"Everybody can work magic.
Everybody can obtain their goals,
If they are able to think,
If they are able to wait,
If they are able to fast."
Hermann Hesse
The current fad for intermittent fasting takes a somewhat myopic view of a practice for physical and spiritual transformation which stretches back thousands of years. Twenty-first century style fasting is currently being hyped as the latest cure-all for weight loss. It’s also lauded for its ability to lower blood pressure, increase human growth hormone, improve blood lipids and help prevent type 2 diabetes. Great stuff. However, in the midst of the current frenzy, what few are told is that such benefits, as well as scores more, have been part of traditional fasting for thousands of years.
REJUVENESCENCE STARTS HERE
Having spent more than 45 years studying and experimenting with fasting practices, I think it’s time we revisited this ancient tradition with so much to offer. Rejuvenescence is an old-fashioned word. It means “the acquiring of fresh vitality and the renewal of youthful characteristics in the cells and tissues of the body.” It is a word which was used frequently in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by clinicians and researchers investigating and making use of fasting as a natural technique for healing and for enhancing health. Like traditional fasting practices, in the face of drug orientated modern medicine, the word has rather fallen from use.
This is an excellent word to describe the remarkably revitalizing effect of going without food for periods of a few days (which most people can safely carry out at home on their own provided their health practitioner approves) to several weeks—something that should under no circumstances be done unless you are in a controlled environment under professional supervision. To fully grasp all the benefits of fasting from an holistic perspective, it’s important to look back to the time in which it was seriously studied and continually practiced as the central procedure for healing in the tradition of naturopathic medicine.
ANCIENT PRACTICES
Pythagoras fasted for forty days before sitting his exams, and then insisted that his students also fast before they could be taught by him. Ancient Egyptians used fasting as a tool for treating syphilis, and Hippocrates prescribed fasting for his patients during critical periods of illness. In the sixteenth century, the famous Swiss physician Paracelsus insisted that “Of all the remedies available, fasting is the greatest one.”
There are religious fasts. Jesus went into the desert where he fasted for forty days to purify his body and prepare it to receive the Holy Spirit. In nature, too, you find spontaneous physiological fasts, such as the hibernation or seasonal abstinence of specific animals or people when they feel they just can't eat. There are therapeutic fasts for the purpose of restoring and maintaining optimal health. None of these reasons for fasting are new. All of them have been practised since the beginnings of history.
In the past century, many thousands of therapeutic fasts have been conducted and recorded at such centers as Otto Buchinger's Bad Pyrmont in Germany. Dr Otto Buchinger coined the phrase “Therapeutic Fasting” after he cured his own severe rheumatoid arthritis. His clinic is still thriving, and is now run by the third generation of medical Buchingers.
MENTAL HEALTH
Vast quantities of information—some of it going back hundreds of years—has been collected about fasting in Europe and America, most of which has been all but forgotten. American expert in traditional fasting, Dr Alan Cott, and many other scientists and practitioners have discovered that a long controlled fast is a powerful force for restoring mental health. Cott fasted hundreds of chronically ill schizophrenics—the kind of people who tend to end up in the dark wards of mental hospitals—and found that after twenty-five and thirty-two days without food, about 65 per cent of them improved enough to leave hospital and return to life with some degree of ability to function as a member of society.
At the University of Athens, scientists discovered that fasting blocks the brain's uptake of the neurotransmitter dopamine. This may be one of the reasons why it can be useful in the treatment of mental illness, since many medications given to control schizophrenia do the same thing. British and Russian scientists discovered that fasting raises the level of serotonin—another neurotransmitter which is important in bringing relaxation to the body and mind, and in harmonizing mood.
The famous Russian scientist Yuri Nikolayev had much success in rehabilitating mental patients. According to Nikolayev, “Fasting purifies every cell in the body. I am sure that 99 per cent of sick people suffer because of improper nourishment. People simply do not understand that they litter their bodies with many unnatural foods and...because of this...poisonous substances are collected in the body. If you are interested in being in good mental and physical health and in increasing your vitality, start to work today with nature, not against her.”
Nikolayev believed, as did Cott, that fasting helps the body mobilize itself against many ills. When you temporarily stop putting food into the body, it gives it a chance to catch up with elimination, forcing it to draw off stored toxins from the tissues and then to excrete them. Practiced seriously and carefully, fasting rebalances the whole system biochemically. Both the elimination of toxic wastes and this rebalancing act bring a sense of being uplifted emotionally and crystal clear mentally.
