Juicing for Energy: How a Juice Cleanse Feeds Every Cell in Your Body

- by Dr. Ritamarie Loscalzo

If you’ve ever done a juice cleanse where you consume primarily or exclusively fresh pressed juice for a specified length of time, you may have already experienced the state of “juice euphoria”  that comes from having a clean digestive tract and a clear mind.

There is something very freeing about not eating for several days to several weeks and allowing your body to rid itself of toxins.

Each cup of vegetable juice is jam packed with all the nutrients you need to give your mitochondria the raw materials to make energy for you.  When you juice rather than eat, the nutrients make a bee-line right into your blood stream, allowing every cell in your body to feel alive and energized.

Most people think that if they do a juice cleanse – meaning consuming nothing but juice for several days or longer – that they’ll feel weak and tired.  Quite the contrary in most cases.  Think nutrients for starving cells.  When you eat in the usual fashion – meaning low nutrient food consumed on the run and under stressful circumstances – there’s very little nutrition, and your digestive system does not digest it well.

If you typically feel less energetic after eating, or crave food even when your stomach is telling you to stop, you just may benefit from a juice cleanse.  Your approach can be as simple as replacing a meal or two with fresh squeezed vegetable juice.  Of course, if you’d like to really benefit, try a juice cleanse for 3-5 or even 10 days.

Three days is easy to do on your own; ten days is another story.  There are a lot of emotions and habits that rear their less than pretty heads when you do an extended cleanse, and it’s best to do it with support, like the 10-Day Juice Cleanse program the Raw Divas are doing in August.  I am one of their team of juice and cleansing experts and I must say, I am impressed with what they put together.

Tune in to my recent blog talk radio show called “Juicing as an Antidote to Fatigue”  for all the “juicy”  details.

Fruit as Friend, Fruit as Foe: Simple Strategies to Find Out if You Should Fill or Forget the Fruit Bowl

Have you noticed that A LOT of health writers place fruit on their “hit list” of foods to avoid? Some even put it right up there as just a notch above high fructose corn syrup!

So what’s wrong with fruit? Actually, there is a book by that name, and, not surprisingly, I own it. I bought it back in the dinosaur days when you actually had to physically own a book in order to read it!

It was at a time when I was exploring macrobiotics, and raw fruit was only supposed to be about 5% of calories on any given day. If you are small and relatively inactive like most people and sustain yourself on a 1500 calorie a day regime, that amounts to less than one piece of fruit.

Fruit: To Fear or to Cheer?

In general, when online authors suggest you should limit or eliminate fruit they tell you that fruit:

• triggers outbreaks of candida yeast (Donna Gates)
• triggers blood sugar swings and cravings (South Beach Diet)
• increases risk of diabetes (Joseph Mercola)
• promotes an acid residue that can feed cancer (Robert O. Young)
• promotes “composting” that can result in overgrowth of unfriendly microorganisms (Gabriel Cousins)

Personally, what I’ve observed is all over the map.

I’ve seen diabetics on my green cleanse program normalize their blood sugars within 3 days while drinking nothing but green smoothies that contain between 40 and 50% fruit by volume. That adds up to a lot of fruit over the course of the day.

On the other hand, I’ve seen other diabetics spike their sugars by adding a few strawberries to a green drink.

I’ve read accounts of women who’ve healed from chronic yeast overgrowth while eating a diet consisting of primarily fresh fruit. I’ve also personally coached patients who are so sugar sensitive they have yeast flare-ups after a few bites of apple.

So What’s the Truth? Is Fruit a Friend or Foe?

Over two decades of guiding people through life changing diet and lifestyle changes has taught me one thing for certain… and that is that there is no single set of eating rules that work for all of the people all of the time.

We are each biochemically and energetically unique. We are shaped by our genes, early exposures, the way we were nurtured, how safe we felt in our early years, our diets, movement and sleep patterns, and even our thoughts. Your response to the world is slightly different from mine. This is true of how we behave in response to outside stimuli as well as how we respond to food. It is said that one man’s food is another man’s poison.

I’ve found over the years that, for many people, one of the best ways to determine which foods are helpful and which are hurtful is to test. And one of the best ways to test is to remove all the potentially problematic foods and add them back in one at a time.

This is called elimination/provocation.

