What is a Juice Fast?
A juice fast is a type of detox diet. A juice fast involves the short-term intake of raw vegetable and fruit juice and water only. Proponents of juice fasting use juice because it's thought to be a good source of vitamins and antioxidants.
A juice fast is considered an extreme form of detoxification because no solid food is consumed. More moderate detox methods, such as the detox diet include solid food.
Who Shouldn't Try a Juice Fast?
* Pregnant or nursing women or children shouldn't try a juice fast.
* People with diabetes, low blood sugar, eating disorders, kidney disease, liver disease, malnutrition, addictions, underweight, anemia, impaired immune function, infection, nutritional deficiency, low blood pressure, ulcerative colitis, cancer, terminal illness, epilepsy, or other chronic conditions shouldn't try a juice fast or should do so only under strict medical supervision.
* People shouldn't try a juice fast before or after surgical procedures.
* A juice fasting can reduce blood proteins and change the way prescription drugs react in the body. People taking prescription medications should consult a health professional skilled in detoxification before trying a juice fast, and should never discontinue or reduce their medications on their own.
It's important to consult a qualified health professional before trying a juice fast.
Possible Side Effects of a Juice Fast
Common temporary side effects of a juice fast include headaches, tiredness, hypoglycemia, constipation, acne, increased body odor, and bad breath.
Other side effects of a juice fast can include fainting, dizziness, low blood pressure, heart arrhythmias, weight loss, hunger, vomiting, diarrhea, and kidney problems. If these side effects occur, there is a worsening of symptoms, or new symptoms appear, the fast should be discontinued and it should prompt an immediate visit to a qualified health professional.
Another possible side effect of a juice fast is diarrhea, which can lead to dehydration and electrolyte loss.
If continued for a longer time, juice fasting can lead to nutrient deficiencies, particularly protein and calcium deficiency.
Grapefruit juice should not be used during a juice fast, especially by people taking certain prescription drugs. A compound in grapefruit can change the way certain prescription drugs are metabolized in the body. Recent evidence suggests that pomegranate juice may also have the same effect.
How Long Does a Juice Fast Typically Last?
A juice fast typically lasts for one to three days. A longer fast requires medical supervision and possibly monitoring to ensure that nutrient deficiencies don't result.
What Does a Typical Juice Fast Involve?
* Proponents of juice fasting suggest fasting only during the warmer months of the year. Spring is thought to be the best time of the year for juice fasting.
* Seven or more days before the fast, alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, sugar, dairy, wheat, animal meat, fish, and eggs are typically reduced or eliminated from the diet. This preparation diet often consists mainly of organic fruits, vegetables, and beans.
* Between 32 and 64 ounces of juice is usually recommended per day during the fast. The juice is sipped throughout the day. Typical fruits and vegetables include celery, carrot, kale, cabbage, apple, pineapple, cranberry, spinach, beet, and greens. Citrus fruits are often avoided.
* Approximately 6 glasses of room temperature or warm filtered water is often recommended in addition to the juice.
* Organic fruits and vegetables are usually recommended. If organic produce isn't available, practitioners suggest peeling the skin off fruits and vegetables or washing vegetables with a non-toxic produce cleaner, usually available at health food stores.
* Freshly juiced fruits and vegetables are preferred, but if unavailable, practitioners suggest buying it from the health food store or juice bar as fresh as possible.
* Green vegetables and sprouts contain the pigment chlorophyll, which juice proponents believe are especially beneficial during a juice fast.
* A combination of fruits and vegetables is recommended.
* Variations on the strict juice fast include eating one meal a day in addition to the juice.
# Certain fruits and vegetables and their parts should not be juiced, such as the pits of peaches, apricots, cherries, and other fruits, apple seeds, citrus peels, carrot and rhubarb tops, tough skins (such as kiwi, pineapple, mangoes), and bananas and avocados.
Breaking a Fast
Proponents of fasting recommend gradually introducing solid foods back into the diet to avoid adverse reactions.
Here is an example:
* Day 1
Two pieces of fruit. Each piece of fruit is divided in half so there are four servings for that day.
* Day 2
Lightly steamed non-starchy vegetables, such as spinach.
* Day 3
Brown rice, fresh salad.
* Day 4
Organic yogurt, unflavored and unsweetened. Eggs.
* Day 5
Meat, chicken, fish, tofu, if eaten.
* Day 6
Beans, other grains may be introduced, if eaten.
* Day 7
Other foods, as desired.
# When introducing foods back into the diet, proponents of fasting suggest: chewing food well so they are more easily digested
# not overeating
# noting any food reactions as new foods are introduced, such as energy, digestion, cravings, and other symptoms.
# transitioning to a healthier long-term diet. Trying new, healthy foods.
Posted by firefly:
Another thing.
