Fasting

What benefits may be achieved by withholding nutritional inputs from time to time in our lives, or in other words, the practice of fasting. Fasting is an essential component to good health. It is a vacation from digesting food, the most energy-demanding activity of the body, and can be a beneficial part of the healing and energizing process. One third of the body’s energy supply is used during digestion. While fasting, energy used for digestion is redirected to restorative processes.

Unsupervised fasting once a week or once a month for 24 hours is a wonderful and safe lifetime habit for most people. Fasting regularly enhances one's health more than any other single activity. Even after a person reaches ideal body weight, unwanted substances that are hard for the body to eliminate enter the body through the foods we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe, and the hectic lives we live. Fasting helps to release unwanted substances, toxins, and other wastes from the fat and tissues and helps to restore and maintain vitality and strength.

Great insights and accomplishments may occur while fasting regularly—as well as great advances toward developing a healthier body.

Ending a fast properly is as important as the fast itself. For one-day fasts come off the fast by consuming whole ripe fruits or a green smoothie (see meal plans in Chapter Nine). A few hours later consume a large pulse salad. Be careful not to overeat in your first post-fast meal; however, do consume enough fruit to be able to easily experience a bowel movement.

Unsupervised water fasts may be extended to seven to ten days to achieve fairly dramatic and swift cleansing, healing, and weight-loss results. Persons suffering from numerous degenerative conditions, such as heart disease, arthritis, and various autoimmune diseases have found that unsupervised fasts of this length are safe and extremely beneficial. Extended fasts longer than this are unadvisable without an attending therapeutic fasting specialist who is licensed to monitor specific health markers and mineral levels during such fasts. A good general rule for extended fasting is to fast until hunger leaves and then fast until it returns. Generally by the fourth day of a fast all hunger leaves and does not return until the body has exhausted many of its fat reserves.

To end longer fasts of seven to ten days, gently prime the digestion pump for a period of at least five days. Begin the first two days by drinking as much green smoothie as desired. After the first two days, depending upon how well your digestive system is working, begin to also include large salads. Follow this regimen for three more days before including cooked legumes, grains, and vegetables.

Some individuals should not fast because of unusual biological conditions they have inherited from birth. These conditions include porphyria, as well as a rare fatty-acid deficiency that prevents proper ketosis from occurring. A doctor should test for either of these two conditions prior to engaging in extended fasting. Additionally, fasting is unadvisable for anorexic or bulimic individuals, or for any person whose body is emaciated or in a state of starvation. Neither nursing nor pregnant women who are diabetic should fast, nor should anyone with anemia (clinical or congenital) or those who have an intense fear of fasting. Except for these conditions, fasting is considered extremely safe.

Those who should never fast without supervision include infants and young children, pregnant women (non-diabetic), those with serious disease conditions, type 1 or type 2 diabetics who are using insulin, those with histories of recreational drug abuse, or persons who have been subjected to high levels of DDT contamination. Fasting allows the release of toxic elements such as DDT into the blood, and it can be dangerous if the amounts are significant. Those who are extremely afraid of fasting, but who still desire to do so, should do so under the supervision of a qualified therapeutic fasting expert.

During the last 125 years there have been fewer than 10 deaths documented in fasting literature that were due to fasting. Compared to more than 225,000 iatrogenic deaths that occur each year while using traditional medical practices, fasting rates as one of the safest and most effective therapies today for treating illness and can lead to the arrest of various degenerative diseases and other conditions of lost health.

Periodic fasting can help restore and maintain vigor for life. Gandhi said, "All the vitality and energy I have comes to me because my body is purified by fasting." Over time, most people include a higher intake of sugar, salt, fat, and animal-based foods in their diet. The most practical way to reset the body’s appetite toward more healthful food choices is by fasting 24 hours. A periodic 24 hour fast is an extremely beneficial habit that will help you enjoy more healthful foods.

In addition to the physical benefits from fasting, click here to come to better understand the benefits that can be achieved when fasting for spiritual purposes and for needed direction in one's life.

Fasting is not a cure-all. It should be used for specific purposes, such as resetting the taste buds to enjoy less salt, sugar and fat, to facilitate the cleansing of the body of toxins that often build up over time, or to achieve the spiritual benefits described in the article linked above.

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ENDNOTES:
Fuhrman, Joel, M.D. Fasting and Eating for Health, pp 216-217 Buhner, Stephen Harrod, The Fasting Path, pp 102-103 Starfield, B., “Is U.S. Health Really the Best in the World?”, JAMA, 284 (2000): 483-485