Juicing Recipes Humble Request: Help Japan Recover

A big whopping grateful hello is in order to all my fair and gentle readers, especially considering the news of yet another tragedy still unfolding in the world. Seeing these things occur to good people makes me extremely humbled that I can sit here behind my desk and reach out to my peeps without worrying about being carted away in some giant wave.

Just as a heads up, you may or may not receive this post in your email (depending on the type of subscription you opted to receive).

I thought it would be appropriate to get in touch with you all and offer up a link to the American Red Cross page at the "causes" site, where they are currently gathering support to help the wonderful people in Japan who need help right now. The site can be accessed here, below (click the red cross picture), or by visiting http://www.causes.com/campaigns/154523. 

I strongly urge you to consider clicking through and donating what you can to the relief effort. The people of Sendai and other areas affected are only now beginning the long process of cleaning up.

Having personally experienced the terror and awesome devastation of both a 7.8 earthquake in Taipei, and the 2004 Tsunami while vacationing in Phuket, Thailand, I am a perfect candidate to testify - there isn't much in the way of natural disasters that can wreak such havoc and destruction, on such a large scale, so quickly. It truly is shocking and heartbreaking to watch unfold. In Japan there's now an added strain, in that a nuclear reactor is in jeopardy of failing, so the circumstance truly is dire and unpredictable.

The kind folks in Japan are among the nicest and most stoically graceful people on our planet. They work hard and they live, love, and laugh just like we do. Most importantly - as of today they are a severely injured populous and need assistance from the rest of the world. That means you and I.

Please take some time, visit the link, and donate what you can. If you can't afford to donate money, donate a prayer. When you're done, go and hug your family.

Juicing For Weight Loss: Proof Positive It Works!

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So juicing recipes for weight loss might seem a topic that fell victim to overkill long ago, but the guy in that << movie poster has just finished proven it certainly works. See, I've been spreading that word for a long time, and as a trainer I've seen the results of a proper juicing diet. But I never bothered to make a movie about it. 

(note to self: learn how to make movies!) 

Before I get started on a long winded post here, I'll stop. I don't need any long rants here, just need to hip my loyal and faithful readers to a wonderfully inspiring gentleman from Australia, Joe, who lost over 50 kg by consuming nothing but juice for 60 days. His story is awesome and his experience the physical manifestation of words I've been preaching here at Ye Ol' Juicing Recipes blog for years. 

Joe has been dubbed a "weight loss superhero" so head over and watch the news report on Joe by heading over to MSN. (Yes, that's the link.) Alternately here's Joe's website with a trailer for the movie he made about his juicing journey. The movie is called "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead", a title that seems to mirror how many people feel anymore, according to my email inbox. 

I would love to have included that video here, but alas, MSN doesn't play as nicely as youtube for embedding video.So folks, please head over to either the MSN report, or Joe's site and check out an amazing juicing for weight loss victory. It's just bloody inspiring. 

Oh, and if you look carefully in the news report you'll notice that's a Breville Juicer Joe's using! Ha! I told y'all I knew what I was on about! ;)

Cheers!

How To Live To Be 100+ (Video)

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Hello to all my fair and gentle readers and subscribers! Thought I would drop by and offer you a truly insightful video that chronicles one man's study into longevity.

Since one benefit of juicing for health means that us folks, with our enzymes, vitamins, minerals, phyto-nutrients, antioxidants,e.t.c... are at a statistical advantage when it comes to living long and healthy lives, I've become more and more interested in the study of longevity in general. In the video that follows you can find a truly mind bending study into just how longevity can be achieved.

So without more of my incessant rambling ;), let me introduce Dan Buettner. Dan has studied longevity from a very unique point of view for quite some time. He's a writer for National Geographic and has spent a great deal of time traveling the world, seeking out those populations who seem to defy time and live thriving into their 90's and beyond - to record breaking ages. Essentially he finds the oldest and healthiest people on earth and studies their nutrition habits, their communal habits, basically anything and everything that might give us clues as to how they do it.  

He and his team study the world's "Blue Zones" Blue Zone being the phrase his team coined to describe communities whose elders live with vim and vigor to record-setting age. In this video (taken at TEDxTC), he shares the 9 common diet and lifestyle habits that keep age defying elders spry past age 100.

Enjoy! 

