3 Day Juice Fasting? Not So Fast!

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Juice fasts are trending… Again. They have been before, and this will probably not be the last time either.

The rationale is that by having nothing but fruit and/or vegetable juice for a few days, the body can clear itself of toxins while it’s not being preoccupied by dealing with what you’re eating on a daily basis.

This is not bad in theory, and in fact is a sort of parallel to the actually good advice to help the liver regenerate—by abstaining from things that the liver has to do hard work about, it has more internal resources to devote to taking care of itself.

Learn more about this: How To Unfatty A Fatty Liver

Just one problem

By having only juice for a few days, you are doing the opposite of what the liver needs.

In fact, by giving it what’s basically straight sugars in water with no fiber and not even any fats to slow it down, you are making your liver work overtime to deal with the flood of sugars, and it will not cope well.

Indeed, processed carbs without sufficient fiber are one of the main drivers of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

And yes, that’s what juice is: processed carbs without fiber

(juicing is a process!)

You can read more about the science of that, here:

From Apples to Bees, and High-Fructose Cs: Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same? ← we get into quite some detail about how, exactly, such a harmless-seeming thing as fruit juice messes up the liver so badly

Here be (more) science

A three-day interventional study was performed on juicing and microbiome health, with three groups:

  1. Juice only
  2. Juice with whole foods
  3. Only whole plant-based foods

The results?

  1. Juice only: biggest growth in bacteria that cause inflammation and gut permeability (that’s bad; very bad)
  2. Juice with whole foods: the same bad effects, but much less pronounced than the juice-only group
  3. Only whole plant-based food: notable improvements in the microbiome

That’s what the changes were immediately post-intervention; what’s interesting to note is that the bad effects of the juice-only group also lingered longer, whereas the juice+food group enjoyed a relatively quicker recovery in the two weeks after the intervention.

Here’s the paper itself; be warned, you’ll be reading a lot about feces and saliva alongside eating and drinking:

Effects of Vegetable and Fruit Juicing on Gut and Oral Microbiome Composition

Ok, what can I do to detox?

Well, the advice we gave up top in the linked article about liver health is very sound, and also you might like to check out:

Detox: What’s Real, What’s Not, What’s Useful, What’s Dangerous?

Want to learn more?

Here’s a video explainer from the ever-charming French biochemist Jessie Inchauspé (and our own text overview, for those who prefer reading):

Fruit Is Healthy; Juice Isn’t (Here’s Why)

Take care!

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  • Fast-Pickled Cucumbers

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Pickled vegetables are great for the gut, and homemade is invariably better than store-bought. But if you don’t have pickling jars big enough for cucumbers, and don’t want to wait a couple of weeks for the results, here’s a great way to do it quickly and easily.

    You will need

    • 1 large cucumber, sliced
    • 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
    • 1½ tbsp salt (do not omit or substitute)
    • 3 cloves garlic, whole, peeled
    • 3 large sprigs fresh dill
    • 2 tsp whole black peppercorns
    • ½ tsp crushed red pepper flakes
    • 1 bay leaf

    Method

    (we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)

    1) Mix the vinegar and salt with 1½ cups of water in a bowl.

    2) Assemble the rest of the ingredients, except the cucumber, into a quart-size glass jar with an airtight lid.

    3) Add the cucumber slices into the jar.

    4) Add the pickling brine that you made, leaving ½” space at the top.

    5) Close the lid, and shake well.

    6) Refrigerate for 2 days, after which, serve at your leisure:

    Enjoy!

    Want to learn more?

    For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:

    Take care!

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  • Energize! – by Dr. Michael Breus & Stacey Griffith

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    We previously reviewed another book book by Dr. Breus, The Power Of When. So what’s different in this one?

