relax and enjoy” without measure.

This post was submitted to BizzyWomen by a great blog, Where is Sarah?, written by Sarah Fortuna, an Australian writing for her friends and family while she is living abroad.

A few months back I started writing a post questioning whether members of Congress really need to be Tweeting. Especially if their Tweets are particularly snarky. That post, like about 75% of the posts I start writing, never saw the light of day because I never completed that idea.

But then last week Matt Bai of the New York Times slammed politicians who use Twitter, most notably Senator Claire McCaskill. “The capital might be a better place if it became a Twitter-free zone,” Bai wrote, “a city where people spent more time talking to the guy serving the coffee and less time informing the world that the coffee had, in fact, been served.”

Then Senator McCaskill responded on her Tumblr blog (really, she has a Tumblr, which is worth noting in and of itself): “I tweet an average of 4 to 5 times a day.  This has become a welcome discipline for me in Washington. As I am walking to a hearing, or riding the tram over for a vote, I think of what I want to tell the folks at home about my work or life. This, I believe, is a fairly decent way to stay connected. After all, I’m in Washington to work for them and this process reminds me of it several times a day.“

Senator McCaskill was also on a panel last week at the Politics Online conference in Washington, which I was fortunate enough to attend (thanks to the wonderful Julie Germany). On the panel, she and three other Members of Congress discussed how they use Twitter to stay connected with their constituents. All of them manage their own Twitter accounts and love the direct connection it gives them to the people — without reporters or communications staff in between them. All of them also read all their replies – they may not have time to respond to everything, but they read them, and it gives them an important window into the minds of their constituents, allowing them to know what the people are thinking.

The Members of Congress on the panel also talked about the frustrations they have run into sometimes in dealing with the other hundreds of Members of Congress who are not using Twitter and other new media tools to communicate with their constituents. Most elected officials haven’t gotten on the new media train yet. Most of them still don’t see the value in it. It’s not unlike the general population really — most normal people still don’t get the value of Twitter, either.

Bai also complains about other politicians, like Craig Fugate, the head of FEMA, who recently tweeted:

To which Bai responded in his article: “Which kind of makes you wonder: if the head of FEMA feels that disoriented buying a latte near the White House, what’s going to happen during a tornado?”

But Bai, and the other old media types like him who won’t stop complaining about how Washington is all a-twitter, don’t really get it. Elected officials may be elected officials, but they’re human beings too – and were chosen by the people to run our government. That doesn’t make them any less human, and the beauty of new media is that you get unfiltered access to these politicians and get to feel more connected to them. They step out from behind the curtain of press secretaries and communications staff and mainstream media and give you direct, unfiltered access to them.

So what if the head of FEMA had a stressful morning? Being the head of FEMA doesn’t mean you don’t experience the same normal moments that average people experience, or that you’re any less human than them. Hiding those moments behind a curtain isn’t productive, nor does it give people any more confidence that you can do your job better when there’s a tornado. And anyone who expects politicians to operate with secrecy rather than transparency is suggesting something ridiculous, as Bai does.

But politicians using Twitter are informing their constituents of what they’re doing in Congress (and why), provoking policy discussions, and most importantly, listening to what their constituents are saying and using that feedback as they continue their work in Congress. I’d say that’s a pretty good case for why every member of Congress should be getting on the new media train.

Nisha Chittal is a writer and journalist who currently serves as Associate Editor of CitizenJanePolitics.com and is a political columnist for UniversityChic.com. Her personal blog is Politicoholic, where she offers commentary on a range of topics, including but not limited to politics, technology, and the changing role of women and Generation Y in politics today.