What are the Benefits of Juicing for Detox?

Fresh fruit and vegetable juices provide an abundance of vitamins, minerals, enzymes, phytochemicals and other essential substances essential to cleansing and healing the body. The main benefit of juicing for detox is that it is a way of getting enough nutrients into your body to counteract acidity and force out toxins.

Juicing is a way of getting in many more nutrients than you could by eating the whole fruit or vegetable. The nutrients are released from the produce leaving the indigestible fiber behind. Juices need no digestion so are are quickly absorbed into your body.

Just think how long would it take to munch your way through 4 large carrots or a bag of apples? Juicing them extracts many nutrients which can be in your body in a matter of minutes.

What about the lack of fiber?

You may see arguments against juicing for detox because it leaves the pulp or fiber behind. After all fiber has many important functions – providing roughage and bulk that prevents constipation, feeding the good bowel bacteria, keeping you feeling fuller for longer and slowing down the release of glucose into the body keeping your blood glucose level stable are just a few.

If you are eating a healthy diet or a detox diet you will be getting plenty of fiber from the whole fruits, vegetables and whole grains you eat. If you like you can add the fiber to a soup to thicken it or add it to other dishes. Nomi Shannon includes a recipe for a raw carrot cake made with carrot pulp in her excellent book The Raw Gourmet. Or add it to your compost heap so it does not go to waste.

Juice Detox Cures

People following the The Gerson Therapy diet for cancer and other conditions have to drink 13 fresh juices a day. They get plenty of fiber from the other food they eat. It is not a problem.

The Breuss Total Cancer Cure consisted of a 42 day vegetable juice fast with herbal teas. It is said that Rudolf Breuss, an Austrian healer born in 1899, based his cure on a German book about the value of fruit and vegetable juices that was written 300 years previously. The lack of fiber did not prevent people being cured.

So you see there are several ways of using juices. You can include them as part of a healthy diet or can drink them on their own as a juice fast.  A juice fast of 2 or days or more is often included as part of a detox program. You can drink as many juices as you like to stop hunger but 5 or 6 x 8 oz juices a day is usual.

Wondering about the best juicer to get? Here’s an excellent review of the best cold-press juicers. 

Juice Feasting

A newer form of juicing for detox called Juice Feasting (I love that term) consists of drinking a gallon (3.8 liters) or more of fresh juices a day. You should not get hungry on this. A long-term juice feast is basically a massive detox program. By consuming fresh juices that are loaded with nutrients, especially alkalizing minerals, and no fiber to slow digestion you are giving your body a chance to divert the energy that is usually used for digestion to cellular cleansing instead.

David and Katrina Rainoshek created the 92 day Juice Feast that many people have done to lose weight and cure themselves of a variety of ailments. Dr Gabriel Cousens, Director of  the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center, says he is so pleased with Juice Feasting that it is now something they use as one of their healing protocols.

Regular colon cleansing is recommended as part of the protocol because of the massive detoxification it promotes. The Gerson Therapy involves coffee enemas to help the liver detox. (I will write about these in a future post).  David recommends certain nutritional supplements during the 92 day program to help support the detox process.

Is Juicing a fad?

I recently came across an article in the newspaper in which the journalist said that juicing is a current fad. Well it may be increasing in popularity as more and more people learn about how it can improve their health but it has been around for a long time.  It is certainly not a fad.

Even drinking one glass of fresh juice a day will help to increase the nutrients you get. Two a day would be even better.  As the cells of your body are bathed in these fresh, alkaline vegetable juices, they begin to release toxins which can then be eliminated by the liver, kidney, lungs and skin.  So you will now appreciate the great benefits of juicing for detox.