What is a juice cleanse and what is a tea detox? Detox can mean different things for different people. It tends to involve a regiment of teas, juices or food, and sometimes fasting entirely to help cleanse the body. As we know, tea detoxes and juice cleanses are both fads, so it's important to consider which one is better for you, or whether you should even do it at all. Here's what you should consider:
1. Health
Your personal health should be the number one factor when deciding to do a juice cleanse or a tea-tox. Firstly, a juice cleanse usually consists of drinking only juice for a few days. Although you would be drinking cold-pressed fruit and vegetable drinks instead of your average cranberry cocktail, it is still difficult to get the same amount of nutrition as you would be while eating.
A tea-tox, on the other hand, involves eating regular meals in addition to drinking the tea. You can stock up on fruits, vegetables, and lean protein to accompany your tea-tox instead of liquifying all your meals. Although you can eat food while on a tea detox, it does involve drinking Senna, an FDA-approved laxative.
2. Fiber
It might seem like a great idea to press all your fruits and vegetables into quick drinks and lose a few pounds, but you're losing fiber as well. Fiber is necessary to get rid of our bodies' waste and leave us feeling full. Drinking only juice may not react well with your digestive system, although may also make it temporarily easier to digest because of the elimination of insoluble fiber. With a tea-tox, you can still get your day's worth of fiber.
3. Budget
Although there are ways to do a juice cleanse on a budget, doing it the classic way can cost $10 for one small drink. Is a juice cleanse really realistic for students? A tea-tox is really just drinking laxatives at night, and for two weeks can cost about $40, depending on which brand you choose.
With tea detoxes, you get a morning tea that's supposed to energize you, as well as a nighttime tea. The night tea is where the real weight loss comes in because you're drinking a laxative. That's right, you're paying all that money just to take a nicely packaged and presented laxative.
4. Results
What we all really care about: results. A lot of people reported that on the tea-tox, that they saw no results and lost no weight. Some report that they lost some weight but put it back on quickly. With the juice cleanse, there were similar results. Some people lost around 3kg of weight in a 3-day juice cleanse, and some people put all the weight back on quickly.
So, should you do a tea detox or a juice cleanse? Personally, I don't think I'll be doing either anytime soon. I might do some Tabata, maybe I'll even try and start a running routine, but I don't think I'll be trying to 'cleanse' my body. Juicing is too expensive for my taste and if I want to do a tea-tox, I'll probably go to the health store and by regular laxative tea instead of paying a ridiculous amount of money for the same thing with a pretty label. I don't think either of these are worth the money or the stress it puts on your body.