I just don't understand the skepticism and criticism towards juicing!

[aspie_and_proud]

I just cannot stand reading articles about doctors, or people who are so skeptical of juicing and even eating better in general. I don't understand how "experts" can - and I quote - chalk up the healing powers of fruits and vegetables (and juicing) to being more "psychological than physical." How does that make sense? Did I mentally make myself fat from prescription medications? Did I psychologically make myself lose 40 pounds? I don't get how you can dispute all the evidence, facts and proof that vegetables, fruit (and mostly raw) stuff is unhealthy. Yet for some reason it is no question as to the unhealthiness of dairy, meat, fast food, junk food and processed food. I can't wrap my brain around it. :/

[freespirit]

Agreed! I work at a juice bar in a gym, and the older women will look at the raw menu and say they can't have the things on the menu...then they talk about the cottage cheese they are going to eat when they get home.

So you cant eat raw fruits and veggies, but the mammary secretions of a 1000 pound animal are ok?

Our society is so brainwashed by corporate America's false nutritional guidelines!

[Gianni]

I know what you are talking about. Just go to wikipedia and look up juice fasting. They try to claim that juice fasting offers no benefits and is potentially dangerous to your health. They couldn't be more wrong or further from the truth.

[Dirkg]

The simple answer is that people will do whatever they can to avoid making an effort. They will take the latest miracle diet pill, 'low fat' junk laden with sugar, doctors will prescribe dangerous and useless drugs like statins that can kill you, they continue to eat garbage. Tell them about eating healthy vegetarian raw diet, and they get angry and act like you are some kind of freak.

[Oldone]

I will agree with freespirit, people are so brainwashed by our greedy corporate america (got to make that almighty dollar), they absolutely do not know any better. I have found that gentle persistence works, and that allows you to slowly reeducate them. It took me four years to get johnny to start juicing but he has been hanging in there for the last 7 years. The secret is to not be so strong that you put them off.

Written by Dragon NaturallySpeaking

[Living Food]

It's because doctors know virtually nothing about health, they're only taught to be drug-pushers for the pharmaceutical industry. Doctors tend to be even less open to learning about health then the average person because doctors have been exposed to even more brainwashing; they learn so much about how complicated diseases are and which drugs are used to "cure" them (ie suppress the symptoms) that by the time they get their degree they can't even comprehend something so simple as diet could have any effect on disease.

Another big problem is specialization. There are hundreds of different fields a doctor can go into, each focused on a single disease or one single segment of the human body. Each of these fields then becomes more and more complicated, obscuring the simple fact that the body is not just the sum of its parts, and that the solution to just about any disease is always the same - remove the toxins from the body, stop putting toxins in the body, fix your nutritional deficiencies, avoid harmful EMF, reduce/eliminate stress. But because most doctors are busy learning about one tiny piece of the body, they have no idea how it operates as a whole.

If you decide to keep going to a doctor [I don't bother], your best bet is to do the research yourself, find reputable papers and evidence that back up your point, and give them to him/her. Every visit you can come in with even more evidence and you'll be teaching your doctor, not the other way around *smile*

The additional benefit of such an approach is that your doctor likely "treats" many other people as well...educate your doctor about health and he/she will end up educating his/her patients about health, and before you know it you've made a huge impact for dozens of people. If people are to lazy to learn about health themselves and instead insist on going to doctors to fix their problems, educate the doctors and the doctors will spread the knowledge like wildfire.

Of course most doctors will be stubborn and refuse to believe that such simple things could cure or prevent disease, but if you persevere and show them enough credible evidence eventually they'll have no choice but to change their thinking. It's already known that most oncologists would refuse chemotherapy for themselves if they got cancer (they know how ineffective it is), so that's progress already.

If everyone here did this with their own doctors, the effect would be felt by thousands of people and that would start a chain reaction that could reach millions. Maybe I'm being too optimistic, but even if just one person benefited it would be worth the effort, no? The vast majority of people know nothing about health or nutrition, but there are thousands upon thousands of us who do...but keep it to ourselves instead of teaching others. I completely understand that some people are too timid or shy to start lecturing to people, but that's why I said just start with your doctor. If you can convert him/her, your doctor will do the lecturing for you. Look, you have the knowledge to save lives - doesn't that mean by keeping quite you are causing needless deaths? Just something to think about.

