Stop Doing "Juice Cleanses" in January, Do This Instead!
January is here and so is the “New Year, New You” marketing machine.
Everywhere you look, there’s an ad promising that a 3-day juice cleanse will magically flush out holiday toxins and reset your body. I want to offer a different perspective. One rooted in physiology, not trends.
Let’s start with an uncomfortable truth: drinking nothing but juice for three days is not a medical detox. In fact, for many people, extreme juice fasting does the opposite of what it promises. Studies show that prolonged liquid fasting can crash blood sugar, spike cortisol by 20–30%, stress the adrenals, and actually increase oxidative stress, leaving you feeling worse, not better.
If you’ve ever done a cleanse and ended up shaky, headachy, nauseous, or exhausted… that wasn’t “toxins leaving.” That was biology waving a red flag.
How Real Detoxification Actually Works
True detoxification isn’t about flushing your system with water or juice. It’s a complex enzymatic process that happens primarily in your liver and it occurs in two very specific phases.
Phase 1: Oxidation (The Unlock)
Think of toxins like tightly tied trash bags. In Phase 1, your liver uses enzymes and nutrients; especially B vitamins and glutathione to “open the bag.” Important detail most people miss: The toxin is now more reactive and potentially more toxic than it was before.
Phase 2: Conjugation (The Neutralizer)
This is where detox actually becomes safe. Your liver attaches a molecule to that reactive toxin to neutralize it and make it water-soluble so it can be excreted. This phase requires nutrients especially amino acids (protein), sulfur, and minerals. No nutrients = no neutralization.
The Juice Cleanse Trap
Here’s the problem with most juice cleanses: They’re high in sugar and almost completely devoid of protein and amino acids. So what happens? You may stimulate Phase 1 — unlocking toxins but you starve Phase 2 — the phase that makes those toxins safe to eliminate.
The result? A flood of reactive toxins circulating with nowhere to go.
This is why so many people feel awful during a cleanse. Headaches. Nausea. Brain fog. Fatigue. That’s not “detox.” That’s oxidative stress.
A Better Way to Reset in 2026
If you want to support your liver after the holidays, you don’t need starvation you need a functional medicine approach that supports both detox phases.
That means:
• Removing the burden
Cutting alcohol, processed sugar, and inflammatory foods that overload detox pathways
• Fueling the pathway
Eating adequate protein (amino acids), cruciferous vegetables (sulfur), and using targeted binders to help escort toxins out through the gut
This is the foundation of my Let It Cleanse program. It’s designed to support your biology not stress it, shock it, or punish it. Because real detox doesn’t make you feel worse. It helps your body do what it already knows how to do, efficiently, safely, and intelligently.