The Powerful Effects Fasting Has On Your Body

Fasting has become a popular topic of discussion in health circles nowadays. It’s studied benefits are far and wide. They include balancing insulin levels, raising human growth hormone levels, influencing positive changes in gene expression, initiating cellular repair, and much more.

And although fasting may seem like a new trend, in reality, it's been around for thousands of years.

Among the oldest and most widespread traditions in the world is fasting for spiritual purposes. It remains part of virtually every popular religion. Jesus Christ, Buddha as well as the prophet Muhammed all shared a belief in fasting's healing power.

According to the Greek physician, Hippocrates, “to eat when you are sick, is to feed your illness.” One other Greek historian and philosopher, Plutarch, wrote that “instead of using medicine, better fast today”.

In general, the ancient Greeks believed they could seek medical treatment in nature. One of the most significant observations of nature is when animals are sick. They cease eating and retreat away from the rest of the world, to give their body vital rest and have time to rejuvenate.

Dr. Arnold Ehret, a 19th-century German health educator, believed in the miraculous powers of fasting as well. In his book, Rational Fasting, he referred to fasting as “nature’s operating table”, and claimed that when left alone, our body’s intelligence could heal itself.

Today it seems as the fasting phenomenon has discovered a renaissance among health advocates, with a legion of women and men promoting its cognitive, physiological as well as spiritual superpowers.

Fasting can be done for various reasons (religious, spiritual, physical, and so on), for different periods of time and in various ways.

Some fasts might be done for long periods of time, such as trying to heal a terminal illness, in which someone might fast for months on end under a specific protocol (Master Fast system). Others might last from three to ten days, and then some people practice fasting every day or intermittently for anywhere from 12 to 24 hours.

There are several types of fasts as well. Some fasts involve eating only raw fruits and vegetables, juice fasts, water fasts, dry fasts, etc.

Juice fasting is just one of various types of fasting. Water fasting and dry fasting are two other popular methods.

Each type and length of fasting is used strategically based on what our personal goals are. In general, the mechanism works in the same way: Fasting gives your body rest from extensive digestive and metabolic issues. It takes its life force energy and uses it to clean out acids and toxins while letting itself heal.

Is the Standard American Diet (SAD) bogging us down?

The Standard American Diet, which includes high amounts of cooked meats, dairy products, grains as well as processed foods, tends to overburden and weaken our digestive and eliminative systems.

The Standard American Diet (SAD) is wrecking havoc on our systems.

When we consider that no other species cooks its food, we see how our deviation from nature has led to a diseased and exhausted human population. That heavy diet of cooked fats, starches, and meats is void of naturally occurring enzymes. This forces the human digestive system to produce more endogenous enzymes and taxes our organs. However, before these foods can be broken down and eliminated entirely, they putrefy in our gut and continually release toxic byproducts into our blood.

Cooked meat, fat, and grains are void of enzymes needed to break down the food in the body. Therefore, the body can't properly digest cooked food, which ends up putrefying in our gut.

There is a major difference between cooked foods and raw foods' digestion. Because of the high enzyme levels in raw foods, our digestive system can break them down faster and utilize almost all parts of the food, minus the fibers that act as a broom to our digestive tract.

Raw fruits and vegetables are rich in enzymes and nutrients. Our digestive system easily breaks down these foods, utilizes their nutrients and eliminates them fully.

Most people don't give their body a break from digestion for longer than nine hours. In turn, their body is constantly using energy to digest instead of eliminating and thereby healing. Fasting lets our pancreas, stomach, liver, intestines, and kidneys have a much-needed rest, which provides more energy for our immune, glandular and lymphatic systems. At this point, our body moves into a natural state of purification and elimination.

One way to boost the rejuvenating effect of fasting is by incorporating periods of dry fasting. Dry fasting is merely abstaining from food and water.

Our parents and teachers have told us that water is more imperative than anything else, so we need to ensure that we get our “eight glasses every day.” However, drinking the water that's most commonly available to us today, isn’t that hydrating at all.

Most of the exogenous water we drink today does a poor job of hydrating our cells. Dry fasting allows our body to draw its water from metabolic water within our weakened and sick cells.