For many people, the best way to do the elimination phase is by fasting on either water or vegetable juice for a prescribed length of time and then reintroduce foods such as fruits.

Solutions for Finding Out if You Are Fruit Sensitive

If you’ve been wondering if you’re sensitive to fruit sugar, here are some questions to ask yourself to determine if fruit is a friend, foe, or in between:

• Do find yourself feeling spacey or light headed after eating fruit by itself?
• Do you crave sugar after eating fruit?
• Does eating lots of fruit cause intestinal upset?
• Do you break out in a rash when you eat lots of fruit?

Carefully observe how you respond to eating fruit and experiment with using low-sugar fruits versus high-sugar fruits. Also try combining fruit with greens and eliminating fruit for a few weeks.

If this is a course of action you’re willing to try, here’s what I suggest:

1. Follow 10 days of eating no fruit at all, except for lemons. The ideal way to do this is by fasting or juicing.
2. After your 10 days of elimination, eat a meal containing 3-5 pieces of fresh ripe fruit all by itself. Monitor how you feel over the next few hours.
3. Next, eat a meal containing the same amount of fruit but this time eat it on a bed of greens or blended with greens into a smoothies.

Try this with a few different types of fruit, in particular with berries. Add cinnamon to your fruit and see if that changes things. You may have blood sugar imbalances that can be corrected by a 30-day insulin receptor reset.

Over the years, I’ve developed my own special relationship with fruit. I rarely eat a lot of it by itself. Personally, I feel best when I eat fruit along with greens.

The first step is to start on the elimination path. If you need support, take part in a group juice cleanse with other people. You can join me with Tera Warner of The Raw Divas for a 10-Day Juice Cleanse starting on August 1st. You’ll also find extra educational support here in our radio show on “How Juicing Affects Your Blood Sugar”.

Fruit does not have to be your foe forever. If you know you have fruit issues and you want to heal your sensitivies, address problems with abdominal fat, and improve your overall energy, you’ll find your best strategies for health and support using the Insulin Sensitivity Restoration System which you’ll find here.

Flatten Your Belly with Simple and effective summer cleansing smoothie strategies

As I get ready for my quarterly Green Smoothie Cleanse, I’ve been pondering the concept of time.

Somehow it seems there is never quite enough time to complete all I would like to do.One way I buy back some time is by doing cleanses.  That may seem like a strange comment.

Let me explain

Have you ever calculated how much time it takes you to plan meals, make meals, eat meals and clean up after meals?  There is a bit of a time investment.  Even if you’re eating out a lot, thinking you don’t have the time to prepare your own meals, the time savings is not that as great as you think, considering you have to drive to a restaurant, order the food, wait for it to arrive, eat it, pay for it and drive home.  Even the fast food drive through concept takes time, and unless you eat while driving, there’s still the time it takes to chew your meal.

Some cleanses save time, some require additional time.

Water fasts require the least amount of time at all.  No prep, no cleanup.  The problem with water fasts is that your metabolism slows down and you can’t quite accomplish all that you might when you’re eating.  The good news about fasting is that your appetite goes away after about four days.

Juice cleanses are the most time consuming, especially if you’re dedicated to drinking the 3-4 quarts a day of juice generally recommended to cleanse effectively.  It takes me the better part of an hour per quart to prepare the foods for juicing, juice and cleanup.  Juicing is similar to water fasting in that your metabolism slows down and different in that you feel hungry all the time.  My experience is that my appetite doesn’t go away after four days as with fasting.  The lower energy makes me less productive.

Cleanses that require potions and powders, enemas and other cleansing rituals are very effective but it’s very time consuming to make all the potions, do the enemas and cleansing rituals, meditate  and rest in between as suggested.  I once read about a cleanse that sounded great, and I was all ready to begin.  Unfortunately it required several enemas a day, cleansing baths, skin brushing and other rituals, in addition to special teas, drinks and foods.  The only way I could have done it was to take time off.

Of course, the most effective cleansing occurs when you take a break from your day to day and dedicate your time to the cleansing process.  I did 28 day supervised water fast once. I was at a health center and all I did was drink water, rest, walk a bit and read.  It changed my life.  I highly recommend that everyone take a month to cleanse sometime.  It’s the best.

Unfortunately, not everyone has that opportunity, so we fit periodic cleansing into our day to day routine.

