Fasting and Eating for Health (3 page)

tissue — fat, abnormal cells, atheromatous plaque, and rumors —and releases diseased tissues and their cellular products into the circulation for elimination.

This kind of dramatic detoxification cannot occur with supplemented eating plans. Toxic or unwanted materials circulate in our bloodstream and lymphatic tissues and are deposited in and released from our fat stores and other tissues.

An important element of detoxification is mobilizing the toxins from their storage
sites
. This occurs best and most efficiently during total fasting.

I have observed many sick patients who have tried these ―detoxification―

powders and not achieved results. I have seen how easily these same people recover when they go on a complete fast. We can't buy magic in a bottle. A supplemented powdered drink food plan may sometimes be helpful for a person with food sensitivity or a very poor diet, but I find that in these cases, where total fasting is not necessary, changing the diet alone almost always achieves equally good results, and adding supplemental nutrients is practically never needed.

To think that we can buy an herb that will detoxify us is also an illusion.

Herbs do not detoxify. They merely are a source of nutrients or natural drugs.

For example, they do not detoxify the liver or kidney when they increase urinary output.
Diuretic
is the name given to a drug that can increase our urine flow. When a drug functions as a diuretic it does so because of its ability to block or poison the ability of the cells that line the kidney's collecting ducts to reclaim fluid. When a natural herbal diuretic is taken, it works via the same mechanism. Instead of accurately referring to it as a diuretic, its proponents call it a kidney strengthener or detoxicant. Obviously, the profit motive encourages claims made for many so-called ―healing‖ substances. It is attractive to think we can buy good health in a bottle, but unfortunately it is not that easy. There is nothing that can be taken that will ever accomplish the biochemical changes that occur when we undergo a complete fast.

Nature Has Designed the Human System with the Capacity to
Fast

The human body has been designed to fast safely. Certain biochemical changes take place when no food is taken that enable the body to fuel itself by burning up its fat reserves and conserving its vital tissues. As this book illustrates, the design of the human system is so masterful that it has built into it the blueprint to change its fuel consumption to fast safely.

The innate intelligence of the body is remarkable, as represented by the biochemical changes that occur in the fasting state. Glucose is a simple sugar that supplies the necessary fuel our body needs. Normally, if we don't eat for a day or two, we start to utilize muscle tissue to make the glucose needed by the body, since glucose can be manufactured .from amino acids stored in our muscles. If we continue to fast, however, the body senses what is occurring and attempts to conserve its lean muscle mass by a few different mechanisms.

Fats are broken down to fatty acids that can then be utilized by the muscles, heart, and liver for energy. The brain, however, is the major utilizer of energy 17

when the body is at rest. The brain cannot be fueled from fatty acids; it requires glucose to fuel its operations.

A special adaptation occurs in the fasting state whereby the brain can fuel itself with ketones instead of glucose. By the third day of a total fast, the liver starts generating a large quantity of
ketones
from the body's fat stores. As the level of ketones rises in the bloodstream, the brain and other organs begin to use these ketones as their major fuel, thus greatly diminishing the utilization of glucose by the body. This significantly limits muscle wasting. These keto acids are utilized for fuel primarily by the brain, muscle tissue, and the heart.

This production of ketones, called ketosis, develops within 48 hours in females and 72 hours in males, and muscle wasting at this time decreases to very low levels. This is known as
protein sparing
.

Thus, the human organism responds to the fasting state by attempting to maximally conserve its muscle and lean body tissue. With severely restrictive diets, like juice fasts, the body does lose weight, but the brain and other organs do not subsist mainly on ketones. Therefore, proportionately to weight lost, juice fasts and severely restrictive diets cause us to lose more lean body tissue and less fatty tissue than do total fasts.

What Is Starvation?

Contrary to what many people believe, fasting is not starvation. Starvation begins when abstinence is continued beyond the time when the body's stored reserves are used up or have dropped to a dangerously low level. During the fasting stage the body supports itself from the stored reserves within its tissues. When food is eaten at normal intervals, the body stores sufficient amounts of nutritive matter to last for a rather lengthy time during later periods of abstinence. Even thin people carry a reserve of nutrients in their tissues to tide them safely over a period of fasting.

The body will not starve or in general even be hungry while fasting because it is ―eating.‖ It is consuming the substances the individual consumed last week, last month, and last year that have been converted into body tissue. In fact, the symptoms of hunger generally disappear by the second day of the fast.

This illustrates that the body has entered a fasting, and (lean) tissue-sparing metabolism. Of course, there is a limit to the body's reserves. When they have been used up, specific symptoms occur that indicate the fast should not be continued. The time required for a fast to reach completion varies from individual to individual. The trained physician can easily denote symptoms that indicate the ending of the fasting period and the beginning of starvation. In the vast majority of fasts, the physician will end the fast many weeks before the nutrient reserves of the body have been exhausted. The average individual (not overweight) would have to fast approximately 40 days or more to exhaust nutrient reserves.

Such a prolonged fast is almost never recommended and, therefore, we are not remotely considering the biologic processes of starvation during the fast of 18

average length. If the fast was continued beyond the point when the body's nutrient reserves were exhausted, starvation would begin. If not eating was continued past this point, damage to the body and even death could result.

Most patients are fasted one to four weeks depending on their nutritive reserves and the purpose of the fast.

Fasting Is Nature's Restorer

In the animal kingdom, fasting is quite common. Some animals fast during hibernation or estivation (sleeping throughout the summer in tropical climates).

Some animals fast during the mating season and in many cases immediately after birth and during the nursing period. Animals instinctively fast when sick or hurt. The ill or wounded animal finds a warm secluded spot where it can lie quiet and undisturbed to rest and fast for a period of time until health is restored. The ill animal sips only water until well again. Nature, with her superior wisdom, has provided the animal world with an instinct to do that which will facilitate optimal physical well-being.