In 1860, Joseph Lister introduced the idea that infections were not caused by internal "miasmas" but by external micro-organisms. Lister's ideas have been credited with the invention of antiseptics (Lister was the first to use bromide in a hospital setting) and bringing hospital deaths down by 90%.
Joseph Lister?
Is LISTERINE named in his honour???
('
');
I never thought about that. Joking aside, it could well be a hat-tip to the great man. Hey, or maybe he invented mouthwash too!
Forgot entirely about Native-American sweat lodges. My sister and her late ex-husband, who was actually a well known Native American leader in Canada, used to run sweat lodges in New York sometimes- usually during the summer. I expect that you can still find them around the area. Don't know if they have them minus the Native American spiritualist stuff. There was fasting involved, and if you were lucky, you would have some kind of "vision quest," a form of spiritual event where you are visited by some kind of spirit and given guidance. I always told my sister that this probably had something to do with the fact that you were fasting and sweat lodging during the summer, and you were probably delirious, but to each his own.
Check out some of F-Troop shows, I think they showed a sweat lodge every now and then.
Maybe you can have some sort of Knicks "vision quest."
On a serious note:
Fasts are used often by many cultures as a tool to weaken the individualistic/ animalistic ego and free oneself to ascend spiritually.
Many individuals subconsciously have exiled themselves from spiritual intimacy because they have felt guilty or abandoned by something they perceive to have done or failed to do.
Thus, the fast works to help the individual overcome their personal guilt/ embarrassment and pride to then attain spiritual intimacy and ascend.
Posted by colorfl1:
On a serious note:
Fasts are used often by many cultures as a tool to weaken the individualistic/ animalistic ego and free oneself to ascend spiritually.
Many individuals subconsciously have exiled themselves from spiritual intimacy because they have felt guilty or abandoned by something they perceive to have done or failed to do.
Thus, the fast works to help the individual overcome their personal guilt/ embarrassment and pride to then attain spiritual intimacy and ascend.
Awesome....
You know when you read something like this and just read in general for ways to become more spiritual......you find that a lot of these things are what you feel in side you and what you think about on a daily basis.....its just someone took the time to analyze it and write it down.
This is the best website ever.
I once abstained from reading or posting on Ultimateknicks.com for about three months.
Posted by BasketballJones:
I once abstained from reading or posting on Ultimateknicks.com for about three months.
you say abstain, we say 3-month BAN.
Eny, if you're really serious about detox, you need to check out info on Dr Max Gerson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerson_therapy
His therapy was claimed to be so good, it cured cancer.
Posted by firefly:
Eny, if you're really serious about detox, you need to check out info on Dr Max Gerson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerson_therapy
His therapy was claimed to be so good, it cured cancer.
"Baby, my stuff is so good it can cure cancer...." - probably what Max Gerson was telling the ladies at the bar
Posted by EnySpree:
Posted by firefly:
Eny, if you're really serious about detox, you need to check out info on Dr Max Gerson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerson_therapy
His therapy was claimed to be so good, it cured cancer.
"Baby, my stuff is so good it can cure cancer...." - probably what Max Gerson was telling the ladies at the bar
They do say that Jerome James' junk can cure anorexia. In fact, if you touch any part of Big Games body, your body fat ratio rises by an average of 15% (averaged because Eddy Curry's can only physically go up by another 2% before he explodes)
Posted by EnySpree:
Anyboy ever do this for any reason?
I'm in a positive frame of mind and I want to take this opportunity to cleanse my body and get intense spiritually during this time period.
I been reading up on some things.......anybody ever fast? Religious fasts? Health fasts? Cutting weight for sports? Detox?
Share some knowledge and experiences if any.
I've been doing raw foods for a while. The best thing is to get more health conscious. Fruits, veggies, nuts and seeds. You can check out some videos on YouTube. Raw food or a raw vegan means when someone doesn't eat processed foods like meat, dairy, pasta, beans and rice, crackers, cookies, etc. Why do we eat, you ask?
I love to make cashew cheese. Use a vitamix, and soak cashews in a bowl for two hours, when they're more soft and have expanded a little, put them in the vitamix with lemon juice, water and sea salt and blend til creamy. Put in fridge and take it out two hours later and use carrots, celery or crackers, etc to dip in it and enjoy.
Another fun snack/meal is organic bananas mashed up in a bowl til it's the texture of soft and mushy. Then sprinkle on some cinnamon and organic strawberries. Organic always tastes best because it has no pesticides.
Also, with your salads, add avocado slices (maybe an avocado and a half), and lemon juice/seat salt dressing. That is always a good way to get your good fats.
Also, cashews and raisins are good, tastes like trailmix.