Find Out Why Micronutrients Rock! (Video)

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Hiya folks! A big warm and fuzzy hello to all my fair and gentle  readers! Hope you all liked my Longevity "series". There will be more for that series a bit later in the month, as I've come to love the subject thanks to Ray Kurzweil. If you haven't heard of Ray (or seen him on TV) he is the board certified resident guru in the world of life extension and longevity. His website kurzweilai.net is worth an extended visit. My guess is after one glance you'll bookmark him, google him, and study his musings for hours, because his vision of the future of health and longevity is truly inspiring, fantastic, creepy. 

For a short run down on Ray, here's his wikipedia page. This guy is some kind of mad scientist/genius. If you're too tired (from working out - hint hint) to click, just watch enough Discovery Channel or CNN, surely you'll see him pop up from time to time with some sort of awe inspiring invention or breakthrough. 

As for my world today, I've no major juicing for health epiphanies to impart since I'm currently reviewing a few branded juicers (you'll see the reviews soon). I did however spend some time surfing and caught the video linked below, which you should consider watching from front to back (it's only 6 minutes). It is an excellent mini education on the benefits of juicing for health, from a seminar in London. I've been to a few health seminars in my tenure, and some are about as useful as a bunny rabbit in an bull fight, however this "seminar guy" (for lack of a more fitting description ;)) seems to know what he's on about when it comes to nutrition and juicing. 

I should warn you that the audio is fairly lame VERY lame - as it was recorded from a hand held, without a doubt. So you might wanna turn it slightly up, or wear headphones. Also, at about 2:40 seconds in, watch out for someone coughing directly into the microphone, because it almost gave me a heart attack :(). Aside from that, if things like macro and micronutrients make you feel all warm and fuzzy and your heart skips a beat, this one's definitely for you.

Cheers!

Longevity Series: Juicing For Health, Nutrition, and Exercise

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100+ years young. Longevity at work folks!

Juicing for health. Let's examine that phrase for a second. I mean, why do we juice? Is it because we love the sound of our wonderful counter top machines? No. (some cheap juicers sound like muscle cars with broken mufflers) Is it because we love to see veggies and fruits getting sliced and diced like wood in a wood chipper? No, although it really does look kinda cool during the first few weeks. :). Is it for the taste? Possibly, but the truth is any supermarket juice can taste great as well, and buying a jug of store bought OJ is perhaps easier than making your own. So in truth, aside from the taste, pretty much the only good reason for adopting a juicing lifestyle is because we seek the many health benefits from the creations we make in our wonderful machines. 

The question then becomes, is juicing for health enough? Answer: of course not. If we are truly to achieve longevity and true long term health benefits, juicing becomes a single piece in the longevity and health puzzle. There are certain things we humans have to do on the regular to keep the body as primed as possible, things that have nothing to do with Doritos, TV addictions, or Pizza Hut (even though that would be just awesome). The point being that if we are juicing, we should also be eating only the right foods, getting up and moving with a dose of daily exercise, and making sure to get proper rest. Otherwise, I may as well be sending you a Twinkies/chocolate/Haagen Dazs juicing recipe today. ;)

Now, depending on your goals, getting and staying as healthy as possible can either be rocket science, or as simple as 2+2=4. For example, someone whose singular fitness goal is to look like a cast member from 300 has made a much larger commitment to weight lifting than someone who just wants their internal organs to stop melting. For most of us, we fall somewhere in between a photo spread in Muscle and Fitness magazine and a couch potato. That being said, all fitness goals boil down to optimizing the same 3 areas of health in order to achieve their desired results. These areas are:

• Fitness and exercise
• Nutrition
• Quality rest

For some of you, I just pulled another "Captain Obvious" moment by stating what should be elementary. But for some, I really do have to mention the necessity and equal importance of these 3 areas, since there truly are kind folks who misguidedly expect to become the next Lance Armstrong just from juicing for health, or from working out incessantly. Case in point: a 20 something man who comes to our gym every day, works out for at least 90 minutes every time, just finished complaining about having been diagnosed with high blood pressure. After talking with him for a few minutes my partner and I learned that he eats anything and everything, using salt and sugar with reckless abandon. I know what you're thinking, and no, this guy was not dropped on his head as a child. He just simply never grasped the golden rule that overall health involves more than bench presses and squats. In fact you'd be surprised how many people assume that a good daily workout cancels out the need to eat properly.

At any rate, to cut a long and preachy post short, if you really want to get the most from your juicing for health lifestyle, please don't just stop at juicing. Take 45 minutes each day to get active. Do an abs workout, sit down and crank out 45 minutes of rowing. Go down the street to the gym and play a game of squash with your buddy. (BTW, squash is a blast, try it). Get a proper, award winning, and extremely beneficial nutrition program like The Diet Solutions and follow the steps and guides. And after each day make sure you wind down appropriately, relax, do some meditation, and sleep 8 hours. If sleep is a problem for you (it has been for me lately) there's a well known blog called Insomnia Cures. Head over there to learn about a myriad of natural cures and treatments for sleeplessness. I can't stress enough how important sleep is to maintaining proper health. So overlooked, the restorative power of sleep is just as important as nutrition and exercise.

