A Guide to Juice Cleanse

A Guide to Juice Cleanse

Edited By: Stephanie Dawson

A fasting method and diet in which consumption of only fruits and vegetable juices are permitted to obtain nutrition is called juice cleansing. This is considered dangerous by many health professionals, whereas the health benefits of juicing are not yet proven. This type of fasting may last anywhere from a few days to several weeks and the juice consumed during this type of fast is made from fresh fruits and vegetables.

Reasons for juice cleansing

Desire to lose weight, attempts to stop habitual behavior like smoking or caffeine addiction, religious, or detoxification are valid reasons for juice cleansing. Sometimes its done with belief that it helps cure chronic pain, depression, cancer, arthritis, and severe infections. Some people believe they can focus on healing specific organs and systems by juice cleansing.

Methods

Attempting to purify the blood in synchronization with what some practitioners believe to be annual cycles of nature, they fast biannually in weeklong periods.
Enemas or herbal or salt water laxatives can be used during fasting to efficiently expel waste from the intestines as pure juice contains little to no fiber. Another way to achieve this is to mix psyllium husks with juice, psyllium is not absorbed by the body but greatly increases in volume when consumed with water.

Benefits

• More Energy: The energy used for breaking down solids gets freed up as the digestive system gets a break.

• Clearer skin: Your skin might be adversely affected when the colon has to deal with buildup from processed foods.

• Reset your taste buds: Everything tastes different once you complete a juice cleanse. The sensitivity to flavor is reestablished.

• Lose weight: This should not be the primary goal of a juice cleanse, but should eventually cause some pounds to come off naturally.

• Reestablish your relationship to food: Its the right time to see what happens when we are unable to have our favorite foods, as we are not having any solid food during this time. We can see if we are using food for emotional satisfaction.

• Improved immune function: Our immune system and digestive system are related. A strong immune system is created when we are able to detox our digestive system.

Side effects

There are some side effects of juice cleansing which one should know before doing it. Detoxification is the most drastic and noticeable for the first 2-3 days as the body adjusts to the new regime. Minor skin blemishes, headache, and fatigue are common symptoms of detoxification. This indicates that your body is doing the work and the pleasant results of juice cleansing are to follow soon.

Frightening facts

• Cleanses can make you gain weight: Some health professionals say that the good feeling that we get after cleansing is only for a short period of time and over time these cleanses can actually make you gain.
• Cleanses may mess up your tummy: Enema-based colon cleanses can destroy good bacteria in the gut that help prevent tummy trouble.
• Cleanses can cause serious heart or organ damage: Over-hydration causes electrolyte imbalance and this may lead to heart or organ damage.