A juice cleanse is one, two or four days of five 250 ml cold-pressed juices and a SUNNY SHOT each day instead of meals, delivered in Lisbon and Porto in returnable glass. The industry around cleanses is where the overclaiming lives, not the bottles: promises of flushed toxins and dropped kilos that the evidence doesn't back. What the science actually supports is narrower, real, and still worth doing. This is how Aura's juice cleanse in Lisbon works, day by day.
What the evidence doesn't support
The industry oversells a few specific claims. We don't make them.
It does not "flush toxins."Your liver and kidneys perform detoxification continuously, cleanse or no cleanse, and no juice accelerates them. We don't use that claim because the evidence doesn't support it — and a program built on real produce doesn't need it.
It is not a weight-loss method. Weight lost over a cleanse is mostly water and gut contents and largely returns when you eat normally. If a multi-day calorie deficit is the goal, there are better tools.
It is not a correction for habits.A cleanse isn't a license for the week before or a remedy for the week after. At best, it's a pause.
So what does it actually do?
Three things, each with evidence behind it rather than a slogan.
It changes what your gut is working on. A 2017 study in Scientific Reports followed 20 healthy adults drinking six cold-pressed vegetable and fruit juices a day for three days. Researchers measured a rapid shift in gut bacteria toward Bacteroidetes— the family associated with leaner metabolic profiles — alongside a significant drop in plasma lipid peroxides, a marker of oxidative stress (Henning et al., Scientific Reports, 2017 · DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-02200-6).
It's a large dose of vegetables you wouldn't otherwise eat. A cleanse day presses more produce than most people chew through in several days — and some of it has unusually strong evidence on its own. Beet juice, the base of VIBRANCE, reduced systolic blood pressure by an average of 8 mmHg in hypertensive adults in a randomised trial in Hypertension, via dietary nitrate conversion to nitric oxide (DOI: 10.1161/HYPERTENSIONAHA.114.04675).
It's structured digestive rest and serious hydration. For a few days, your digestive system processes liquid instead of meals, and you drink on a schedule instead of by accident. Structured vegetables, enforced rest, a rhythm to the day — that's the whole mechanism, and it's enough.
What's in each cleanse day
The rhythm above is built literally into the day's bottles. Every cleanse day is five 250 ml cold-pressed juices and a SUNNY SHOT, pressed in our Campo de Ourique store and drunk roughly every two hours. The order is deliberate — vegetable-forward to open, immunity to close — but it's a rhythm, not a rule.
08:00 — IGNITE.Beetroot, cucumber, lime, celery, ginger. The day's opener and the most vegetable-led juice on the roster: mineral electrolytes from cucumber and celery, beetroot nitrates for circulation, ginger to settle an empty stomach, and just a squeeze of lime — the lowest-sugar bottle of the day.
10:00 — RAW.Spinach, cucumber, celery, lemon, ginger, microgreens. The deep-green hydration block — chlorophyll, vitamins A, C and K, and minerals in their most drinkable form.
12:00 — BALANCE.Orange, carrot, lemon, ginger. The midday vitamin C and beta-carotene dose, bright enough to feel like lunch's stand-in.
14:00 — SERENITY.Celery, pineapple, mint. The afternoon reset: pineapple's bromelain for digestive comfort, mint and celery to cool and rehydrate.
16:00 — VIBRANCE.Apple, carrot, beet. The cardiovascular juice — beet nitrates convert to nitric oxide in the body, supporting blood flow and oxygen delivery through the late-afternoon dip.
18:00 — SUNNY SHOT.Ginger, lemon, orange, turmeric in a concentrated 60 ml shot. The closer: warming, citrus-sharp, with turmeric's curcumin paired with ginger.
Each juice's full ingredient and benefit breakdown lives on the program page.
What day one actually feels like
Day one is the harder day: hunger tends to arrive in waves rather than as a steady state, and the headache people usually blame on the cleanse is more often caffeine withdrawal — which is why the taper below matters. Most people report feeling lighter and clearer by day two, once the body has settled into liquid meals on a schedule. If nothing dramatic happens for you either day, that is also a normal result — the juices aren't built to produce a sensation, just the three things above.
Who shouldn't do a juice cleanse?
Honest list, no fine print: don't do a multi-day cleanse if you're pregnant or breastfeeding, if you have diabetes or take blood-sugar-affecting medication, if you have kidney disease, if you have a history of disordered eating, or if you're under 18. A cleanse is a few days of very low protein and calories — fine for most healthy adults, wrong for these groups. When in doubt, ask your doctor first; we'd genuinely rather lose the order.
How delivery works in Lisbon and Porto
Order at aurawellnessbar.com/juice-cleanse — choose 1, 2 or 4 days and a start date, and pay online. Every juice, Porto orders included, is pressed on our hydraulic press in Campo de Ourique: no preservatives, no concentrates.
1-Day Starter — €25 (+ €5 delivery). Five 250 ml juices and a SUNNY SHOT, the right introduction or a monthly ritual.
2-Day Reset — €48 (+ €5 delivery). Five 250 ml juices and a SUNNY SHOT each day. Long enough to feel the day-two clarity. If you have done a single day before and want more from it, choose the 2-day reset.
4-Day Deep Cleanse — €96, free delivery in Lisbon and Porto. Five 250 ml juices and a SUNNY SHOT each day, delivered across two drops so nothing sits longer than two days, plus a personal check-in from our team mid-program.
Everything arrives in returnable glass bottles. Hand them back at any of our Lisbon counters — the Campo de Ourique flagship (R. Domingos Sequeira 11A), inside MVMT Studio in Santos, or inside Fine Club in Campolide — and they go back into circulation; returns also stamp toward our bottle-return loyalty program.
How to prepare — and what to eat after
A cleanse goes better with a ramp on both sides:
Two days before: taper caffeine, reduce alcohol, and lean meals toward vegetables and lighter proteins. During:drink water between juices — the juices hydrate, but they're not your only fluid — and keep movement gentle; this is the week for walking, not intervals. After:break the cleanse the way you'd wake someone gently. Soup, overnight oats, fruit, a light salad on day one; normal meals from day two. Going straight to a heavy dinner undoes the digestive rest you just gave yourself.
The 2- and 4-day programs include a preparation and recovery guide with delivery.
1, 2 or 4 days — which to choose, and what to notice
Never cleansed before, or want a monthly rhythm: the 1-Day Starter. Notice how you feel the morning after, before deciding whether to go longer next time.
Want to actually feel it:the 2-Day Reset — the day-two lightness is what people come back for. Notice it arriving on schedule: the point of the second bottle, not the first.
Want the full reset:the 4-Day Deep Cleanse, with two fresh deliveries, free shipping, and a check-in from us. Notice the water and appetite for a day or two after, as normal meals return — that settling-back is as much the program as the four days were.
And if you're weighing a cleanse against simply adding one daily juice, our cold-pressed juice in Lisbon guide covers how the juices work outside the program.
A cleanse really is a simple thing — nothing more claimed, nothing less delivered.
Aura is a wellness bar in Lisbon. The cleanse claims above cite the studies they come from — and where the evidence stops, so do we.