Fruit Juice Diet Causes Woman Irreversible Brain Damage

A woman in her 40s was admitted to the hospital in Israel with irreversible brain damage after being put on a strict juice diet from an alternative therapist. This diet consisted of only water and fruit juice.

Medics say she was on the diet for three weeks as her weight dropped below 90 pounds. This diet caused a salt imbalance and professionals fear the damage is permanent.

Related - Water Intake Calculator

Fun fact: Israel does not require qualifications to call yourself a therapist so anyone can say they are a therapist and give out health advice for profit.

She was only allowed to consume fruit juice and water for this diet, and she lasted three weeks before visiting a hospital in Tel Aviv, Israel. Consuming only fruit juice and water lead to the salt imbalance. She's been under observation for a few days, but the doctors' outlook is not looking good.

Reports suggest her weight is currently less than 87 pounds.

Professionals Believe Water Intoxication to Blame

Professionals believe she is suffering from hyponatraemia, or water intoxication. This is where your body has low levels of sodium in the blood due to drinking so much water.

Salt is an important electrolyte and our body relies on it for many functions — including regulating the fluid levels inside and outside the cells in our body. So when our salt levels drop too low, fluid moves into our cells and causes them to sell. When it happens in the brain, this can cause potentially life-threatening damage.

As cells engorge themselves with fluid, that excess fluid accumulation is called cerebral edema. This can affect your brain stem and cause central nervous system dysfunction. In more severe cases, water intoxication can cause seizures, brain damage, coma, and even death.

You've probably heard of water intoxication before.

Normally, water intoxication occurs in people from sporting events like long-distance marathons or people who have had an upset stomach and want to rehydrate.

Some professionals speculate that some extreme "detox" diets could result to this type of extreme... but those are rare cases.

Detox Fasts

Simply put, any suggestion that the human body can be detoxed with a juice cleanse is simply incorrect. Our bodies are naturally designed to remove toxins from our liver and kidneys. The juice cleans won't perform much of a detox.

While there isn't much evidence that a detox necessarily does anything bad to you, there isn't much evidence that it does much good for you, either.

We all want a magic bullet to lose weight very quickly, and we will do anything to find it. Even if that means we have to completely ignore the fact you could eat a little less food, move a little more, and slowly improve your health and physique.

It's all about habits.

It takes years for us to finally figure out we are eating the wrong types of foods, but we hope it only takes a few weeks to burn it off. It's just not feasible. Long-term diet change is where you are going to see sustainable progress. Drastic diets aren't healthy.

While we don't know the details of this woman's case, additional supplements would have been needed to balance her nutrition and electrolyte levels. Many assume none we added. Many people fast for 12 to 16 hours at a time like myself, but never for three weeks.

Wrapping It Up

Look, I'm not a professional but I've lost 120 pounds twice and I've learned a lot. So far I am down 140 pounds this time around.

Eating real food and getting up and move will make the difference. I've lost the majority of my weight from making better nutritional choices and moving when I can. It is a slow process that takes time to make into a habit... but it's the worth the time investment.

Fasts can play a huge role in weight loss, but not at the expense of your nutrition. Take a look into intermittent fasting and try it out. I personally enjoy intermittent fasting, but I have friends that just can't do it.

Instead of pushing the limits of your body to lose weight, I invite you to give yourself 12 weeks of improving on something every day. You could aim to eat one piece of fruit per day, exercise for 15 minutes per day, or simply cook more at home than you normally do.

Log your calories, log any exercise you do, reward yourself with non-food items when you make progress, and learn to like the process. Here are 10 tips to make walking more fun.