In the previous three chapters (links below) I have talked about what my initial and ongoing experience with fasting has been as well as the forces against it and some interesting facts about it. In this chapter I’m going to relate more information from the many books I’ve read on fasting as it pertains to using it as a therapy for a variety of common acute diseases and their prevention.
Up front I’m going to be honest with you. If you are not studied in fasting for therapy you probably won’t believe a word of this. You are going to think “If this is so wonderful why isn’t it used more widely in the world”. Actually, it is widely known and commonly used and has been for thousands of years. However, each new generation gets further and further away from religion which uses fasting to clear the head and prepare the body for enlightenment. Religious people put the religious benefits of fasting above all else and rarely, if ever, consider the fact that fasting prepares and cleanses the mind AND THE BODY for receiving an other-worldly experience. There may be some fear also that people who are adamantly against religion or hate God for whatever reason shun fasting and its benefits for fear of getting “sucked into” a religious fantasy world of some sort. I don’t know. Even my own wife of 48 years thinks I’m nuts even after witnessing first hand what it has done for me. What I can tell you is that I’ve observed and experienced miraculous healing from fasting. I’ve also watched people die of acute diseases that have been put into remission by water-only fasting for only a few days for the people who have the courage to just try it. These people wanted nothing to do with fasting and decided to follow their doctor’s advice to their last breath. I’ll share my thoughts on why I think this is in chapter 5.
My biggest regret about fasting is only finding out about this miracle therapy late in life. Oh, the quality of life I could have had for the last 40 years. Better late than never as they say.
No health therapy is without risk even as slight as it is with fasting, but still there is a right and wrong way to do it and there are precautions that should be taken. There are people that should not fast like children under the age of 18 and birthing/lactating mothers unless supervised by a fasting therapy practitioner. People who are on prescription drugs which is pretty much everyone over 50 years old need to be supervised by a fasting practitioner. I used to take a blood pressure medication, but fasting reduced my blood pressure to the point where it was no longer necessary. All of my fasting was done without supervision. I read the books and knew what to expect. If I did have an experience outside of what I read I would have known to seek supervision. I’ll have more about my personal experience in chapter 6 than what I shared with you in chapter 1.
I’m just going to list all the diseases that respond well to fasting. Pretty much any disease that eating can get you into can be at least brought to a lesser degree of life invasiveness even to a complete remission. Oh, you expected a real list? If you are really interested you will read at least the four free books I’ve listed below.
Here’s a list (sort of) of diseases that fasting can help with:
Tumors shrink or vanish with extended water-only fasting. The body sees tumors as “superfluous tissue” just like fat. Soft tumors are gone in as little as three days and hard ones can take up to 21 days. Sometimes it takes multiple extended fasts. The reason that tumors are so susceptible to fasting is because we learned back in the 1930’s, from work done by Otto Warburg, that cancer loves glucose as its food source, but ketones, the body’s food source during a fast, not so much. Warburg won a Nobel prize for this discovery.
Type II diabetes can be put into complete remission. This is one disease that fasters need to be very careful with. If you are taking meds to control your sugar they need to be adjusted to compensate for lower blood sugar until your body becomes more sensitive to insulin. Dr. Jason Fung has a clinic in Toronto, Ontario that treats Type II diabetes putting it into remission.
Autoimmune diseases. This is where the bulk of grief is for most people suffering from the result of food indulgences. Allergies, asthma, Lupus, heart disease, tumors, skin issues like eczema, psoriasis, and acne, and many other autoimmune diseases respond well to fasting. Obviously, sometimes it has just gone too far and requires a miracle. Too often people will refuse to relinquish their faith in doctors until it is too late. Fasting protocols are the first thing to try rather than the last. It can be argued that the Hippocratic oath with its opening words “First do no harm…” meant to use fasting before more invasive therapies. Hippocrates used fasting in his medical practice. To first fast and then move to more invasive remedies as a last resort is what makes sense from the wealth of studies and fasting experience that is available to the interested person.
If you have read the previous three chapters, you know that missing a few meals for most of us poses no health threat. Extended water-only fasting is what brings the most benefit. Pick any of the several books below to know why. I keep pushing further study because knowing as much as I do has brought me to discourage the impatient person to act on only what I present here. I’m just the photographer of a beautiful landscape that was created by others and my role is to present you with a snapshot to get you started down a path of great enrichment.