TURN BACK TIME
How about the remarkable benefits of fasting as an anti-aging tool? First we’ll look at the regenerative effects fasts have been shown to have on animals and humans. Then we'll explore what happens on a long fast—a fast of more than two or three days—which is something that on no account should be done except under professional supervision, preferably in a clinic atmosphere. Finally, we'll examine short fasts of a few days and how for healthy people they can form an exciting and enjoyable vacation from the kind of habitual eating most of us find ourselves doing. Yes, enjoyable. Most people who look on fasting with distaste have never experienced its physical benefits and the heightened state of mental and emotional clarity it can bring.
ALL CHANGE
Drastic changes take place in your body right from the first missed meal. Almost immediately, wastes stored in your tissues are thrown off—sometimes at incredible speed. This can lead (and usually does) to a coating of the tongue and teeth with an unpleasant tasting stuff and, in some people, even to a headache or a feeling of being unwell which lasts for from a few hours to a day or so. For this reason, experts in traditional fasting practices usually insist that their patients follow a special diet composed of low sugar raw fruits, juices and vegetables for a day or two before beginning a supervised long fast, to start clearing the system and help avoid too drastic an elimination of waste products all at once.
Twelve hours after you begin your fast, your body starts to use up the glycogen (glucose) it has stored in the liver. This supply lasts less than a day. Body chemistry begins to change. Abstinence from food forces the body to produce and circulate ketone bodies—normal products of fat metabolism which can be oxidized to produce energy. Elevated levels of ketones occur as fat in the body is rapidly metabolized. There are two points during an extended fast during which acetone excreted through the urine and the skin reaches a peak—usually on the fourth and fifth day, and then again on the ninth or tenth. This gives some fasters a scent of acetone on the surface of the skin and can make your system quite acidic, which is why many fasting experts insist that it is better to fast on fresh vegetable and fresh (non-citrus) fruit juice, whose alkalinity can balance any excess acidity.
GREAT BRAIN FUEL
Your body adjusts itself to the fasting state by utilizing these ketones as fuel for brain and nerve cells. A mild state of ketosis on a fast is fine. If it becomes extreme, this can be potentially damaging, particularly if a person already suffers from kidney or heart trouble or is pregnant. But in these conditions fasting should never be carried out anyway.
Fasting naturally lowers blood pressure in hypertensive patients. From the beginning of a fast, there is sometimes a slight increase in temperature which usually lasts only a day or two. Most fasting experts attribute this to the rapid burning of stored toxins. Sometimes, on about the thirteenth day, the level of ketones in the blood serum rises drastically to as much as ten times above the previous level, while alkalinity diminishes. Temporary disturbances can take place in the fat, cholesterol, sugar and diastase levels in the blood. Often on these days the faster feels slightly unwell.
Doctors working with fasting have termed these periods `crises of acidity'. They stress that this is a natural occurrence, nothing more than symptoms of the body's readjustments. Such symptoms disappear quickly and don't occur again throughout the rest of the fast, but they can be a cause of great concern to the uninformed. This only serves to underline the necessity for careful supervision on a long fast.
GETTING HIGH
The experience of fasting is a highly subjective one. Many fasters claim that their concentration is improved and that they are better able to carry out creative tasks like painting or writing. (I would often do a fast of from a few days to a week or more before starting work on a NEW book.)
Most fasters sleep less than usual and feel better for it. Although this is usually not true of patients who previously suffered from insomnia. These patients often sleep more—sometimes as much as eighteen hours a day in the beginning. A few people, particularly those who have been chronically ill, experience a feeling of weakness and tiredness and seem to need a lot of time simply to lie around and do nothing. However, there are also many cases recorded where just the opposite is true.
A number of American and Swedish athletes have been known to carry out long walks—of two weeks or more—while fasting. Experts on fasting say that usually patients who are weaker at the beginning of the fast will tend to gain strength steadily from the beginning of the period of abstinence. Sexual desire is usually reduced during a fast, although in some instances people have reported an increase in sexual activity. In any case it returns almost immediately after the fast is broken—often with renewed vigor.
ENDGAME WARNINGS
Something that almost nobody understands, except practitioners proficient in fasting their patients and people who themselves have undergone long fasts, is that the way a fast is broken is as important as the fast itself in bringing about lasting benefits. When you go without food for a week or even a few weeks, your digestive system has a complete rest. One of the results of this is that digestive secretions slow down and eventually stop altogether. Also, your body becomes highly sensitive to whatever you put in it. The kind and amount of food you use to break your fast matters a lot. Break it sensibly on small quantities of raw food and you will find that a week or two later you will continue to feel as well and as clear as you did during your period of abstinence, but even stronger. Break it carelessly by eating too much or the wrong kind of thing, and you can throw your organism into complete chaos—a chaos which can result in mental and emotional confusion, fatigue, and even serious illness.
Next week, in PART THREE, we’ll take a look at the practicality of do-it-yourself fasting—what works, what doesn’t and how to get the best of what fasting has to offer, while avoiding as many of the hiccups as possible. See you then...