If you're on the fence about making that final step towards personal Uber-greatness, just look around here and examine the sites I promote. They are here only because I absolutely trust in their ability to make getting you in shape fun, exciting, and certainly NOT rocket science. They all work like gangbusters. Truth About Abs is the cats meow. It's like working out, only awesome. Diet Solutions takes confusion over calories and proper diet, and squashes it like a bug. Amazon? Come on folks, really. Amazon sells everything, and usually at insanely low prices.

If you are juicing for health and not going the extra mile, start now. No, seriously. Right now. It's February already folks, one month gone. 2011 should not be about wasting more time before you get to it. So take the plunge folks! Longevity is a reachable goal. 

Cheers!

Longevity and The Uber Health Collection: Fruit Juice Recipes

Lemon~Lime Ginger Ale

• handful of grapes
• 1 apple, cored and sliced
• ½ inch fresh ginger (less if you find the taste too strong)
• 1/2 lime
• 1/4 lemon
• sparkling mineral water

*Remove the grapes from the stem. Juice the apple and ginger together, then juice the rest of the fruit. Pour the juice in a large glass and fill to the top with sparkling water and serve with ice.

Sparkling Tropical Fruit Juice

• 1 kiwi, peeled
• 1 orange, peeled and sectioned
• 1/2 mango, peeled and sliced
• sparkling mineral water

*Process the fruit in a juicer. Pour the juice in a large glass and fill to the top with sparkling water and serve.

Gingered Apple Cider Juice

• 1 inch piece ginger
• 3 apples or 1 cup apple cider

*Process and serve.

Peach Pear Apple Juice Recipe

• 1 apple, cored and sliced
• 2 peaches, remove seed
• 1 pear, sliced

*Process and serve.

Fruit Punch (Juice)

• 6 strawberries, fresh or thawed from frozen
• 1 apple, cored and sliced
• 1/2 orange, peeled and sectioned

*Process and, well, you know the drill by now.

Fruit Nectar Recipe

• 1/2 cup raspberries, fresh or thawed from frozen
• 1 orange, peeled and sectioned
• 1 nectarine, pitted and sliced

*Invite 3 friends over. Place fruits on the ground. Jump up and down until squashed. Scoop up the bits and drink. 

OR

*Process the fruit in a juicer and serve. :()

Blueberry Cherry Juice Recipe

• handful of cherries, pitted
• 3/4 cup blueberries
• 1 apple, cored and sliced

*Process via the ultimate Uber Serious Juicer of The Gods, and serve. :p

More awesome fruit juice Ideas …

• 1 cup strawberries
• 2 med. apples
• 1 tsp. lemon juice

---------------------------------------------- 

• 1/2 red grapefruit
• 1 med. orange
• 2 handfuls cranberries

----------------------------------------------   

• 1 pear
• 1 peach
• 1 apple

----------------------------------------------   

• 1 orange
• 1 mango
• 1 apple

 *recipes courtesy healthrecipes.com.

Juicing For Health Longevity Series: Wheatgrass

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Unless I decide to write a novel here and now, any benefits from wheat-grass that I can list in a single article is merely scratching the surface. There are so many positive health benefits from the ingestion of this substance in your juicing for health lifestyle that it could really boggle the mind. For me to say it's nutritious is a massive understatement. To say it is helpful to cleanse and detox your body is like saying a new Ferrari is useful for driving the speed limit. If I were to tell you that it's extremely helpful in weight control and weight loss, again, it barely illuminates the awesome benefits of this super-food. In fact, if I were to say that wheat-grass is one of the healthiest substances on earth, it wouldn't be an exaggeration at all.

Let's just examine some of uses for wheat-grass juice:

• 19 amino acids (yep, you read that right... 19!)
• chlorophyll (read on to find out why chlorophyll basks in a sea of awesomeness)
• minerals (over 90, in high concentrations, including the heavy-hitter alkaline minerals such as calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium)
• vitamins (can anyone say "way to go Captain Obvious"?)
• enzymes (protease, transhydrogenase, cytochrome Oxidase, lipase, e.t.c...)