    While the chronotypes featured in The Power Of When also feature here (and sufficient explanation is given to make this a fine stand-alone book), this book has a lot to do with metabolism also. By considering a person’s genetically predisposed metabolic rate to be fast, medium, or slow (per being an ectomorph, mesomorph, or endomorph), and then putting that next to one’s sleep chronotype, we get 12 sub-categories that in this book each get an optimized protocol of sleep, exercise (further divided into: what kind of exercise when), and eating/fasting.

    Which, in effect, amounts to a personalized coaching program for optimized energy!

    The guidance is based on a combination of actual science plus “if this then that” observation-based principles—of the kind that could be described as science if they had been studied clinically instead of informally. Dr. Breus is a sleep scientist, by the way, and his co-author Stacey Griffith is a fitness coach. So between the two of them, they have sleep and exercise covered, and the fasting content is very reasonable and entirely consistent with current consensus of good practice.

    The style is very pop-psychology, and very readable, and has a much more upbeat feel than The Power Of When, which seems to be because of Griffith’s presence as a co-author (most of the book is written from a neutral perspective, and some parts have first-person sections by each of the authors, so the style becomes distinct accordingly).

    Bottom line: if you’d like to be more energized but [personal reason why not here] then this book may not fix all your problems, but it’ll almost certainly make a big difference and help you to stop sabotaging things and work with your body rather than against it.

    Click here to check out Energize!, and do just that!

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  • To Err Is Human; To Forgive, Healthy

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    How To Forgive (And Why)

    There’s an old saying that holding onto a grudge is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. If only it were so simple and easy as just choosing to let go!

    But it’s not, is it?

    When people have wronged us and/or wronged our loved ones, it’s hard to forgive, especially if they have not changed. For that matter, it can be hard to forgive ourselves for mistakes that we made, too.

    Either way, “drinking that poison” can be close to literal, in terms of what harboring such anger and resentment can do for our cortisol levels.

    So, what to do about it?

    If you have a dialogue with the person, our previous article on communication may help a lot.

    If you don’t, there are various other angles that can be taken:

    The Unsent Letter

    You can even send it, if you like, but it’s not the point here. The idea is to write to the person, expressing your grievances. But, (as per the above-linked article on communication) try to focus at least as much on your feelings as their actions. “When you did/said x, I felt y”, etc.

    This is important for helping you process your feelings. If you send the letter, it’s also important for the other person to be able to understand your feelings.

    Sometimes, we feel the things we do so strongly because we don’t have an outlet for them. Pouring out our emotions in such a fashion, on the other hand, means (to labor the metaphor) they’re no longer bottled up. Even just in and of itself, that can provide us a lot of relief.

    And when we the negative emotions are no longer such high pressure, it can be easier to let go of them.

    Mindfulness

    Following on from the above idea, a good strategy can be simply sitting and feeling everything you need to feel, noticing it without judgement, like a curious observer.

    Sometimes what we need is just to be heard, and that starts with hearing ourselves.

    Compassion

    There’s a Buddhist exercise that involves actively feeling compassion for three people: a loved one, a stranger, and an enemy. Many people report that it’s actually harder to feel compassion for a random stranger, than an enemy. Why? Because we don’t know them; we don’t know what’s good and bad about them in our estimation.

    If you’re reading this because you want to be able to gain the peace of being able to forgive someone (even if that someone is yourself), then in at least some respect right now, that person is in the “enemy” category. So how do we unpack that?

    To err is human. Everybody screws up sometimes. And also, everyone has a reason (or a complex of reasons) for acting the way they do. This does not mean that those reasons excuse the behavior, but it can explain it.

    You don’t get angry at a storm for soaking you through. Even if you might not understand the physics of it in the way a meteorologist might, you understand that there were things that led to that, and you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

    So why do we get angry at someone else for wronging us? Even if we might not understand the personal background of it in the way their psychologist or therapist might, we (hopefully) understand that there were things that caused them to be the way they were, and we were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

    And ourselves? We probably know, when we made a mistake, why we made it. Maybe we were afraid, insecure, reactive, forgetful, or too focused on some other thing. Whatever it was, we did our best at the time and, apparently, our best wasn’t as good as we’d like.

