Can a juice cleanse really detoxify your body?
Doctor says ‘amazing gut’ helps body flush toxins, with no need to spend $59 per day on liquids
Those who complain about the proliferation of Starbucks in Toronto might want to start keeping an eye on the juice bar situation. They’re starting to take over, especially in Yorkville and in the PATH in the downtown core, where it can feel as if every third store is a juice bar or, for the scientifically minded, juice “lab.”
Are we at peak juice? Probably not, given that a lot of these trade in juice “cleanses,” an increasingly popular wellness regimen designed to “reset” and detoxify the body and cure “toxic overload,” a condition that, allegedly, makes people feel sluggish, bloated or fogheaded.
Since I have one or all of those symptoms at various times, I decided to try it out. But, since $59 a day adds up, I opted for a one-day cleanse from Greenhouse Juice Co., rationalizing it with the idea that, if my insides got too clean all at once, it might be a shock to my system. And, since I try to seek medical help wherever possible, I asked Dr. David Armstrong, gastroenterologist and associate professor of medicine at McMaster University, what he thought about my plan to improve my gut health.
“I’m intrinsically skeptical about a couple of things, starting with the basic assumption that we need a cleanse,” Armstrong says. “It assumes that we’re dirty on our insides and that flushing a lot of fluid through will somehow make that better. Even though we may be eating the wrong things, that doesn’t mean we're accumulating lots of toxins.”
Armstrong says humans are equipped with an “amazing gut” that can break down food, filter out the bad and produce antibodies to combat infections. On top of all that, we have an enzyme system in the liver that breaks down chemicals. We’re detoxifying all the time, all on our own — no juice required.
OK, so maybe I don’t need to wash my insides. But what about the 25-plus super-healthy foods I’d be drinking in my
cleanse, which included turmeric, chia seeds, probiotics, pea protein, spirulina, kale and oil of oregano?
“That sounds like an interesting menu that has a whole range of what sounds like plausibly healthy fruits, vegetables and antioxidants,” Armstrong tells me. “But I’m not aware of any evidence that, singly or particularly in this combination, suggests these ingredients will produce any long-term health benefits that will reboot the microbiome, or give you good bacteria, or get rid of bad bacteria, or do anything else.”
Undeterred, I started juicing at 9:37 a.m. the very next day. It involved drinking 12 bottles of cold-pressed juice — which is supposed to be better in terms of vitamin levels, but does nothing in terms of retaining the fibre — in a specific order, starting with a tasty little spicy lemonade with four grams of sugar and a billion probiotic CFUs. That’s in place of coffee, which isn’t allowed. Neither is alcohol. Solid food isn’t recommended but, if you’re hungry, a little broth or steamed veggies is an acceptable cheat.
At 10:30 a.m., I knock back a shot of E3 AFA, a blue-green algae supplement. While not the worst thing I’ve consumed recently (I was served roasted worms a few months ago), it was not exactly what you’d call palatable. Ten minutes later, I decided to look up bluegreen algae, only to find that some strains are potentially toxic. Great.
At11:15 a.m., I started to panic that I was falling behind in my juice schedule. I was also a little chilly, which is a common side effect, so I put on socks and grabbed my next juice, Gatsby, a delicious blend of cucumber, apple, spinach, kale, ginger and lemon. Oh, and another 13 grams of sugar, which was starting to add up to more than I would normally have in an average day. Although, not from my next drink, the sugar-free Chia Seed Hydrator, which promised to be a little “chewy.” Thankfully it was not. 12:46 p.m.: Next up was the Almondmilk, which, since it’s got protein, fat, as well as seven grams of sugar, appears to be lunch. Turns out I like almond milk and pea protein slightly less than algae.
1:39 p.m.: Time for the Gold Rush, a zesty and fresh fruit drink with 14 grams of sugar. It was about here that I realized I felt hungrier than usual at this time of day, even though I generally try to subsist on water and a single espresso for the first several hours. I had a bit of brain fog, slight chills and wanted a nap, so I started to wonder if all the sugar was a problem. I was already up to 38 grams.
“There’s a notion that juice has some magical property, even though it’s entirely unproven,” Armstrong says. “And the trouble is that, if you buy commercial juices, they often have a lot of calories, so people often gain weight. If you like juice, go for it — but as a drink, not as a health and wellness exercise. Like most things, just because one is good for you, doesn’t meant that 10 is better.”
Armstrong advises that diabetics and pre-diabetics (as well as celiacs or most anybody with a medical condition) should speak with a doctor before cleansing. My blood sugar is fine (for now at least), so I pressed on and had my Genius with eight grams of sugar at 3:30 p.m. and, an hour later, a spirulinatinged Blue Lemonade with three grams of sugar. Then I decided to have a miso soup (fermented bean paste and stock) which seemed to solve a lot of problems, including hunger, dizziness and sluggishness.
There were 36 more grams of sugar involved in the next three drinks, Fiery Ginger (a delicious immune booster with turmeric), Rococoa (essentially a dinner substitute similar to the Almondmilk) and Deep Roots (20 grams of sugar), a perfectly tasty mix of beet, celery and apple.
Once it was all over, and I could stop thinking about the next juice, I felt pretty great. I had a lot of energy for a while, then crashed pretty hard at roughly a normal bedtime. Only not before thinking about the 85 grams of sugar I consumed that day, which Armstrong pointed out equals 21teaspoons — about the same sugar intake as10 Tim Hortons “double-doubles!” That’s more than three times the World Health Organization’s recommended maximum daily amount and, since some researchers have recently been suggesting that sugar is, itself, a toxin, drinking all that sugar seems like a pretty bizarre way to detoxify.
I was relieved at the thought, though, that even if all that sugar is toxic, I have an “amazing gut” and a working liver, designed to get rid of everything bad. It would cleanse me, even as I slept. And, with that, I happily drifted off.