Most people do just the opposite of the animals when they are sick. They maintain their hectic work schedule, continue to eat a rich diet, and take anything they can find to gain comfort. Any drug advertised to hide their signs and symptoms is ingested. Drugs, well recognized as toxic and harmful if ingested when we are well, are suddenly seen as healthful and healing when the body is suffering with an acute illness.

Many people are unaware that symptoms such as a runny nose or fever are the treatment the body has prescribed to remedy the condition. Increased mucus production is the body's means of washing away infected cells and removing virus particles from the body. Fever aids in the body's immune defenses, activating the white blood cells and inducing interferon secretion from the brain. Interferon is a powerful substance that stirs the fighting arm of the immune system into action. Typical cold symptoms that people attempt to suppress with drugs are nothing more than attempts of the body to restore homeostasis and remove the disease itself. By drugging away their symptoms, people keep themselves sick longer and can even turn a minor disease into a major one.

Rather, we should do as the animals do. We should listen to our bodies when appetite is diminished or absent. If we are not feeling well, we should sip water and rest. It is amazing how quickly patients recover from viral syndromes when this advice is taken. Recovery in this case leaves the body in a clean and healthy state, rather than contaminated with toxic medications; we have thus laid the groundwork for future good health.

In both acute illnesses and chronic disease there is no greater delusion than that an individual needs ―strength‖ to fast. What is true is that such people have bodies that are too weak to digest the food they take in. The people who are most helped by a fast are those who are in most need. Too often the weak patient is told he or she must eat to regain health or strength. In many cases, while feeding, the person remains ill and fatigued.

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Frequently, even extremely thin individuals who have been losing weight while feeding themselves rich foods show a tremendous improvement in their digestive capacity and begin to gain weight and strength after a moderate-length fast. Fasting enables them finally to reach a normal weight. This illustrates their weakened powers of digestion or assimilation or the presence of serious chronic disease such as digestive impairment or autoimmune illness, which improves or resolves as a result of the fast.

The job of fasting is to supply the body with the ideal environment to accomplish its work of healing. During the period of a fast the blood pressure will drop, the level of retained metabolic wastes will fall, and the blood vessels will begin to soften and rid themselves of hard sclerotic plaque. In a short period of time the heart and brain, as well as other organs and muscles, will receive a more adequate blood supply and oxygenation. The tissues throughout the body's systems will begin to purify themselves and the rejuvenation process of the fast will have begun.

The goal of the body at all times is to keep the individual healthy. When the disease-causing stresses are removed, the natural healing and self-repairing powers of the body begin to work unhindered. Within a short period of time, allergic and mucus-filled individuals clear their nasal passages, asthmatics breathe easier, arthritis sufferers report their pain is resolving, and cardiac patients begin to have increased circulation to their hearts. Healing has begun.

Healing and rejuvenation occur because fasting is an opportunity for the human body to take a rest from all of the stressful elements of life, such as physical labor and emotional stress. It is also an opportunity for the internal organs and digestive system to take a physiological vacation.

In our society, most people eat heavy foods during much of their waking hours. This not only overworks the digestive tract, but also forces the body to continue its work of digesting and absorbing foodstuffs and eliminating food-derived wastes well into the night. This prevents the body from totally directing its energies toward repair and self-cleansing of its tissues.

To regain normalcy or health, individuals suffering from chronic illnesses must rid their systems of the burdens of toxic material and excesses, such as fatty or swollen tissues or atherosclerotic plaque. It may be possible, over time, to eliminate the excesses while on a restricted diet that calls for taking in foods that support the body. Fasting, however, offers a much more efficient means of accomplishing healing that is dependent on the elimination of retained waste.

This is because fasting gives the body an opportunity to focus completely on the elimination of the waste deposits and the purification of its tissues that are necessary to reach a recovered state of health.

When no calories are consumed, the body is living off its nutritional stores, primarily its fat reserves. The innate wisdom of the body is such that, while fasting, it will consume for its sustenance superfluous tissues, carefully conserving vital tissues and organs. The body's wondrous ability to autolyze (or self-digest) and destroy needless tissue such as fat, tumors, blood vessel 20

plaque, and other nonessential and diseased tissues, while conserving essential tissues, gives the fast the ability to restore physiologic youth to the system. By removing or lessening the burden of diseased tissue, including the fatty tissue narrowing the blood vessels, fasting increases the blood flow and subsequent oxygenation and nutrient delivery to vital organs throughout the body.

Conceptually, fasting provides a comparative rest for the digestive tract, while, throughout the entire body, from the blood vessels and nerves in the feet to the noxious retained substances irritating the central nervous system, the body conducts an internal ―spring cleaning.‖ Fasting enables the entire system to focus on the elimination of superfluous tissue and the retained waste that it was unable to break down and remove in the feeding state.

When an individual has a. serious chronic disease, we need to combine a fast with necessary dietary changes before and after the fast to achieve a recovery. By combining the fast with a healthy diet and lifestyle, the individual can maintain the benefits from the fast and remain healthy.

Fasting Is Not New

Fasting has been used as a healing modality throughout recorded history.

Socrates, Plato, Pythagoras, and Hippocrates, for example, all recommended fasting for various physical conditions.

Our species has survived on the earth for the last 400,000 years partially because of the incomprehensible design of nature that enables us to survive under various circumstances, including going without food for prolonged periods of time. Built into our genetic code is the ability to instruct the body exactly what to do to survive in a period of famine, food scarcity, or natural disaster when food is unavailable for prolonged periods. Obviously, the body functions normally for quite a long time when no food but only water is ingested.