Being healthy or living a healthy lifestyle is something that only 35% of Americans strive to achieve during their lifetime. In this paper, juicing and the effects on the human body and what it can do, both good and bad will be explored. The history and popularity of juicing as well as its benefits will be discussed.
History of Juicing
There are a great number of juicing fads and celebrity diets popping up, but it is actually an age-old tradition of body cleansing. Juicing has also gained the reputation of being the magic pill (per-say) for feeling your best, promoting weight loss and anti-aging. It is known that certain nutrients and herbs can regulate blood glucose levels, stop cravings and balance energy level.
Some of the first documented evidence of humans juicing for health benefits are from the Dead Sea scrolls dated 150 B.C. through 70 A.D. Juicing was described in the scrolls as pounded mash of pomegranate and fig resulting in profound strength and subtle form.
Many cultures have used plants and ground up herbs applied both internally and externally to promote healthy remedies and benefits all over the world. In parts of the country like Korea and Peru, juicing green juices became part of healing rituals (thejuicingclub.com).
Max Garson, a German scientist in the 1920’s developed a theory that combined raw juices and a vegetarian diet which is still carried on today and is called the Garson Institute. In 1936 Dr. Norman Walker published a book called Raw Vegetable Juices. This book led to the result of the Norwalk Juicer and this became the world juicer.
For over 70 years, Dr. Walker developed a philosophy by studying living foods. The study concluded that the best way to nutritional health was a diet of juice and raw foods that he termed ‘living foods’. Dr. Walker lived to the age of 118 years by following his own practices (thejuicingclub.com).
He proved with research that a long life and wellbeing can come together in life. Modern day researchers and nutritionist are just recently finding out the truths that Dr.Walker knew. Following all his research in the twentieth century (truthkeeperz.com).
In 2010 Joe Cross made a 60-day documentary called fat, sick and nearly dead. Under the care of Dr. Joel Furman, Nutrition Research Foundations Director of Research. Following the juice fast and plant-based diet, Mr. Cross lost 100 pounds and discontinued using all medications (Fat sick and nearly dead.com).
Popularity of Juicing
There is exciting research that has been done in the last decade which has been the discovery of a group of nutrients that have protective effects against cell oxidation. These are naturally occurring compounds that relate to the bright color of fruits and vegetables that act as antioxidants to the body by hunting down free radicals in the body that are implicated to most degenerative diseases like diabetes, cancer, arthritis, atherosclerosis and aging.
Their effects have been so pronounced that they have been dubbed The Fountains of Youth. In this, the fruits and vegetables have been granted on them the functional food status preventing and helping to diminish disease in the human body and promoting overall good health.
Lycopene, carotenoids, phenolic flavonoids and glucosinolates are some of the most thoroughly studied antioxidants. In recent years, living healthy has assumed great importance in our society, increased interest in beauty, fitness and nutrition have greatened our concerns about diet and human health.
There is a new diet or health standard evolving that places a lot of emphasis on positive aspects of living healthy. Studies are now looking at examining foods for their nutrition, protective and disease prevention (Nicoli et al., 1999).
This has changed in recent years from looking into negative attributes such as fatty acids, micro-organism count and inorganic pollutant concentration. Phytochemicals in vegetables and fruits have attracted a lot of attention, mainly looking into their role of preventing disease, attributed to oxidative stress which releases free oxygen radicals in the body.
These oxygen radicals have been implicated in many disorders including the ones discussed earlier such as cancer, cataracts, rheumatism, cardiovascular malfunction and many other auto-immune diseases besides aging.
Epidemiological studies consistently show that there is significant positive association between the consumption of fruit-vegetable juices and a reduced rate of heart diseases, mortality, common cancers and many other degenerative factors or disease (Steinmetz & Potter, 1996). With all of this in mind, this has a great effect on the popularity of juicing in our present day and age.
Juicing and Weight Loss
Besides providing your body with well rounded, excellent nourishment, there are five reasons why consuming juice daily is a great idea. Juicing detoxifies the body by cleansing and removing toxins from the body that are absorbed every day. Juicing also fosters healthy weight loss and alkalizes the body. This is important being that many diseases thrive in acidic conditions.
Juicing also helps to make the immune system strong and gives one massive amounts of energy without crashing. Juicing reduces the energy in the body used to digest foods while giving you ample amounts of the nutrients needed.
Juicing helps to reduce appetites in return, weight is lost and the comfort eating habit is eliminated to help promote a feeling of satisfaction with less food intake. It is also provides a psychological boost to get over changing eating habits.
It also helps to eliminate consumption of harmful foods, juice cleansing takes the wheat, gluten, fermented foods and the dairy out of your diet Coffee and alcohol also gives the stomach rest tens of millions of people are on acid-suppressing drugs and older people don’t produce enough stomach acids to break down food.
Making the stomach work less to get the nutrients needed can be a great benefit. When juicing, it requires less of the stomachs digestion process (acid, pepsin and churning). Chewing gently on juice will add oral enzymes to further digestion.
Juicing floods your body with super nutrition which not only gives the vitamins and minerals but the important phytonutrients that are essential for the healing and clean-up process. Natural raw juice also helps retain nutrients that are destroyed by cooking, especially some B vitamins and digestive inflammatory enzymes.
