Thoughts on Fasting?

[Guest guest]

Hi Bee,

I know you recommend that we stop taking supplements one day out of the month.

I'd like to know what you are thoughts on fasting for extended periods of time,

like 1 week? I found this link:

http://www.soilandhealth.org/02/0201hyglibcat/020127shelton.III/020127.toc.htm

from Message #4326.

I've read through most of the chapters and am intrigued. Some interesting

excerpts from this book:

The body has a vast store of reserve foods which are designed for use in

emergencies and which may be utilized under such conditions with greater ease

and with less tax upon the body than food secured through the laborious process

of digestion, for, it is less expensive to the organism to supply the requisite

sustenance from its nutritive reserves than to do it by the digestive machinery

from raw material. These reserves are available for use in repairing tissue.

" Extremes of practice, are, however, to be avoided. Men are always prone to

indulge forcing processes. A fast for a few days or at most a week, will often

be comforting and valuable; but to compel the organism to live for a month

without food is an unnecessary violence. But in acute diseases the fasting may

continue for weeks, because nature cannot appropriate the food; we only object

to arbitrary fasts for long periods. Fasting is not a cure-all; it may do evil

as well as good; but it should always be employed in connection with rest of the

general system. "

I need only to add that in chronic disease, when the patient fasts, the whole

digestive tract enters upon the work of elimination and assists in freeing the

body of its accumulated toxins.

There is a popular belief that the work of purification can be finished with a

diet and, in many cases, this is true, providing the patient is willing to

greatly restrict himself for a sufficiently long period of time; but it is the

rule that the patient who will not carry the fast to completion will also refuse

to control himself and stay with the requisite dietary restrictions sufficiently

long to accomplish the desired end. Because it is easier to fast than to

restrict one's eating, one is more likely to abandon a restricted diet. It

should be known that there are no " seven day cleansing diets. "

Fasting is but a means to an end. It is a cleansing process and a physiological

rest which prepares the body for future right living. It is, therefore,

necessary that the work begun by the fast be continued and completed after the

fast.

" Human flesh, " says Dr. Page (The Natural Cure, page 73), " by absorption,

constitutes a most appropriate diet in certain conditions of disease. The

absorption and excretion of diseased tissue is, under some circumstances, the

only work that nature can with safety undertake, and in these cases, no building

up can be accomplished until a solid foundation is reached and the debris

removed; and not then, unless while this good work is going on, the nutritive

organs are given an opportunity to virtually renew themselves. "

" With no digestive drudgery on hand, " says Oswald, " Nature employs the

long-desired leisure for general house-cleaning purposes. The accumulations of

superfluous tissues are overhauled and analyzed; the available component parts

are turned over to the department of nutrition, the refuse to be thoroughly and

permanently removed. "

Regards,