Beets at market
By Cat, Sept 2016 (Photo, right, from Wikipedia)
NOTE: these juices can be consumed anytime, not just during a fast. Dr. Mercola (3) recommends a veg-juice each morning.
I’ve been doing a veggie-juice fast at the Wellness Education Center in Kalispell, MT since 2008. My Naturopath in Portland, Steven Bailey (2) had been encouraging me to do his “juice fast” for years, but I resisted because I assumed it would be fruit juices which would be an issue with my insulin resistance. I didn’t look into it any further. But then I moved back home to Montana and made new friends here.
- See also: 1. Beverages Menu under Vegetable Juices; 2. Raw Beet Juice
- Includes WEC Juices: 1. Beet, carrot & greens; 2. Apple & greens; 3. Green goddess; 4. Carrot, Apple, Lemon, Ginger; 5. Beet, apple, lemon, ginger fizz; 6. Other recipe suggestions
Discovering Veggie Juices
One of those new friends, Jean H., was a regular juice-faster and she told me that it’s mostly veggie juices – beets, carrots and greens, some with a small amount of apple. So I bravely signed up in the fall of 2009. It was an amazing experience. The week before I had to eliminate animal foods from my diet, and the last two days I was to be eating only veggies. That was probably the hardest part. The actual fast started on a Friday evening with a “liquitarian raw soup” made at the WEC.
After that it would be just veggie juices (with a bit of cod liver oil each day), for seven days.* I didn’t think I could do it, but remarkably, it wasn’t that hard. And I felt so good. After the fast comes a 5 – 10 day ‘breaking the fast’ during which you slowly introduce whole foods; the number of days depends on the number of days you fasted.
‘* They also offer a 3- and 5-day fast, but neither of these is recommended for a first fast. 5-days is the minimum if you wish to do the liver/gall bladder flush.
Some of the other newbies had chills or pains, a result of the detox process, but I was spared those issues. And I was hooked; I do the fast every fall (October), and also sometimes in the spring (April or May). One of these days when I’m back in Portland, I will look up Dr. Bailey and tell him.
Many benefits of veggie juicing
The following is from Mercola (3):
- “Helps you absorb all the nutrients from your vegetables. This is important because most people have impaired digestion as a result of making less-than-optimal food choices over many years, which limits your body’s ability to absorb all of the nutrients in whole, raw vegetables. Juicing helps “pre-digest” them, so you won’t lose any of this valuable nutrition.
- Makes it easier to consume a large quantity of vegetables. Virtually every health authority recommends that you get six to eight servings of vegetables and fruits per day, but very few actually get that. Juicing virtually guarantees you’ll reach your daily target.
- Boosts your immune system. Raw juice supercharges your immune system with concentrated phytochemical and biphotonic light energy, which can revitalize your body. The nutrients in fresh juice also feed your body’s good bacteria and help suppress potentially pathogenic ones.
- Increases your energy. When your blood is flooded with nutrients and your body’s pH is optimized, you’ll feel energized. Since juice is absorbed and utilized by your body very rapidly, juicers report feeling an almost instantaneous “kick” of energy.
- Supports your brain. In the Kame Project (5) people who consumed juice more than three times per week were 76% less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease than those who consumed juice less than once a week.
- Provides structured water. Vegetable juice is one of the purest sources of water and actually qualifies as water. Vegetable water is structured water (living water (4)), which is different from regular water — H3O2 rather than H2O. Water from vegetables is the best quality water you can drink.
On a side note, sun exposure is also important for structuring the water in your cells. Part of the energy your body requires can actually be obtained from sunlight, but you must expose your skin directly to it. The ultraviolet (UV) radiation increases nitric oxide (NO) release, which can direct more than half your blood flow to your skin.
Once your blood is exposed to the sun, it can absorb UV and infrared radiation, which help to structure the water in your cells and energize your mitochondria.”
Veggie Juice Recipes
All of these recipes are made using a vegetable juicer, not a blender, because the juicer filters out the fiber. While fiber is an important part of a good diet, during the fast, you want to shut down your digestive action so the body can focus on detox (the pure juices are absorbed without digestion).
