Review of the: Dr. Oz 3-day Detox Cleanse
Dr. Oz 3 day detox cleanse - fruit and veggies
Photo by: Monica Lehua
Dr. Oz's detox cleanse is a great way to reboot your system. Whether you’re healthy, working on prevention of disease or challenged by health issues; we all need to look at simple, holistic methods of recharging our bodies.
When I heard about Oz’s 3-day detox cleanse drinks it sounded like a simple and relatively inexpensive way to give me a boost and reset my body, besides its only 3-days. I waited until the weekend so I would be able to spend the time shopping for the ingredients, (the shopping list and recipe for each drink is below) blending my drinks, and not have the temptations that an office environment can sometimes have with candies and snacks.
Detox breakfast drink
Breakfast was pretty good, sweet with a refreshing taste. I didn’t have flax seeds until later and found that I had to pulverize the seeds if you buy the whole flax seed and try to blend it, you’ll be picking seeds out of your teeth. Later I found it was less expensive to purchase a large bag of organic flax seed powder which made future drinks one step easier and easier to digest. You can purchase the flax seed powder I got on Amazon or a huge bag that will last forever at Costco or check your local health/grocery store.
Breakfast drink ingredients:
· 1 cup water
· 1 Tbsp flax seeds - powder
· 1 cup raspberries
· 1 banana
· ¼ cup spinach
· 1 Tbsp. almond butter
· 2 tsp. lemon
Flax seed is used in the breakfast and dinner drinks. WebMD reports the benefits of flaxseed can include fighting heart disease, diabetes and breast cancer. Another difference is using almond butter which is not very common but can be found in most grocery stores. If you have a health food store nearby, those stores sometimes have machines that will grind fresh almonds to make the butter with no additives or oil. Costco scored again by having a large bottle of almond butter for a great price. I also tried grinding whole almonds into a powder form and that blended well too.
Detox lunch drink
This is known as the ‘green drink’. I must have used the super large green veggies because this was too much for me to drink at one sitting. I was also very full trying to get all of this stuff down. Besides, the one page print out wasn't very clear and I didn't see the show to see what they actually did to mix the drinks.
Since I have a Vitamix blender (you can buy refurbished models on Amazon to save some moolah) that baby can pulverize almost anything, including the skin, seeds, and stems of fruits and veggies. With that said, don’t blend the lemon or lime rinds. I thought I would see what the blender could do and it made the drink bitter. So although it says, one banana, I knew not to put the banana peel in, yet I still thought grinding the half lime and not squeezing half a lime juice in the drink was the way to go cause it was a green drink – don’t do it. I put some tips next to the ingredients below. Since the green drink is mainly veggies, if you’re not doing organic, the skin on the cucumber and other veggies can be bitter once blended.
Lunch drink recipe
· 4 celery stalks - clean
· 1 cucumber – unless organic, peel the skin and remove the seeds to reduce bitterness
· 1 cup kale leaves
· ½ green apple
· ½ lime – squeeze the juice only
· 1 Tbsp. coconut oil
· ½ cup almond milk
· 1 cup pineapple
Dinner detox drink
· ½ cup mango
· 1 cup blueberries
· 1 ½ cup coconut water
· 1 cup kale
· 1 Tbsp lemon juice
· ¼ avocado
· ¼ tsp cayenne pepper (optional)
· 1 Tbsp flax seed powder
After the challenges of drinking the lunch drink, of which I couldn’t finish on Day One, this was a relief to my taste buds. The sweetness of the mango and blueberries blended well with the kale and avocado. I left the cayenne pepper out as I never cared for it. I was still full from the lunch drink so I had the dinner drink later in the evening.
Side effects or benefits of detoxing
The purpose of a body cleanse is to put your body into a state of rest of digesting whole foods, proteins and other things that you usually indulge in. A suggestion when drinking these drinks is to sort of chew your drink to generate saliva in your mouth to help in the digestion. This detox will clean out your system but it wasn’t something that was uncontrollable, however everyone’s system is different. I eat a lot of fruits and vegetables in the first place so I was sort of half way there. For those who aren’t accustomed to eating regular servings of fresh fruits and veggies, you may want to be sure to start and end when you’re able to be at home and not on a stressful schedule.
That said, the 3-day detox cleanse also includes taking a Detox Ultra Bath each night using Epsom salt and lavender oil. I admit I didn’t have the time, although I wanted to, it didn’t work out but it would have been nice.
One of the side effects that I noticed after three days and more of being awake while working on the computer was that I wasn’t tired and I got a lot of writing done. At first I thought it was because of a new medication I was on, however then I realized that after I stopped the detox drinks I was able to sleep at night.
Although it’s been a few weeks since I did the 3-day detox cleanse, I decided to continue to take the breakfast drinks as part of my daily routine of energizing my body with fresh ingredients. I noticed that I also don’t need to take protein powder shakes like I used to. This not only saves me money but the raspberries help curb my appetite, increase my vitamin intake and naturally wake up my cells. I may do the 3-Day Detox Cleanse a couple times a year, depending on what’s going on in my body and would highly suggest that others try it, even two days is better than none.
Share your experience with the 3-Day Detox in the comments below.
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