There are two common systems of juicers: the centrifugal and the masticating.
The centrifugal juicer presses the material against a spinning grater that shreds it, throwing the juice in one direction and the pulp, peel and skin in another. Some of the differences in the models I have used are a small feeding shute versus a larger one. The smaller requires more prep of the fruits and veggies to get them down to an acceptable size. The larger lets whole apples, tomatoes, carrots drop right in and be pressed down against the blade without cutting into smaller sections. Both work fine, less effort is nice.
The masticating juicer is a different structure with a slow moving motor that has gears enabling grinding of anything. It is often a quieter, slower moving machine that some would contend gets more juice from the first pass through the machine. The masticating does a better job of juicing leafy veggies like spinach, kale, chard and wheatgrass.
There are some concerns in literature comparing the two methods. Dr Max Gerson, the physician who created the Gerson Therapy, wrote that the centrifugal juicer flings all the juice through a screen, exposing it all to unnecessary oxygen, shortening it's shelf life (recommending immediate drinking for best result.) He also expressed a concern that the centrifugal process creates ions that cancel the opposite ions in the fruit and vegetables, producing a lesser nutritional juice.
The masticating juicer quietly "chews" the material, separating the juice and pulp within a closed system that, literature says, allows for refrigeration for drinking in the next couple of days.
I was perfectly happy with both of my centrifugal juicers. An older model whose maker I forget, and a borrowed Breville Juice Fountain have been very satisfactory. I've recently returned the Breville to it's owner, and have just received my Omega 8004 masticating juicer. In the interim, I've been blending my fruits and veggies in a Vita Mix blender. I've found that I do like to refrigerate some of my drinks for consuming later, so I chose the Omega 8004. The 8006 is the same machine, but chrome, and a little more expensive.
The Gerson Institute recommends the Norwalk Two-Step process Juicer and Press for use while doing the Gerson Therapy. If you are considering including the Gerson Therapy to your fight after a diagnosis, and you have the $2400 for this Rolls Royce of juicers, don't hold back. But if you are approaching this material with a desire to build your immune system, with an eye toward warding off disease, then you will find defenders and users of every type of juicer.
Monday, October 1, 2012
The Purpose of This Blog
I have contacted high school classmates (we are Baby Boomers) about the phenomenon of juicing to maintain health, and as a part of a healing regimen for serious chronic disease. I have found that I am not alone, we have other students of this information among us who will be able to add their experience and research to the information compiled here. I am not offering medical advice. I hope the information here will inspire others to experiment and adopt some adjustments to their diets that will improve health and strengthen immune systems to avoid future chronic disease.
Sunday, September 30, 2012
Juicing vs. Blending Fruits and Veggies
I've been juicing and blending vegetables and fruits for almost a year. Let me distinguish between juicing and blending. Juicing is a removing the skin and pulp from a fruit or veggie, in order to get the most instantly absorbable blast of vitamins, enzymes and nutrients from the juice of raw, whole food. Blending is putting similar contents into a blender and making a drink or smoothie to get the entire fruit or veggie into the body.
What's the nutritional difference? Blending is a way to take in the nutrition and bulk of fruits and vegetables by drinking it. The whole item of food has value in addition to providing fuel and medicine, like keeping the entire digestive system in action, scraping and cleaning, and other essential activities. Juicing makes the vitamins, minerals and enzymes absorbable at the speed of alcohol, without the need for several hours and effort of digestion. This allows us to take in the nutrients of more food than we are actually eating and digesting. In this time of reduced nutritional value of much of our food, this jolt of quality is important to our entire system.
This is of vital importance when healing. When following the Gerson Therapy, for example, the patient drinks thirteen 8 oz glasses of different juices, spread over the entire day, in addition to eating three organic raw food meals. This "injection" of quality nutrition has speedy and powerful effects on the patient. Comfort, healing, visible reversal of symptoms often become apparent within one to 14 days. Typically, the regimen is maintained for about two years, then a maintenance program devised by each patient allows comfortable, continued, healthy living (Charlotte Gerson states that there is no official maintenance or preventive diet, there is only The Gerson Therapy. After two years of the process, each patient and their support systems are experts, so they can create valuable programs for continued health of the patient.)
