The Body’s Ability to Heal
“Everyone has a physician inside him or her; we just have to help it in its work. The natural healing force within each one of us is the greatest force in getting well. Our food should be our medicine. Our medicine should be our food. But to eat when you are sick is to feed your sickness ”
– Hippocrates
Fasting is as old as mankind maybe even older. As far as we can recollect in history people (Egyptians, Greeks, Indians, Romans, Chinese, Ayurvedic medicine and many religions) have fasted for one reason or another, it is a universal practice. Its instinct even, just like an animal knows to abstain from eating when sick.
“You have the ability to heal your mind, body and life beyond what you have been made to believe and programmed to think”
– Thyrza, A Divine Universe
Human instinct and evolutionary adaptation has made our bodies very efficient at storing energy reserves, and drawing upon them when food supplies are scarce. The same works when the body is to fight disease, its response is to starve it out and generate a new environment and cells in which dis-ease cannot live. The body literally heals itself when provided with the right conditions.
“A little starvation can really do more for the average sick man than can the best medicines and the best doctors”
– Mark Twain
Reasons & Benefits of Fasting
There are only two types of fasting and they are fasting for physical health and fasting for spiritual growth.
Spiritually, fasting helps us transcend our addiction and attachment to food and substances, and to realize that humans don’t live by food alone. Spiritual awareness deepens and the mind becomes noticeably clearer. Freed up from having to satisfy physical hunger, you can then turn your attention to feeding the mind and spirit. Your connection to source, god and mother earth can amplify beyond imagination. Spiritual masters like Pythagoras would not admit any disciple into their higher teachings unless they had first purified themselves through fasting. Fasting, not only from food can ramp up the spiritual journey; social media fasting, toxic people and information fasting. Being able to control what you put in your body, mind and spirit gives you invaluable discipline in life and spiritual connections.
“Fasting blinds the body in order to open the eyes to the soul”
– Rumi
Physically, fasting enables the body to detoxify and clean without the extra burdens. Majority of diseases are caused by autointoxication, fasting has huge amount of therapeutic healing benefits and gives the digestive organs a well needed rest which in turn allows it to focus on specific healing.
In the acute crisis stages of diseases and fever, health historians like Hippocrates prescribed either a strict fast with nothing but water and medicinal teas, or a very slender liquid diet. Fasting is also recommended for colds and flu, arthritis and rheumatism, digestive complaints, and all humoral and metabolic disorders, in fact there is not many ailments I would not recommend using fasting as part of a healing regime.
“Fasting is the greatest remedy – the physician within”
– Philippus Paracelsus
Scientific experiments conducted have shown that severe restriction of caloric intake greatly extends vitality. Fasting holds great promise for life extension.
- Number one detoxifying practice
- Digestive track gets to rest and resets
- Resolves inflammatory responses
- Reduces blood sugars and cholesterol
- Increases fat metabolism
- Clears skin
- Promotes weight loss
- Boosts immunity
- Promotes a healthy diet and eating
- Rebuilds glands
- Break addictions
- Clear emotions
- Spiritual connections
- Connect to self (inner wisdom)
- Detoxify organs
- Clear mucus
- Creates healthy habits
- Stem cell regeneration
- Eliminate parasites
- Mental clarity
- Reduces risk of disease
Detox and Die Off Symptoms
When fasting the body’s own ‘Inner Physician’ is awakened, and the human organism, in its infinite healing wisdom, starts to detoxify and cleanse. This Inner Physician knows exactly where to go, what to metabolize and eliminate, and how to eliminate it.
During fasting the body gets to rest the digestive system and so instead of digesting food, the digestive secretions and enzymes can serve to digest, neutralize, and eliminate toxic wastes from the body via the gut tract. Team Leader among these secretions is bile, which is secreted by the liver and gall bladder and this is when the die off and detox symptoms can start.
- Head / Brain: headaches, dizziness, vertigo, wooziness, light headedness.
- Nose, Sinuses: sneezing, runny nose, itching, stinging, post nasal drip.
- Throat: soreness or constriction, hoarseness, scratchiness
- Lungs: chest congestion, wheezing, phlegm discharges, foul breath odours
- Skin: rashes, acne, pustules; excessive or abnormal sweating; strange body odours
- Stomach: sour or nervous stomach, stomach cramping, belching, bad breath
- Liver: sore eyes, bitter taste in mouth, sallow complexion, pain or distension under the ribs on the right side.
- Gall Bladder: colic, spasm, tenderness or pain underneath the liver area.
- Intestines: foul smelling gas, cramping, diarrhea, spastic colon or irritable bowel.
- Kidneys: low back pain and weakness, fatigue; frequent urination, often urgent; strongly coloured or smelling urine.
Depending on when and how the toxins were accumulated will determine when, how, where and the severity of the detox symptoms.
Detoxification symptoms, headaches, loss of weight and muscle mass, are the most hectic and intense in the first three days. Over those days, energy levels will also be at the lowest and generally results in many frustrations as the body adjusts and detoxifies. During and after the first three days, a change happens in the body’s internal energy system, where the body switches over to the more efficient burning of its fat reserves to satisfy its basic energy needs (ketosis) and even start to clean out damaged cells (autophagy). Then, the energy levels get a lot better.
