Is a Juice Cleanse Good For Weight Loss & Detoxification?

Carrying a $10 bottle of pressed juice in your yoga bag has become somewhat of a status symbol in Southern California, symbolizing a quest for health and purity. But is a juice cleanse really as healthy as it’s cracked up to be?

When considering juicing for weight loss you may also like to consider getting acupuncture in La Jolla, CA. Juicing was made popular in the 1950’s with celebrity chiropractor and fitness club owner Jack LaLanne. He had a TV show and marketed exercise equipment, vitamin supplements, and electric juicers. In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, Jay Kordich re-popularized juicing as a health regimen. He produced a variety of infomercials selling electric juicers.


More recently, the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, an online nutrition school based in New York City, has produced a large number of graduates promoting raw foods, a vegan diet, and juice cleansing. Among one of the first juice cleanse delivery services was Blueprint Cleanse, started by two Institute for Integrative Nutrition graduates.  Their juice cleanse program consists of six bottles of juice daily for 3 days, which is supposed to assist the body in weight loss and detoxification.

Depending on who you ask, what company it is selling the juice or juicer, or what your particular motive is (weight loss, detoxification, recovery from illness, increased energy, etc.), a juice cleanse is usually described as a liquid fast for any time period from 1 to 100 days. Most people opt for just doing a juice cleanse for a few days up to a week,  but those seeking desperately for help will do it for longer. For “maintenance” purposes, many consumers shell out $10 - $30 a day on high-end juices at Whole Foods, which are the same brands of juice pictured in the fashion magazines and promoted at events such as Coachella, Wanderlust, Bhakti Fest, and Hanuman Festival.

But is juicing really as healthful as it’s cracked up to be? The evidence suggests that juice cleansing may actually do more harm than good, especially when it comes to weight loss and detoxification. When fat cells are broken down in a process known as lipolysis, toxins stored within the fat cells such as environmental pollutants and metabolic byproducts are released into the bloodstream. This can cause tiredness, headaches, and other unpleasant symptoms that are often brushed aside as a “healing crisis” or “detox” reaction. Certain nutrients such as amino acids (the components of proteins), B vitamins, dietary fiber, and a variety of nutrients and cofactors are required by the body in order to bind to toxins, transport them to the kidneys, liver, and colon, and excrete them. However, on a juice cleanse, these nutrients are not available. The toxins floating around in the bloodstream can therefore lodge inside any organ or gland.

If you are trying to lose weight, you might consider acupuncture for weight loss instead. Not only is acupuncture safer than a juice cleanse, but acupuncture in La Jolla, CA is actually well-studied and time-attested to aid in weight loss. Combined with herbal medicinals and the traditional wisdom of Chinese dietary therapy, acupuncture in La Jolla, CA can also assist in detoxification.

Is acupuncture good for weight loss?

Many people think acupuncture is synonymous with pain relief. However, another one of the benefits of acupuncture is that it can help you lose weight. 

Before 1971, most people in the United States had never heard of acupuncture. In fact, complementary and alternative medicine in any form can be traced back to a single event that happened in 1971. A New York Times columnist, James Reston, had to have an emergency appendectomy while visiting China to provide media coverage of President Nixon’s visit there. When James Reston returned from China, he wrote about acupuncture anesthesia in China.

That famous piece in the New York Times about acupuncture anesthesia in China is what put acupuncture on the map, and many Westerners became intrigued with acupuncture’s benefits for pain relief. Since that time, acupuncture has become synonymous with pain relief, although the benefits are far more extensive than that. Acupuncture may hold the “secret” to maintaining a youthful appearance, hormone balance, longevity, fertility, and a slim physique.

 

Auricular acupuncture (acupuncture that is done at specific points on the ear) is known to help curb cravings for addictive substances, including sugar, nicotine, and drugs, and it is often used in drug rehabilitation centers to ease symptoms of withdrawal. For weight loss acupuncture in Del Mar, CA, auricular acupuncture is combined with meridian acupuncture at different points on the body. While the points on the ear help to curb cravings and withdrawal from addictive foods, the points on the body help to balance a variety of hormones.

The hormones that are considered the most well-studied ones involved in hunger and satiety are leptin and ghrelin.

Leptin is known as the “satiety hormone.” It is secreted by adipose tissue (fat cells), so typically an overweight or obese person will have a lot more circulating leptin than a lean person. The reason why overweight or obese people continue to feel hungry despite high levels of leptin is because they become “leptin resistant” in the same way that a person with type 2 diabetes becomes “insulin resistant.” The body’s cells fail to recognize the leptin (or insulin, in the case of type 2 diabetes) because leptin is chronically elevated because of chronic overeating and weight gain. Getting Acupuncture in Del Mar, CA can be beneficial by helping the body’s cells to recognize the leptin, therefore helping overweight people to feel satiated with fewer calories.

Ghrelin is known as the “hunger hormone.” When ghrelin levels rise, you feel hungry. After a meal, your ghrelin levels decrease and you feel satiated. The catch-22 with weight loss diets is that ghrelin levels increase in response to weight loss and decrease in response to weight gain. This is why most dieters end up feeling very hungry when they start to lose weight, so they end relying on willpower to maintain the weight loss with a constant feeling of deprivation and hunger. Eventually, the willpower wears off, they eat to satiety, and the weight piles back on. Acupuncture for weight loss works by lowering ghrelin levels so hunger decreases even with weight loss, and the weight loss can be maintained without having to rely on willpower and deal with a constant feeling of hunger.