Do not worry about fats in cashews and avocado. They are good fats. No cholesterol in either so you won't gain any fat like you would in meat/dairy products.
i've done blueprint cleanse a couple of times, its a little pricey but I reccomend it to all my friends.
http://www.blueprintcleanse.com/
You could try the Eddy Curry "CD Fast". You eat nothing but chili dogs for eight weeks. The great thing is, you can have as many chili dogs as you want. According to reports, the weight just sloughs off. Eddy's in the best shape of his career....
Posted by EnySpree:
Anybody here study/practice Islam? I've always respected the fast associated with Ramadan. Its a daylight fast of food, drink and sexual intercourse. Lots of rules, prayer and discipline.
It's possible that your larger interest is in spirituality and you should, thus, take a top down approach - which would be to put emphasis on studying Islam, and adopting their practices, including fasting - rather than fasting to to get closer to Islam. It's a subtle difference, but if you're going in that direction anyway you might do best having your diet being in accord with your spirituality, rather than the other way around.
There's also no harm in starting by cleaning up your diet first and foremost and letting the rest come to you, so to speak.
There is something similar to the Ramadan fast that some people do routinely called "intermittent fasting". Google it.
It's often associated with something that goes by the terms "Paleolithic Diet," "Neanderthal Diet" or "Caveman Diet". The theory is that physiologically our bodies haven't evolved much since prehistoric times, and a prehistoric diet is what we are genetically coded to consume. Thus, eating as a caveman did is in accord with our biology, while eating otherwise is not. The archeological record shows that a caveman essentially ate, as hunters/gatherers do, that which he could kill with a spear or pluck off a bush or tree. This entails meat, fruit, veggies, seeds and nuts. From the standpoint of human evolution, things like the domestication of animals for dairy, and the farming of things like beans, grains and starchy vegetables, are considered recent events that our biology has yet to adapt to.
So our bodies simply aren't coded to consume so many of the foods that we do, and this leads to poor health. Some of the worst dietary offenders being, because of their prevalence in todays culture, grains and processed oils.
Intermittent fasting plays into this by, in some small way, replication the periods of feast and famine that hunter/gatherers typically endure, and that we are genetically coded to undergo.
I could go off on many tangents here, such as why processed oils are so bad and how they they led to this kick that saturated fats are bad for you when in fact some saturated fats are extremely good for you - it's when they've been industrialized that they become bad. This includes trans fats and partially hydrogenated oil which are awful, but because of them all fats have taken a bad rap. And when manufacturers remove fats from products so they can tout them as "Low Fat!' they typically replace them with sugar, which is far worse. In fact, the whole business that saturated fats cause cholesterol, and that cholesterol causes heart disease, is highly speculative and seems to be on shaky ground these days.
Anyway, this is a big topic and I'm starting to go places I'm not qualified to go. But check out intermittent fasting and the paleo diet and you'll be on the right track. If you want to check out an interesting fitness site where these and other interesting matters of health are routinely discussed check out www.crossfit.com. Great exercise video library, and a good forum, although oft times almost cultish in their zeal.
BTW, I've not yet adopted these measures, but I think I'm headed that way.
oops, forgot to include this blurb on evidence to the benefits of intermittent fasting.
Intermittent fasting as an alternative approach
Studies by Mark P. Mattson, Ph. D., chief of the National Institute on Aging's (NIA) Laboratory of Neurosciences, and colleagues have found that intermittent fasting and calorie restriction affect the progression of diseases similar to Huntington's disease, Parkinson's disease, and Alzheimer's disease in mice (PMID 11119686). In one study, rats and mice ate a low-calorie diet or were deprived of food for 24 hours every other day (PMID 12724520). Both methods improved glucose metabolism, increased insulin sensitivity, and increased stress resistance. Researchers have long been aware that calorie restriction extends lifespan, but this study showed that improved glucose metabolism also protects neurons in experimental models of Parkinson's and stroke.
Another NIA study found that intermittent fasting and calorie restriction delays the onset of Huntington's disease-like symptoms in mice and prolongs their lives (PMID 12589027). Huntington's disease (HD), a genetic disorder, results from neuronal degeneration in the striatum. This neurodegeneration results in difficulties with movements that include walking, speaking, eating, and swallowing. People with Huntington's also exhibit an abnormal, diabetes-like metabolism that causes them to lose weight progressively.
This NIA study compared adult HD mice who ate as much as they wanted to HD mice who were kept on an intermittent fasting diet during adulthood. HD mice possess the abnormal human gene huntingtin and exhibit clinical signs of the disease, including abnormal metabolism and neurodegeneration in the striatum. The mice on the fasting program developed clinical signs of the disease about 12 days later and lived 10 to 15% longer than the free-fed mice. The brains of the fasting mice also showed less degeneration. Those on the fasting program also regulated their glucose levels better and did not lose weight as quickly as the other mice. Researchers found that fasting mice had higher brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) levels. BDNF protects neurons and stimulates their growth. Fasting mice also had high levels of heat-shock protein-70 (Hsp70), which increases cellular resistance to stress.