During a fast, the body detoxifies itself during the night, leaving a thick, stinky, bitter tasting residue on the tongue in the morning. When waking, it is best to go to the bathroom with a tongue scraper and scrape the toxic waste off and cleanse the tongue and mouth with charcoal or coconut oil.
The ultimate healing stages the body goes into when fasting is ‘autophagy’ and ‘autolysis’, Autophagy refers to an ordered and purposeful digestion of cellular components. Autolysis however is when digestive enzymes leak out of lysosomes and start destroying the cell.
Both stages encourage regeneration of new stem cells, creates neuroprotective functions and rebuilds new DNA and more.
Things to Know before Fasting
- If undertaking a fast longer than 3 days, it is advisable to consult a holistic practitioner for guidance and check your body is in a place to do an extended fast.
- When doing a fast longer than 3 days (5, 10 or 21 days) it is highly recommended to do a colon cleanse before commencing to optimise the detoxification process.
- Drinking the right amount of water on any fast is imperative. 2 litres to every 22kg of body mass is optimal. Your fluid or water in-take can include herbal teas or in the case of juice fasting then vegetable and fruit cold press juices.
- Taking the correct steps to breaking your fast, from an extended fast, is more important than the fast itself. Faecal matter and toxins will reabsorb back into the body and bloodstream creating more issues than when you started if done incorrectly.
- Organic black coffee is only recommended for intermittent fasting or fasts that last no longer than 3 days. If you drink coffee on an extended fast (longer than 3 days), you will spike your adrenal and nervous systems putting unnecessary burden on the liver, counteracting any healing you are trying to achieve.
Types of Fasting and Detoxing Diets
All fast offer various types of healing opportunities.
Intermittent Fasting is generally 16 to 18 hours of fasting and a 8-6-hour window of eating: for example eating break-fast at 10am and having dinner down by 6pm, then drinking water between the hours of 6pm and 10am the next day. These can be great for maintaining general health.
Juice Fasting is the intake of only fresh organic cold press juices, herbal healing teas and water. These fast are great for giving the digestive tract a break, is alkalising, boosts nutrient absorption and can balance out targeted health issues.
Water Fasting is the intake of only water, healing herbal teas, specific mineral salts and in some cases specific zero calorie supplementation. These fasts can cure disease and completely renew the whole body, and mind and spirit.
Supercharge the Detoxification and Purification
- Deep conscious breathing techniques and body movement or stretching
- Light exercise or strength training
- Sun & sungazing – the suns prana energises, plus kills off bacteria, fungus and viral matter
- Enemas or colonics
- Herbal teas
- Mineral salts like Himalayan or a good quality ‘Keto’ salt
- Clean air and clean water
- Hygiene, lots of showers and baths, dry brushing, brush your teeth 2-3 times a day, remove unwanted hair or old hair from the body
- Massage with essential oils – frankincense is most beneficial
- Bentonite clay or Diatomaceous Earth
- Infrared sauna and sweating
- Reducing stress levels
Breaking a Fast
The way you break your fast is more important than the fast itself. If you do not do this step properly you risk reabsorbing toxins and faecal matter into the body and blood stream. You also risk creating some hefty gut health and organ issues. Fasts that are longer than 3 days should take around 3 days of easing back into a healthy solid food diet.
Stage 1 – liquids only and introducing some nutrients. 1, Vegetable and fruit (cold pressed) juices with 50% water, ptisan (barley water, used in Greece), congee (a Chinese medicine rice water), honey. 2, vegetable and or bone broth if you normally eat meat. 3, soft fruit.
Stage 2 – introducing more nutrients and some more solid type foods like; 1, coconut or nut yogurt and kefir (not dairy) and organic miso soup. 2, Moving into raw leafy green salad (only leafy green and lemon/orange and salt dressing), steamed vegetables. 3, Raw vegetables.
Stage 3 – well cooked grains, beans and lentils, 1, kitcharee (a gruel of mung beans or lentils with rice used in ayurvedic medicine), congee (a Chinese medicine rice gruel with added cooked vegetables), vegetable soups, steamed vegetables. 2, Nuts, seeds, and eggs. 3, back into better living with a clean intake of high amounts of raw fruit and vegetable.
When to Fast
The timing of your fast is mostly dependant on where your body and being are at and listening to what it needs. A fast is evident whenever toxicity in the body is heading towards a crisis and the degree of symptoms will guide you to the length and type of fast required for healing.
When it comes to lunar phases, the waning hemicycle of the Moon favours cleansing and divine purification, however the waxing hemicycle favours recovery and rebuilding after the fast. If you can break the fast around the time of the New Moon, you can utilize the waxing Moon’s energy to rebuild.
It is also favourable to fast when the weather is not at any type of extreme, not too cold or too hot. This being said, if you are able to control your home environment so you don’t experience the extreme temperatures then it would be ok to commence.
“The best of all medicines is resting and fasting”
– Benjamin Franklin
For further support and advice please contact me.