Hi Everyone
Today I want to talk about a topic many of my clients ask me about. JUICING.
Is it good? Should I start a Juicing cleanse? How long? What should I put in there? Are juices better than smoothies? Why do I feel low in energy shortly after my juice?
Let’s clear up those common questions about juicing!
1. What is Juicing exactly?
Well, Juicing is a way of having foods, mainly vegetables and fruits, in a liquid form. It is a way of extracting and condensing all nutrients from vegetables and fruits.
2. What health benefits can we expect from juicing?
Juicing mainly allows you to get a lot of raw vegetables in a glass, much more actually than you could ever eat realistically in one meal. So most of the benefits are due to the fat that you are taking a very concentrated form of:
- Minerals
- Vitamins
- trace minerals
- enzymes
- phytochemicals
- carotenoids and bioflavonoids (that your body converts into antioxidants)
All those compounds are essential and enhance our overall food and nutrition. They help our body metabolize, assimilate and absorb efficiently the carbs/fats/proteins from the foods we eat. So this is a crucial point when juicing. As many people don’t manage to have a good balanced diet on a daily basis, it can help them get an extra push in their nutrition.
The main health benefits we can expect from this are:
- It adds a variety of foods in your daily consumption
- The concentration of phytochemicals and biophotonic light energy feed your healthy gut bacteria and suppress the bad ones, therefore boosting your Immune System
- It cleanses your blood, lymph and intracellular fluids and neutralizes toxins at the same time. This allows your body to function much more efficiently
- It helps your body heal, repair and recover
- It gives you this Energy Boost straight after you have it
- It supports brain health and decreases the risk of Alzheimer
BUT you have to follow the following principles if you want to get all those benefits. Juicing has to be done SMARTLY. If not, it can be quite harmful actually, and wreak havoc your hormonal and metabolic system. So please GO ON READING :-))
3. Fruits Juicing vs. Vegetables Juicing
I would not recommend Fruits Juicing. This makes you take an enormous amount of fruits, that you would never ever eat in the normal way, and it is a spike of Sugar to your system that is better to avoid! Your blood sugar levels start going through highs and lows, making some people crash and even faint. Their hormonal system gets out of order and this can have many harmful health consequences. Therefore: avoid pure fruits juicing.
Vegetables Juicing, on the contrary, are more balanced, with naturally occurring proteins more particularly. You can mix some fruits in them but be very careful with it. Usually, there are too many carrots and apples added. To my opinion, berries are the best fruits to add.
4. Organic or nothing
If you don’t choose organic vegetables, your juice will be a concentrated powerhouse of pesticides, herbicides and fungicides!!! And might have some GMOs in there too…. So you won’t get any benefits from it whatsoever. This is a no-brainer. Make sure you have a good pure quality source of ingredients (Biodynamic is the best today, followed by Organic but ask your local farmers, they might be farming in the best way and just not have the expensive label, that’s all).
5. Juicing can not be a substitute for real fresh wholefoods
When juicing, you miss out on many natural components that come together in the fresh whole foods. It is important to keep on having real vegetables on a regular basis. Juicing should be considered as a supplement to your food intake, not a substitute.
6. Balance out your juices
There are some proteins in the vegetables that are mostly used to juice (dark leafy greens mainly), but this might not be enough to balance out the blood sugar level impact of those juices for many people, especially if their metabolic type is Polar type. Therefore, I would always advise to add some good fats in there, like Raw Organic Coconut Oil, or raw butter, Avocados, Organic Olive Oil… or even seeds or nuts (chia or hemp seeds, almonds, cashews…). Those fats are actually essential to be able to get the antioxidants from your juices. So don’t hesitate to add them in there, it makes the whole experience even more tasty! A tsp of Cinnamon can also balance out your blood sugar levels so don’t hesitate to add it in.
7. Juicing or Blending?
The main difference between blenders and juicers is that blenders retain ALL sort of fibers (soluble and insoluble ones like the pulp of fruits). Juicers only retain soluble fibers. It can be good for some people suffering with constipation, but in overall the abundant live nutrients from real juice are much more important than this amount of extra fibers from blenders.
Also, blenders damage Vegetable nutrients through heat and oxidation. So the final smoothie you get can be easily quite deficient in many essential nutrients…besides sugar.
8. What type of Juicer choose?
The quality of the Juicer you are going to use is highly important. Choose a bad one and you ruin your experience!
- Centrifugal Juicers
Those are the most common and the least expensive. They separate the juice from the pulp through a spinning process. But this is very noisy, and generates high heat, which destroys many precious nutrients, so you won’t get real good benefits by using those
- Masticating Juicers
Those ones “chew up” the vegetables and push them through a strainer. As a result, they give 20-25% more juice than the Centrifugal Juicers, they are quieter, but above all, they don’t heat up as much, and don’t damage the micronutrients like the other juicers. They cost a bit more but over time, ou will break even as you get more juice for much better quality.
- The “Grind and Press”
Those ones act like an apple cider mill. They proceed at slow speed to maintain most of the natural benefits from the ingredients you use. The quality is the highest with those ones, and they can be quite expensive. But if you are going to juice every single day and make it part of your health routine, they might be worth a look.
9. So what to take from it?
- Juicing can be very beneficial, if used as a complementary source of nutrition to a well-balanced diet
- Juicing is only beneficial if ingredients are pure, clean, non-GMO, organic
- Pure Fruits Juices contain too much sugar and can be harmful
- Add some good fats to benefit the most from the antioxidants and also to balance out the blood sugar levels: coconut oil, avocados, nuts and seeds, olive oil…
- Cinnamon helps balancing out the sugar levels as well
- Avoid blenders and juicers that heat up too much and damage consequently the nutrients
- Add Lemon, Lime or Fresh Ginger to add some great nutritional and tasty benefits!
- Avoid Carrots and Apples that add up in sugar a lot
- When done methodically with specific guidelines, juicing can help treat some chronic illnesses, provided the quality of ingredients and juicer are good enough
I personally like to juice from time to time, when I feel my digestive system is a bit stuck or when I feel a bit sluggish. But 100% pure, clean, non-GMO, Organic Real Whole foods will always be my choice #1. Juicing is just a great way to boost a slow metabolism, provided all guidelines here are respected. I like to add Coconut Kefir for taste and for my gut bacteria..
Hope this helped you a bit!
In Health and Happiness,
Stephanie