How To Make A Super Heart Health Juice

Graphic © herbshealthhapiness.com. Photo © Half-Cup Global Enterprises

You might wish to mix up a super heart health juice of fresh orange, pomegranate and pink grapefruit, such as the delicious one in the image that our friends made recently!

It’s super easy! Simple select one of each of these three fruits and for best results, fresh squeeze the juices yourself and consume / refrigerate right away (or even just eat the fresh, unjuiced fruit). If you have herbs growing in your garden, you could add a decorative mint leaf or other herb for presentation as depicted.

Benefits of Pomegranate, Orange and Pink Grapefruit

Why should you want to try this? For lots of reasons. There are tons of scientific studies on the health benefits of these fruit and we’ve selected a few: Pomegranate juice has been found by scientific researchers to reverse arterial plaque and improve other cardiovascular parameters when consumed daily over a period of time. ^[1]

Fresh orange and grapefruit juices have been found by scientists to contain high quantities of numerous antioxidants, anthocyanins and other beneficial phytochemicals – and the positive influence on plasma lipid metabolism and plasma antioxidant activity could make fresh orange and grapefruit juices a valuable supplement for disease-preventing diets. ^[2] Anthocyanins have also been associated with sharpness of vision, protection of the eyes against macular degeneration, anti-cancer qualities and more.

Grapefruit is also a natural source of tryptophan, a substance that is the natural “building block” for serotonin – nature’s “happiness chemical”. This may provide a gentle, natural mood lift – especially in winter – and it’s interesting to note that turkey meat and cashes are also tryptophan sources. Note that there’s a list of medications that grapefruit may interact with (see foot of article for this).

Getting Optimal Nutrition From Your Juices: A Brief Tutorial

First note that the benefits found by researchers are much higher in organic, fresh fruit than in canned or packaged drinks. It’s been demonstrated by the latest science that organic fruit is actually higher in antioxidants and super-healthful components such as anthocyanins than the non-organic variety. It’s also lower in pesticide residues and yes, these do get inside the fruit.

Commercially produced juice that has been processed, reconstituted, heat treated and so on, plus has been sitting in a can or plastic bottle for ages, is going to be “ok” but probably not stellar. Many packaged fruit juices, assuming they are even pure juice, are typically very low in actual vitamin C. Sometimes vitamin C is artificially added in order to bring levels back up again!

Using a hi-speed blender is not ideal for making juices. Why? Because the super high speed blades introduce a lot of oxygen into the juice, causing it to oxidize faster. You know how apples go brown if you leave them out? That effect, accelerated. Also, the blades may even “smash” some of the nutritional components.

The oxidization effect is also minimized by consuming the juice as soon as it is prepared. Thus it makes sense in this case to make up just the amount you are going to use, if possible.

Hand squeezing is a really good way to go. But if you really want to pull out all the stops, you could invest in a super high quality juicer such as the Welles, Champion or even the super-expensive “Rolls Royce” of juicers, the PURE Juicer (these are Amazon links) that are designed to press the fruit in the “old school” way, so as to pull the optimal nutrition and vitality from the fruit and put it in your body. Your life is worth it.

A truly great investment in your health might be to prepare at least one meal or juice per day from all fresh, natural “one ingredient” foods. Give it a whirl! And then tell us whether you feel better, more alive, more awake… 😉

Grapefruit Should Be Avoided By People On Certain Medications

Safety Note: Grapefruit juice should be avoided by those taking the following medications:

Statins (cholesterol-lowering drugs): lovastatin (Mevacor), atorvastatin (Lipitor), simvastatin(Zocor, Vytorin)

Antihistamines: ebastine

Calcium channel blockers (blood pressure drugs): nitrendipine, felodipine (Plendil), nifedipine (Adalat, Procardia)

Psychiatric drugs: buspirone (BuSpar), triazolam (Halcion), carbamazepine (Tegretol), diazepam (Valium), midazolam (Versed), sertraline (Zoloft)

Immunosuppressants: cyclosporine (Neoral), tacrolimus (Prograf)

Pain medications: methadone

Impotence drug (erectile dysfunction): sildenafil (Viagra)

HIV medication: saquinavir (Invirase)

Antiarrhythmics: amiodarone (Cordarone) ^[3]