Juicing for lung recovery

Hey everyone, I'm new here! I have just recently become interested in raw food (specifically juicing), as I have spent my entire life very unhealthy and am feeling it all catching up to me. I smoked up until last week, I can count on one hand how many times a year I've eaten veggies outside of rare corn or potatoes, I drink more soda than water, that type of thing. So long story short, I ordered a juicer which should be arriving any day now and am very very excited to start a new lifestyle.

My specific question is, being that I am just quit smoking, what are the best type of juice ingredients to cleanse and repair my lungs and hopefully eventually get rid of the tar??

Any help or advice is appreciated. I am basically clueless with anything regarding healthy food lol and am trying to soak up as much basic knowledge as possible so I'm not just randomly pulling things off the produce shelves at the supermarket without having any clue what it is or what it does for me. Thanks! I have a feeling I will reading this forum quite a bit over the upcoming months!

Hi,

Welcome to the forum and congratulations on quitting smoking. Long may it last :)

I can't answer your question specifically but fruits and greens juiced, alongside a raw, vegan diet will make you feel like a new person and also help heal and cleanse you.

Take a look at the 30 day fast thread and the 30 day Challenge thread and see which route you want to take. I totally recommend committing for 30 days when you are serious about improving your health. It depends if you want to just juice or if you want to eat as well as to which thread will give you the most support. Try it ... see where it leads you :)

Thanks! I will check out those threads for sure. My only concern would be with losing weight. I am really REALLY skinny and never have been able to gain weight and if anything want to gain about 30 pounds, and I know people do the juice fasting for dropping weight. Ah its such a catch 22 lol. I want to be healthy but everything healthy involves much less calories. Regardless, I will definitely research those threads you suggested and I suppose if I end up losing weight for the initial 30 days I can always pig out on avocados or dates or something to put it back

If you eat a well balanced raw diet then whilst you may (and maybe even probably will) lose weight at first which I realise is undesirable to you, you will level out and then start to gain weight when you are settled with the new way of eating and learn to eat enough for your needs. I think I would recommend you do smoothies rather than juices and eat a raw food diet in addition rather than just drink juices but that is up to you and you may have a feeling that what you need is juices not food ... only you can know this.

Sprouted seeds and grains are good for bulking up meals and avocados are always yummy though you may want to watch your fat intake at some point.

Lobelia root (terrible tasting!) is excellent for the lungs. I gave my son either the dry herb rolled in a nut butter pill so he could swallow without tasting, and also bought tinctures. He no longer has any need for asthma meds.

Fenugreek is an herb good for the lungs. I used to throw it into soup, make a tea, but you could try sprouting it too....

Juicing is great for any type of health issue. But specifically for healing your lungs from smoking damage, I would suggest eating lots of organic leafy greens, fresh herbs... Along with practicing vast amounts of self-forgiveness! :)

Peace

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Originally Posted by Mr. Fuzzums

... so I'm not just randomly pulling things off the produce shelves at the supermarket without having any clue what it is or what it does for me.

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I don't know...I think this is a wonderful way to juice! You'll find that no matter the combination, it always tastes really good. I know there are folks on here that can speak to the "food combination" aspect, but, personally, I don't think you can go wrong by getting whatever from the produce section (organic, of course, is best) and pushing it through your juicer.

BTW, this morning I threw I bunch of stuff I had into my juicer and it was phenomenal. It was 3 stalks celery, 2 medium tomatoes, half a beet, some parsley, a handful of baby carrots and a small yellow pepper. Good night!!

Lovely! These are all great responses, thanks. I'm definitely going to get the Lobelia root.I also was reading about Mullein which I am going to order too to have tea. It's supposed to make you cough and loosen up the mucus.

Trench, I'm guess you're right about not being concerned about food combos too much. Thinking about it, I guess if I spent 28 years living of fast food, cheetos and soda, I could risk combining the wrong veggies lol.

Mystic, I think I really do want to do the juice at first. After doing that for a bit than I will move onto smoothies and than move onto actual raw meals. I want to take it pretty slow because I'm frightened of awful detox symptoms and just frightened of the whole life change in general I have to admit. I regularly get nausea and have bad acid reflux and don't want to aggravate it full on just yet. Maybe if I drag out the transition for a month or two I can creep up on all these health issues without any major problems? It turns out I am just loaded with questions haha. Once I feel pretty comfortable with my transition THEN I will do the 30 day challenge. I would want to really commit 100% ya know?

Sorry for the lengthy response, I am in a talky sort of mood right now =)

Good luck with the juicing ... but one thing that will help at least as much is if you ditch the fear. Fear is bad for your health. Fear and guilt cause untold problems. Don't fear something that will help you :)

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Originally Posted by Mr. Fuzzums

Lovely! These are all great responses, thanks. I'm definitely going to get the Lobelia root.I also was reading about Mullein which I am going to order too to have tea. It's supposed to make you cough and loosen up the mucus.

Trench, I'm guess you're right about not being concerned about food combos too much. Thinking about it, I guess if I spent 28 years living of fast food, cheetos and soda, I could risk combining the wrong veggies lol.

Mystic, I think I really do want to do the juice at first. After doing that for a bit than I will move onto smoothies and than move onto actual raw meals. I want to take it pretty slow because I'm frightened of awful detox symptoms and just frightened of the whole life change in general I have to admit. I regularly get nausea and have bad acid reflux and don't want to aggravate it full on just yet. Maybe if I drag out the transition for a month or two I can creep up on all these health issues without any major problems? It turns out I am just loaded with questions haha. Once I feel pretty comfortable with my transition THEN I will do the 30 day challenge. I would want to really commit 100% ya know?

Sorry for the lengthy response, I am in a talky sort of mood right now =)

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I am new to this forum, and have been researching health foods for about 1-2 years, now. I also have some formal education in the chemistry of biological systems.

If you have been smoking for some time, you probably have a lot of toxic combustion by-products built up in your body. Cruciferous vegetables (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruciferous_vegetables for a list) have constituents (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isothiocyanate) which have been shown to increase the body's production of "detoxifying" enzymes, which have a protective effect on cells and break down foreign chemicals.

I juice a lot of red and green cabbage. I find that a twin gear juicer works best for especially leafy products like kale - the grinding action releases a lot more of the juice.

If you are after the aforementioned beneficial constituents of cruciferous vegetable juice, it would be most effective to juice the vegetable by itself then let the pure juice sit for about 5 minutes before drinking it. Those constituents are converted to their active form by a chemical reaction that takes place after the cell walls are broken down.

PM me for more information on this phenomenon or links to more information.