What's the nutritional difference? Blending is a way to take in the nutrition and bulk of fruits and vegetables by drinking it. The whole item of food has value in addition to providing fuel and medicine, like keeping the entire digestive system in action, scraping and cleaning, and other essential activities. Juicing makes the vitamins, minerals and enzymes absorbable at the speed of alcohol, without the need for several hours and effort of digestion. This allows us to take in the nutrients of more food than we are actually eating and digesting. In this time of reduced nutritional value of much of our food, this jolt of quality is important to our entire system.
This is of vital importance when healing. When following the Gerson Therapy, for example, the patient drinks thirteen 8 oz glasses of different juices, spread over the entire day, in addition to eating three organic raw food meals. This "injection" of quality nutrition has speedy and powerful effects on the patient. Comfort, healing, visible reversal of symptoms often become apparent within one to 14 days. Typically, the regimen is maintained for about two years, then a maintenance program devised by each patient allows comfortable, continued, healthy living (Charlotte Gerson states that there is no official maintenance or preventive diet, there is only The Gerson Therapy. After two years of the process, each patient and their support systems are experts, so they can create valuable programs for continued health of the patient.)
Saving Lives With Shared Information
I began this effort, to save my own and my classmates lives, with a letter to my high school classmates. Here it is:
This is Jim Lewis, (President of the Spring 1964 Class at Lincoln.) I’m writing this email to you with two purposes:
I’ve written a letter to you that says what’s in my heart. I want us (our classmates and their families) to live long and healthy lives. Of course, I want it for everyone, but I thought I’d start with people who know me at least a little bit. My letter is below. If you’d like to hear about my mission to save both our lives, please read on, and please “Reply” with a “Yes” by deleting the “No” from the “Reply” email. Or simply “Reply” with the “No” remaining if you want to opt out.
Jim’s Letter to His Lincoln Classmates and Their Families
I've been reading books and watching documentaries about food. I started taking Kung Fu lessons and looking into eating right in order to optimize my health. While doing this, I began coming across startling information about preventing and healing heart disease, cancer and other debilitating diseases. The success rates of several alternative approaches are so impressive that I have to tell my friends about them. What I've learned is too important for me to keep to myself. My high school classmates are the first ones I’m going to.
Perhaps it was an old friend's story of coping with and surviving cancer that inspired me to look into ways to avoid it. We're all at an age where we're becoming candidates for chronic disease. Some of us are already there. What I want to do is to save all our lives. No pressure.
About eighteen months ago I stumbled onto a documentary that inspired me to start juicing vegetables and fruits. It was called "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead." After a month or so of daily juicing I had to adjust my reading glasses to a lower magnification. How cool is that?
Early in 2012 I got a chest x-ray. It showed a nodule in my lung that required a follow-up x-ray. I started pouring the fruit and vegetable juices into myself. No one was certain it was cancer, but it had my attention. The follow-up x-ray was clear. I thought it was worth mentioning.
I want us to live to be an active 100. We might also teach our offspring, friends and neighbors how to keep their immune systems functioning at their peaks. Preventing, fighting and curing cancer, heart disease, MS, Alzheimer's, diabetes and other debilitating chronic diseases is available to us. I've found a couple of ways to do this and I want to share them with you.
Several recent documentaries awakened me to actual solutions to chronic disease. Films like Healing Cancer From the Inside Out, The Gerson Miracle*, Forks Over Knives*, Dying To Have Known*, The Beautiful Truth*, Burzinski*, Food, Inc.*; Ingredients* and Forks Over Knives: Engine 2 Kitchen Rescue* have had a massive impact on me.
*Available to watch online on your Netflix account. Healing Cancer is available by mail with your Netflix account.
