As a Type II diabetic, I'd be very nervous about dumping a whole lot of sugar into my system on an empty stomach.

i guess my fundamental problem with it is twofold:

1. the pure bolus of sugar dumped into the system
2. the seriously unnatural, unprecedented nature of it.

Please please dont take this the wrong way, i am not a re-enactor or whatever, but certain foods/manners of eating that are very unnatural (in my opinion) just seem to me to be less-than-good for us. I know that certain unprecedented things (like taking isolated cod liver oil) can have very beneficial effects for us, too. This one just strikes me as dangerous.

I do concede that it would prolly clean you out or whatever. If you really wanna strip your guts out yknow?

When I was in the hospital I refused an IV and had my friends bring me coconut water and other juices instead. Let's just say that even though coconut water is all natural and whatnot, I did not feel awesome.

If a fast soothes your digestion, maybe there is something in your diet or gut that's still not quite right.

I used to be a heavy juicer because I was a raw vegan. I enjoyed juices very much, but overall I don't think they contribute to a healthy sustainable gut bacterial colony. Frankly, they often gave me the runs. As far as healing properties, teas are a much much better choice. You can make them with healing herbs and not take the hit of the sugar from juice.

Weren't you doing VLC? I don't think that is great for the gut either. Even Far Northern peoples eat some very high-fiber foods like kelp or pine shoots.

I think you need a good balance of animals foods + vegetable foods to keep your bacterial colony happy + a probiotic to make up for the years you ate the Western diet. Cooling Inflammation has lots of good info about this.

I still read a lot of raw food community blogs too, where juice fasting is a big thing, and it looks to me like people who are successful at it (1) mostly juice vegetables and leafy greens, to keep the sugar content of the juice low, and (2) use some means to still prompt the body to eliminate released toxins or byproducts of the healing via the digestive tract and via skin (enemas, probiotics, skin brushing, exercise). Here is one example: http://www.courtneypool.com/ Point (1) prevents juice fasting from being a glucose IV. I think juice fasting works for a lot of the same reasons paleo works -- your body doesn't have to struggle with digesting grains, dairy, or legumes.

How long were thinking of juice fasting for? I think another question is how juice fasting compares to IF. Given the body's need of protein and fat, I would question how paleo it is to choose a 5-day juice fast over a 36-hour IF. But a 36-hour juice fast and a 36-hour IF would be very similar in benefits, I think, especially if you have trouble with regular IF. This all assumes, of course, that you're using fresh juice you've made yourself with low-sugar produce.

I don't understand the terminology. Fast means no food. Juice is food. A juice fast is anything but a fast.

I wonder how much of the benefits come from not ingesting any sort of dietary lectins. I'd imagine a veggie fast would be more beneficial to stop the rollercoaster ride that would be your blood glucose (and hopefully insulin, barring any serious insulin resistance). But on all veggies, you're going to have a hard time getting a decent amount of calories in.

I'd stick to going super strict with the quality of food your putting in your mouth. Grass-fed, wild caught, pastured, meat. Organic veggies. I'd even limit fruit and starchy veggies if you're going for some sort of cleanse.

Either way, hope it works out well for you, and let us know what you decide on!

Only juice fast I'll be trying is a grassfed steak purée.

I can't imagine how That much fructose would damage us long term, who cares about short term with that in consideration.

Well if the 'juice' where made of lower sugar veggies, it would probably be a far sight better than the regular SAD diet or even many vegan diets littered with sugar, starch, and high fructose corn syrup. So I am not surprised that some or many people have felt much better on it. Basically, it would be a short stint of eating much less crappy foods. Even regular juice would probably be an improvement for many on SAD! And if it did not go on super long you probably would not yet experience any serious nutrient deficiencies. For those who have yoyoing blood glucose levels (most people these days), some sugar would probably prevent them from going into withdrawal symptoms.

However, that is not to say juice fasting would be even NEARLY as healthy as just eating healthy food all the time like we advocate. I think part of the popularity of juice fasting is people want a quick fix that they can do for a few days and then be 'fixed.' But unfortunately, it just doesn't work that way when it comes to eating. You can't juice fast and then go back to eating crap and think you have actually fixed anything really.

I imagine the benefit lies in the rest that your digestive system gets.

This is one of the huge benefits of IF and results in alot of positive health benefits.

Fruit Juice is absolutely not worth the resulting liver/metabolic damage.

Short term vegetable juicing with care taken to reduce lectin load would be great for anyone coming off SAD

After being diagnosed with Celiac disease, my body's absorption still was terrible, so I began juicing twice a day, but pretty much all vegetables. I will throw in a tart apple or a lemon. But there is no way I could eat all the food I'm juicing, however, I can get all the nutrition. I have never fasted on just juice, but it was something my mom did when she had breast cancer. She actually beat her cancer naturally, and juicing was a big part of that.

Girl Gone Primal, thanks for raising a question about my article on juice fasting. For those of you who want to read the original interview you can go here.

