10 Health Crazes That Will Actually Damage Your Health

What Is It?

If you believe the hype, juicing is your one-way miracle ticket to a happier, healthier, more colonically cleansed you.

But, please, don't believe the hype.

The idea behind a juice cleanse is that, by consuming exclusively (or almost exclusively) raw juices for a number of days at a time, it will give your body the opportunity to "flush out" the toxins that build up from eating normal foods. The supposed benefits include weight loss, clearer skin, better sleep, increased energy levels and pretty much any other positive outcome you might think of. So, is this really a cure-all to save us from the effects of our nasty, modern lives?

Nope.

So, What's So Bad About It?

There are a huge number of companies out there who claim that their juice cleanses will "clean the system" and "flush out toxins" (and, did we mention, cost you a small fortune to purchase). These are not only completely unfounded but are also, by and large, a physical impossibility. 

The human body already has an excellent mechanism for ridding the body of toxins via the liver and kidneys, and it has never been shown that drinking juice will help this process in any way. Since the body is already constantly cleansing itself, there is absolutely no reason why a person would need to manually "cleanse" it too.

Actually, all that a person is doing by juicing is depriving their body of vital nutrients such as protein and fibre, whilst consuming vast quantities of sugar. This can cause blood sugar levels to go haywire, leading to side effects such as a lack of energy, headaches, irritability, shakiness and tooth decay, as well as constipation due to lack of fibre. Sounds fun.

Almost all of the weight lost during a juice cleanse will be water weight as the body burns through its glycogen stores. This is likely to go straight back on once normal eating recommences and could even come at the cost of muscle loss.

With virtually no proven health benefits, and a long list of horrible side effects, the positive results experienced by juicers are generally either psychological or a temporary fix. Any juice cleanse that lasts longer the three days could actually be very dangerous, and anything under three days is, at best, entirely pointless.