The Medical Medium Celery Juice Trend: What Are the Real Health Benefits of Celery Juice?

Green juice has been around for a while, but in recent years, there’s been one specific type of green juice that has taken a place of honor above all others: celery juice. Wellness influencers post about it on social media, celebrities talk about it in interviews, it’s been featured in Goop, and so on. The reason for all this buzz around celery juice is both very clear and a bit murky, because it all stems from a mysterious someone called the Medical Medium. Read on to learn everything you need to know about the Medical Medium celery juice trend and what science says about the health benefits of celery juice.

First of All: Who Is the “Medical Medium”?

As we mentioned, the Medical Medium is a mysterious guy, so it’s tough to find out a lot about him. Much of his mystique seems to lie in this mystery, and this may be why he’s notoriously reclusive: he very rarely engages with the traditional press, and it’s near impossible to contact him directly.

But we do know a few things about him. The Medical Medium is actually a man named Anthony Williams, who claims to have been born with the ability to communicate with a high-level spirit who he calls the “Spirit of Compassion.” As his website explains, this communication lets him learn “ extraordinarily advanced healing medical information that’s far ahead of its time.” He’s used this gift to read people’s health conditions and help them heal (including, he claims, diagnosing his symptom-free grandmother with lung cancer when he was four years old). 

While he’s become well-known for his claims about the health benefits of celery juice (which we’ll get into below), there are many other notable elements of his career. He claims to be the originator of the whole lemon-water-in-the-morning trend, and also promotes the idea that the Epstein-Barr virus is the root of many of our modern ailments (a claim which may have legs — read our interview with Dr. Kasey Holland to learn more about the far-reaching effects of EBV). He’s written a number of books and regularly dispenses medical advice (both on his own website and on the Goop website), and all of his beliefs and guidance are based on his supposed communication with the Spirit of Compassion. 

The Medical Medium Celery Juice Trend

Williams says he’s been spreading the word about the benefits of celery juice since 1975, but it wasn’t until May of 2019 that the celery juice trend blew up. That’s because that’s when Williams published his book Celery Juice: The Most Powerful Medicine of Our Time, Healing Millions Worldwide. Though he’d written several other bestsellers, this book — and the Medical Medium celery juice craze as a whole — is really what made him a wellness superstar. 

His celery juice gospel almost instantly attracted the attention of tons of celebrities, most notably Kim Kardashian, who posted about it in an Instagram story, and Gwenyth Paltrow, who excerpted a chapter of the book on Goop. Since then, many more celebs have endorsed the trend, including Pharrel Williams and Robert DeNiro, and it’s spawned a massive online movement, earning him more 4.5 million followers on Instagram. The Medical Medium celery juice trend became so big that celery sales tripled in growth after the book’s release, and Williams has come to refer to the craze the “Global Celery Juice Movement.” And while there was a lot of press around the Medical Medium and celery juice in 2019 when the book came out, coverage is still ongoing years later, with outlets like Mind Body Green, Vanity Fair, and others highlighting the trend and Williams’ contribution to it. 

So what, exactly, does the Medical Medium celery juice trend entail? He lays it all out pretty clearly. In order to reap the benefits of celery juice, he says, you need to drink 16 ounces of organic celery juice every morning on an empty stomach. While he strongly recommends organic celery juice, he concedes that you can use conventional celery, as long as you wash it thoroughly (but since celery is on the EWG’s Dirty Dozen list, going organic is probably the safest choice anytime you’re consuming celery).

He emphasizes the importance of having the celery juice on an empty stomach, and not blending it with other ingredients, like kale or apples or other common juicing ingredients. As his website states, “celery juice is most powerful when you drink it solo. [Juice] blends function differently than what I’m recommending as your greatest tool for recovering your health: pure celery juice taken on an empty stomach.” 

So to repeat, the guidelines for reaping the health benefits of celery juice are

• Make a 16-ounce serving
• Drink it in the morning
• Drink on an empty stomach
• Use organic celery (and if you can’t, be sure to wash it thoroughly)
• Do not blend the celery juice with anything else

What Are the Medical Medium Celery Juice Claims?

So why are so many people —  celebrities and non-celebs alike — adhering to this highly-specific regimen? Well, if you believe the Medical Medium, celery juice has nearly magical healing properties. Williams claims that drinking 16 oz of pure celery juice on an empty stomach can heal everything from gut issues to depression to Lyme disease and beyond.