These films suggest that no one needs to die of heart disease, cancer or the other big killers. Physician after physician is quoted, saying that all this is avoidable. Why isn't every stricken person following one or the other of these alternative treatments? Could it be because laws in the US actually prevent physicians from recommending alternatives to the three standard cancer treatments: surgery, chemotherapy and radiation? They could lose their medical licenses and go to jail.
Three or four of these movies describe a dietary regimen that has had remarkable success fighting chronic diseases. It’s called The Gerson Therapy®. This is what I'm talking about. Its core principle is eating a very healthy diet, and that has been redefined for me. This new food program consists of juicing fruits and vegetables to saturate our bodies with healthy nutrients, while refraining from eating foods that interfere with healing. In this therapy, patients also take supplements, perform de-toxing processes and eat three organic vegetarian meals a day while fighting heart disease, cancer or other chronic diseases.
We've all read that American physicians’ training includes no more than two hours of nutritional instruction. In this limited curriculum, med students learn that Meat and Dairy comprise as much as one-half of the daily dietary requirement for healthy living. There is, however, important evidence to suggest the necessity to rethink these fundamental food choices.
In the last several months, I have adopted a not-too-severe daily regimen of juicing, either or both, fruits and vegetables. My ophthalmologist tells me my vision may be 20/15 (I still need low magnification readers in normal indoor lighting.) My vision improvement is probably due to the juice of carrots.
What I am doing with my juicer is inserting organic veggies: carrots, celery, romaine lettuce, kale, chard, spinach, and drinking the juice. If I put in too much chard or spinach or kale, I throw an apple or two into the mix to sweeten it. Fruits like apples, pears, peaches, berries, grapes, bananas, mangoes and kiwis are always tasty.
I recently bought a Vita-Mix blender and I have been throwing these same veggies into it, and drinking the result. All that pulp really makes the flavor unpredictable. Usually it is a nice surprise, but an apple or two can correct the occasional disaster. While thick smoothies are fun to drink, pulp - from a blender - slows the digestive process to the usual pace and limits the amount that can be consumed. The pulpless juices - from a juicer - allow vitamins, minerals and enzymes to rapidly enter our systems. We can also drink the equivalent nutrition of 15 to 20 pounds of vegetables and fruit in a day, essential while healing.
The Gerson Therapy® recommends juicing with the Norwalk Juicer -- the Rolls Royce of juicers. I am not using the Therapy program, which is a very precise disease-fighting regimen, because I am not fighting an illness. I am building up my immune system by dumping more nutrients into it than I ever have.
I have been using a centrifugal juicer, but after reading Gerson’s criticism of the centrifugal process I’m planning on getting a masticating juicer. (I've ordered an Omega 8004.) The Gerson plan steers people engaged in the fight for their lives away from these two types of juicers. They believe their recommended Norwalk Two-Step Juicer offers the most complete and nutritious extraction of liquid. Their materials offer the thought that the two non-Norwalk style juicers can be very effective in prevention and in building resistance to illness.
I have offered to cook for several classmates who have a family member battling cancer. I own and have watched the Gerson DVDs which teach how to do the program at home. No takers yet. I plan to train with the Gerson Institute to perform this service on their recommendation. You could also look at the documentary, "Forks Over Knives: Engine 2: Kitchen Rescue." Firefighter, Kip Esselstyn (maybe you saw him on Dr. Oz) shows two families, who want to change their shopping, cooking and eating habits, how to proceed.
While I focus on health, I've also been adjusting my attitude toward pleasure. I've been smelling more flowers, savoring flavors, noticing colors and listening more intently. I took some courses to awaken my enjoyment of touch. It kicked my love life into high gear. Now I coach people into enthusiastic, luscious love lives. What a delightful pastime for our final 35 years. And just think, we'll still be getting together at the Park and the Tennessee Grill every year, too.
I'd like to create a discussion group for my mission. I'll call it "Choose Happiness." Please take part. You can respond with a yes or a no on a reply to this email. A "yes" will put you on a list for this purpose. A "no" will keep you on the reunion list, and you will still be kept up to date on the Park and Grill mini-reunions (but no more on cancer or chronic disease curing.)