That’s why my current cleanse of choice is a green smoothie cleanse.  It may not be as deep a cleanse as a water or juice fast, but it certainly has amazing results.

Every 3 months, I take a 7 day break from chewing and fats and I drink green smoothies
morning, noon and night.  I have plenty of energy to work, exercise and enjoy my family.  I save precious hours of food prep, chewing and cleanup.  Smoothies are easy to make, quick to clean up after and take a lot less time to consume than the equivalent quantity of fresh produce would take to eat.

When you make them as I suggest, between 40 and 60% green and 40 – 60% fruit, they provide an abundance of minerals, amino acids and anti-oxidants.  Leaving out the fat gives you’re a liver a break and allows it to devote more cycles to cleansing.

I lead my very first online green smoothie cleanse about 4 years ago, informally with about 25 people.  It was so successful I created an official program with recipes, menu plans, shopping lists and lots of bonuses.

It’s evolved now to a full website with videos, audios, a support forum, bonuses, and daily journals and coaching questions.

I’m getting ready to lead another cleanse starting Monday, and I am so ready.

This cleanse will be a bit different for me in that I’ll be in Tucson, staying at my sister’s house.  She’s done my Green Cleanse before, and she’s excited that she’ll get to do it with me in person.

We kick off on Monday evening, with a teleseminar called:

“The Art of Cleansing with Greens- Putting Your Best Food First to Get Started “

Later in the week we’ll have a teleseminar called “Gut Healing Secrets” and I’ll do some Spotlight Coaching and answer your questions.

Our last teleseminar of the cleanse is “Eating Healthy in The Real World: Tips and Tricks for Taming Emotional and Social Eating and Living in a Body You Love”

The cleanse includes full access the calls and all the materials, coaching, recipes and guidance of for a full  7 days.

For a limited time, we’re including these extra bonuses:

Early Bonus 1: Eliminate the Gluten and Accelerate Your Health – a special report containing information and inspiration packed articles, recipes and foods to avoid lists for gluten free diets.

Early Bonus 2: Balancing Your Hormones Recording -  A 90 minute audio class in mp3 format containing diet and lifestyle tips for optimal weight, vibrant energy, strength, stamina, and joyful longevity.

Early Bonus 3: Balancing Your Hormones Power Point Presentation – A pdf file containing the slides that accompany the 90 minute audio class.

Early Bonus 4: Balancing Your Hormones e-book – Complete written transcripts of the entire 90 minute Balancing Your Hormones audio, as an e-book in PDF format.

Please comment below and answer these questions:

Have you ever cleansed?  If so, what’s your favorite way?

Love, Health and Joy,

Dr. Ritamarie

Lean Summer Body Strategies and Summer Cleansing Tips

It’s that time of year when the weather outside beckons you to enjoy outdoor activities, like swimming, gardening, lawn sports, cycling,  nature walks and picnics.  It’s especially  important this time of year  to put the healthy habits in place that nourish your tired  adrenals  and give you abundant energy so you can enjoy your favorite summer pastimes without feeling exhausted every time you exert yourself.

The sad truth is that over 50 % of people today experience fatigue so severe that even a trip to the grocery store exhausts their energy and requires a recovery nap afterward.  And 80% of women will experience adrenal fatigue at some time in their lives. That’s definitely not a pleasant condition to be in, especially if your friends and family members are encouraging you to join them in summer time fun. Unfortunately, the typical summertime celebration food served at picnics and barbecues zaps your energy and can lead to alll sorts of health consequences, like cancer, heart disease, diabetes and immune system dysfunction.  In my opinion, it’s just not worth the risk.  Yet you may be emotionally attached to your foods and the happy celebration memories that eating it stirs up. What if you could eat your favorite picnic foods and feel energized and comforted,  knowing that the ingredients  are not only safe, they are loaded with antioxidants, vitamins and minerals that energize and nourish you? It’s been a long time since I needed caffeine and sugar to energize me so I could enjoy summer activities.  I used to need stimulants to make it through the day and still crashed in the early evening.  Now I fuel myself on whole fresh food and everyone I meet comments on how energetic I am ALL the TIME! What would your life be like if you could say the same?