When you feel better and have more energy, you are naturally losing weight. Some is fat and some is water bloat. Juice cleanse is a great way to jump start the diet process, controls appetite and cravings and is naturally lower in calorie intake while giving the body more beneficial concentrated healing nutrients and energizing what it gets with eating regular foods.
Going with Organic, plant-based juicing diets, helps to heal our cells optim only establishing efficient integral messages and the process of manufacturing. Thus enabling the mitochondria to create energy and not having to fight off all the inflammation and free radicals, also helping to limit impediments to proper DNA function.
Here are a few good recipes to loose weight through juicing.
1/3 small bunch or cilantro, 3 leaves of kale, 6 carrots, 1 cucumber, 1/4 head of green cabbage and 1 green pepper
Spicy tomato antioxidant juice consist of 2 large tomatoes, 1 stalk of celery,1 cucumber ½ red bell pepper, 3-5 grinds of black pepper 1-3 shakes of cayenne pepper
Try to get three to four vegetables and two who fruits daily.
Make sure to get different colors, that way you can get a good mixture of minerals and vitamins.
If you want to implement the fiber add some pulp back in or you can use it to cook with.
Here is a mini guide to juicing, it is very simple and fast way to get massive amounts of minerals, nutrients and protective plant chemicals to your diet. Most any vegetable or fruit or herb can be juiced, first you must wash all ingredients thoroughly make sure to juice with the skin on most minerals lie below the peel.
Do not chop produce ahead of time as to avoid excess vitamin loss (Van Straten, M. (2014). Most recipes can vary in their composition and complexity but juicing is an excellent way that’s easy for your digestive system, Fruit juices are tasty but by themselves are not that great long term you must mix them with vegetable juices , about an 80% vegetable to 20$ fruit mix is good.
Data supports affiliation between high intake of vegetables and fruit and a low risk of chronic disease. There are allot of reasons biologically mass consumption of fruits and vegetables are rich sources of vitamins, dietary fiber, trace minerals, and many biologic compounds that our bodies need.
Downside to Juicing
The question is, “Is there a downside to juicing”? Polyphenolic compounds and flavonoids do have very powerful effects invitro in a lot of test systems, but can also act as pro-oxidants in others. It is uncertain if pro-oxidant, anti-oxidant or any other biological effects exerted by flavonoids can contribute or account for health benefits derived from rich plant-derived foods or beverages.
Phenolic compounds may help to increase the protection in the gastrointestinal tract against damage the overall health benefits of flavonoids is uncertain and consumption of massive quantities are uncertain and should not yet be encouraged.
Green juice might be rotting your teeth (Sounding an alarm on juicing 2014), and can also spike your blood sugar and harm your relationship with food. Bright green elixirs of liquefied ginger, kale and cucumber have become so popular that they threaten to supplement coffee as the beverage of choice for Americans.
Many medical experts are questioning if drinking your fruits and vegetables are a good idea and if it is good on your wallets. Dr. David Angus is one of the most prominent voices against juicing. He is known for counseling Apple CEO Steve Jobs throughout his career for treatment. He is also a professor at The University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine.
Dr. Angus says, squeezing fruits and vegetables in a juicer exposes it to air. This instantaneously starts the process of oxidation and degradation of nutrients with most nutrients being very sensitive to oxygen and light.
The degrading process also makes the sugars more available to the body, in turn causing an insulin spike in the body that can cause inflammation and increase the risk of cancer. Consuming juices in large quantities that is required to make juice goes against advice in favor of moderation.
Dr. Angus also attests that our bodies are not made to eat six carrots or three apples and large quantities of fruits and vegetables in one setting. Our bodies are not programmed to absorb that many nutrients at once.
Over-doing juicing is not great on our teeth because of the high sugar content, this mixes with bacteria in your mouth and forms acids that are very unhealthy for teeth and lead to tooth decay. Angus also states that there is no data that is in existence to prove benefits that are most commonly associated with juicing.
Dr. Clyde Yancy, Chief of Cardiology at North Western University’s, Feinberg School of Medicine also agrees with this concept. He also said, it is not as healthy as it would appear to be at first glance. A liquid diet of juice and vegetables does not contain sufficient protein and may disrupt cellular function if potassium levels drop too low.
A patient had presented with oxalate-induced acute renal failure presumably from oxalate-rich vegetables and fruit from juicing (Am J Clin Nutr 1999). The case was described and clinical presentation was reviewed of 65 patients seen at Mayo Clinic (Rochester, MN) between 1985-2010 with renal failure and proven renal calcium oxalate crystals.
Three patients, including the index patient, had presumed diet-induced oxalate nephropathy in context of chronic kidney disease. Clinicians should be aware that oxalate-rich diets may precipitate acute renal failure in patients with kidney disease. Consumption of oxalate-rich juices appeared to be a potential cause of oxalate nephropathy and acute renal failure.
Conclusion
As we can see, the epidemiologic data does support that high consumption of fruits and vegetables and fruit juices have many plausible biological reasons why they might slow down or prevent the onset of chronic diseases. Rich sources of vitamins and nutrients such as trace minerals, vitamins, dietary fibers and many other biologically active compounds.
The immune system is stimulated by modulation of detoxification enzymes, reduction of platelet aggregation, modulation of cholesterol synthesis and hormone metabolism. It also helps with reduction of blood pressure, antioxidant, antibacterial and anti-viral effects.
The ultimate conclusion would be that juicing and the effect on the human body are way more positive than negative.