My goal is to have us live to 100 and have a much more active life. But first, let's get us safely to 70, 80 and 90. I want to help us both live a healthy and long, blissful life. Let’s be active, clear headed, appreciative, sensuous grown-ups who savor our partners, our meals, our gardens, our families and friends, and all the aspects of the last quarter+ten of our century of life.
Jim
If you’d like to learn more:
http://gerson.org/gerpress/
http://getskinnygovegan.
This is Jim Lewis, (President of the Spring 1964 Class at Lincoln.) I’m writing this email to you with two purposes:
- I want to let you know that the 2013 mini-reunions at the Vicente Park and the Tennessee Grill are scheduled for the last weekend of June, the 29th and 30th.
- I also want you to know that I’ve been studying the prevention and curing of chronic disease (heart disease, cancer, MS, Alzheimers and others) through diet. I’m so excited about this information that I feel compelled to pass along what I’m learning. I believe I can save lives by spreading this information, and I want to save both yours and mine. (I'm not selling anything)
I’ve written a letter to you that says what’s in my heart. I want us (our classmates and their families) to live long and healthy lives. Of course, I want it for everyone, but I thought I’d start with people who know me at least a little bit. My letter is below. If you’d like to hear about my mission to save both our lives, please read on, and please “Reply” with a “Yes” by deleting the “No” from the “Reply” email. Or simply “Reply” with the “No” remaining if you want to opt out.
Jim’s Letter to His Lincoln Classmates and Their Families
I've been reading books and watching documentaries about food. I started taking Kung Fu lessons and looking into eating right in order to optimize my health. While doing this, I began coming across startling information about preventing and healing heart disease, cancer and other debilitating diseases. The success rates of several alternative approaches are so impressive that I have to tell my friends about them. What I've learned is too important for me to keep to myself. My high school classmates are the first ones I’m going to.
Perhaps it was an old friend's story of coping with and surviving cancer that inspired me to look into ways to avoid it. We're all at an age where we're becoming candidates for chronic disease. Some of us are already there. What I want to do is to save all our lives. No pressure.
About eighteen months ago I stumbled onto a documentary that inspired me to start juicing vegetables and fruits. It was called "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead." After a month or so of daily juicing I had to adjust my reading glasses to a lower magnification. How cool is that?
Early in 2012 I got a chest x-ray. It showed a nodule in my lung that required a follow-up x-ray. I started pouring the fruit and vegetable juices into myself. No one was certain it was cancer, but it had my attention. The follow-up x-ray was clear. I thought it was worth mentioning.
I want us to live to be an active 100. We might also teach our offspring, friends and neighbors how to keep their immune systems functioning at their peaks. Preventing, fighting and curing cancer, heart disease, MS, Alzheimer's, diabetes and other debilitating chronic diseases is available to us. I've found a couple of ways to do this and I want to share them with you.
Several recent documentaries awakened me to actual solutions to chronic disease. Films like Healing Cancer From the Inside Out, The Gerson Miracle*, Forks Over Knives*, Dying To Have Known*, The Beautiful Truth*, Burzinski*, Food, Inc.*; Ingredients* and Forks Over Knives: Engine 2 Kitchen Rescue* have had a massive impact on me.
*Available to watch online on your Netflix account. Healing Cancer is available by mail with your Netflix account.
These films suggest that no one needs to die of heart disease, cancer or the other big killers. Physician after physician is quoted, saying that all this is avoidable. Why isn't every stricken person following one or the other of these alternative treatments? Could it be because laws in the US actually prevent physicians from recommending alternatives to the three standard cancer treatments: surgery, chemotherapy and radiation? They could lose their medical licenses and go to jail.
