How Juice Detoxes Affect You And Your Skin

 

As difficult as it is, I'd recommend that we all do some juicing and consider some serious detoxing on at least sporadical occasions throughout our lives.

We all need to be considering the cells in our body and how hard they are having to work when faced with such a huge assortment of toxins such as:

• Pollution and environmental factors
• Chemicals and synthetics in our food products and washing powders
• Processed foods 
• Refined sugars that are in everything from sweet to savoury meals
• Meat consumption (which if you are a meat-eater like myself, I would suggest you are eating too much of it, I know I certainly am).

Some of these toxins are almost impossible to completely avoid, but some of them you can keep to a minimum if you try hard enough, so take back a bit of control and try to give yourself a little cleanse every now and again by doing some juicing.

I know how hard it can be to eat super healthy day in day out in the long term. It takes a huge amount of commitment and preparation, and I know anyone who is a busy working mum like myself or just busy with their career in general finds themselves needing to grab something quick on occasion.

So, don’t put too much pressure on yourself; life is about balance. That's the reason I choose to take a little chunk of time to focus on a juice cleanse whenever I can.

After completing three and a half days of my ‘hell on earth,’ five-day juice cleanse (which is how I am lovingly referring to it as), I bounced into the completely opposite direction! My body felt YOUNG, I felt ALIVE and my notoriously puffy eyes were less puffy than I had seen them for literally as long as I can remember (and I'm talking over 20 years when I'm saying as long as I can remember).

My skin was glowing, my face felt more contoured and I lost 5 lbs in weight. I decided that if detoxing from caffeine and refined sugar could make me feel that terrible at the beginning of my cleanse then I'm going to try to go on a caffeine and refined sugar-free journey moving forward. (I will let you know how I get on, but for now, I'll get back to what a cleanse is doing for your skin as that is my speciality…)

People who suffer from breakouts may well experience a bit of breakout when starting a detox as your body flushes out all toxins, and one way of doing this is through your skin. But it's important to note that this will not happen to everyone. I've always been lucky enough to have never suffered from breakouts on my skin and I still don’t experience this when I juice.

When you begin juicing you are feeding your body with a HUGE amount of nutrients, and because they are in liquid form they go straight into your bloodstream. Your organs, in particular, your liver and kidneys will rapidly begin to remove toxins, which will impact your skin and the appearance of your face as these two areas are very much affected by the function of your liver and kidneys.

In my opinion, you are best to either purchase a very good book containing lots of juice recipes or order a ready-made juice cleanse from a very reputable source. If you are lucky enough to live in my area (Liverpool) then you will have Claire from Hi Vibe Nutrition available to you - she really knows her stuff and I couldn’t recommend her more.

The reason I suggest either of the above as opposed to throwing whatever you fancy in your juicer is that different fruit and vegetables have so many different benefits for your skin.

Now I'm no nutritionist, but when we are talking about the skin I do know my stuff! So I will go through a few benefits some fruits and vegetables have from a skin experts point of view (that’s one of my qualified titles, by the way, I'm not just blowing my own trumpet here!)

Kale and carrots contain Vitamin A which is a powerful antioxidant, helping to improve your cells ability to renew therefore preventing premature ageing of your skin.

Beetroot is not only packed full of iron so will help with your blood's ability to carry oxygen to your cells, making you feel young and energised, but it also cleanses your liver of harmful toxins that will then consequently flush your skin of toxins - giving your skin a detox.

Celery is wonderful for alkalising your body and has anti-inflammatory effects, so this can help with the inflamed, sore redness you get when you are suffering from acne.

Cucumber contains ascorbic acid, which can help prevent water retention - this all helps those dreaded puffy eyes!

Spinach, although you don’t get a large volume when you juice it, it is full of Vitamins including Vitamin C. Studies have shown that women who have a very high dietary intake of Vitamin C have noticeably fewer wrinkles and appear to have less skin dryness.

A couple of other things that aren't fruit or veg but are great in your juices are:

Ginger - packed with over 40 antioxidants helping with almost all of the above I've mentioned along with reducing the damage linked to free radicles, helping to prevent your skin from sagging.

And lastly - Aloe Vera. This promotes your skins collagen production and we all want our skin to produce as much collagen as possible!

My last point to make is that as long your are juicing correctly, and by that, I mean drinking a minimum of 2 litres of water a day, then your skin will be beautifully hydrated too.

Going forward, I've decided I'm going to try to do a very green-based juice for three days once a month, and do it as a strict juice cleanse (nothing but juice, water and herbal tea) and I would recommend you try it yourself! By green-based juices, I mean very low in natural fruit sugars and more vegetable-based to try to really alkalise my body.

I felt the effects this five-day juice cleanse had on my skin and the overall appearance of my face makes it worth doing it at least this often. Aside from the physical benefits, the mental benefits of completing something that requires so much willpower is so empowering!

My mum did this cleanse with me and she said she felt “heroic” when we completed it, which made me laugh my socks off, but what she said is true! You really do feel very proud of yourself afterwards.

But if this isn’t something that you feel like you could stick to or isn’t worth the few days of ‘hell on earth’ then adding juices into your diet and just simply trying to eat more ‘cleanly’ will be a huge benefit to your skin. Because although you are not giving yourself a full detox, you are still adding all of the nutrient-dense foods into your diet and your skin will undoubtedly benefit as a result.

If you need any advice, or some moral support to keep going while you are doing a strict cleanse then please get in touch! And please… let me know how you get on :)

Love From Lois xxx