Fasting and Eating for Health (2 page)

Medical propaganda to the contrary, our adult population has never been sicker, and cancer rates have continued to climb.

While high-tech methods such as new drugs and surgical techniques (angioplasty and bypass surgery, for example) aim to reduce symptoms, they do not address the underlying cause of the disease, and people are getting sicker and sicker. The underlying cause I am referring to is not an absence of adequate medical care. It is severe malnutrition. By malnutrition, I do not mean the lack of food or nutrient deficiency; rather, what we have today is a society of overfed people, poisoning themselves with high-fat, high-protein, highly refined foods. This rich diet harms our bodies and lays the groundwork for chronic degenerative disease. Fasting in conjunction with optimal nutrition after and before the fast offers the ability to undo the damage done to the body by the rich diets of modern societies.

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In the last ten years there has been a revolution in medicine. The diet—

disease relationship is more well documented than ever before. More and more physicians are embracing nutritional and preventive approaches. Doctors are advising their patients about the quality of their diets and about the importance of exercise and lifestyle modifications such as smoking cessation. The

physician community and the population are attempting to modify cardiac risk factors by lowering their intake of fats and cholesterol. Even dietary suggestions for reducing the risks of cancer are in
vogue.

New information, collected from large investigations on various human populations, has shown that the majority of the chronic and life-threatening diseases are preventable. But because conventional medical therapy does not address the cause of disease, it thereby limits itself greatly as a long-term solution.

Because of conventional medicine's limited success and high costs, alternative treatments are becoming more widely used. Fasting, combined with nutritional competence, removes the most significant causes of disease, and due to its great success, is now being looked at by conventional physicians as well as by patients. The health care of the future will have to be both more effective and less costly than what we have available today. Fasting, as a.

therapeutic modality, is safe, effective, and a true health care bargain.

In most serious chronic diseases the body can heal itself and recover when a properly conducted fast is undertaken. Certainly there are advanced pathologic states, such as cancer, that will not respond to fasting, but the majority of chronic diseases do respond in a predictable manner. Modern medicine offers little hope of recovery from the variety of chronic debilitating diseases affecting the population. Fasting offers that hope.

Many current approaches offered by the medical profession to deal with a medical problem or health crisis involve significant risk or side effects. Fasting is noninvasive and can be both more effective and safer than the more standard approach. The details of this with regard to multiple disease states will be explained in this book. Additionally, the traditional medical practice of treating the symptoms of a disease with medicine or surgery does not remove the causes. Inevitably these causes, left unchecked, allow the disease process to advance. By contrast, therapeutic fasting, supported by a healthy lifestyle, removes the causes of disease and accelerates the healing process. This can allow the disease sufferer to reclaim a normal life, free of a lifetime of medicines and further suffering.

As you read this book you will experience the thrill of learning all about the miraculous healing powers of the human organism.

The selfhealing power of the body is often overlooked because it is rarely given a chance to act in a world that expects the quick fix. The power of the body is as evident as green grass, rainy days, and sunshine. It is by no means a mystical power: it arises from the same exceptional intelligence that 12

produced you out of two microscopic
cells
and that heals your wounds when you are injured. It is the same set of natural human characteristics that allows you to eliminate waste or to "lose weight" when you change your diet. It is the same innate ability that allows an exhausted individual to go to bed (without eating) and wake up vibrant and full of energy for another 16 hours. Fasting enables the body to repair and rejuvenate its own tissues, by directly providing the conditions for recovery and removing the impediments that curtail your recuperative powers. The fast establishes a unique opportunity, vital for the restoration of health.

I will present many case histories in this book in order to give you factual knowledge about how fasting can help get you healthy . . . fast. After reading these pages you will be clear on how to act efficiently in putting your life on the fast track of healthy living.

I present this case history now as an illustration of why I am so enthusiastic about fasting and why I feel it is so vitally important to share this information with everyone.

Years ago, a 20-year-old world-class athlete and Olympic ice skating hopeful suffered a severe injury to his leg. Forced to walk on crutches, he could not bear weight on his leg without excruciating pain. His heel was so swollen and sensitive that the mere weight of a bed sheet caused intense discomfort.

Because he was ranked among the top two in the country in his event, the U.

S. Olympic Committee encouraged him to seek treatment by one of the country's leading orthopedic surgeons.

After months of prodding, probing, and medical tests by the prominent doctor, and still unable to walk after a year in pain, the young man was quite discouraged. His doctors offered him no solution to the swelling and acute sensitivity in his injured foot. Then one day without warning, while
in
the hospital, a nurse instructed him to take a medication because the doctor intended to perform surgery the following morning. Outraged, the young man refused to take the drug and demanded that his physician discuss the proposed surgical plans with him.

Later that day, the doctor stormed into the room and brusquely informed the athlete that experimental surgery was required to promote the healing of his foot. The doctor explained that after exposing the injured tissues, he would use his scalpel to traumatize the area in a checkerboard pattern in an attempt to stimulate the area to heal. When the young man refused to participate in such an experiment, the physician angrily told him that if he did not have the surgery he would never walk again. Nevertheless, the young man rejected the surgery and left the hospital.

The young athlete was aware that a few years earlier his arthritic father had restored his health by fasting. He remembered the articles and books he had read on fasting at that time and realized that the technique probably offered his best chance to recover.

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Determined to give fasting its best chance, he traveled to Dr. Shelton's Health School in San Antonio and fasted a total of 46 days. At the end of the fast he was able to walk again. In a little over a year he placed third in the World Professional Figure Skating Championships.

