Do you ever reach for your electrolyte replacement drink only to pucker up because the drink is too salty or worse, way too sweet? Have you looked at the list of ingredients and scratched your head, wondering what some of those mystery ingredients might be? As a runner, we are so careful about the food that we put into our bodies…don’t you want to be just as careful with your fluids?
Experienced runners know how important electrolyte replacement is. During a run, you lose sodium and potassium through sweating. You must replace these minerals so that you can replace and retain the fluids that you just lost.
You all know that I am the juicing queen and my go to electrolyte replacement drink is so simple—celery juice! Did you know that every cell in your body is bathed in a salt solution? If there is an imbalance, dehydration can occur.
Celery juice has these amazing health benefits:
- Replaces lost electrolytes and rehydrates the body
- Contains potassium and sodium to stimulate urine production
- Reduces inflammation—an added bonus for runners and for people with chronic anti-inflammatory conditions
- Promotes healthy kidney function to eliminate toxins
- The sodium in celery is very safe for consumption, even for people that are salt sensitive or are on a reduced salt diet
- Lowers blood pressure
- Alkaline so helps balance the pH of the blood
- Contains anti-cancer compounds
- Eliminates and prevents kidney and gall bladder stones
- Has a natural laxative effect
- Natural calming effect—leading to better sleep
- Contains vitamins A, B1, B2, B6 and C
- Contains minerals potassium, folic acid, calcium, magnesium, iron, phosphorus and sodium
So now that I have you excited about celery juice…how do you get started? Many stores these days carry fresh squeezed juices. But if you make it at home you are assured of the freshness and get the most nutrients out of it because you are drinking the juice immediately after juicing. If you are new to juicing you might not want to go hard core like me and drink straight celery juice (or maybe you do!). Below are some yummy recipes. Just put all of the ingredients in the juicer and in no time you will have a delicious drink.
Recipe 1
- 8 stalks of celery
- 1 apple
- ¼ inch piece of peeled ginger
Recipe 2
- 6 stalks of celery
- 2 carrots
- ½ peeled lemon
- small bunch of parsley
Breville sells great juicers but if you want the mother of all juicers, check out the Norwalk 280. We bought ours about a month ago and it is everything that I imagined. I read about it in the book The Gerson Therapy--a great book that I will write a review about in my next blog post.
Just try it--you will be amazed how great you feel when you have this immediately after a run. So refreshing and the cells in your body will thank you!