The first home juice extractor was invented in the 1930s. It was called the Norwalk Juicer, created by nutritionist Dr. Norman Walker. His juicer worked by grating produce, placing the resulting mash in a bag, and then squeezing the bag under a hydraulic press. The next big innovation came in 1955 with the Champion juicer. The Champion was the first to pioneer the idea of forcing the pulp through a screen during the grating process. Manufacturers started coming up with hundreds of models. They experimented with different modes of extraction, and models became smaller and easier to use over time.

Advantages of Juicing
Juicing’s biggest health benefit can be summarized in one phrase: cellular cleansing. Cleansing the body is not a new concept. We are all cleansing right now, and have been since the moment of conception. Every time we breathe out, we have cleansed our body of the metabolic waste known as carbon dioxide. Every time we have a bowel movement, our body is eliminating old cellular material. Cleansing occurs because the body’s cells are constantly dying and being replaced with new cells. Spleen and liver and stomach cells do it, intestinal walls do it, even bones and muscle cells do this regeneration circle of life. The goal of vegetable juicing is to improve this spring cleaning regeneration process. Juicing works well at cleansing as raw, enzymatically active liquid requires very little digestive work to process, allowing vegetable juice to get into the system quickly. Squeezed vegetable juice is nutrient-dense. This concentration acts to supercharge the system in the same way that herbal tinctures work. Another important, often overlooked reason is that juicing cleans the liver. The next big advance in understanding health will be in acknowledging the importance of self-detoxifying and desludging our liver. Sure, if you look into any human biology book, it already tells us that there are now over 700 known functions of the liver. But what we do not realize is how our liver cannot function optimally when it is clogged. Liver cleansing is actually easy, because the number one job of the liver is to cleanse the blood. In other words, every drop of your nine pints of blood runs constantly through the liver, removing toxins and metabolic waste every second of every day of your life. Since crushed vegetable juice goes quickly into the blood stream, it goes quickly into the liver as well. A cleansed liver leaves us feeling better; improving its function seems to affect everything from mental clarity and focus to emotions to sleep to how stress is handled. It improves our digestion, our skin, and can even improve how we perceive and deal with relationships.

What to Juice
Every plant has distinct properties and effects on our body, and since life is an experiment, you can juice anything you want.

General Juicing Tips
Start a simple experiment. Drink one to two cups of juice every day for 28 days. Juice lasts in a refrigerated tightly closed glass jar for at least two or three days, so you can juice every other day. There are two types of juice.

1. Delicious juice. This is the kind that you drink and immediately think “ahhh!”
2. Shot Glass juice. This is the kind of medicinal juice that you sip and immediately make a face. This is the intensely green drink, the kind that immediately opens up every duct in your gall bladder and liver. Try a little of both kinds each week.

If you do use fruit in your juice, especially apple, do not eat anything solid for 60 to 90 minutes afterwards, to prevent indigestion. Let the juice do its work by itself, so that it is the only thing in your digestive tract. A pinch of Celtic gray sea salt can perk up many juices. Use ginger all the time, especially in combination with apple. Wheatgrass is an alkalinizing miracle unto itself.
Squeezing vegetables is not the end-all and be-all to staying healthy. And it is certainly not the main ingredient of any diet. But it helps to stay flexible and symptom-free. Like many of the great ideas and concepts that we learn, juicing is one more brilliant tool that we can use to stay healthy. Try a 28-day program, where you eat what you normally eat, but you also add a cup or two of freshly prepared vegetable juice each day. Do not be alarmed if you go through a bit of discomfort in the first couple weeks. It is normal and temporary, and the blessing of the plant’s powerful nourishment. Remember that we are all our own walking Petri dish, and others need to hear of your experiences… enjoy life.