At Dr. Shelton's Health School, the young man saw asthmatics cured so they no longer needed medication. He-met colitis patients with bleeding bowels who recovered without drugs or surgery. He observed people with chest pain who had been told they needed bypass surgery. They were riding bicycles and jogging for the first time in years. The young man saw for himself how the body could heal itself if the causes of disease were removed.

This man was so impressed with what he witnessed and experienced that he sought out other practitioners who used fasting and natural diets to heal patients. What he learned from them excited him so much that he later decided to attend medical school and become a physician. At medical school, however, the patients were treated with conventional modem methods. Given large amounts of medication to control their symptoms, they rarely got well. No cardiac patients stopped taking drugs because their angina disappeared. No hypertensive patients stopped taking medication because their condition improved. No arthritic patients recovered and threw away their pills.

As a medical student, the young man saw patients suffer and die needlessly, while under the care of modern medicine. Through it all, he remained convinced that people could get well if only they knew how to use fasting and natural diet to restore their health.

This young man was I.

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Many thousands of people have restored their health through therapeutic fasting. Some, ill and distraught from years of discomfort and discouragement, try fasting as a last resort. Fortunately, the majority of people who undergo a supervised fast not only improve or recover (often from what are considered incurable diseases) but also experience physical, psychological, and mental rejuvenation. Fasting to heal one self can mean the difference between living life pain-ridden and dependent on drugs, going from one doctor to another for relief, and living a normal pain-free existence into old age.

Therapeutic fasting is not a mystical or magical cure. It works because the body has within it the capacity to heal when the obstacles to healing are removed. Health is the normal state. Most chronic disease is the inevitable consequence of living a lifestyle that places disease-causing stressors on the human organism. Fasting gives the body an interlude without those stressors so that it can speedily repair or accomplish healing that could not otherwise occur in the feeding state.

Fasting stops the continual work of the digestive tract, whose activity can drain the body of energy and divert the healing processes. Each time we take in food, the body must secrete digestive enzymes to break down the food, move these simpler components into the cells lining the digestive tract, and further move these nutrients into the bloodstream for distribution throughout the body. All of these functions require a substantial amount of vitality and energy — energy that might otherwise be used to fuel the healing process.

Each time we take in food we take in not only nutrients but also additives and other toxins. The digestive tract, the liver, the kidney, and other organs must work to remove these non-nutritive substances from the body. These wastes include by-products of digestion, bacterial by-products from the decomposition of inadequately digested foodstuffs, and excess nutrients the body cannot use. All these as well as the waste products of normal cellular metabolism must be actively eliminated for us to maintain excellent health.

Food, therefore, while providing essential nutrients for life, also introduces toxins. Fasting, particularly when we are ill and the body is already overburdened with self-produced wastes, can provide a welcome relief by halting the introduction of further toxins and waste products. Without this extra burden, the body is finally able to heal itself.

Individuals who suffer from chronic disease often have weakened or abnormal digestive function. Indeed, this is often the reason they are ill to begin with. In these cases, fasting allows the digestive tract to take a much needed break to restore itself to normalcy.

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When a person's appetite and hunger disappear, especially during an acute illness, the loss of appetite indicates that the body has a much lowered capacity for digestion. Forcing this person to eat can result in the absorption of partially or improperly digested food, which will impede a quick and complete recovery.

What Is Fasting?

Fasting, in the strictest sense, is defined as the voluntary abstinence from all food and drink, except water, as long as the nutritional reserves of the body are adequate to sustain normal function. This is a state of relative physiologic rest. Some of the medical studies on fasting (which we will refer to) have included the use of vitamins, coffee, tea, and drugs during the fast. Except for extremely rare instances where some medication may be indicated, it should be recognized that a total fast, with water only, is both the most effective and the safest way to fast.

Vitamins are not generally required because within the body's cells are adequate reserves of protein, fat; minerals, and vitamins that can be called upon during periods of famine, food scarcity, or fasting. Even in prolonged fasts (those lasting from 20 to 40 days) no deficiency diseases develop, illustrating that the body has the innate ability to utilize its stored reserves in a highly exacting and balanced manner. Today, with modern laboratory tests available, it is simple to check the blood for levels of every vitamin and mineral, as well as for electrolytes and other essential factors. Interestingly, these levels of vitamins and minerals are exceedingly stable during the fast and, if normal to begin with, remain normal throughout the period of fasting.

In some cases a liquid diet, such as fruit or vegetable juices, has been considered to be a fast. This may occasionally be appropriate for a person who requires relative bowel rest, whose health condition would make a fast inappropriate. One cannot, however, achieve the powerful benefits of complete fasting if juices are part of the fast. ―Juice fasting‖ is not truly fasting; biochemically the body does not enter the ―protein–sparing‖ fasting state. In this state the body conserves its muscle reserves and fat is preferentially broken down. This does not occur with juice fasting. Juice fasting also does not have the powerful anti–inflammatory properties of the pure water fast that are essential for recovery in autoimmune illnesses. Other benefits of total fasting include decreasing platelet aggregation and promoting other biochemical changes that help to prevent the formation of blood clots, which could cause a heart attack. These beneficial changes, so essential in the cardiac patient, as well as the significant lowering of blood pressure, also do not occur if even a small amount of carbohydrate in the form of juice is taken.

Occasionally claims are made for special powders, vitamin preparations, herbal mixes, or drinks that are intended to detoxify the liver more effectively than fasting. Obviously, this is wishful thinking. The powerful detoxifying effects of the fast cannot be obtained by following a restricted or supplemented diet. Only when there is total abstinence from all calories do we observe waste products being heavily excreted from the breath, the tongue, the urine, and the skin. Plus, the fast does not merely detoxify, it also breaks down superfluous 16