The books I’ve listed below basically read the same even though they span a timeframe of 120 years. Only the books written after 2000 include physiological proof of fasting health benefits because of the diagnostic tools of today that were not available to the earlier authors. What I mean to say here is that all the books talk about curing this and that, but the more recent ones explain the how and why. Just don’t read the boring technical stuff in a comfortable position. ; )
The following four books are free:
The No-Breakfast Plan the Fasting Cure (Published in 1900)
Dr. Edward Dewey
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/27128/27128-h/27128-h.htm
Fasting Hydropathy Exercise (Published in 1900)
Bernarr MacFadden
http://www.bernarrmacfadden.com/fastinghydropathyexercise.pdf
The Fasting Cure (Published in 1911)
Upton Sinclair
http://apache2.pum.edu.pl/~fasting/upton.pdf
*Fasting and Sunbathing (Published in 1934)
Dr. Herbert Shelton
http://www.loveandtruth.net/shelton-fasting.html
The following books were purchased from Amazon:
The 5:2 Fast Diet (Published in 2013 rev. 2015)
Dr Michael Mosley and Mimi Spencer
Fasting (Published in 2013)
Michael Caputo
Water Fasting for Wellness (Published in 2015)
Jennifer Matthews
**The Complete Guide to Fasting (Published in 2016)
Dr. Jason Fung
Practical Helps in Fasting Long Fasts (Published in 2016)
Zacharias Tanee Fomum
Intermittent Fasting Hacks (Published in 2016)
Zack Smith
Fat for Fuel (Published in 2017)
Dr. Joseph Mercola
Ketogenic Diet + Intermittent Fasting (Published in 2017)
Steve Blum
*IMO the best of the free books and better than most of the purchased books I’ve read
**IMO the best of the purchased books I’ve read
Suggested for further study for specific health issues:
Cancer:
Cancer as a Metabolic Disease by Dr. Thomas Seyfried (amazon.com) and on youtube
Cognitive Decline:
Numerous study abstracts and youtube appearances by Dr. Mark Mattson who is Chief of the Laboratory of Neurosciences at the National Institute on Aging Intramural Research Program National Institute on Aging. He is also Professor of Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University.
Curing Type II Diabetes:
Dr. Jason Fung https://idmprogram.com/
Previous three chapters:
https://steemit.com/fasting/@chuck2u32/chapter-1-i-lost-45-pounds-by-doing-nothing
https://steemit.com/fasting/@chuck2u32/chapter-2-who-s-for-it-and-who-s-against-it
https://steemit.com/fasting/@chuck2u32/the-facts-ma-am-just-the-facts
Thank you for reading this information. It really can help you grow old with grace, dignity, and independence
Hi Chuck,
we've had prime time BBC shows talking about the benefits of fasting here in the UK. Mainly the discussion is around something like the 5-2 diet, which is mainly about weight loss I believe.
They had a guy on the show who was an extreme faster( I don't remember the specifics) and after having had all sorts of tests run on him the doctor declared that the fasting chap would never ever suffer from heart disease, diabetes and some other ailments. That statement really stayed with me and although as a busy parent, career to keep going etc I've yet to find the time (sounds silly written down but I guess I mean time to prepare mentally) but you have given me a bit more inspiration to try fasting myself.
Thanks Chuck I will follow you for more and resteem.
Thank you for the upvote and resteem! The mental prep is a two-fold process in my experience. First as you say getting your mind behind your body is useful, but really avoiding stress is key. Every time I find myself in a stressful situation I stuff my face. The second thing is freeing yourself from faith in doctors. There is nothing wrong with relying on them especially if you have holes in your body and you are bleeding profusely. I'm talking about a faith like you might have in God. Doctors say you must "eat to keep up your strength" and have no training in fasting whatsoever, at least in developed countries. Fasting is perfect for people who have no time for special meal prep, counting calories, exercise, etc. You literally do NOTHING yet lose weight and gain health benefits. My personal story will be in chapter 6. I still have weight to lose and several health issues yet to put into remission. Again, read the books for the full story. No one should attempt a fast based on my snapshot of the books.
Thanks for the reply Chuck, I agree with all of your points. Good advice about avoiding stress.
Excellent stuff there Chuck, I also do a bit of fasting from time to time. It's always very beneficial.
My last major fast was last year with a 29 day water/urine fast.
I discovered Urine Therapy or Shivambu (what they call it in India) a few years ago and have been testing the various aspects with very positive results. Your own urine is nature's perfect medicine.
the book "water of life" by John W. Armstrong is an important resource.
