Our parents have always told us to eat our fruits and vegetables. Juice cleanses, which include a combination of freshly squeezed juices from fruits and vegetables, increase in popularity on SMU’s campus as bathing suit season arrives. But what’s the secret behind these cleanses? Are they healthy? Do they actually work to lose weight and detox your body? Here’s the truth about juice cleanses.
Juice cleanse companies, such as BluePrint Cleanse, offer their basic three-day cleanses, with six bottles of fruit or vegetable juice per day. There are three different levels, and you choose a level depending on your current eating habits. Usually the easiest one has more fruit juices and the hardest has more vegetable juices.
The stated purpose of this cleanse is to detox the body and remove all the bad stuff, but almost everyone uses them as a quick way to lose weight before spring break. But, some experts say you twice before you dish out anywhere from $200 to $500 for a three to five day cleanse.
Many doctors say that weight loss on a juice cleanse will most likely happen in the short-term, but the results will not be long term. As soon as you start eating normal foods again, or even healthier foods than you used to eat, the weight will come right back. A huge problem for regular cleaners is routine hair loss. Doctors from Philip Kingsley Clinic in NYC, a clinic that specializes in hair and scalp health, say that they see dramatic shedding of hair from the juice cleanses three months after the cleanse ends. Furthermore, side effects of the cleanse can include dizziness, blood sugar spikes, and headaches.
If you actually want to detox your body, professionals recommend drinking some combination of kale, parsley, celery, cucumber, apple, lemon, or cayenne as a substitute for only one meal per day. However as a weight loss tactic, it is not recommended. Juice cleanses can actually slow your metabolism down and bring about the undesirable side effects. Try at your own risk!!