With everyone’s busy schedules these days, it’s sometimes hard to make sure that you’re getting enough vitamins and nutrition. Juicing is the solution to the problem!
There are a number of health benefits of juicing, including providing nutrients essential for growth and renewal, and having protective and medicinal effects. Additionally, vegetable and fruit juices promote health and nutrition.
Fruits and vegetables provide essential nutrients
Fruits and vegetables contain a lot of different vitamins that are essential to our bodies. These vitamins regulate your metabolism and help with the conversion of fats and carbohydrates into energy. What better way to do this then with a tasty glass of freshly juiced juice? Fruits and vegetables also contain minerals that are necessary for the nerve and muscle function, as well as being the building material for some body tissue. Fruits and some vegetables contain carbohydrates, which supply most of the energy that we use everyday. It sounds difficult to eat 10 carrots a day, but juicing them can concentrate those 10 carrots into one glass of tasty juice.
In addition, fruit and vegetable juices are good sources of the traditional nutrients. Citrus fruits (grapefruit, oranges, etc.) provide healthy portions of vitamin C. Carrot juice contains large quantities of vitamin A, in the form of beta carotene. A number of green juices are a good source of vitamin E. Fruit juices are a good source of essential minerals like iron, copper, potassium, sodium, iodine, and magnesium, which are bound by the plant in a form that is most easily assimilated during digestion. Cucumbers are high in silica, which is a mineral that strengthens your connective tissues and is good for tendons, muscles, cartilage, bones and ligaments. It is also good for skin elasticity, fingernails and complexion
Finally, fruits and vegetables provide one more substance that is absolutely essential for good health – water. More than 65% of most of the cells in the human body are made of water, and in some tissues, like the brain, the cells can be made up of as much as 80% water. Water is absolutely essential for good health, yet most people don’t consume enough water each day. Fruit and vegetable juices are free of unneeded substances and are full of pure, clean water.
Fruits and vegetables have a protective effect
Fruits and vegetables are excellent for protecting your body from major diseases like cancer and heart disease. Some vegetables like carrots are high in substances called anti-oxidants, such as beta-carotene, Vitamins C and E and selenium, which are nutrients that protect cell membranes from the damage of free radicals. Some are rich in other anti-cancer compounds, such as indoles. This is especially true of the cruciferous family to which the cabbage belongs.
The plant chemicals, known as phytochemicals, are the cutting edge of nutritional research because they hold the keys to preventing some of our most deadly diseases, such as cancer and heart disease, as well as some of our most common, like asthma, arthritis, and allergies.
For example, broccoli contains a substance that may prevent and even cure breast cancer. Citrus fruits have substances that make it easier for your body to remove carcinogens, thus decreasing the chance of contracting cancer. Grapes contain a phytochemical that appears to protect each cells’ DNA from damage. Similarly, a number of green vegetables contain phytochemicals that appear to offer protection against cancer-causing substances. The list goes on and on: bok choy, broccoli, Brussel sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, carrots, collards, kale, kohlrabi, mustard greens, rutabaga, turnip greens, red beets, peppers, garlic, onions, leeks, and chives are but a few of the vegetables that appear to have cancer-preventing phytochemicals.
Fresh juice has an ability to deliver another important group of nutrients, know as enzymes. Enzymes are your body’s work force. They act as catalysts in the chemical reactions that take place throughout the body, are essential for digestion and absorption of food, for conversion of food stuffs into body tissue, and for the production of energy at the cellular level. In fact, enzymes are critical for most of the metabolic activities taking place in your body all day long!
Fresh juices are a tremendous source of enzymes. In fact, the freshness of juice is one of their key features, because enzymes are destroyed by heat. Since fruits and vegetables are juiced raw, the enzymes are still viable when you drink the juice.
Fruits and vegetables have a medicinal effect
Fruits and vegetables can do so much for you and your body. For example, blueberries are an effective anti-diarrheal agent, while ginger is as effective for motion sickness. New studies have even shown that ginger also relieves nausea and stomach discomfort caused by pregnancy.
|Fresh juices are far more potent than the nutrients found in vitamin pills. Nutrients influence each other, so they shouldn’t be separated. The nutrients that are combined naturally in foods work together more effectively than when they are separated as a single supplement.
Recently, the National Cancer Institute began a campaign to get people to eat more fruits and vegetables. The recommendation was to eat five servings of fruit and three servings of vegetables a day, and their reasoning was simple: a diet high in fruits and vegetables will prevent or cure a wide range of ailments. However, the average American eats only 1 1/2 servings of vegetables and, on average, no fruit on any given day. Juicing could provide the answer to fixing fruit and vegetable deficient diets.
Chlorophyll, a substance found exclusively in plants, has a structure similar to hemoglobin, the substance in blood that is responsible for transporting oxygen. During the 1940s, researchers found that consuming chlorophyll enhances the body’s ability to produce hemoglobin, thus improving the efficiency of oxygen transport.