Three or four of these movies describe a dietary regimen that has had remarkable success fighting chronic diseases. It’s called The Gerson Therapy®. This is what I'm talking about. Its core principle is eating a very healthy diet, and that has been redefined for me. This new food program consists of juicing fruits and vegetables to saturate our bodies with healthy nutrients, while refraining from eating foods that interfere with healing. In this therapy, patients also take supplements, perform de-toxing processes and eat three organic vegetarian meals a day while fighting heart disease, cancer or other chronic diseases.
We've all read that American physicians’ training includes no more than two hours of nutritional instruction. In this limited curriculum, med students learn that Meat and Dairy comprise as much as one-half of the daily dietary requirement for healthy living. There is, however, important evidence to suggest the necessity to rethink these fundamental food choices.
In the last several months, I have adopted a not-too-severe daily regimen of juicing, either or both, fruits and vegetables. My ophthalmologist tells me my vision may be 20/15 (I still need low magnification readers in normal indoor lighting.) My vision improvement is probably due to the juice of carrots.
What I am doing with my juicer is inserting organic veggies: carrots, celery, romaine lettuce, kale, chard, spinach, and drinking the juice. If I put in too much chard or spinach or kale, I throw an apple or two into the mix to sweeten it. Fruits like apples, pears, peaches, berries, grapes, bananas, mangoes and kiwis are always tasty.
I recently bought a Vita-Mix blender and I have been throwing these same veggies into it, and drinking the result. All that pulp really makes the flavor unpredictable. Usually it is a nice surprise, but an apple or two can correct the occasional disaster. While thick smoothies are fun to drink, pulp - from a blender - slows the digestive process to the usual pace and limits the amount that can be consumed. The pulpless juices - from a juicer - allow vitamins, minerals and enzymes to rapidly enter our systems. We can also drink the equivalent nutrition of 15 to 20 pounds of vegetables and fruit in a day, essential while healing.
The Gerson Therapy® recommends juicing with the Norwalk Juicer -- the Rolls Royce of juicers. I am not using the Therapy program, which is a very precise disease-fighting regimen, because I am not fighting an illness. I am building up my immune system by dumping more nutrients into it than I ever have.
I have been using a centrifugal juicer, but after reading Gerson’s criticism of the centrifugal process I’m planning on getting a masticating juicer. (I've ordered an Omega 8004.) The Gerson plan steers people engaged in the fight for their lives away from these two types of juicers. They believe their recommended Norwalk Two-Step Juicer offers the most complete and nutritious extraction of liquid. Their materials offer the thought that the two non-Norwalk style juicers can be very effective in prevention and in building resistance to illness.
I have offered to cook for several classmates who have a family member battling cancer. I own and have watched the Gerson DVDs which teach how to do the program at home. No takers yet. I plan to train with the Gerson Institute to perform this service on their recommendation. You could also look at the documentary, "Forks Over Knives: Engine 2: Kitchen Rescue." Firefighter, Kip Esselstyn (maybe you saw him on Dr. Oz) shows two families, who want to change their shopping, cooking and eating habits, how to proceed.
While I focus on health, I've also been adjusting my attitude toward pleasure. I've been smelling more flowers, savoring flavors, noticing colors and listening more intently. I took some courses to awaken my enjoyment of touch. It kicked my love life into high gear. Now I coach people into enthusiastic, luscious love lives. What a delightful pastime for our final 35 years. And just think, we'll still be getting together at the Park and the Tennessee Grill every year, too.
I'd like to create a discussion group for my mission. I'll call it "Choose Happiness." Please take part. You can respond with a yes or a no on a reply to this email. A "yes" will put you on a list for this purpose. A "no" will keep you on the reunion list, and you will still be kept up to date on the Park and Grill mini-reunions (but no more on cancer or chronic disease curing.)
My goal is to have us live to 100 and have a much more active life. But first, let's get us safely to 70, 80 and 90. I want to help us both live a healthy and long, blissful life. Let’s be active, clear headed, appreciative, sensuous grown-ups who savor our partners, our meals, our gardens, our families and friends, and all the aspects of the last quarter+ten of our century of life.
Jim
If you’d like to learn more:
http://gerson.org/gerpress/
http://getskinnygovegan.
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