Safety First

When you start a juice fast you want to make sure to be ready...mentally and physically.  If you are contemplating this, you probably already know your own physical problems and illness tendencies.  Getting a physical and blood-work done will not only insure that their are no hidden concerns but will also give you a baseline to compare your results to later.

I have a lot of visceral fat and I know I have issues metabolizing  alcohol as well as urinary tract infections and kidney stones so I wanted to support my liver and kidneys.  Visceral fat is an indicator for fatty liver disease which is a silent killer.  A juice fast is already a wonderful way to help reduce fatty liver disease which is caused by SAD (The Standard American Diet).  I found that silymarin is recommended to support liver function and help reduce fat in the liver.  It is found in Milk Thistle. Another herb that helps is coffee...yes, coffee.

I did fasts for cleansing early on in my life and one thing I found is that the toxins liberated by the fast put a strain on my liver.  Let me explain.  When you eat meats, dairy products or oils whatever fats were stored by the animal or plant contain oil soluble toxins that the animal or plant was exposed to.  All animals store toxins in their fat to protect themselves against the toxins, which they may not have had the resources to deal with at the time of exposure due to poor diet or illness.  Meats are the worst because these are the toxins the animal was exposed to during it's entire life...pesticides, herbicides, contaminated water and air all contribute to the toxin load carried by the animal in it's fat.  You eat the meat from the animal and the fat carries the toxins into your body and it get's stored in the form of fat.  When you begin to burn the fat you also liberate the toxins.

When I was younger I did weekly apple fasts.   Seven days with only apples, water, lemon and clear vegetable broth at night.  I would wake up and look in the mirror and see that the whites of my eyes were yellow tinged.  That's an over loaded liver--jaundice.  Coffee enemas or even drinking coffee will help the liver dump toxins into your bowel and out they go.  I find the milk thistle helps this along even more.

To help the body deal with the stress of fasting also plan to take vitamin B12 if you feel especially tired and it doesn't lift for a couple of days.  We also add protein powder ( pea or hemp) and nutritional yeast to our morning juice to fortify ourselves for the day.  We aren't millionaires who can afford to check into a spa for a couple of weeks.  We go to work every day and take care of our kids and all the other things modern life demands of us so we need to keep our energy levels up and our heads clear enough to function! Speaking of keeping a clear head, I will get to the mental part of fasting in the next post.