@Scorpio: Detox and disease are essentially the same thing. When the body goes into a diseased state and produces symptoms, it's trying to heal itself. Notice how many symptoms of disease involve trying to expel something from the body -- sneezing, watery eyes, sweating, coughing, vomiting, etc. Apppetite often drops during a disease as well, so the body has a chance to catch up on elimination without having to deal with digestion.
A dietary change can trigger a detox/diseased state, often within the first few days. But the way you know whether this is a good thing is how you feel further down the road, long after the initial detox. Do you feel better than you did before the detox, about the same, or worse? What other results did you gain? Did you lose weight? Did your eyesight improve? Do you feel mentally clearer? Do you need less sleep? Does physical exercise feel easier? Do you have more stamina? And so on...
If you just had a temporary illness and go back to feeling the same or worse afterwards, that wasn't much of a detox then, was it? You've only maintained the status quo and restored your previous equilibrium. But if you notice a long-term shift in how you feel from that point onward, such as I did after going 100% raw, then you know you're on to something.
Now the people that I've talked to who've done a juice feast often change their diets afterwards as well. For starters they tend to eat a bit less food, and they eat less emotionally. The juice feast raises their awareness of their eating habits so much that they aren't the same afterwards. Some kind of permanent change is created.
If the benefits of juice feasting were temporary and only lasted as long as the juice feast itself, that would be interesting, but that isn't what I'm after. I'm more interested in the long-term effects.
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