Another NIA study compared intermittent fasting with cutting calorie intake. Researchers let a control group of mice eat freely (ad libitum). Another group was fed 60% of the calories that the control group consumed. A third group was fasted for 24 hours, then permitted to free-feed. The fasting mice didn't cut total calories at the beginning and the end of the observation period, and only slightly cut calories in between. A fourth group was fed the average daily intake of the fasting mice every day. Both the fasting mice and those on a restricted diet had significantly lower blood sugar and insulin levels than the free-fed controls. Kainic acid, a toxin that damages neurons, was injected into the dorsal hippocampus of all mice. Hippocampal damage is associated with Alzheimer's. Interestingly, the scientists found less damage in the brains of the fasting mice than in those that ate a restricted diet, and most damage in mice with an unrestricted diet. But the control group which ate the average daily intake of the fasting mice also showed less damage than the mice with restricted diet.[36]
Another Mattson study[37] in which overweight adult asthmatics followed alternate day calorie restriction (ADCR) for eight weeks showed marked improvement in oxidative stress, inflammation, and severity of the disease. Evidence from the medical literature suggests that ADCR in the absence of weight loss prolongs lifespan in humans[38].http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorie_res...
Posted by BlueSeats:
Eny, I have "juice fasted" a few times for periods ranging from 3 to 10 days. I find it excellent for mental and physical well being. For some a juice fast might not be considered stringent enough, but I think it's the way to go as it keeps vitamins and minerals flushing through your system while still allowing the toxins and bulk to pass.
It depends on the fruit you buy also. By the time we go to the grocer, the vitamin - minerals diminish greatly. It starts the moment they pull the stuff off the branches. That why we have to take vitamins and minerals daily, to make up what we don't get like humans used to. Before' you could just pull it right off the tree. Now it's sprayed to keep the pests away and has to be delivered across country or nation to nation for several days.
Get a juicer, but you'll have to make up the vitamins and minerals to make it count. And buy organic if you can find it. It tastes better.
Posted by martin:
oh my, sometimes these off-season OT topics bring out some interesting stuff.
Exactly, I'm learning new things here myself. Great stuff.
Posted by EnySpree:
Posted by martin:
oh my, sometimes these off-season OT topics bring out some interesting stuff.
I'm just trying to keep this sight from dying of boredum. The guys here show time and time again that they know a lot about a lot of things and can engage in conversation without threatening to explode in an flaming bitch out all the time.
Just as long as we don't discuss how the Knicks do it, then we're all cool.
Posted by ramtour420:
I'd just like to add to this discussion. Personally i cannot truly fast as i am a diabetic and my blood sugar goes crazy even if i skip 1 meal. However i have done a great deal of research on fasting and here are some things:
After 2nd or 3rd day of true fasting(nothing but water) the body goes into a detox mode. The digestive system starts to work the opposite- expelling stuff rather than absorbing. There are groups out there that believe that we get sick because of excess flegm and while fasting thgat stuff has a chance to exit the body. these guys swim in lakes during the winter and do all sorts of crazy stuff in subzero temperatures and don't get sick. Their philosophy is that we catch a cold cause of excess flegm and we expell it by catching a cold. Fasting is another way to do it and we get rid of a massive amounts of of that stuff while fasting. Once u have no xtra flegm your body literally has no reson to catch a cold so they are able to do some amazing things if they fast consistently. They even collect the urine and let it evaporate after a week or so of fasting just too see all the gunk that leaves our body.
The personal testemonials show thats its at least an incredible way to get rid of ulsers since the stomach stops producing acid together with some other factortors that come into play while fasting. Supposedly u'll never catch a cold if you fast and also a great way to get rid of one( cold or common flue) is by getting rid of as much flegm as possible( blowing the nose and spitting it out as well when u do get sick). There are other benefits to fasting as well many of which only a handful of ppl are able to reach.
One of the most important things during a fast is refraining from any negative thoghts and emotions. When u fast your senses are hightened and any negativity as well as positive thoughts are multiplied. Its also an ideal time to pray and meditate since we are more receptive and it carries xtra meaning when u fast. Overall it has incredible benefits even for ppl that are not professionals at it. So if you are planning to fast be strong and try to gather as much positive energy during that time as u can. Also, fasting will not rob you of much energy(suprasingly) so u can work and do your daily activities as normal- as long as u are not gonna go for a marathon run :)
Very good info. Some of my family members are diabetic. They have to really take care of their diets and absolutely no drinking. My mother just had her eyes worked on, because they were swelling from behind the ball. She also went in for laser treatment. Luckily, they don't have the severe type of diabetes. I knew a guy who had to shoot himself in the arm several times a day. Poor guy. Good luck with that.
And man, about the positive energy thing (I know, I should speak) that is just as crucial as anything else to good health. Stress will break you down and could end up killing you.
