Spring Cleanse Your Way to Swimsuit Season and Better Health

Want a jumpstart to wellness before bikini season? A spring "cleanse" helps in five ways.

It’s that time of year where many people are sprucing up their home or wardrobe, but it’s also the perfect time to spruce up your health and body by cleansing with Isagenix. More than just a way to get your body toned for swimsuit season, cleansing with Isagenix offers a surefire way to recharge, gain energy, and improve your overall health.

Depending on the type of Isagenix system you’re embarking on, Cleanse Days will involve one or two days a week, or every other week, where you’ll abstain from food and in its place will be the drink Cleanse for Life, plenty of purified water, and other little nutrient-packed “tools” to get you through.

Ask anyone who’s lost weight on Isagenix and they will surely tell you that these Cleanse Days are what gave them the “jump start” to results and benefits that are seen from the overall system. It’s not just other people too—as with anything else made by Isagenix—Cleanse Days encompass the benefits seen in well-designed, published studies. Here are five reasons why Cleanse Days will bring you results:

1. “Jump Starts” Fat Burning: The reduction of calories on Cleanse Days stimulates the body’s fat burning furnaces by increasing human growth hormone while suppressing proteins responsible for fat synthesis and storage. Notably, the surge in human growth hormone also helps protect against muscle breakdown as long as followed with intake of quality protein (as on Shake Days).
2. Triggers Detoxification: The abstinence of food on Cleanse Days gives the digestion processes a break, allowing the liver to kick into detox high gear. Also, with the reduction of fat deposits on Cleanse Days comes the release of stored fat-soluble toxins. By drinking Cleanse for Life on Cleanse Days, this helps encourage even deeper detoxification. Cleanse for Life provides several significant advantages over traditional fasting: The drink contains B vitamins, which are depleted during normal fasting. These vitamins are essential for normal body metabolism and energy production. It also contains bioactive herbal ingredients demonstrated to stimulate antioxidative and detoxification enzyme pathways including glutathione transferases, catalase, and superoxide dismutase. And, finally, Cleanse for Life contains potent antioxidative complexes that directly contribute to the body’s antioxidant defense system.
3. Improves Insulin Sensitivity: A review of animal and human studies involving intermittent or alternate-day fasting, or abstaining from food for one or two days in between normal calorie consumption days, found that fasting resets cellular sensitivity to glucose and insulin (1). This in itself can bring better health—allowing the body to better control blood sugar. The opposite of being insulin sensitive is insulin resistant, which is related to metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Recently, research has shown that periodic intermittent fasting was associated with reduced risk in type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases (2).
4. Reduces oxidative stress and inflammation: As fat cells shrink, they release fewer pro-inflammatory cytokines (signaling molecules) that cause oxidative stress and inflammation. Less total body fat also helps improve antioxidant status in the body. The end result is improved health overall and lower risk of chronic disease. Oxidative stress, in particular, plays a heavy toll on telomeres (related to aging). The lower the oxidative stress, the better for healthy aging.
5. Activates Your “Longevity Genes”: Studies in animals suggest that intermittent fasting on Cleanse Days can activate genetic expression of SIRT1, dubbed the “longevity gene” (3). The scientific interest in sirtuins, the family of proteins that SIRT1 is a part of, has grown since the early 2000s because of findings that stimulation of them—via calorie restriction, intermittent fasting, and compounds such as resveratrol—may slow aging and increase lifespan.

So what the about other parts of the Cleansing and Fat Burning System that are so great? For one, Shake Days on an Isagenix system can also be considered “calorie restricted” days. Two meals replaced with an IsaLean Shake and one 400- to 600-calorie well-balanced meal will most likely equate to consuming fewer calories than normal. If followed consistently, this in itself can lead to weight loss. On top of weight loss, calorie restriction has shown in both animal and human studies to elongate life and protect against chronic disease (1).

What’s more, the biggest component of an Isagenix system is IsaLean Shake, a nutrient-dense meal that feeds the body whey protein, which has consistently shown in studies to be the top choice (compared to other sources of protein like soy) for:

• Reducing muscle loss, which is usually associated with most weight-loss plans (4;6)
• Reducing total body fat and visceral fat by increasing fat burning (oxidation) (5;6)
• Increasing thermogenesis, which increases the amount of calories burned (5)

On top of this, Isagenix systems promote the regular use of Ionix Supreme, an adaptogen-rich tonic that helps reduce the stress associated with weight loss and helps with the “feel good” effects of the program.

The beauty of a Cleansing and Fat Burning System from Isagenix lies in the combination of its individual parts. Not a system that involves restricting yourself to drinking plain juices, or worse yet, taking laxatives, Isagenix offers a lifestyle plan that supports weight and fat loss, will get you into swimsuit-shape, and supports muscle maintenance, supreme nutrition, and maximum detoxification.

References:

1. Varady KA, Hellerstein MK. Alternate-day fasting and chronic disease prevention: a review of human and animal trials. Am J Clin Nutr 2007;86-13.

2. Horne BD, et al. Usefulness of routine periodic fasting to lower risk of coronary artery disease among patients undergoing coronary angiography. Am J Cardiol 2008.2008 Oct 1;102(7):814-81.

3. Walker AK, et al. Conserved role of SIRT1 orthologs in fasting-dependent inhibition of the lipid/cholesterol regulator SREBP. Genes Dev 2010;24:1403-17.

4. Baer DJ, Stote KS, Paul DR, et al. Whey Protein but Not Soy Protein Supplementation Alters Body Weight and Composition in Free-Living Overweight and Obese Adults. J Nutr July 2011, 141.

5. Acheson KJ. Protein choices targeting thermogenesis and metabolism. Am J Clin Nutr 2011; 93: 525-34

6. Josse AR, Atkinson SA, Tarnopolsky MA, Phillips SM. Increased Consumption of Dairy Foods and Protein during Diet- and Exercise-Induced Weight Loss Promotes Fat Mass Loss and Lean Mass Gain in Overweight and Obese Premenopausal Women. J Nutr 2011;141:1626-34

6. Yang Y, Breen L, Burd NA, Hector AJ, Churchward-Venne TA, Josse AR, Tarnopolsky MA and Phillips SM. Resistance exercise enhances myofibrillar protein synthesis with graded intakes of whey protein in older men. Br J Nutr 1-9, 2012.