Now, I have my own opinions about where the benefits are coming from (I also practice fasting regularly, without juice, and find that even a 24 hour fast soothes my digestion; I know the importance of enzymes; etc),

If you mean you can get all the benefits of fasting without ingesting a single ounce of juice but rather by water fasting you are absolutely correct, but water fasting for longer than a couple of days can be quite difficult psychologically, and is far more aggressive than juice fasting physiologically. And when dealing with incurable diseases, which is the context of the interview, not physiologically necessary.

One of the other ponderings currently running through my brain is whether juices would be an effective replacement for glucose IVs etc during hospital visits (assuming the visit isn't going to impact the efficacy of the digestive system). The idea of a glucose IV makes me a little nauseated, given that when I recently had some 75% dark chocolate, I felt really ill afterward, whereas 85% doesn't bother me. I suspect juices might be quite high in sugar and have a similar impact, but perhaps not as extreme as a glucose drip, but I really don't know the impact of IV drips on blood glucose and insulin. What do you think?

You should definitely be afraid of the typical IV drip in the hospital. I wrote about that in my article, Ten Tips On How To Survive A Trip To The Hospital. The solution however is not juice but coconut water, which is sterile and has been used as an IV drip historically.

Even if raw vegetarianism isn't the only/ideal way of living healthfully, do you think juice fasts could be helpful to paleos in certain circumstances?

I think you are equating two things that need to be kept separate. Raw vegetarianism and juice fasting can be kept logically distinct, and for the purposes of this interview should be. Not to mention that my blog doesn't in any way shape or form come close to promoting raw vegetarianism as a lifestyle, and I would argue quite forcefully that raw veganism, which Dr. Schulze promotes as the way to eat after you are well (as distinct from raw vegetarianism) is not a way of living healthfully long term under any circumstances. So clearly I posted this interview with something else in mind.

Dr. Schulze earned his chops healing "incurable" diseases. He has a long public and demonstrable track record of doing such a thing, much like the late Dr. Max Gerson, and unlike Aajonus Vonderplanitz, the founder of the Primal Diet, whom I recently wrote an article about: Before Mark Sisson: Aajonus Vonderplanitz And The Primal Diet®

I didn't post this interview as a way of extolling the benefits of adding juicing to your regular dietary regimen, like many raw vegans do. I posted this as a part of my "curing the incurables" series, which is part of the mission of my blog. My take on juicing (non-intermittent fasting) can be summed up at the end of my article on Vonderplanitz:

In my opinion, the Primal Diet® is like non-intermittent fasting and veganism, they can be healthful and effective therapeutically, but are not necessary (and even harmful) as an ongoing continual every day practice.

still, having done the master cleanse, i can tell you that those mythical toxins are in fact released during the process - whether from the liver or the gut. Whether or not you re-absorb a lot of them in your colon before they can be evacuated is of concern however. – patrick3000

Schulze addresses this in the interview. The old school natural hygiene fasting folks thought the body would get rid of these toxins in due time, and for a longer fast, in my experience, that is correct. But Schulze is more aggressive on this point, and adds his herbal compounds and specific juices to the regimen to make sure you have a bowel movement at least once a day.

It's not just fruit juice - you can do celery and herb juices too, according to the interview. Carrot and beet juice would pump up the sugar a bit, but not as high as fruit. – Girl Gone Primal

Not only that, but during a therapeutic fast, the body maintains very tight control of blood sugar regulation. This is something you only discover through actually working with people on fasts, rather than imagining "oh my God, its a sugar dump." :-)

By the way Girl Gone Primal, I'm not picking on you - you have done a great job here. I'm just using some of what you wrote as a jumping off point for further explanation.

Not gonna win me any friend amongst the juicing crowd: but this is garbage. Schultze's language reeks of snake-oil. I mean snake-juiece. Sorry. – Patrik♦

"Man cures his colon cancer by juice-fasting. The cancer came out in the toilet." Are you effin' kidding me???!!! Holy God. It is even worse than I thought. In the future, let's not post questions about absolute bullshit on PaleoHacks. Thanks. – Patrik♦

I don't believe many of the 'miracle cure' aspects of the interview, sure, but that doesn't mean the wider applications should be ignored outright. Most of the world would never believe that zero-carbing could cure diabetes and not end in heart disease, but there you go... I hoped paleo people would be open-minded enough to at least consider traditional medicines, etc. – Girl Gone Primal

"Belief" is not required here. It doesn't take much leg work to find people who have benefited in exactly the way Schulze describes from juice fasting and other herbal therapies. The "bullshit" is the way modern medicine has deluded us into thinking they are somehow the answer (or there is no answer other than poisoning, cutting, or otherwise mutilating your body) for degenerative disease. Clearly they are not.

I guess that the good old-fashioned Paleo logic would apply then; if we evolved eating whole fruits and veggies, odds are we're better off eating them whole as opposed to juiced, but that's probably getting a little over-the-top. – Fearsclave

That logic might be your death sentence if faced with an incurable disease and a broken body that needs something more than a dietary change to reach equilibrium once again. :-) My point is this interview isn't really about a normal diet, though you can clearly see where his sympathies lie. Hopefully you have a better understanding of my use of the interview from the first answer.

i guess my fundamental problem with it is twofold: the pure bolus of sugar dumped into the system

Is this an reaction from having experience with juice fasting both personally and with others, or is this something you think might be a problem?

the seriously unnatural, unprecedented nature of it.

