Juice Cleanse: 6 Benefits You Don’t Want to Miss!

Before pursuing any kind of major dietary change, you should consult with your physician to ensure that you are in good health to engage in fasting activity. Some people may have
undiagnosed diseases which may be exacerbated by a cleanse. 

Because it gives the body a steady source of calories and those calories are coming from a high-nutrient source, so the body is not being starved at any point, juice cleanses are
typically considered less harsh to the system than water fasts. 

You should monitor your body carefully while performing a juice cleanse. While some negative symptoms are common, such as headaches or intense cravings for junk food, these are the result of withdrawals from sugar, caffeine, and excess fat, not from hunger.

If you are performing a juice cleanse correctly, you should be getting enough calories that you should not be hungry. 

However, it is not saying that you are forbidden to bite on any food during a juice cleansing. If chosen carefully, some type of protein and nutrients are allowed during a cleansing.

Juice Cleanses Support Weight Loss

One way that juice cleanses benefit someone is that they can help people lose weight. Some juices, such as pomegranate juice, even contain substances that act as a natural appetite suppressant. 

Juice cleanses support weight loss in the following ways: 

• Juice cleanses help to wean a person off sugary sodas and other processed foods.
  Many people are legitimately addicted to junk food, and a juice cleanse can act as a detoxifying process while the addictive chemicals in these foods are flushed from the body, and the person in the cleanse goes through withdrawal from excess sugar and fat. 
• Juice cleanses allow a person to control their caloric intake in a very specific way to avoid overindulging.
  
  People who are overweight tend to have portioning issues at first before they learn to readjust their thinking about food, and easy-to-measure portions of juice make that process easier.
• Juice cleanses act as a detox period to lead into a new healthy eating lifestyle that involves whole fruits and vegetables along with other complex carbohydrates.
  
  Cleanses are a good “trial by fire” activity that can jumpstart a healthy eating habit simply due to their restrictive nature.
  
  Once a person has undergone a few juice cleanses, they are unlikely to see swapping to healthy whole food choices as quite so daunting.
• Juice cleanses teach a person who undergoes them dietary discipline and how to monitor their own dietary intake without having to adhere to complicated meal plans. Many people with weight to lose
• Juice cleanses are a less restrictive form of intermittent fasting, which promotes a smaller appetite.
  
  Reduction of appetite is extremely helpful in trying to lose weight, as it also reduces cravings for high-calorie and processed foods.
• Making healthy choices, such as increasing one’s intake of fruits and vegetables via a juice fast, can lead to more healthy decisions, because willpower is a finite resource and making smart decisions at the beginning of a lifestyle change makes it psychologically easy to make smart decisions later
  
  (Ex. If you do a week-long juice cleanse, you’ll be unwilling to go straight back to unhealthy eating afterwards because of your time and willpower invested.) 

Juice Cleanses Increase Absorption of Vital Nutrients

Along with promoting weight loss and a shift into a healthy eating lifestyle, juice cleansing is
also a way to mainline vital nutrients into the body’s systems in an
easy-to-absorb form. 

This is especially important for anyone who has been living on the average first world diet, which is woefully deficient in nutritional value. A juice cleanse is one way to inject yourself with instant nutrition. 

It is recommended that people eat five to nine servings of fruits and vegetables a day for optimal nutrition, but many people do not find whole fruits and vegetables palatable enough to eat that many of them in a day. 

Many of these whole foods are very fibrous as well, making them feeling and difficult to eat enough servings of daily.

But when juiced into an easy-to-transport form, people are
more likely to eat their full amount of fruits and vegetables for the
day. 

Juice Cleanses Detoxify the Body’s Systems

Juice cleanses help detoxify the body’s systems in a variety of ways, such as the following: 

• Juice cleanses help flush the body of foreign contaminants such as chemicals, pollutants, artificial food colorings/flavorings, and toxins
• Juice cleanses keep a person nutritionally sound while they are withdrawing from the absorption of chemicals as well as excess sugar and fats
  
• The juices formed from fruits and vegetables are chock-full of antioxidants, which are chemicals that help scour free radicals and other toxins from the body.
• Juices support the function of the liver and kidneys, which are responsible for detoxifying the body. 
  
  Cranberries, in particular, have been noted for their positive correlation with kidney health. Meanwhile, blueberries, grapefruit, and beet juice can support liver health.
• When diluted with water or in addition to water, a juice cleanse can help dramatically increase hydration levels. 
  
  With optimal hydration, the body is able to much more easily flush toxins and other pollutants from the body. 

While the bulk of detoxifying in the body is performed by the liver and kidneys, a juice cleanse aids those organs by creating a sort of embargo against incoming toxins.

With fewer incoming toxins to filter out, the kidneys and liver can do some deep-cleaning of the body instead of just trying to keep up with incoming trash. 

Juice Cleanses Rest and Stabilize the Digestive System

One of the benefits of a juice cleanse is that by abstaining from solid food for a period of several days, the person performing the juice fast is able to reset their digestive
system to a large degree. 

Since they don’t have to work at digesting solid food, the stomach and intestines are allowed to rest and regenerate themselves.

If you think about it, the stomach and intestines are very hard-working organs that require a relatively large amount of energy to run and maintain. 

Fasting the stomach by avoiding solid foods for a period can give beneficial bacteria in the gut a boost, and these microbiomes influence the human body in various ways, from triggering hunger to stimulating our metabolism. 

Juice Cleanses Help Stabilize Blood Sugar

Some people will tell you that taking a juice cleanse can cause your blood sugar to rapidly spike and crash in the short term as the result of a juice cleanse, and this can
sometimes be the case, which is why diabetics should consult a physician
before. 

However, using a juice cleanse to wean off of sodas and other sugary drinks that really wreak damage on the body’s blood sugar levels can ultimately lead to more stable
blood sugar levels when a person finishes their juice cleanse by eating whole
healthy foods such as whole fruits and vegetables instead of the junk food they
were eating before the cleanse. 

While juice cleanses can cause some temporary blood sugar fluctuations during the fast itself, by spearheading a major lifestyle change, performing a juice cleanse
semi-regularly can change someone’s overall eating habits and lead to them
having lower blood sugar in general. 

Juice Cleanses Increase Immune Response

Juice cleanses are beneficial to the body’s immune system because the immune system requires many different kinds of vitamins and trace minerals to function correctly.

One of the major components of juice cleanses that bolsters your immune system is Vitamin C, which is abundant in many fruits and vegetables. 

Vitamin C is crucial in the immune system because it reinforces the following immunological responses: 

• Chemotaxis (movement of white blood cells)
• Phagocytosis (ingestion of bacteria by white blood cells)
• Generation of reactive oxygen species (useable oxygen generation) 
• Microbial killing (immune system’s ability to fight off and kill foreign microbes)

A juice cleanse that includes tomato juice will increase your intake of folates, which in turn decreases your risk of bacterial infection and help the body to repair its own DNA. 

There are many other minerals and nutrients in fruit and vegetable juices that support immune system health, and a lack of these nutrients in the average first world diet is one of
the reasons that many people are malnourished and suffer from dozens of common
diseases related to malnutrition, such as obesity and Type 2 diabetes. 

By committing to a juice cleanse, you’re not just dramatically increasing your intake of these nutrients, but you’re also cutting out other less healthy foods that would actually suppress your immune system such as fast food, alcohol, and caffeine.