JUICING - A KEY TO YOUR HEALTH

[sumisu]

Reboot with juice

July 11, 2011 5:28 PM

BY MARA KNAUB - SUN STAFF WRITER

http://www.yumasun.com/articles/juice-71382-juicing-cross.html

Learn more about the documentary at www.FatSickAndNearlyDead.com and about juicing at www.JoinTheReboot.com.

Before making the documentary “Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead” Joe Cross had been a yo-yo dieter for years.

“I put weight on, I lost it and I put it on again,” Cross said.

He described himself as 100 pounds overweight, loaded up on steroids and suffering from a debilitating autoimmune disease.

“When I turned 40, I realized that I had been all talk and no action for years, saying that some day I would change my life and do something to reclaim the robust health I had enjoyed as a younger man,” the Australian entrepreneur and investor said.

To reclaim his health Cross turned to juice fasting, an experience that inspired him direct and produce “Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead.”

“Juicing is essentially drinking fruits and vegetables. Juicing offers us many delicious health benefits including a faster, more efficient way to absorb immune boosting nutrients naturally found in fruits and vegetables,” he said.

Some local doctors also agree that juicing is a good way to get nutrients in one glass.

“It's a good alternative in the sense that in one glass of juice you can put in a lot of vegetables. (That's) better than not having any vegetables at all,” said Dr. Margarita Hernandez-Guzman, a local naturopathic physician.

Dr. Carl Myers, a retired oncologist and coordinator of Healthy Yuma 2011, noted that traditional medical literature says very little about juice fasting, but he pointed out that naturopaths have been promoting it for a long time.

He agreed that juicing has many potential benefits, the biggest being: “While they're juicing, they don't eat the regular American diet” of processed foods.

In addition, Myers said, juice is very easily absorbed and gives the digestive system a rest. Some naturopaths say that juicing helps detoxify the body.

“The idea of detoxifying is not well accepted by the medical field,” Myers said. “On the other hand, we get hooked to foods high in fat, high in salt and high in sugar, and fasting can help get rid of the addiction.”

After a fast, individuals can then reintroduce solid, healthy foods. “I recommend it as a way to get away from addicting foods to whole foods, plant based, rather than animal based,” Myers said.

It has “dramatically” helped some people “to have a clean slate,” he added.

But Myers would not recommend any type of fasting if a person is not healthy or for children or those who are on medicine without first checking with their physician.

Hernandez-Guzman recommends juice fasting “only on a case-by-case, depending on the person's health condition.”

She also stressed fasting should only be attempted after an assessment by a physician. As part of the assessment, she conducts blood tests and tries to determine whether a person is sensitive to certain foods.

She also checks a patient's metabolic rate, stress and activity levels and even considers the person's environment (the surrounding temptations).

An assessment is also important in determining whether a person has an eating disorder.

“If they're tending towards anorexia or they have a distorted body image, then this could be an excellent excuse to go to extremes. They won't know when to stop,” she said.

Hernandez-Guzman recommends a fast depending on the person's goals and taste buds, noting that some fasts last 24 hours, a weekend, one week, one month or two months.

“It's very personal, very specific,” she said.

Common goals are weight loss (the most common) and cleansing the body of toxins, but some also want to treat migraines, high-blood pressure, high-blood sugar, fatigue, body pains and for mental clarity.

Some of the ill effects, especially if a person is very toxic, are fogginess, crankiness, being lethargic and skin eruptions. As the body clears out the toxins, these effects will go away, Hernandez-Guzman said.

Ultimately, she said, juicing is considered a radical therapy that can help a person “completely change their eating habits.” It's a good way to “reboot” the system.

It's exactly what moved Joe Cross to start a 60-day juice fast under medical supervision. He left his native Sydney and juiced his way across America. He bought a truck, a juice extractor and a generator to operate it.

“I had been on juice fasts before. They were successful for me and I noticed a real positive impact in terms of nutritional intake and energy when I was on them,” Cross said.

His goal was to get off prescription medicines and find relief for his autoimmune disease that was brought on and made worse by excess weight.

“For me, it was about getting healthy, living without pain and getting off prescription medicines. While juicing, your body gets the vital nutrients it needs and that was an important component for me. I didn't want to just shed weight. I wanted to gain health and wellness,” Cross explained.

He committed to eating only food that was grown on trees or dug out of the ground, foods made by the sun, water and the earth.

“Because I'm an impatient man, I wanted quick results so I decided to only drink these foods for the first 60 days. Not blend -- drink. That means extracting the juice, and separating the fiber from the plant.”

He described the first three days as “brutal.” “But once you get to the other side, you start to feel alive in an entirely new way. During my first couple of ‘reboots,' I experienced headaches and general fatigue the first few days, but now when I reboot it's not really an issue because I juice all the time and eat a heavily plant-based diet –even when I am not rebooting.”

He feels “more energetic, more mobile and more alive,” he said. “The more you juice, the more you crave juicing. Your body begins to like being spoiled and receiving the type of nutrients mother nature intended it to.”

The result? “After 60 days of juice and another 70 days of eating just fruit, vegetables, nuts, beans and seeds, I was 100 pounds lighter and off all medication. I've been that way ever since.”

But the film “Fast, Sick and Nearly Dead” not only chronicles Cross' journey. During his cross-country journey, he talked to more than 500 Americans about food and health.

At a truck stop in Winslow, Ariz., he met a truck driver who suffers from the same rare condition. Phil Staples was morbidly obese weighing in at 429 pounds. Cross offered his help and the film chronicles Staples' own journey as he recovers his health and loses a massive amount of weight with juicing.