Do you really know the best way to drink your juice?
The answer is tricky and I will try to make it simple and easy to digest. Pun intended.
From everything I have read since I started drinking the juice in 2007 there are 5 factors determining a correct answer.
The 5 Determining Factors
1. Taking your mangosteen juice with or immediately after a meal.
2. Natural variation between people and a person’s sensitivity or resistance to the components in mangosteen juice that are good for you.
3. Quantity of mangosteen juice that is consumed.
4. Time between consuming each serving of your “Jungle Juice”.
5. Bioavailability of nutrients within the body.
Lets take these factors one at a time.
1. All the nutrients in any food are either water soluble or fat soluble. So, if you have your juice well after a meal and there is no fat in your digestive system you will miss out on the fat soluble components of mangosteen. This is why if you read around you will find some suggestions to eat a few almonds before drinking the juice. In Australia I would tell people to eat raw almonds but I believe in the USA that only roasted almonds are allowed for human consumption.
2. Do you remember your high school mathematics and all that probability and normal distribution curve stuff? Basically, it comes down to common sense and the things that we know about each other “We are all different”. This difference between individuals goes for XanGo juice and the beneficial goodness, we each get out of it as a food source supplying us with nutrition.
3. On this point “Are you taking enough for yourself as an individual?”. For example are you a person who is slightly insensitive to the nutrients in mangosteen? Then if you are only taking a small amount and don’t feel any different, that makes sense. Someone who is insensitive would need to take more juice. Just like someone who is sensitive would be able to feel the benefits with less juice. The issue here is also: “Is there a point at which you can take too much juice?”. Does your body stop absorbing the nutrients from mangosteen at a certain point? More on this later in the post.
4. When is the best time to have another shot of juice. Studies from various sources have shown that xanthones from mangosteen pericarp (skin) have a half life of 3.5 to 4 hours. After your initial shot of juice in approximately 4 hours you only have 50% of the original quantity in your body and at 8 hours, only 25% of xanthones. So if you decide to try 120 mLs total, take 3 x 40 mLs or 4 x 30 mLs throughout the day.
5. Bioavailability or just how much nutrients from the juice can your body absorb? Xanthones, the unique antioxidants discovered inside the mangosteen pericarp (skin or peel), have been found to decrease as the amount of xanthones in the blood increases. The study involved drinking 2 x 90 mLs daily or 2 x 180 mLs daily and 2 x 270 mLs daily. The people in the 90 mLs group and the 180 mLs group had higher blood levels of xanthones than the 270 mLs group. I wonder what the result would be if the study was repeated again with 4 servings in the higher group, that is taking 4 x 135 mLs. Nothing is ever simple when a trial is set up often there are more questions to answer.
Follow this link for answers to 19 frequently asked questions about Xango juice.
Instructions for XanGo® Juice on the label state to drink 30 mLs to 90 mLs per day. I don’t know of any studies for this but if you do please send me a comment and the reference and I’ll publish it on this blog post. From what we have discussed who knows if 30 mLs, 60 mLs or 90 mLs is enough for you to take. You may need to load yourself up and then later cut back a biton the amount of juice you take. My best advice that I always say and what I did is “Give it a try”. Take less and take more see what suits you. We all know when we have eaten too many prunes or you probably know when to stop drinking coffee, so you get a good nights sleep.
The next issue I’d like to bring up when people ask “how much do I need to drink?” is as far as I have read most of the studies concern the absorption of xanthones into the body. Perhaps any benefits from mangosteen you are feeling is not from xanthones, unique to mangosteen but from the other nutrients in mangosteen: catechins, polysaccharides, proanthocyanidins and even tanins. Yes, by all means take notice of what is pertinent for the xanthones in mangosteen but listen to your own body perhaps and what suits you.
A reference on bioavailability can be found at J Agric Food Chem. 2009 Oct 14;57(19):8788-92 . This study suggests maximum antioxidant activity is achieved in the body at 4 hours. However this study is not on pure mangosteen juice or XanGo juice for that matter. So there are still more variables to consider when answering the question: “How much mangosteen juice should I drink?”
Best answer is consider the 5 variables and trust your body to tell you.