Global Juice Feast Day Twenty Eight!

I Love Cucumber!!
Juice Feast Day 28

The Daily Juice Journal:

This morning we got up and made six quarts of GVJ with romaine, spinach, parsley, cilantro, kale, cucumber, celery, carrot, and yam. We also made four quarts of orange, pineapple and lime. Then we made 1 quart of grapefruit and garlic. Sounds kind of like yesterday doesn’t it? Yes, a lot like yesterday!

DAVID:

3 QUARTS GVJ, 2.5 QUARTS FRUIT.

TOTAL JUICE: 5.5 QUARTS

KATRINA:

3 QUARTS GVJ, 2.5 QUARTS FRUIT.

TOTAL JUICE: 5.5 QUARTS

Added to juices: MSM, bee pollen, Vitamineral Green, Spirulina, Hemp Oil, Kelp Granules.

Also taken: NCD, Vitalzym, MSM, Antioxidant Extreme, and water.

Your Questions:

I have started the Global Juice Feast with all of you... and have really enjoyed it. I did not lose much weight at all... on day 23 I think I have lost something like 3 kg - 6 pounds. BUT... my period is missing, FIRST TIME EVER! And this is what scares me. My periods have always been so super regular!
I have been experiencing all the PMS syndroms... but no period... this scares me because it may be indicative that I am missing minerals and perhaps iron? Am I becoming anemic on the Juice Feast? Am I exhausing my body rather than helping it?
A few months prior to this feasting I did have a blood test - and my doc told me I was EXTREMELY low on ferritin. She prescribed me (synthetic) iron supplement - but I did not take it and I thought I can correct it with all the green juices and other iron rich raw vegan foods. I have been consuming A LOT of green juices every day. All done by the book.... so what it going on?

What am i to do with missing period?!?!?! What am I to do with the low iron ?!?!! Is my missing the period an indication that my ferritin levels are even lower and this is why my body is holding on to the iron reserve?

I have been feeling quite weak and tired while on this Juice Feast... none of all the great energy everyone is raving about ... and after work - when I want to be active and excercise... I feel exhausted and cannot do much more that to relax on my sofa...

Could it be that the Juice Feasting is not for me at this time of my life? Should I interrupt the feasting and start a modified Juice Feast which includes smoothies and salads, etc? What should I do on this Juice Feast to increase the iron levels...and I have been consuming A LOT of greens including spinach and kale and parsley & bunch of celery / day, etc...

Is Juice Feasting bad for me?

~Nettle

We Say:

Hello Nettle!

This is a common experience for women on a Juice Feast, and it can be quite disconcerting. For those of us who do not experience a complete disappearance of our period, we will often experience a shift in our cycle. Sometimes women will have heavier bleeding than usual due to the body using this time of month to detox as much a possible. Some women will have very short, light periods, for me this has been the case. Some women, like yourself, will miss their period all together.

In our experience this is all a part of cleansing, healing, re-building, and re-structuring your body. Every single one of us will respond differently to this process.

The biggest reason that women miss their cycle (besides being pregnant) is due to being underweight. The women's body says "if I don't have enough body mass to make a baby, I'm going to make sure that I'm not going to get pregnant" Any animal in the wild will not get pregnant unless there is enough food around to nourish a new, growing baby.

Other reasons for missing your moon can be vigorous exercise or athletic training, emotional stress, hormonal imbalances, malnourishment, if you are breast feeding, chronic illness, and/or thyroid imbalance.

We know of several women who have missed their period for times up to as long as five months, and then had it return once things balanced out again for them.

Other signs to watch for WHILE also missing your period that can signal a potential problem are hair loss, changes in vision, headaches, and breast secretions and/or milk production.

If you are experiencing any of these symptoms along with the loss of your period, please consult your health professional.

You can also check out this article from www.mothernature.com to see if anything there resonates with you.

Nettle, because you have weight to loose rather than weight to gain, and because you have had test results showing low iron levels, it would be my guess that you are not absorbing the nutrients from your juices very well, and have most likely not been assimilating the nutrition from your food for a long time as well. This is also a very common problem that we encounter. Juice Feasting addresses all of these issues very well given time! Remember too that often with cleansing, things get worse before they get better!

Because we are not doctors, and we are also not working with you personally, we can’t answer your questions with certainty. Please do work with your health professional on these health challenges.

We can tell you that what you are describing could all be linked to poor assimilation of nutrients, and what is possibly behind the anemia and the period loss are one common underlying condition: poor HCl (Hydrochloric/stomach Acid) production by the parietal cells in your stomach.

Poor HCl production is common among westerners who have eaten a SAD or even cooked diet for many, many years, and part of the reason is because of low amounts of organic sodium - our main alkalinzing mineral - coming back into the system, and due to dehydration, which is important for proper HCl production. Also, we tend to dehydrate as we go more times around the sun, regardless of our cuisine and lifestyle (but a diet of water-rich foods helps immensely).

Good HCl is important for the digestion of protein. Your stomach acid should be at a pH of .5, and for many of us, it is not. A low HCl activates pesinogen enzymes, which break down protein chains into amino acids so they can be re-linked and used by your body. If you do not have good HCl, this digestive process done by the pepsinogen enzymes activated by the HCl will not occur, and you get poor protein assmiliation.

Iron assimilation is also linked to HCl production. Victoria Boutenko writes in Green for Life:

"Most minerals, including such important ones as Zinc, Iron, Calcium and the B-Complex vitamins (folic acid and others) need certain amounts of stomach acid in order to be absorbed at all. Without stomach acid, nutritional deficiencies inevitably develop leading to disease."

Please consider beginning to supplement with HCl. One place I know you can get an excellent supplement is the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center Dispensary. Go to www.treeoflife.nu, find their number and ask for the dispensary. You will want to get Quantum HCl and Quantum HCl Activator by Premier Research Labs. Or go to your local health food store and get an HCl supplement, and use as directed with your meals.

I don’t imagine that it is the low fat that is causing your challenges, but rather a poor assimilation of nutrition.

I hope this helps! With love and peaceful steps!!

Personal Journal:

Hello, hello!

The days are all flowing into one another here in Patagonia. I can’t believe it is Friday already! Each day holds similar yet radically different moments, complete with butterflies, lavender blooms, poppies at the road side, skin turning slowly more and more golden in the sunshine, a subtle yet significant shift in body, mind, and spirit occurring every day.

I can’t even quite say today what exactly is shifting, but I know I feel better and better in my body every day, my eyes are clear and see things in sharp focus, my sense of smell makes me feel like I must be a dog not a person, my skin has me returning to it again and again just to make sure I wasn’t imagining its softness, my breath tastes sweet and sweat smells yummy. It is so nice being a natural human! I want to leap into the Matrix and say “Humans don’t stink! We smell really scrummy!”

My weight has remained quite the same since beginning on March 1st. In total I have dropped between 4 and 5 pounds, and then I will go back up again! But what I do notice is that my shape is shifting, and I feel my body is simply doing a trade of old cake and bread cells for orange and spinach cells! Things are firming up, to put it another way. I have decided to be happy about this, as it means that I am assimilating much of the lovely nutrition from my juices, and that my digestive system is doing its job! I am maintaining a healthy body weight on juices.

Enemas? Not as often anymore. I am still doing them 2 out of three days or so, David not so often. Today I have gone twice without any prompting. If you still have weight to loose, go ahead and continue with the enemas, they will help you body to move stuff along much faster!

Do you have your BreakStone Tea and coffee for coffee enemas ready for Day 30?? We are going to start some liver cleansing darling!! More on that to come….

Happy juicing,

With love and hugs,

Katrina and David Rain