According to the Medical Medium, celery juice can:

• Calm inflammation 
• Starve and break down pathogens responsible for chronic illness 
• Balance your body’s pH levels
• Cleanse and repair your stomach, digestive tract, and liver through celery’s mineral salts, which raise your gut’s hydrochloric acid level so it can better break down and assimilate what you eat
• Support neurotransmitter function (aka keep your brain sharp)
• Calm mental health issues, like anxiety, depression, PTSD, ADHD, OCD, and more
• Improve sleep
• Help your body better absorb hundreds of nutrients, including vitamin B12 and zinc
• Reduce migraines
• Heal adrenal fatigue
• Heal any thyroid issues, including conditions like Hashimoto’s thyroiditis
• Cure a multitude of autoimmune conditions, including lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s, celiac, MS, and many more
• Prevent leaky gut syndrome
• Put the mind and heart at ease
• Clear up your skin
• Facilitate weight loss

Many of the famous people and influencers who have joined the celery juice movement say that it has truly transformed their health, and the Medical Medium’s website includes a whole section of celebrity endorsements, as well as social media posts where they share their celery juice healing stories.

The Real Health Benefits of Celery Juice

So, the Medical Medium has some very strong beliefs about the benefits of drinking organic celery juice. With all of these claims, it’s no wonder that people are jumping on the Medical Medium celery juice bandwagon left and right. Who doesn’t want to heal all their health issues, clear up their skin, sleep better, and feel calm and relaxed? And all you have to do to achieve that is drink some juice in the morning? Sign us up!!

But are any of those claims about the health benefits of celery juice actually true? What’s the science behind it all? Unfortunately, just like details about the Medical Medium himself, the answer is a little fuzzy. 

See the thing is, the whole deal with the Medical Medium is that he receives his health knowledge from a spirit and not from science. In fact, he claims that he learns truths about our health and our bodies before researchers do, so his advice and beliefs are ahead of our time. Because of this, if you read his website, you’ll often come across phrases like “medical science and research are not yet aware…” According to him, medical science isn’t yet advanced enough to be able to confirm the things that he knows. Because of this, it’s pretty hard to corroborate or dispute his claims. After all, how do you argue with the word of a “spirit”?

But there are some things we do know. For instance, we know that the Medical Medium doesn’t have any sort of medical or scientific training or certification (the legal disclaimer on his website lays this out quite clearly, also specifying that he doesn’t render medical advice or provide medical diagnoses, despite the fact that the messaging elsewhere on his site seems to do just that).

Medical and nutritional professionals are predictably skeptical of the Medical Medium celery juice claims. A registered dietician told The Atlantic that “there is no one food that will cure your cancer, inflammatory disease, or other ailment, so don’t believe the hype you see and hear on Instagram.” The publication also spoke with a professor of nutrition at New York University, who attributed it all to the trend-based nature of the wellness world. “You’ll see something take off where you just have to have celery, or you just have to have kale — one vegetable is really not better than another,” she said. Another RD expressed her dubiousness about the notion that celery juice helps you cleanse or detox, explaining that “there is no evidence that drinking celery juice, or any juice, has any detoxing or cleansing benefits.”

Still, that isn’t to say that there are no health benefits of celery juice, and at WellBe, we’ve learned that conventional dieticians and nutritional professionals are often far behind when it comes to understanding the power of food as medicine to heal A recent study from the Cleveland Clinic showed that celery can help lower blood pressure due to its high content of a  phytochemical called phthalides. But even then, they recommend eating the whole stalk, rather than just the juice, in order to reap the benefits. It’s also important to note that when you drink juice, rather than eating produce whole or in smoothie form, you don’t get any fiber, which aids digestion and keeps you feeling fuller longer. So if you simply blend the celery in a blender, you’ll get those benefits, but if you use a juicer to extract only the celery juice, you won’t. 

Of course, organic celery juice is still pretty good for you. It’s packed with nutrients, like vitamin C, vitamin K, folate, and potassium, all of which help your body function at its best. Also, since celery is about 95% water, drinking celery juice helps you stay hydrated and hydrating foods like celery, cucumber and watermelon are known to help reduce inflammation and acidity in your body and perhaps even reverse acid reflux and heartburn. And even though the Cleveland Clinic study above recommends eating a whole stalk to most effectively lower blood pressure, at least some research has found that celery juice does help to reduce hypertension as well.   

