The Pros & Cons of a Juice Cleanse

This diet consists of the person fasting from solid food, and consuming only fruits and vegetables in the form of a liquid juice. The juices can be made at home or purchased from a store in which they give the consumer direction for how to complete the diet. This cleanse lasts anywhere from three days to ten days, and the restrictions that come along with it also vary. No matter how or why the juice cleanse comes into someone’s life, it comes with some challenges and some pros and cons. 

Pros

Detox

A lot of people choose to do a juice cleanse because it can help with detoxing the body. For example, if someone has been on vacation and has been eating different types of foods that don’t sit well with their lifestyle, or if there has been more alcohol intake than normal, it is common that to bounce back from this and remove the toxins a juice cleanse will come into play. This detox comes from drinking more liquids, causing your body to need to urinate more, and in turn, remove toxins at a quicker rate than the body naturally would.

Jumpstart a healthy lifestyle

Juice cleanses can be beneficial for people who are trying to change their eating lifestyle. For those who are modifying their diets, a juice cleanse can help introduce more fruits and veggies while training the body to adapt to a more restrictive diet. This way, once the juice cleanse is over, people are in the mindset of consuming healthier meals, this can help them maintain this when they are reintroducing foods back into their diets.

Food allergies

When people experience allergic reactions to foods but can’t figure out what food is causing this, a juice cleanse can help with that. Once the juice cleanse is coming to an end, start reintroducing foods slowly, and pay attention to how you feel after. This can give clarity to understanding which foods are causing this reaction and can help get to the bottom of the issue.

Cons

Not sustainable

While juice cleanses can be great, they are not a sustainable choice for a dietary lifestyle. It’s very hard to keep up with a juice cleanse, and while people lose weight during the cleanse, this weight loss is only temporary until a normal diet is reintroduced back into daily life.

Loss of energy

Due to a lack of calorie and protein intakes, juice cleanses can cause energy to be lower than normal. This can make the cleanse tough and cause people to break the cleanse sooner than they planned. Additionally, the low-calorie intake can make people feel faint and in turn do more harm than good.

Difficult to maintain

Because of the extremity of removing solid foods from daily life, juice cleanses can be very difficult to follow through with. The body is used to having something to chew and hold onto throughout the day, so by removing this, the brain and body get confused and send messages to consume something of substance.

Overall, juice cleanses can be beneficial if the person participating is doing it for the right reasons such as detox, or for medical reasons. However, if the diet is done wrong, or for the wrong reasons, it can do more harm than good.