Originally posted March 17, 2014.
Are you looking for a way to detoxify and take your wellness goals up a notch? Try vegetable juicing! Juicing is a powerful tool that can cleanse you from the inside.
Virtually every health expert, including conventional doctors, recommends six to eight servings of vegetables and fruits per day. However, very few of us get the said recommended amount.
Juicing is a way to reach this daily target for veggies. It allows you to add a wider variety of choices to your diet. You get to enjoy stuff that you normally enjoy eating whole, and it’s easier for your body to absorb the exciting lineup of nutrients.
Having an option like juicing is important because you can have impaired digestion resulting from less-than-optimal food choices over the years. This limits your ability to absorb all the nutrients from the vegetables. Juicing helps “pre-digest” them for you, enabling you to receive most of the nutrition rather than have it go down the toilet.
A Wonderful Detoxification Technique
Juicing enabled Cherie Calbom, known as “The Juice Lady,” to heal herself from a range of disabling health problems, including chronic fatigue, allergies, fibromyalgia, and candidiasis. She earned her nickname in 1991 when she worked for the Juiceman company.
According to Calbom, wheatgrass is especially helpful for detoxing because it provides nutrients that accelerate and facilitate detoxification, especially in your liver.
Your detox reactions depend on how many toxins are in your body. You may even feel worse before you get better. According to Calbom, most people need three months of regular juicing for significant improvement to show.
Common cleansing reactions include diarrhea, flu-like symptoms, and headaches. Once you get over the initial hurdle, there are many wonderful benefits in store for you, including:
Better sleep
Improved memory, mental energy, and cognition
Improved focus
Reduced aches, pains, and headaches
Elimination of cravings
You should note, however, that your fat stores more toxins than in your blood. Juicing can help you shed excess fat and thus, help you reduce toxic stores, but it will not in and of itself draw toxins out of your fat. You need expert help for that.
Juicing Tips and Tricks
It is very important that you listen to your body when you’re juicing. Here are a few tips:
Use-pesticide free vegetables. Choose organic whenever possible. Note, however, that some vegetables have more pesticides than others. According to the 2013 Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce of the Environmental Working Group (EWG), celery, cucumbers, spinach, and collard greens have the most pesticides. So make sure to buy organic varieties of these vegetables.
Get ready to juice. If you’re new to juicing, start out with celery, fennel, and cucumbers, which are the easiest to digest and tolerate. Once you get used to them, start adding the more nutritionally valuable and less palatable vegetables, such as those with dark green leaves. You can use one-half lemon or a lime to effectively counter the bitterness of these greens. You can also add herbs like parsley and cilantro.
Enrich the taste of your veggie juice. Make your juice taste better by adding lemon and lime, cranberries, fresh ginger, and/or coconut.
Drink your veggie juice right away, or store it very carefully. Vegetable juice is highly perishable, so you should drink it immediately. But if you’re careful, you can store it for up to 24 hours with only moderate nutritional decline. Just put your juice in an airtight glass container, and immediately store it in the fridge and consume it when you’re ready.
Clean your juicer properly. This will prevent any remnants from contaminating your juicer with mold growth.