1) Spring Cleaning

I always do some sort of cleanse in the spring, to rid my body of any excess fat and toxins that come from spending so much time indoors during the cooler months.  I’ve done short water fasts of 5 -7 days, juice only regimes, powdered meal replacement shakes and even a modified version of the Master Cleanse, eliminating the maple syrup and using powdered greens to supplement the lemonade.  I’ve done all sorts of variations of many cleanses and even developed a few of my own. My all time favorite way to cleanse, owing to its high simplicity and satisfaction score is Green Smoothie Cleansing.  A few short years ago, I created a group Green Smoothie Cleanse and have guided hundreds of participants to increased energy, decreased brain fog and a reduction of belly fat.  I am amazed at the profound results most participants receive within just a few days.  Many are even able to reduce pain medications because their inflammation significantly decreases.  I’m leading a group cleanse in a couple of weeks and I can’t wait to experience the lightness and sense of renewal I always feel after a  7 day cleanse. The concept is quite simple, and you can can certainly do it on your own if you have the discipline and a variety of recipes.  I find that I personally need the accountability of the group experience, otherwise when those periods of desire for solid foods become strong, I crave in.  These periods don’t last long in general, so when I am accountable to the group and have regular check-ins scheduled, I sail through in spite of occasional temptations. I’ve set up the group Green Smoothie Cleanse experience so that there are 3 different options you can choose from, depending on your level of cleansing experience and your schedule.  There are daily check-in forms you can use to report your progress and get personalized feedback and this time you’ll also get extra support through a facebook chat session. To  join in the Spring 2011 Cleanse register at www.Greensmoothiecleanse.com

2) Make Delicious Nutritious Picnic and Barbeque Foods

Whenever I’m invited to summer parties, or am hosting my own, I make sure to create a few easy dishes to take along that are remakes of picnic and barbecue favorites, like mock hot dogs, burgers and potato salad and coleslaw made with a creamy nut or seed sauce instead of mayonnaise. I also cut up veggies and make delicious dip, usually including some sort of blended green vegetable and sea vegetable.For dessert, there’s the picnic tradition of watermelon and peaches, plus I add berries and cut up fruit with a yummy dipping sauce, usually made with chocolate or carob to please the kiddos. I’ll often make a seasonal fruit pie with a nut, seed or coconut based crust, like the ones in my book,  “Dessert Making it Rich Without Oil.”

The pie is simple to make.  For example, when I get lots of fresh peaches from a local farm, I slice the peaches and lay them inside the crust.  I’ll then make a sauce to hold it all together.  That can be as simple as blended peaches or possibly a different complimentary fruit like berries.  I sometimes add a couple of teaspoons of psyllium husk powder or coconut butter to thicken, and then pour the creamy sauce over the fruit and refrigerate until ready to eat.  This simple pie takes minutes to make and is usually the hit of the party. Burger substitutes can be made by putting sunflower seeds and almonds in the food processor along with vegetables.  My favorites are carrot, celery, onion and something dark green, like arugula or spinach.  Process until it begins to hold together and has the consistency of…I hate to say…chopped meat.  Season to taste and dehydrate or eat as is. Any of the bread recipes in my e-book Dried and Gone to Heaven can be formed into burger buns and even hot dog buns.  There are a few burger recipes in Dried and Gone to Heaven as well.

The bread recipes in our video course Amazing Gluten Free Living Bread can also be formed into burger and hot dog buns. And speaking of hot dogs, my dear friend, colleague and talented chef  Karen Osborne has created a hot dog recipe that has fooled many a kid.  It looks, tastes and cuts just like the real thing without all the nasty ingredients.  Now to me, eating something that tastes like a hot dog is not appealing, but for kids and kids at heart who love hot dogs, that’s great news. Karen will share her gluten free, raw food recipe for hot dogs and several others in our class “Picnic Foods and Barbeque for Gluten Free and Living Foods Diets” on May 22 .  Videos and live cast are available if you either live far away or can’t make the

I interviewed Karen on my Blog Talk Radio show and she shared the ingredients she uses and tips for making summer celebration foods.  The recording can be found at Dr Ritamarie Radio

3) Short Frequent Bursts of Exercise

My last strategy for getting and keeping in shape for summer is to incorporate short bursts of exercise throughout your day.   This can be in addition to your regular exercise program, or on busy days, in place of it.  Studies show that 30 seconds of all out intensity exercise several times a day can have the same or even better effects on your blood sugar balance as a 30 minute aerobic exercise session.  It also results in improved stress hormone balance.  Better blood sugar control and fewer cortisol spikes result in a flatter tummy.