I also attended the first annual Water of Life symposium back in September.
http://www.wateroflifesymposium.com/
a really wonderful group of peeple.
if you're curious that link should get you started.
Maybe also google a guy Dave Murphy or steemit member; https://steemit.com/@weedu-shivambu
There's a bunch of stuff about it on youtube.
cheers. A
and BTW I do mini-fasts Buddhist monk style everyday, which is to fast 18 hours a day. I start the day by drinking all my first morning pee. The pee really fine tunes your internals.
I'm pretty sure Jesus was fasting on urine when he did the 40 days in the wilderness.
the Water of Life describes some truly miraculous cures.
It is no surprise we carry that miracle around with us 24/7!
Thank you for this reply and upvote! Before I got to your hypothesis about Jesus and his 40-day fast I had the same thought. None of the books I've read required drinking your own urine in order to achieve remarkable healing and disease prevention benefits. Thank you for the links to the information. I will follow them up.
Urine is rarely mentioned because of the deep adverse western cultural conditioning in play.
this goes back to Shiva and his discussion with his wife Parvati. She wanted to know the secret of his effulgence. Shiva agreed to tell her, but she must keep it secret.
This tradition carries on through today in Hindu culture. Advanced yoga practitioners around the world know about urine therapy/Shivambu, but only tell their advanced students about it. (kinda like here with you, I mention it only because of your advanced awareness of the benefits of fasting)
The current bible keeps an even tighter leash on this information with only vague references like; "Drink water from your own cistern, running water from your own well."
UT is truly revolutionary and would upset the western medical profession of butchery and deadly poisonous drugs.
Things like UT and Bitcoin are indications that perhaps the dawn of a new age is truly upon us...
We now know the tools to be our own doctor and our own bank.
Cheers A.
A truly though provoking point. Thank you, sir!
its very valuable article for my treatment
Thank you for this reply! Glad to hear this was helpful to you. Please read the books I've *indicated before fasting.
Puasa adalah wajib.dan benar puasa bisa mengaboti sagala penyakit.
I would love to respond. Can you please write in English? Sorry for any inconvenience.
Wow Chuck you really put some time and work into this post. I'm pretty interested in the slowing of the aging process--I'm a runner, I practice yoga and mostly eat fairly healthy (non GMO, minimize HFCS, etc) and take certain supplements and it's worked for me to help keep me young looking. My peers at work are often surprised to find out I'm 10 years older than most of them.
I haven't really tried fasting because of how much I exercise but it might be a good thing for me to take a week off the exercise, fast, do a juice cleanse or something. I just never seem to have time to deal with the side effects because I'm always working, adulting, doing chores, working on my car, house etc.
Thanks for sharing this information and I've followed and given you an upvote. Best of luck to you in your journey on steemit and I look forward to seeing more of your posts.
its working @cryptokeepr, you don't look a day over 50!
Again, thank you for the reply, upvote, and follow! I know it can be difficult for a busy man like yourself. The only thing in a water-only fast that they recommend giving up would be the exercise. Otherwise no one would know you are fasting except those you break bread with on a regular basis. Those that know you are fasting will think you're nuts, but the benefits are there for the taking. The hard part for me is watching people I know and care about killing themselves with autoimmune diseases that are controllable using any one of a number of fasting protocols or at least a ketogenic diet until the threat is put into remission. The thing I love about fasting is the nothing-to-do of it. No special anything as well as no cost. In the next chapter I'm going to get into how man's wisdom of "eat to keep up your strength" is not the way we were designed or have evolved from. That three meals a day, day after day, week after week, year after year is one of the worst things we can do to our bodies. And now, with modern physiological diagnostics, we know why. Again, sir, many thanks!
I never really thought about the time saving aspect of fasting and simplification of the day not having to prepare food 3 times per day (or pre-prepare earlier). The days that I'm off work I actually tend to end up eating only twice and my dad says since he's retired he only has 2 meals per day.
So many aspects of modern day life are counter to what is actually healthy and natural for our bodies and the older I get the more things I realize are not the way that they actually should be. I question so much but feel powerless to change a lot of it. But my diet is something I have control over so maybe I will try a fast at some point in the near future.
I'm really happy to have connected with you here and look forward to seeing your future posts.
Thanks for the reply and I am glad to make a connection with you too.
This post was resteemed by @steemvote and received a 12% Upvote