Drinking fresh juice is an important tool for achieving optimum health. Freshly extracted juice offers many life improving health benefits. It provides a way to access and extract nutrients, phytonutrients, vitamins and enzymes usually locked away in the cells of whole fruits and vegetables. Fresh juice delivers enzymes, a type of nutrient that is important for day to day body function. Enzymes act as a catalyst in chemical reactions that take place throughout the body, they are vital for assisting with digestion and absorption of food, for conversion of food stuffs into body tissue and for the production of energy at the cellular level.
Concerns about the loss of fibre
Fibre is an essential dietary requirement and a diet rich in fruit and vegetables will provide more than an adequate amount of fibre for digestive health. The benefit of freshly extracted juice, with no fibre, is the quantity of nutrition that you receive. For example, you would not be comfortable to eat the number of carrots required to produce a glass of carrot juice, yet the nutrition found in carrot juice is highly beneficial for the immune system.
The benefits of juicing
Health and Healing
A diet rich in fresh fruits and vegetables can prevent and cure a lot of ailments.
Plant chemicals known as phytochemicals are the cutting edge of nutritional research because they hold the keys to preventing some of our most deadly diseases such as cancer and heart disease, as well as some of our most common ailments like asthma, arthritis and allergies.
For years studies, that compare disease conditions and diet, in large populations of people have shown positive results on the value of a diet high in fruits and vegetables.
The building blocks for maintaining a healthy body and the essential requirements for curing disease and healing, in addition to phytochemical, are vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, essential fatty acids, proteins (amino acids), fats and carbohydrates. Freshly extracted vegetable and fruit juices contain ALL of these nutrients so the key to health and healing is daily juicing. Since each vegetable and fruit contains different values of each of these nutrients, by juicing specific fruits and vegetables, you can not only treat specific diseases and ailments with juice but also maintain optimum health.
Weight-loss
Juicing is the perfect tool for weight-loss. Weight-loss mostly occurs when you burn more calories than you consume. We gain weight for many reasons, mainly bad eating habits combined with lack of exercise. When we do not eat nutritionally dense foods, the body is deprived of the nutrients it needs to function and empty calories result in weight gain, elimination problems, sleep problems, skin problems and the list goes on. Vegetable juices, in particular, are low in calories and fats and have a high liquid content. The juicing secret for weight-loss is vegetable juice, including leafy greens. Vegetable juice assists you in losing weight due to its low calorie and zero fat content while offering you extreme high nutrition in the most absorbable form. The fact that the body receives all the nutrients it needs means that you are full for longer and it reduces cravings for unhealthy foods. Of course juicing for weight-loss should be combined with a healthy balanced diet rich in vegetables, fruit, fibre and regular exercise.
Detox
Detoxing is the process of getting rid of toxic and unhealthy substances that have built up in the body as a result of junk food, environmental and cosmetic toxins. A body filled with toxins shows symptoms of feeling sluggish, skin breakouts, aches, pains, headaches and digestion problems. The key part of detoxing is consuming enough liquids to flush out the toxins. Juicing, especially green juices, are rich in iron, magnesium, vitamins plus have a high water content. They flood your system with powerful nutrients and antioxidants helping you get rid of the bad stuff while replacing it with all the good stuff.
Add more fruit and vegetables to your diet
Nothing is more nutritious than fresh, raw fruit and vegetables. Imagine having to eat an entire tray of cucumber, spinach, carrot, green pepper, tomato and celery. Ordinarily, considering the time it would take to chew the food, and for our digestion system to process it, we would not consume this medley all at one time. Juicing extracts in liquid form, the most nutritious parts of the produce meaning you can take in as much produce as possible at one time. Juicing also gives you the option to consume vegetables outside the regular ‘salad’ vegetables. From a health point of view, to get the best nutrition, produce needs to be rotated as each vegetable or fruit contains unique nutrients.
Digestion
Juicing (especially with a ‘slow’ juicer) breaks down the food in a way that resembles chewing food. Chewing food is a necessary part of digestion, where the food is mixed with enzymes to aid with the breakdown and absorption of nutrients. Fruits and vegetables, in a liquid form, are already in a pre-digested state so you can assimilate and absorb up to 99% of the nutrients in the food, even if you have a weak digestive system which is why juicing is highly recommended for those with ailments and poor digestion systems.
Alkalising
The body has two states that it can be in, either acid or alkaline. The biggest influence of the state that your body is the food that you eat. Other factors include the environment and stress. The acid/alkaline balance is known as the pH balance. Your pH plays a definite role in weight-loss because it determines how your body will burn fat. By eating the wrong foods you can change your pH and it can become very difficult to impossible to lose weight. The secret to avoiding acidity in the body is to know which foods to eat. The most alkalising foods are green leafy vegetables, wheatgrass, alfalfa sprouts and most vegetables. This is the cocktail for a juice to alkalise your body, lose excess weight, heal, cure and be healthy.