At the risk of sounding like your typical blogger…I would be lying if I said celery juice didn’t completely change my life. It would be wrong of me not to share this with the world because it truthfully healed my gut in major ways. Before juicing, I would always see people talking about it online and thought oh geez, another trendy Instagram thing. But then the more I read and listened to people’s stories, the more intrigued I became.
Why I Started Juicing
I have suffered from IBS my entire life. Then, at 21, I developed severe acid reflux to the point where eating anything at all gave my heartburn and a throat so sore I didn’t want to talk. I was damned if I ate, but then also damned when I didn’t eat anything at all because acid would build up. After going on two pills twice daily (one for IBS and one for my reflux) for years, I decide I was over it. Everyone knows it’s never good to be taking anything for too long, if at all, and I was over it! Especially because it didn’t even completely heal/help me, it only kept my symptoms and suffering at bay of 70% of the time at BEST. And that’s only if I kept an extremely limited, bland diet. I decided it was time for a change and I reduced my reflux pill from twice a day to once a day to start. Then I heard about celery juice.
All over the internet, bloggers with liver problems, Crohn’s disease, IBS, psoriasis….you name it – ALL were swearing by the same thing: celery juice. So I ignored it until I couldn’t anymore and I thought…what’s the worst that could happen? It’s not like celery is sponsoring these bloggers, so they must be being truthful if they have nothing to gain, right? Right. So I bought a juicer on amazon and figured at the very worst, I’m only out some money for a juicer (and I can just return it) with nothing else to lose!
The First Two Weeks of Juicing
During my first week of juicing, I HATED the taste. It took me forever to get the green juice down and it was unpleasant. So I decided to mix it with 1/2 of a cucumber (also juiced). This took the taste from unpleasant to bearable…and then it started to become very refreshing. I kept reducing the amount of cucumber I put in it over time and after the first 2 weeks I just drank it straight and found that it tasted so refreshing now all on its own! It was the strangest thing, but it grew on me to the point where I now CRAVE it in the morning! (NOTE: Chop off the leaves because they taste bitter. All I do to prep is rinse and then chop off the leaves and base!)
It wasn’t all uphill from there though. That first week it felt good going down, but then would mess with my stomach a little bit. I reached out to one of the bloggers that swore by celery juice and she replied that it was totally normally because the juice was putting my gut through a detox. As skeptical as I was, she convinced me to keep at it and she was right! It was just flushing me out and was totally over after about a week or two. After this passed, the only feeling I felt was INCREDIBLE. I felt more energized, my reflux was at bay despite the fact that I decrease my pill intake, and my gut felt completely cooled down. Typically, my gut feels like a hot fiery pit of lava. When I started drinking celery juice, after about 20 minutes of finishing my glass, this cooling sensation came over my gut and it just felt calmer. I couldn’t believe it! I was ready to spread the gospel and proceeded to let all of my friends and coworkers with gut issues in on this weird, unbelievable juice trick.
How to Juice
Everything I know about juicing comes from The Medical Medium. While I have not read his book, I have read about his belief in celery juicing on his website. He says to drink 16 oz of pure celery juice (not mixed with anything – no lemon, no apple, etc.) each morning on an empty stomach. Then, wait at least 20 minutes before consuming anything else. He also says its best to drink it immediately after you make it so you can get all of its benefits. (Side note: My friend tried making it the night before and it turned into sludge so she threw it out – GROSS.) And that’s it!
The biggest issue people have with juicing once they acquire a taste for it is cleaning that darn juicer! Is it annoying? Yup! But it’s not hard, and it now only takes me 5 minutes because I’m so used to it now. Plus, as annoying as it is, I feel like it speaks volumes for how much celery juice has helped me because I still am committed to dealing with a juicer every single day. The pros far outweigh the cons and you really get faster and faster and cleaning it. Also, most of the parts of my juicer and go right in the dishwasher, although I always wind up hand washing it when I get home from work.
The Skeptics
While I haven’t read Medical Medium’s entire book and also don’t necessarily know how I feel about his belief that spirit gives him medical knowledge of how to heal holistically – I frankly don’t care! It worked for me. While he could just be making up stories and although there’s no science to back up his celery juice theory, I just don’t care! After a couple weeks of juicing I completely stopped taking my acid reflux pills after almost ten years. And it’s working for so many others too.
Leave a Reply