Additionally, while celery juice might not be able to cure cancer, per se, celery does contain the antioxidant apigenin, which researchers at Ohio State University found promotes the death of cancerous cells. Experimental studies have also shown that celery has antibiotic and antifungal properties, and celery seeds have been shown to treat skin conditions like psoriasis. A study on diabetic rats also showed that celery seed extract helped regulate insulin levels and promote weight loss.

Lastly, celery is an alkaline food (all foods are either alkaline, neutral, or acidic). A research study on alkaline diets concluded “from the evidence outlined above, it would be prudent to consider an alkaline diet to reduce morbidity and mortality of chronic disease,” i.e. reduce death by chronic disease. So clearly there is a case that it helps prevent a variety of chronic diseases and premature death! 

And if you weren’t already sold on why you should only buy organic celery, the study goes on to say the “type of soil [alkaline foods] were grown in…may significantly influence the mineral content.” This is because nutrient-poor soil from over-farming and stripping the land with chemical fertilizers and pesticides results in food with less minerals than it should have. So if you had the thought “yeah, but organic celery is more expensive,” imagine that a stalk of non-organic celery is a small jar of jam, and organic celery is a bigger jar. It costs more because you’re actually getting more (more minerals, that is), so it’s really not fair to compare them as if they are equal!

The WellBe Takeaway on the Medical Medium Celery Juice Trend

This is quite a lot of information (plus a whole lot of mysterious non-information when it comes to what we know about the Medical Medium), and it’s made more complicated by the hullabaloo about the whole thing on social media and in the wellness blogger community. But here’s the bottom line on what you need to know about the Medical Medium celery juice trend:

• The Medical Medium is a man named Anthony Williams, who claims to communicate with a spirit that gives him extremely accurate health information, including things that aren’t yet known by medical research.
• Because the Medical Medium is extremely reclusive, and because his prescient health claims can’t be corroborated by science (because it’s information about the future, communicated by a spirit), it’s pretty difficult to pin down the validity of any of his claims.
• When the Medical Medium published a book extolling the health benefits of celery juice, it sparked a global trend. The trend has garnered publicity from lots of celebrities, and has evolved into what the Medical Medium calls the “Global Celery Juice Movement.”
• The Medical Medium celery juice trend has clear guidelines: you must drink 16 ounces of organic celery juice in the morning on an empty stomach, and you can’t blend anything else with the celery. 
• Adherents of the trend believe that celery juice has a TON of healing properties. They claim it can do everything from reduce inflammation to cure autoimmune disease to clear up skin and more.
• There’s not much science to back up the Medical Medium celery juice claims. However, the research that does exist around the health benefits of celery juice affirm that it is very hydrating and alkaline; full of phytochemicals, vitamins and powerful antioxidants (which remove free radicals from the body and can potentially reduce cancer risk); and can reduce death by chronic disease. It’s important to note that eating a few alkaline foods on top of a generally unhealthy, acidic diet (hello processed foods!) won’t do much.
• The WellBe Take? Celery is good for you, and drinking celery juice can only help you, though we can’t say there’s evidence to support drinking 16 ounces every day, or that the juice version is better than the whole food version. 

Have you tried the Medical Medium celery juice trend? If so, let us know how it went in the comments below!

Citations:

1. Illes, Jennifer D. “Blood Pressure Change After Celery Juice Ingestion in a Hypertensive Elderly Male.” Journal of chiropractic medicine vol. 20,2 (2021): 90-94. doi:10.1016/j.jcm.2021.04.001
2. Cardenas, Horacio et al. “Dietary Apigenin Exerts Immune-Regulatory Activity in Vivo by Reducing NF-κB Activity, Halting Leukocyte Infiltration and Restoring Normal Metabolic Function.” International journal of molecular sciences vol. 17,3 323. 1 Mar. 2016, doi:10.3390/ijms17030323
3. Kooti, Wesam, and Nahid Daraei. “A Review of the Antioxidant Activity of Celery ( Apium graveolens L).” Journal of evidence-based complementary & alternative medicine vol. 22,4 (2017): 1029-1034. doi:10.1177/2156587217717415
4. Schwalfenberg, Gerry K. “The alkaline diet: is there evidence that an alkaline pH diet benefits health?.” Journal of environmental and public health vol. 2012 (2012): 727630. doi:10.1155/2012/727630