    If we didn’t deserve forgiveness, we wouldn’t be critical of our past selves in the first place.

    And, the science is very clear that it’s important for our health for other reasons besides cortisol management, too.

    And as for others? They did the best they knew how. Maybe they were afraid, insecure, reactive, forgetful, or too focused on some other thing. Same story, different character.

    Remembering that can be key to “accepting the apology we never received”.

    Forgiving without forgetting

    Developing the ability to forgive is a useful tool for our own mental health. It doesn’t mean we must or even should make ourselves a doormat.

    “I forgive you” does not have to mean a clean slate; it means remembering that the thing happened, and just not holding on to the anger/resentment associated with it.

    It may be water under the bridge now, but it might have been a devastatingly destructive wave at the time, and continuing to acknowledge truth that is sensible. Just, from a position of peace now, hopefully.

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  • Eating on the Wild Side: – by Jo Robinson

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    The author is an investigative journalist, and it shows here, as she leaves no stone unturned in her quest for the truth in the face of many food myths.

    She covers a lot of “popular wisdom” things that are varyingly true or false, or sometimes even both—in the case of food lore that’s a good rule of thumb, but has notable exceptions (e.g. “more colorful and/or darker-colored fruits/vegetables contain more nutrients”, which is a very good rule of thumb until one meets a cauliflower, for example).

    She also covers food preparation myths, and how, to give one example, in spite of the popularity of “less cooked is better”, in some cases certain cooking methods will indeed destroy nutrients; in others, certain cooking methods will improve nutritional availability. Either by destroying an adjacent antinutrient (e.g. phytates), or by breaking something down into a more manageable form that our body can absorb. Knowing which is which, is important.

    The book is organized by kinds of food, and does exclusively cover plants, but there’s more than enough material for any omnivore to enjoy.

    The style is… Journalistic, it would be fair to say. Which is not surprising, given the author. But it means that it is written in a fairly narrative way, to draw the reader in and make it an enjoyable read while still being informative in all parts (there is no padding). In terms of science, the in-the-prose science is as minimal as possible to still convey what needs to be conveyed, while 25 pages of bibliography stack up at the end to show that indeed, this journalist cites sources.

    Bottom line: this is a really enjoyable book, packed with a wealth of knowledge, and is perfect to uplift your cooking by knowing your ingredients a little more intimately!

    Click here to check out Eating On The Wild Side, and, enjoy!

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  • Reduce Caffeine’s Impact on Kidneys

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

    Have a question or a request? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!

    In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

    As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

    So, no question/request too big or small

    ❝Avid coffee drinker so very interested in the results Also question Is there something that you could take or eat that would prevent the caffeine from stimulating the kidneys? I tried to drink decaf from morning to night not a good result! Thanks❞

    That is a good question! The simple answer is “no” (but keep reading, because all is not lost)

    There’s no way (that we yet know of) to proof the kidneys against the stimulating effect of caffeine. This is especially relevant because part of caffeine’s stimulating effect is noradrenergic, and that “ren” in the middle there? It’s about the kidneys. This is just because the adrenal gland is situated next to them (actually, it’s pretty much sitting on top of them), hence the name, but it does mean that the kidneys are about the hardest thing in the body to have not effected by caffeine.

    However! The effects of caffeine in general can be softened a little with l-theanine (found in tea, or it can be taken as a supplement). It doesn’t stop it from working, but it makes the curve of the effect a little gentler, and so it can reduce some unwanted side effects.

    You can read more about l-theanine here:

    L-Theanine: What’s The Tea?

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  • Foods That Cause You to Lose Weight – by Dr. Neal Barnard

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    We previously reviewed Dr. Barnard’s “The Power Foods Diet”, and this time his work is about weight loss.

    This time there are more recipes (which take up most of the book, so this one could be reasonably described as a cookbook), but not until after nearly a hundred pages of concepts, principles, and tips.

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