Juicing Explained

An electric juicer extracts the juices of fruits and vegetables, yielding the essential nutrients stored in their fibers. You can purchase fresh juices at a juice bar or make your own juices at home. A juicer can be a valuable tool for building and maintaining good health. Ask your primary care physician if consuming fresh juices would be appropriate for you.

Benefits

Raw vegetables and fruits contain the enzymes necessary for proper digestion and assimilation of your food. When food is cooked at 118 degrees or higher, its enzyme content is lost. Vitamins, minerals and protein are also abundant in raw fruits and vegetables. Drinking their juices allows you to easily assimilate these nutrients without burdening your digestive system, writes Ron Lagerquist, author of "Whole Foods and Healing Recipes."

Types of Juicers

A centrifugal juicer separates juices from the fibers by using centrifugal force. It has a strainer with cutting blades spinning at 3,000 to 7,000 rpm. A centrifugal juicer is easy to use and more affordable than other types of juicers. Masticating juicers use a single gear to slowly break down fruits and vegetables with a chewing action. The slow speed of masticating juicers creates less heat, which preserves more living enzymes in the juice. A twin-gear, or triturating, juicer has gears that rotate inward toward one another to crush vegetables and fruits and release their juice. Twin-gear juicers spin at only 80 to 160 rpm. It takes time to feed fruits and vegetables through the gears. Twin-gear juicers are good for juicing leafy greens and cost more than other types of juicers.

Juice Diet

Following a liquid diet of fresh homemade juices, water and herbal tea for a period of time is purported to rejuvenate your system by cleansing it of accumulated wastes, according to Dr. Paavo Airola, author of “How to Keep Slim, Healthy and Young with Juice Fasting.” Digestion and nutrient absorption may be improved after a period of cleansing, writes Airola. However, there is no scientific evidence that detox diets actually cleanse the body, according to Mayo Clinic dietitian Katherine Zeratsky. A balanced diet for optimum health includes vegetables, fruits, lean protein and whole grains, adds Zeratsky.

Recommendations

Those with diabetes, high blood pressure or high cholesterol may want to mix water with juices to avoid consuming too much sugar. Choose fruits and vegetables with low sugar levels for juicing, so as not to aggravate these conditions. Check a glycemic index food list to learn the sugar levels of fruits and vegetables. Consult your doctor before making any changes to your diet.