WEC recommends the following formula for veggie juices: 33% sweets, 33% greens and 33% water. This is the basis for all the recipes in the WEC Juices section, below, and is illustrated in the first of those recipes.
You can also make up your own, using that same formula. Mercola (3) makes the following suggestions to make the juices more flavorful:
- Limes and lemons: You can add one half to a whole lime or lemon for every quart of juice. Limes are my favorite for cutting bitter flavors.
- Cranberries: You can also add some cranberries if you enjoy them. Limit the cranberries to about 4 ounces per pint of juice.
- Fresh ginger-root: This is an excellent addition if you enjoy the taste. It gives your juice a spicy “kick.”
- Limited amounts of apple and carrot (just be mindful of your overall sugar content).
Dr. Don Colbert in his book: How to Revitalize Your Body in 28 Days: Get Healthy through Detox and Fasting (6), recommends the following juice ingredients, as they are especially cleansing:
Veggies:
- Cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, and other cruciferous veggies
- Greens (wheat grass, beet greens, kale, spinach, arugula, dandelion, collards, turnip, parsley, etc.)
- Dandelion root, greens (good for liver and kidney detox)
- Sprouts
- Celery
- Carrots
- Beets
Fruits:
- Apples
- Lemons and limes (mostly peeled)
- Berries (blueberries, blackberries and strawberries)
He recommends that at least one juice each day contain a cruciferous veggie (cabbage family), and/or beet. The base of your combo should always include at least one of the following: carrots, celery, apples, and tomatoes (to which I would also add beetroot), as these taste good and combine well with other veggies and fruits. The greens are usually bitter and strong of flavor, so you will want to use less of them.
NOTE: I don’t use tomatoes in my juices; they are a member of the nightshade family and are mildly toxic for me. If you have issues with nightshades (tomatoes, peppers, eggplant), you might also avoid adding them to your juices.
WEC Juices
The following are from the Wellness Education Center 7-Day Juice Fast Book (1).
Percentages are by weight (oz) or mass (grams). One serving is 12 oz, so 33% by weight is 4 oz.
Beet, Carrot & Greens
This is the mainstay of the fast, with one serving of this juice almost every day. It is also the basic recipe from which others are derived. Most include sprouts, but I’m not sure how long they are sprouted.
The percentages in the following recipes are by weight in oz (or mass in grams).
4 oz. Sweets = 33% total
- Carrots: 32%
- Beets: 1%
4 oz. Greens = 33% total
- Cucumber 10%
- Chard 10%
- Celery 9%
- Sprouts 4% (sunflower & buckwheat)
4 oz. Water = 33% total
Apple & Greens
Same as above, replacing carrot with apple
Green Goddess
- Sweets include apple
- Greens include: spinach, parsley, chard and cucumber, plus sprouts.
- Purified water as above
Carrot, apple, lemon, ginger
- Sweets includes carrot, and apple
- Other includes ginger and lemon juice as well as sprouts; not sure about percentages
- Purified water as above
Beet, apple, lemon ginger fizz
This is my favorite of all the juices
- Sweets includes apple and beet
- Other includes lemon and ginger as well as sprouts; not sure about percentages
- Water: replace with soda water for fizz
References
- Wellness Education Center (WEC): juicefast.info
- Dr. Steven Bailey, Northwest Naturopathic Clinic, nwnclinic.com
- Mercola: Juicing may be the answer to chronic health problems: articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2016/09/17/juicing-for-chronic-diseases.aspx
- Mercola on Structured Water (articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/01/29/dr-pollack-on-structured-water.aspx
- Kame Project study: American Journal of Medicine 2006 Sep;119(9):751-9
- How to Revitalize Your Body in 28 Days: Get Healthy through Detox and Fasting, by Dr. Don Colbert. See Amazon (amazon.com/Get-Healthy-Through-Detox-Fasting/dp/1591859611) for more about this book.