Fasting has a long history, including even juices.

Please please dont take this the wrong way, i am not a re-enactor or whatever, but certain foods/manners of eating that are very unnatural (in my opinion) just seem to me to be less-than-good for us. I know that certain unprecedented things (like taking isolated cod liver oil) can have very beneficial effects for us, too.

Cod liver oil also has a long history.

This one just strikes me as dangerous.

I do concede that it would prolly clean you out or whatever. If you really wanna strip your guts out yknow?

Does this come from your own personal experience of fasting and fasting others? Does this come from a perusal of the literature on the subject? Or is this just something you are feeling in your gut, that you don't want to strip? :-)

As far as healing properties, teas are a much much better choice. You can make them with healing herbs and not take the hit of the sugar from juice.

Far from me to disagree with one of my favorite bloggers but frankly herbal teas (as normally sourced and used) suck, they are what I call "herbal light". Not really powerful enough to do anything, other than convince people (wrongly) herbal therapy doesn't work.

At any rate the point of the article is juice fasting, and fasting for healing with teas can often be as aggressive and as unpleasant as fasting with water. Tinctures are better, with teas and juices. Also many people fast only with green juices to keep the sugar somewhat lower than juice. But this is all variable depending on a number of factors. For someone who is just juicing as an adjunct to their diet, it is certainly something to consider. For someone dealing with an "incurable" disease, there are other factors to take into account, since the body operates differently during a fast than it does while eating normally.

I don't understand the terminology. Fast means no food. Juice is food. A juice fast is anything but a fast.

The historical use of the term fasting means abstaining from some types of food. It can include a liquid diet all the way up to and including only consuming water, but it is not limited to that.

Alright, enough. :-)

juicing are great* Its hard to get a good juicer.

While there is some good discussion here, there is also some narrow "dig in my heels" kneejerk reactive commentary, (such as Patrick- come on, dude..) and I can only hope that the whole dietary movement has grown up in the past year since this thread was created. Many people here seem to confuse "fruit juice" that Schultz would have recmmended with the processed crap sold in bottles in stores. These juice programs are short term healing diets meant to be digestive rests while providing lots of micronutrients in readily digestible form. I am sure ancient people would have eaten fruits and vegetables, perhaps even mashed them, but here we have people clicking away on their laptops while simultaneously knocking the invention of an electric juicer (and saying they "are hard to get"?!).

The juicing program (for those who really cannot wrap their little minds around the word "fast" in this context of NOT EATING FOODS) is an antidote to an ALREADY UNNATURAL progression of events which lead to terribly UNNATURAL states of health in many of those who undergo it- a therapeutic intervention, if you will.

Juice fasting would be way more effective if you mixed some coconut oil in the mix.

Coconut oil will not only add some ketones to the mix but also help you absorb the fat soluble vitamins from the juice (A, D, E, K).

Has anyone tried this?

I did VLCD 18 months ago, which translated roughly into the Paleo route. Hubby seriously started Paleo 6 months ago. Zero processed sugar, zero grains, zero starchy carbs. We've both lost significant weight...I don't do cheat days as a rule. A month ago, after considering another VLCD round to see if I could finally drop those last pesky pounds, I came across the Crazy Sexy diet. It's a pure vegan juice/smoothie plan with probiotics, teas and colonics.....I was intrigued by the juicing component, not being a huge fan of the fasting days. Then I watched "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead" and I was sold, not only on the lean proteins, organic veggies and processed sugar as poison, but the idea of the juice came back again and again. We invested in a low speed, single auger juicer...TONS of pulp and I always add more back. Those juice fast days are cake and pie (metaphorically speaking). I follow several juice gurus advice and always maintain at least 30% dark, green leafy veggies...most days I keep it at 40-70%. We're now juicing for sure in the a.m. And frequently end up making juice for dinner, especially in summer heat. I've seen my teens' faces clear up, I swear their growing like we've doused them in fertilizer and we've all maintained level weight and blood sugars. I'm aiming for a five day juice FEAST to help jump start my father who was just diagnosed with stage two colon cancer. I supplement with sprouted seeds or apple with nut butter. I also love those smoothies with a half an avocado ( learned the hard way on that one...drinking guacamole isn't very fun!) overall, we'll stick with lean, organic proteins and the greens, seeds, and sometimes we go crazy and eat legumes! Our personal experience (without official blood tests or "scientific" quantitative statistics) is that the juice has improved our overall health. It's pretty much like any other recent trend...raw, organic and half the portion. If we turned the food pyramid upside down and screwed the agricultural community by acknowledging that humans weren't supposed to eat grains or milk, we'd all be thinner, healthier and shinier. Find what works for you and commit.

I think that juice fasts can be very healthful if done right and that yuo get all teh macronutrients. I did a sort-of juist fast the week before last week because my wisdom tooth was bothering me and for fat and protein I added chia seeds, goat or sheep's milk yogurt, and soymilk (I know latter three not paleo) to my juices and smoothies and shakes and I felt great and I was not hungry and had no cravings