Our cells won't absorb exogenous water to the point of proper cellular hydration. Drinking copious amounts of water mostly taxes our kidneys and prevents them from doing their primary job: filtering lymphatic waste. One of the most efficient ways to hydrate our cells is through dry fasting. Does it sound weird? Keep reading.

In his roughly-translated book, Dry Medical Fasting: Myths and Reality, Russian Dr. Sergei Ivanovich Filonov describes what happens in our body when we dry fast.

During a dry fast, he claims, our body switches its detoxification pathways and becomes a cellular “incinerator.” The process of intense body-cleansing is initiated as our body rids itself of sick and old cells and creates space in tissues for new stem cells to form.

As the body is starved of water, the cells get clever. Stronger cells cannibalize our body’s weaker cells through the process of phagocytosis. While the stronger cells consume the weaker cells, they absorb the metabolic water, which hydrates our body on a much deeper level than exogenous water. “Dead” water is essentially replaced with “living” water.

With that new endogenous water activated within our body, blood and lymph are purified through an internal filtration process, while the tissues through which our blood and lymph circulate are cleaned out.

Our immune system also benefits significantly from dry fasting. Inflammation is fed by water, so when our body is deprived of an inflow of exogenous water, it uses endogenous water very carefully—merely for feeding healthy cells. Damaged cells, various bacteria, viruses, and parasites will suffer from a lack of water and die. Irregularities such us cysts and benign tumors also dissolve as a result of autolysis.

Illustration of phagocytosis. During dry fasting our stronger cells will cannibalize the weaker cells and absorb their metabolic water.

Fat loss is another result of dry fasting. During water fasting, we lose both fat and muscle tissue in almost equal proportions. Dry fasting burns mainly fat, as it transforms our metabolic processes. Since 90% of our fat cells are water, they disintegrate three to four times faster than our muscle cells during dry fasting. Therefore, weight loss and toning takes place.

It's through the elimination of weak and damaged cells which dry fasting performs its miracles. Cells become stronger than before, and, therefore, they produce “healthy offspring” once they divide. Only the strongest cells survive and thrive.

To dry fast safely, one must be careful before jumping into a longer dry fast, as Dr. Arnold Ehret notes in his book, Rational Fasting. That's because as our body starts to remove toxins, and it can also start to recirculate in the blood. That's often known as “detox symptoms.” If someone is too toxic and obstructed, and the rate of elimination can't keep up with the number of toxins being loosened from the tissues, then they might get very ill.

Therefore, anyone who is chronically ill or has consumed a SAD diet for many years needs to fast under the supervision of a healthcare or detox professional.

Juice fasting is a great way to ease into a longer period of dry fasting. For the chronically ill or those who have been on the SAD diet for many decades, it's best to seek the support of a health care or detox professional.

As a safety precaution for people who are heavily burdened by toxicity, Dr. Ehret suggests doing shorter fasts more often. Consistent, everyday dry fasting periods between 12-18 hours could be just as powerful as longer dry fasts. That may look like finishing your dinner at seven pm and then abstaining from food and water until 12 the following day. After doing those shorter fasts for awhile, you can work your way up to more extended periods.

Lastly, Dr. Ehret underlines that breaking the fast is just as critical as the fast itself. The first meal after a fast must have a laxative effect, which means eating foods which pass through the digestive tract quickly and bring toxins as well as decaying food matter with them. Watery and astringent fruits, like grapes, cherries, and oranges are the ultimate “scrubbers” in that case. Raw vegetables act more like the “sweeper” of our GI tract.

So, is fasting the ultimate way to unlock your vitality? If the animal kingdom has got something to teach us, then it might very well be a tool with unlimited rejuvenating potential.

Both our ancestors and several of the great spiritual masters of our time realized that fasting was the way that could lead to purification and higher states of consciousness. Today it seems we're rediscovering this capability.

Although some might argue that fasting is just another health “fad,” what can't be denied is how our body feels and looks after periods of fasting. The proof indeed is in the pudding, and as such, fasting stands as another testament that there's no more powerful operating table than nature’s very own.

Reference: The Mind Unleashed