Eli5 – what “activates” charcoal? And how does that make it good for you?
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Properly activated charcoal is processed by treating it with high pressure extremely hot steam. This causes it to ‘foam up’ on the molecular level giving it an extremely large surface area to volume ratio.
Activated charcoal is very good at capturing other molecules and is used to treat poisonings, and to filter water, for this reason. It can also be used to capture foul odurs and remove stains, for the same reason.
As for being good for you, that really only applies if you have something that needs filtering out for some reason- poison of some kind in the gut, for example. Or nicotine/coffee stains on teeth.
Otherwise, charcoal, even activated charcoal, is fairly inert and unreactive at body temperature and doesn’t do much of anything.
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