Several years ago, biochemistry senior Sara Mata Stevens was on the road to competing for Miss Teen Arizona. She said her future seemed optimistic until a devastating back injury changed her life forever. Now, years later, she is doing her honors thesis on the very topic that brought her back to health: juicing.
What first started as a back pain soon turned into an emergency trip to the hospital, where she spent 15 days going from specialist to specialist, trying to figure out what was wrong with her.
“Despite seeing a lot of specialists, the pain was still there,” Stevens said. “It was frustrating.”
Stevens said she spent over 18 months bedridden and under heavy medication without enough energy to walk, stand or even get out of bed. She also suffered major side effects from the medication, which made her feel sick almost every day.
In an effort to speed up her recovery, Stevens moved to Prescott, where she saw a medical specialist, and started to stand and walk again. It was here where Stevens decided to use nutrition as an alternative form of healing.
Stevens found juicing, which is a process of manually breaking down fruits and vegetables into a liquid form that retains various vitamins and minerals from the fruit and veggies. Stevens started juicing with a cheap blender that her mom found in her garage.
“I was a college kid, so I had to make it work,” joked Stevens.
She committed to drinking only juice for one month, saying she wanted to see for herself if juicing could actually heal the pain she was going through.
“I had to do something.” said Stevens. “I couldn’t continue my life laying in bed.”
With her positive attitude and perseverance, Stevens starting her juicing journey.
Stevens said the process was difficult at first. It would take her almost an hour to make her juices because her injury restricted the amount of time she stood. But by the end of the month, Stevens said she felt better.
Stevens said she was able to stand, walk and even do light activities, like swimming. Her skin cleared up, her insomnia went away and she lost more than 25 pounds.
With all of the positive results, Stevens went back to her endocrinologist to see if juicing had actually cured her problems from her back injury.
“She (the endocrinologist) didn’t believe me when I told her I had lost weight and felt better because of juicing.” said Stevens.
When the doctor went back and compared the results from before and after her juicing, the results were astounding. Not only was her weight down, but other changes, such as her thyroid levels, had improved also.
“I knew I lost weight and felt better because of juicing.” Said Stevens.
Now a senior at Barrett, the Honors College, Stevens has decided to write her honors thesis on juicing, which she said turned her life around.
“There is hardly any scientific data on the topic of juicing,” Stevens said.
Stevens created a survey about juicing, where she surveyed 1,000 people from all across the globe. Thanks to the help of “juicing celebrities” like Neil Martin and Joe Cross, Stevens was able to get juicing participants from Iran to Australia, from all different age groups and genders.
The survey collected data such as how long the participants had been juicing, the percent ratio of fruits to vegetables and the positive and negative health benefits the participants had experienced. Stevens said she hopes that others will be able to share the same amazing benefits she did.
Although the data is still in its early stages, Steven's thesis director Sandra Mayol-Kreiser said in an email that they have already formulated some opinions based off their current results.
“What we are seeing so far is that people who have been juicing for a longer period of time tend to have a higher ratio of vegetable consumption than fruit,” Mayol-Kreiser says. “This may be because they are more experienced juicing and may not need so much fruit consumption to increase the flavor of juicing.”
ASU nutrition professor Christy Appel Lespron said juicing actually has seen health benefits associated with it.
“Juicing can help increase intake of fruit and vegetables, which we know is lacking in the typical Western diet," she said. "Fruits and vegetables have numerous health benefits, providing antioxidant phytochemicals that reduce risk of chronic disease.” she said.
Stevens believes college students can also use juicing as not only a healing remedy, but to improve their nutrition.
She said she recommends students check out the ASU Farmer’s Market, take advantage of the Sun Devil Fitness Complex and ask questions. Grocery stores such as Whole Foods will even juice your vegetables or fruits for free if you don’t have a juicing machine of your own.
Stevens plans on taking her work with nutrition and juicing into her future career, working in medicine. She said she hopes to share all of the valuable things she learned on her journey with others who are ill also.
“I want to be able to have them (patients) make big changes so their bodies heal better,” she said.
Reach the reporter at sgreene6@asu.edu or follow @thesydneygreene on Twitter.
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