Inspired by Dr Fuhrman’s book “Eat To Live”, I decided to
read his other book, Fasting and Eating for Health. I started to feel very excited about the
therapeutic and regenerative possibilities with fasting. I am familiar with fasting but mainly from
the spiritual perspective but this book delved deeper into the health aspects
of fasting.
To summarize the practice of fasting for health: The theory is, that
after WATER fasting, consuming ZERO calories (no juices, green drinks etc), the
body goes into true ketosis within 48 hours for women and 72 hours for
men. This means that after a day or two
of utilizing muscle tissue to make glucose for fuel, the body senses what is
happening and starts to conserve its lean muscle by going into protein sparing
mode and using fats to fuel the body and ketones from these fats to fuel the
brain. After around 3 days of fasting, the
body is in a process of autolyzing (eating itself) by breaking down “needless
tissue such as fat, tumors, blood vessel plaque, and other nonessential and
diseased tissues, while conserving essential tissues” in this way, diseased tissue and toxic materials stored in our fat are
released into the “circulation for elimination”.
Dr Fuhrman advocates pure water fasting over juice fasting
and ketogenic diets like high protein diets because they allow fully for this
deep cleansing and elimination and because “the human organism responds to the
fasting state by attempting to maximally conserve its muscle and lean body
tissue. With severely restrictive diets,
like juice fasts, the body does lose weight, but the brain and other organs do
not subsist mainly on ketones.
Therefore, proportionately to weight lost, juice fasts and severely
restrictive diets cause us to lost more lean tissue and less fatty tissue than
do total (water) fasts.
When the reserves are exhausted, the body moves into
starvation mode and starts to feed off the lean muscle or healthy tissue but before
this stage, true hunger kicks in and the fast must be stopped. According to Dr Fuhrman, it takes the average
person 40-70 days to go through their body’s reserves.
A clean, pink tongue with no white coating and the return of
sweet smelling breath are considered indicators of a complete cleanse but the
fast must be stopped once true hunger sets in, even if the tongue is still
coated and the cleansing or healing is not complete. The return of true hunger would indicate
either that there has been too much loss of lean muscle (especially in the case
of very overweight people) or that reserves are close to exhausted.
It is also important to ease out of the fast gently by
gradually increasing foods over a period of days or weeks (depending on the
length of the fast). The appetite is
ravenous once the fast is broken and uncontrolled eating will negate the
benefits of fasting. The post fast period
is supposed to be the most difficult. It takes 4-6 weeks for the metabolism to
get to normal. Overeating with a slow
metabolism can be a disaster. The
digestive system will be receptive and easily assimilate all nutrients from
food. This is the most ideal stage to
introduce a low calorie, nutrient dense way of eating.
I have to add here that Dr Fuhrman recommends that long term
fasting (over 3 days) be done under medical supervision.
Pre-existing health conditions can make
fasting dangerous for some individuals.
It is really important to do the research before considering
such an extreme activity as there are some conditions in which fasting is contraindicated.
Another informative, if rather dated, resource on fasting is
Herbert M Shelton’s “The Science and Fine Art of Fasting.”
This is something that I am considering quite seriously. Any fasters out there? What were your experiences? Has anyone actually healed a medical condition through fasting?
