Читать книгу 5LBs in 5 Days: The Juice Detox Diet - Jason Vale, Jason Vale - Страница 10

The TV doc’s exact words were:

Complete myth, there is no such thing as detox; it’s absolute rubbish. You have three perfectly good organs, your liver and two kidneys, which do all the detoxing you need…

Technically, our TV doc has a point – the body does indeed detoxify itself with the help of its perfectly good organs designed to do precisely that. I am also fully aware that fresh juice doesn’t detox the body per se; only the body, essentially, detoxs the body. However, there are two fundamental points our TV doc, and many others, are missing when it comes to the word ‘detox’.

Firstly, just because the body wants and is designed to do certain things naturally, it doesn’t mean it’s always in the position to do so. Take breathing for example; the body naturally wants to breathe; its very survival depends on it. However, if someone were to put their hands around your neck and start to lightly squeeze, or if you were caught up in a house fire, the body would have much greater difficulty doing what it naturally, and desperately, wants to do. Equally, if a person constantly puts more toxicity (refined sugars, fats, salts, alcohol, nicotine, etc.) into the body than it can detoxify (or eliminate if you will) efficiently, then it will struggle doing what it naturally was designed, and is desperate, to do.

If, as the TV doc suggests:

‘...you have three perfectly good organs, your liver and

two kidneys, which do all the detoxing you need…’ then, by that rationale, there is no need to stop smoking, curb heavy drinking, or cut down on junk food for that matter, as the body will do all the detoxing for you.

It is more than clear that our detoxifying organs cannot always cope with the amount of toxicity coming in and they are not capable of doing all the detoxifying for us if overburdened. If they did, then no matter what we put in we would all be slim and healthy for life, and people like my beautiful mother wouldn’t have passed away so prematurely from stage 4 lung cancer due to the toxic nature of tobacco; her lungs would have simply detoxed it out. The more rubbish you pile into your body in the absence of live high-water content nutrient-rich foods and drinks, the more the organs have difficulty coping. Stop putting in the rubbish and, then yes, the body will indeed detoxify itself. So I agree that the body is essentially the only thing which technically detoxifies the body. I also agree that juicing per se does not detoxify the body. However, by eliminating all the toxic rubbish from one’s diet and supplying the system with freshly extracted juices, the body will then be free to do what it naturally wants and needs to do every minute of every day – detoxify!

Secondly, the vast majority of people will be doing this five-day juice-only detox to lose weight and kick-start a healthy lifestyle. They don’t think the juices will act in place of their perfectly good detoxing organs such as the liver and kidneys and nor do they think that is what the word means. And this is perhaps the biggest point to be made here. The vast majority of people use and understand the word ‘detox’ to mean

They understand it to be a set period of time where they abstain from things such as caffeine, refined sugars, refined fats, alcohol and so on. Who honestly ever really thinks that ‘juice detox’ means anything other than that? Well, apart from some doctors and scientists of course, but here in ‘normal world’ the meaning on the ground has changed and they need to catch up.

This book is entitled 5lbs in 5 Days: The Juice Detox Diet, not because of my lack of understanding of how the body actually works, but rather because 99.99 per cent of people who pick it up know exactly what that means. They won’t think juices detoxify the body, but rather that they will have a period of time without certain foods and drinks while drinking nothing but juice.

The meaning of some words change over time anyway, and sometimes if used enough in a certain way, end up meaning the complete opposite of what the actual definition is. Take the word ‘bad’, for example. I grew up in a place called Peckham in southeast London where if you said a certain piece of music or a film or even an item of clothing was ‘bad’; it actually meant it was ‘good’. It is now widely understood that if someone refers to certain things as ‘bad’ they actually mean ‘good’. Clearly it’s not the actual meaning of bad in the dictionary, but it has changed and that’s just how it is. If something is really good some people now refer to it as ‘sick’, but anybody using this term doesn’t actually believe for a millisecond that an item of clothing can projectile vomit! So if you get anyone saying: ‘Detox is a myth’, please tell them to stop being so flipping pedantic, as they are more than fully aware of what you and I mean by the word.

Having said that, I have just looked up the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of ‘detox’ and it appears it is indeed what we all believe it to be rather than what the TV doc suggests.

detox informal noun, Pronunciation: [mass noun]. a process or period of time in which one abstains from or rids the body of toxic or unhealthy substances.

This is exactly what this programme is: a period of time, five days to be exact, where ‘one abstains from or rids the body of toxic or unhealthy substances’. Where’s the confusion? And moreover what is the problem with calling it a ‘detox’ when that is exactly what it is? If ‘Detox is a myth’, as the TV doc stated on national television, then perhaps it should be removed from the Oxford English Dictionary?

Once you’ve addressed the fact that ‘detox diet’ is indeed a perfectly reasonable phrase for this five-day programme, you’ll have another couple of big guns to contend with from the juice sceptics out there. Please also remember you are not simply dealing with genuine sceptics either, but also with friends and family members who may not overly want you get slim and healthy while they aren’t doing so! That sounds terrible, but it’s the way of the world. After all, if your next-door neighbour renovates their house and makes it look amazing, in order to make your house look good you have a couple of choices. You can either make an effort to renovate your house too, or you can blow their house up! Many people who feel they cannot make a change in this area for whatever reason will, consciously or sub-consciously, do anything to prevent you from ‘doing your house up’, so to speak. This is why they will often attack what you are doing; it’s simply in order to prevent you from doing it so your house stays in the same condition as theirs. If you make your house look amazing it only brings attention to how bad theirs is.

Fear, of course, is the most common approach used by both genuine juice sceptics, and the many friends who don’t want your house to improve. This is why many say, ‘it’s dangerous’ and why you will hear the following arguments. I am adding these to the book for one reason alone, to arm you with the right information so you are not scared away from doing this programme.

How anyone can think that drinking freshly extracted vegetable and fruit juice for just five days is in any way, shape or form harmful is one of life’s great mysteries. However, somehow they can be convincing and many people don’t try this on for size because they listen to the nonsense without questioning it. You can live on water for five days and all would be OK, so the fears are completely unfounded, but let’s debunk them anyway before we start. I have heard the first one for over 15 years, and it’s one of the first things people argue when talking about juice detox diets.