If 1 ounce of this wonderful substance equals 1+ kg of green veggies, more even than a full serving of Popeye's favorite muscle grower, then seriously, what more is there to say to convince you to run out THIS SECOND and buy a wheat-grass juicer to get your act in gear? Wait though, because 1. You can get a quality wheat-grass juicer right here on Ye Old Juicing Recipes For Health site (at seriously discounted prices); and 2. of course I still have more to say... any of my regular readers have already figured out that I am nothing if not consistently mouthy. :)

So you may be asking, what else can some frikin' grass do for my health? Ha. So much more, my fair and gentle reader, so much. This super-food assists in the production of red blood cells, and those little suckers are the entire body's oxygen delivery system, your very own molecular version of the UPS guy. So needless to say that oxygenating every organ you have will combat fatigue during exercise, as well as shore up your defenses against those pesky little environmental issues like pollution and carbon monoxide.

Also, some of you may remember high school, when you first learned about this thing called haemoglobin. If not, haemoglobin is the iron-containing oxygen-transport metalloproteins in the red blood cells of all vertebrate. (Thanks Wikipedia ;)) What high school didn't teach you, (at least not my high school) is that chlorophyll is just about identical to haemoglobin under a microscope. What this means is that our body's engine finds it markedly easy to transform chlorophyll into haemoglobin and offer our system a serious increase in red blood cells, and as a result, oxygenation.

Is there anything not technical to be said for chlorophyll, and why it is to health as a Fender Stratocaster was to Jimmy Hendrix? Yes. Put it this way, chlorophyll normalizes blood pressure, it energizes the body via alkalizing the blood, and it is like a smart bomb attack on environmental issues such as pollution, that can make us unhealthy just from simple proximity.

Can you say "amino acids" 5 times fast?
Amino acids, to be Captain Obvious yet again, are what builds protein, which in turn helps muscle and cell growth as well as maintenance. Need I say more? Not really, but I will. Wheat-grass is a thorough and complete protein source, and this is why many athletes juice it daily.

Plainly I could go on and on, as I said, a novel would cover it's benefits; maybe. It helps fight and cover our butts against illness, acting as our immune system's very own can of Red Bull. It detoxifies the body, cleaning out our system of free radicals, these tiny tyrants being the mortal enemy of longevity. It helps your digestive system break down and eliminate toxic waste. It clears up and elasticizes the skin. In fact, soon enough I'm gonna head into the juicing for health labs and experiment on using wheat-grass to fuel rocket ships to Mars. What I'm saying is that there are such a myriad of benefits from juicing wheat-grass that to NOT be juicing it regularly is doing a great disservice to your own quest for improved health and longevity.

So where do I get wheat-grass and how do I juice it?
The questions abound at this point. Many of you might be wondering "where do I get wheat-grass?"; "Does it grow on my front lawn?"; "How do I get that good stuff in my body most effectively?". The short and not so brilliant answer is to grab a supplement. A few of the organic and reputable brands can be found here and here. Having said that, supplements are a silver medal to wheat-grass juicing Gold, second place to actually grabbing your own grass (from any health food store worth it's salt) and juicing it in a juicer specifically designed for the purpose. And of course, you can grow your own wheat-grass with very little effort, in your own kitchen.

Your normal veggie and fruit juicer likely won't juice wheat-grass effectively, for reasons I won't get into here. Some of the best grass juicers might be available at certain appliance stores; maybe. In some parts of the universe they can be hard to find, minus a special order. Amazon has a few excellent Wheat-grass juicers, both manual and electric. The best I've found, and the one that sits in my own kitchen (right next to my Uber cool Breville) is the Omega J8004 Nutrition Center. You would do well to click that preceding link, or head here and grab one, since you can save $81.00 (or 24%) from the retail price, as opposed to buying from the store down the road. Here's some pictures of manual and electric wheat-grass juicers, with click-able links for more info.

It's not really of import to me where or how you grab your grass juicers, I make literally pennies from selling this stuff on my site. My biggest concern is that you see the vast benefits wheat-grass will offer your juicing for health lifestyle, and you get up off your butt and grab the tools you need for your very own daily dose of Uber-Super-food.

Cheers!

Juicing Recipes For Health Longevity Series: The Colon Cleanse

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Hopefully all you Juicing Recipes for Health nuts had a most excellent New Years, used my recipes to cure your hangovers, and are now 25 + days into your juicing and healthy lifestyle again. The new year is the perfect time for renewed energy and for focusing on overall health improvements.

Today's post marks the first in a series I'm completing that really explains the benefits of juicing for health and for why it can be a critical component to helping yourself maintain an energetic and vital life.

