To Juice or Not to Juice- Magic Elixir or Fad Diet?

Find out how healthy juice diets really are.

An all-juice diet seems healthy and easy on your system. It is a diet that almost eliminates your need to digest food, giving your digestive system a break, and it detoxes your body. All these are claims celebrities and popular media have made for a few years now. Recently, doctors have come out with the truth about juice cleanses. Here are the straight facts about juicing.

As far as researchers have discovered, there is no miracle diet that can provide extra detoxification or give vital body systems and organs breaks. The human body is designed to take care of itself, and it will rarely need outside help as long as you give it the nutrients it needs. Unfortunately, those nutrients cannot all come from fruit and vegetable juice. Yes, fruits and vegetables are essential to your health, and yes, many of those essential nutrients are retained within juice you drink. However, juice does not contain other vital nutrients such as calcium, protein, vitamin D, and essential fats.

Over time, your body’s lack of these nutrients could eventually cause your hair to fall out, your skin to dry out and/or break out, and your teeth to rot. The high sugar content of a juicing cleanse or diet causes insulin levels to spike and crash repeatedly, altering skin and hair’s collagen and elastin structures and causing skin to age prematurely. High acid content in the fruit will damage tooth enamel, and given enough time, your teeth could fall out without the collagen fiber that hold them.

The idea of a juice cleanse or diet is that a person will feel more energized a few days after starting and that energy will last a few days after finishing, but any energy gained while juicing is an unsustainable sugar rush. Lightheadedness is a a common complaint while on the diet, and exercise quickly becomes impossible with iron and protein deficiencies. Another complaint during the juice diet or cleanse is intense stomach pain. This is constipation setting in caused by your body’s lack of fiber – a nutrient you would get from the pulp of the fruits and vegetables that were juiced.

Juice diets are not a healthy way to lose weight. Crash diets are aptly named due to the crash your body experiences while on them, and the negative effects are long-lasting. Any weight you lose during a juice diet, you will quickly put back on, along with a little extra. Any short-term, low-calorie diet is going to mess with your metabolism and eventually cause you to add weight.

Juicing can have benefits when used as part of a healthy diet. Juices are an easy way to get one or two of your daily five servings, especially if you are not a fan of fruits and vegetables. These juices still contain most of the minerals and vitamins that are in whole fruits and vegetables. These nutrients and minerals guard against cancers, cardiovascular disease, and inflammatory diseases like rheumatoid arthritis. They also help guard against cellular damage from exposure to chemicals and pollution.

There is no legitimate research proving that a diet solely consisting of juice is any better for you than eating whole foods, but there is plenty of research proving its negative effects. Use juices as a part of your diet, but do not let it become your only source of nutrients.

Here are some healthy ways to add fruitsand vegetables to your diet with juicing:

Sparkling Pomegranate Juice
Green Juice Recipes

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SkinnyMs.

The SkinnyMs. team believes that all people, regardless of age, size, and fitness level, have the power to transform their lives — they just need the resources to do so. The SkinnyMs. method promotes healthy living through a combination of clean eating and regular exercise. We offer everything you need to be successful.

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