Bonus Results of My Lean Summer Body Strategies and Summer Cleansing Tips

In addition to a flatter tummy and boundless energy, some of my favorite extra bonus results you’ll experience when you use these strategies for getting in shape for summer are:

• Happier mood
• Sharp focus and mental clarity so you can be more productive
• Decreased inflammation and more comfortable muscles and joints
• More efficient and painless digestion
• Improved blood lipid balance and reduced risk of heart attack

If you Have any favorite recipes to share for summer celebrations, please post them in the comment box below.  If you have a website where you offer recipes, feel free to post that too, and if your site is in alignment with mine, we’ll leave the link for all to see.

I wish you Love , health and a happy summer!!

Dr. Ritamarie

7 Strategies to Reduce Belly Fat and Brain Fog

Brain fog and belly fat are complaints I hear often in my practice.  In fact, I think they are almost epidemic.

In my experience, the most common cause of both is stress.  When you experience stressful situations, your adrenal glands take action to protect you and ready you to fight or get away.  After all, in the olden days, the biggest stress you might encounter was being chased by a hungry tiger.  Your adrenal glands secrete adrenaline, a neurotransmitter that creates a high level of stimulation to your system and causes your nervous system to operate from what’s known as a sympathetic dominant state.  It also secretes a hormone called cortisol.

Adrenaline is short lived.  As soon as the perceived stress dissipates, it decreases.  Cortisol lasts a lot longer.  Some of the effects of cortisol create the phenomenon of excess belly fat and brain fog.  Cortisol causes fat to be released from storage and turned into sugar…which is a very good thing if you’re running away from a tiger.  It also causes you to become more efficient at burning fat for energy – you’re not going to be able to refuel while in pursuit by a hungry animal.

However, most modern day stressors don’t require physical exertion.  Getting stuck in traffic, financial concerns, an over demanding boss, juggling children’s activities and needs and all of our modern day stressors are all non physical.  Thus when your fat stores are released and turned into sugar, the lack of physical exertion creates an increase in your blood sugar levels, which causes extra insulin to be released.  The extra sugar then gets converted back into fat.

The interesting thing is that while the fat may have been evenly removed from storage, under the influence of cortisol and insulin, most of it gets stored back around your belly.  This is a protective mechanism, to insulate your vital organs during times of threat.

YIKES!!!  Stress causes you to store more fat AND redistribute the fat you already have to right where you least want it…your belly! Stress is the ultimate weight gain drug!  Because cortisol stimulates fat it inhibits weight loss even if you’re doing everything else right.

Another action of cortisol is to shift off the function of your prefrontal cortex, the “wizard brain” that’s responsible for high level thinking and turn on your primitive brain, your limbic system, also known as your “lizard brain”.  The lizard brain is really good at survival and not so good at being “on” mentally -  thus the brain fog that comes from being stressed all the time.

Cortisol contributes to brain fog in yet another way.  There’s a part of your brain called the hippocampus that controls your short term memory.  Cortisol actually damages this part of your brain.  Did you ever walk into a room to get something only to forget why you were there?  That’s good old cortisol wrecking havoc on your hippocampus.

Excess cortisol isn’t the only cause of brain of and belly fat.  Other culprits include immune system dysregulation, food allergies, gluten intolerance, insufficient or poor quality sleep, hormone imbalance, sluggish thyroid, insufficient exercise and overburdened detoxification pathways.

Here are 7 of my favorite strategies for reducing brain fog and melting away your excess belly fat.

1. Get a handle on stress.
2. Balance Your Blood Sugar Levels
3. Burst exercise
4. Eat a Nutrient dense diet rich in whole, raw plant foods and test nutrient levels and function regularly
5. Balance  Your Immune system, avoid allergens and eat a Gluten Free Diet
6. Get sufficient high quality  Sleep
7. Incorporate regular Cleansing and Detoxification, like a 7 day green cleanse every quarter.

The next article in this series is Reduce Belly Fat  and Brain Fog: Adrenal Gland and Stress Connection

Watch for a series of blog posts over the next few days that go into detail about each of these strategies.