And so we arrive at the colon (yes, that is possibly the most disturbing sentence ever). I'll say it before you... "ewww gross". Admittedly, the colon is not the most attractive conversation topic, and certainly one to avoid at the dinner table, or upon any surprise visits by the Queen. Nonetheless, understanding how critically important the colon is to proper health is of utmost importance to anyone searching for health and longevity. So at the risk of being, yes, "ewww gross", it's a subject necessary to touch on occasionally or I'm not doing my job.

THE COLON:
The colon is such an under appreciated system in the body, even by the most health oriented people. Having said that, understanding why it's important to keep the colon in tip top shape is a simple matter of understanding that any issues and problems with digestion can be of paramount importance to maintaining continuing good health, and that any problems in this area can be extremely dangerous to a person's longevity and health efforts.

The colon is the place where waste and toxic matter is gathered before being evacuated from the body, so having a colon that can properly absorb nutrients and then pass the remaining waste is extremely necessary. Without the colon operating at it's peak capacity, the risk of poisons remaining in the body is present, causing a condition known as auto-intoxication as the body is forced to reabsorb the harmful materials that accumulate. This occurs when the remaining waste is absorbed by the colon walls and redistributed through your body, through the bloodstream, damaging almost every organ in one way or another.

A JUICING COLON CLEANSE:
At this point I could go on and on about the functions of the colon, but it's of no real consequence to getting the help you may need. Anyone in their right mind should understand by now how critical a properly working colon is to your quest for better health. In order to ensure your colon is being taken care of, it's always smart to occasionally commit to a colon cleanse, and one extremely beneficial therapy for a clean and well performing colon is by juicing certain vegetables and fruits. By applying various juicing recipes for health you can offset any potential issues as the phytonutrients and enzymes in juices do their work flushing your colon of poisons and putrefied waste.

Aside from just vegetables, fruits such as lemon, lime, apples, e.t.c... are also known as very effective foods for colon cleansing.See the below guide.

There is a few qualifications to properly juicing for a colon cleanse, the most important being that you must always drink your juice fresh, as soon as possible after making it. Any long exposure to air oxidizes the juice and destroys important enzymes. This rule is basically important to juicing in general, not just for helping to heal the colon. Having said that, the enzymes present in fresh juices are critical to a proper colon cleanse. This is why you often see any juicing enthusiast drinking his recently made concoctions within moments of making and pouring. Enzymes and phytochemicals are considered the most important elements and benefits from juicing, so it's only natural to assume that storing your juice - thus allowing air exposure to hurt the juicing for health benefits - will have less of a positive and desired end result for your efforts.

WHY FIBER?:
This should be a pretty short explanation, since it's an easy concept to grasp. Fiber is the part of a food that cannot be digested, and as such, as it passes through the digestive system it acts as your very own personal roto-rooter. It is to your intestines as the broom is to a dirty kitchen floor. As fiber passes through your body it gathers and moves along many poisons, toxins, and other wholly unnecessary crud from the body. An excellent source of fiber is by eating raw and unpeeled fruits whenever possible.

WHAT WORKS:
The following veggies and fruits have been shown to provide the most benefits to a colon cleanse. Once a juicing therapy is decided upon, juices made from these vegetables should be consumed twice daily, for the length of your colon cleanse:

Vegetables:

• beets, carrots, sprouts, artichokes, eggplant, kale, capsicum

Fruits:

• kiwi, mango, pineapples, papaya, apples (skin intact), lemon or lime
  

As juicing recipes go, any combination of the above foods will work to assist a colon cleanse, providing you the best chance to get it right and help your colon do it's job properly. I find that by experimenting with some or all of the above I can usually end up with a combination that tastes fantastic as well as being extremely beneficial. If your pallet has any aversion to the above foods, try adding honey to the recipe. Honey is a certified Uber cool super food, and good for you no matter how you get it in your system. It usually makes just about anything taste good and for some reason it's very effective as a flavor enhancer in juices.

There are other fruits and vegetables out there that are beneficial to a colon cleanse, the above is just a basic starting point. If you are considering a serious colon cleanse in the near future, keep an eye out for my new book. Within the pages is a detailed 10 day colon cleanse, complete with a daily walk-through to make it as easy as possible to accomplish the cleanse.

Below is a short video that explains a few things regarding a proper colon cleanse. The lady in the vid certainly doesn't provide any real clarity, in fact it's almost entirely useless as a guide to cleansing, but the tiny bit of advice she does provide is of import and should be considered before you start. Cheers!