[michigan roman]

its because truth is people in power have been wrong about diet since day one , and they wont come out in all the publications / tv shows -ads / radios / etc and openly say theyve been wrong because it'll gigantically cost them in terms of peoples respect for their opinion . they come out and say look all these man made products - wonder bread - wheaties - pepsi - etc are whats been causing all our diseases / all our tetth rotting out . if we'd been eating mostly raw and the rest whole boiled or baked plant foods since day one we'd all be gigantically healthier and longer lived . so if you dont figure it out forself youll sit there and allow tv to prod you into slowly killing yourself via diet because the ruling class wont own up t their mistakes !!!!!! just like they wont own up in many instances , but choose to spend the lives of their citizens to keep them afloat when theyre lost and washed up

[Living Food]

Heck, I'll even make it easy for you.


Lesson 1:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1552366 - raw vegan diet resulted in much lower levels of certain enzymes + toxic products in the subject's stools that have been shown to cause colon cancer.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10943644 - Both rheumatoid arthritis patients and fibromyalgic patients had significant improvements when put on a living food diet.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9117178 - Raw vegan diet rich in fermented foods changed (for the better) the fecal bacteria content in 43 rhematoid arthritis patients. "We conclude that a vegan diet changes the faecal microbial flora in RA patients, and changes in the faecal flora are associated with improvement in RA activity.” My emphasis.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7491884 - 21 people on a living food diet had significantly higher dietary intake and blood serum, levels of many antioxidants then their cooked food counterparts. “Compared with the omnivores, the vegans had significantly higher blood concentrations of beta-carotene, vitamin C, and vitamin E, as well as higher erythrocyte superoxide dismutase activity...the "living food diet" provides significantly more dietary antioxidants than does the cooked, omnivorous diet, and that the long-term adherents to this diet have a better antioxidant status than do omnivorous control subjects.”

There are more, but I can't do all the research for you, that would be no fun *smile* Also find studies showing that the SAD, or components of it, causes most diseases; there's an abundance of such studies around.

[Living Food]

Another worthwhile "project" would be convincing your dentist about the dangers of fluoridation and mercury fillings.

Some resources to use:

* fluoridealert.org
* the International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology (http://iaomt.org/)
* the Fluoride Debate booklet (http://www.fluoridedebate.com/Downlo...ridedebate.pdf ) - Lengthy, but it rebuts all of the erroneous statements made by the ADA and if you read it carefully you will know enough to convince anyone about the dangers of fluoride.
* The Case Against Fluoridation paper (http://www.newjerseywatereducation.c...uoridation.pdf)
etc.

Few people know that the fluoride put in our drinking water isn't pharmaceutical grade sodium fluoride, but mostly toxic industrial waste from the fertilizer industry like fluorosilicic acid and hexafluorosilicic acid.

[MysticTree]

Lots of people assume that fluoride is added to their water. Over here in the UK it largely isn't :)

[Living Food]

Lucky; over here in the US it largely is.

Fluoride is actually not allowed to be added to the water of many countries because they know how toxic it is, just like many countries refuse to allow GM food. We in the US are just particularly dumb (ie our politicians are particularly greedy so lobbyists essentially make the laws around here).

[Revvell]

Another worthwhile "project" would be convincing your dentist about the dangers of fluoridation and mercury fillings.

I don't "do" projects in "trying" to educate those who've spent hundreds and thousands of dollars going to school to be educated. I just tell my dentist (whomever s/he might be at the moment) that when I get my teeth cleaned they do NOT use flouridated products. I had one kid IN school (USC) who told me she HAD to use drugs to numb my gums for a deep scaling. Told her she didn't and wouldn't. She didn't. They often do it automatically so they can charge more when it's totally unnecessary. Our next argument was about using a flouride polisher. Had to get instructor over for that one. No flouride!

[Gianni]

I am not sure if flouride is bad in toothpaste because it probably helps to kill off a lot of bacteria. However, it has no business being in the water supply and should never be ingested.

[MysticTree]

Can I just say when I've been to the dentist lately she asked if I wanted a local when she planned to drill and no offer was made for the scaling. Over here they like to keep costs down. Though we still pay for NHS dental care, it's reduced and at the dentist I go to, it is pretty cheap!

[Revvell]

Not cheap here. That's why we go to dental schools such as USC or, many I know, go to Mexico. You'd pay about half of what you'd pay here. The last dentist I went to doesn't even take insurance (not that I have any.)

Can I just say when I've been to the dentist lately she asked if I wanted a local when she planned to drill and no offer was made for the scaling. Over here they like to keep costs down. Though we still pay for NHS dental care, it's reduced and at the dentist I go to, it is pretty cheap!