Juice therapy is the practice of drinking raw fruit and vegetable juice—either as part of a fast or in addition to other food—to cleanse and detoxify the body while flooding the cells with healthful nutrients. Organic fruits and vegetables are usually chosen because they don’t contribute any pollutants of their own and because organic produce has been proven to contain as many as 15 times the nutrients of commercially grown produce. Organic herbs and grasses, especially the highly detoxifying wheat grass, may be included in juice therapy beverages to add special healing qualities.

Why try juice therapy? Fresh fruits and vegetables contain not only a powerhouse of nutrients, but they also are full of structured water and enzymes. Produce contains a high percentage of water, and it’s the perfect kind of water to hydrate you—water without weak hydrogen bonds that interfere with absorption. The enzymes in fresh produce help “unlock” your body’s cells on a molecular level, so the water and nutrients can enter.

For the best juice therapy, juice it yourself

While a wide variety of fruit and vegetable juices are available at the grocery store—and even organic varieties at the health food store—most of those juices are processed with heat to extend their shelf life and keep the manufacturing process sterile. Unfortunately, any juice that has been exposed to temperatures above 114 degrees F. is likely to contain few active enzymes, because even relatively low levels of heat can kill the enzymes.

To create healthful juices for juice therapy, it makes sense to obtain the fresh, raw fruits and vegetables and juice them yourself. The enzymes are perfectly preserved and stored in the whole fruit (or veggie) until the juicing process begins, so you’ll be sure to get the water and enzymes intact.

Juice therapy keeps you alkaline

Many experts believe that a healthy body is slightly alkaline in nature, while diseased or stressed cells are slightly acidic. Juice therapy is an easy way to restore the body to its natural alkalinity because most raw fruits and vegetables are naturally alkaline—unlike cooked foods of all sorts, including cooked fruits and vegetables, which are slightly acidic. Produce consumed without adequate enzymes is often not thoroughly digested, and partially or poorly digested food is highly acidic in the digestive tract.

It’s harder for our bodies to digest acidic food, so a continuous diet of acidic foods (or poorly digested food) can lead to cellular starvation, where few vital nutrients are ever supplied. Weak, starved cells are vulnerable to a number of ailments.

What about acidic foods like citrus fruit, and even bell peppers, which are high in ascorbic acid (Vitamin C)? Paradoxically, eating acidic fruits and vegetables does not create acidity in the body in the long run, although some raw juice fans say it’s better to eat a whole citrus fruit—with the pulp—because it keeps the blood sugar from spiking. Sugar without fiber can make the body more acidic.

Juice therapy takes it easy on the digestive tract

Raw fruit and vegetable juice delivers nutrients to your body’s cells faster and more efficiently than any other kind of food you can eat, and it gives your digestive system a break. In a conventional meal that includes meat and grain products, up to 80 percent of the nutrients in the food may be expended in the process of digestion itself—leaving precious few nutrients for your cells to use as they function. Raw juice is so simple to digest that it uses only a tiny percentage of the nutrients it supplies, leaving you with more nutrients at a cellular level. That’s why juice therapy is considered an excellent choice for people who are ill or injured and need to repair a lot of cells in a hurry.

Juice therapy releases the nutrients

One of the reasons raw juice is so easy to digest is that it contains little fiber. Many of the valuable nutrients in produce is locked up within walls of fiber; to release the nutrients, we need to thoroughly chew the food. Fiber eventually passes out of the body undigested, and if it hasn’t been chewed, the nutrients may still be locked inside. Juicing helps “chew” the fruits and vegetables for you, breaking down the fiber so that the nutrients are immediately available. This may be especially important in some herbs and grasses.

To break down wheat grass to the point where its nutrients are available, for example, might require chewing a mouthful of wheat grass for several minutes. Since most of us don’t take that much time with our food, juicing gives us a way to access wheat grass nutrients and not be late for work.

Don’t we need fiber? We do, and luckily, raw fruit and vegetable juice still contains plenty of fiber—normally enough for our normal purposes on a juice therapy fast. If you are concerned about the decrease in fiber during juice therapy, you might want to eat some whole juiced fruits, pulp and all, to keep your digestive tract running smoothly. You can do this by using an ordinary blender to juice your fruits and veggies, then drinking the juice with the pulp. Some people find that making smoothies with raw fruits and vegetables—by adding ice cubes or frozen fruit—makes the pulp go down more easily.