• Inflammations on the surface of the body
• Sprains or broken bones They could make the condition significantly worse. FASTING Perhaps nowhere is the power of food more evident than when food is abstained from. Entire religions have evolved from one man’ s fast, empires toppled, wars halted. For examples we need look no further than Jesus, Muhammad, the Buddha, Gandhi.“ Prayer and fasting” is the time-honored path toward understanding and enlightenment followed by spiritual masters East and West. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all observe fast days; the Greek mystery schools, Jainism, Buddhism, South and North American Indian cultures, Siberian shamans, and practically all traditional cultures we know of use fasting for religious, spiritual, or health reasons. In addition, not eating is probably the oldest and most universal food-related healing technique. Animals routinely stop eating if they don’ t feel well. And from the dawn of history, as well as from earliest infancy, human beings have also fasted when illness has struck. The practice of fasting tacitly acknowledges the fact that ours is a self-healing organism. Healing occurs naturally if it is allowed; improper or excessive food simply thwarts the natural ongoing healing processes. Forcing a sick person to eat“ to keep up his strength” overlooks the fact that digestion uses up strength too: more often than not, the available strength is better used for healing the problem at hand than for digestion. Also, as fasting appears to release a hormone that stimulates the immune system, it would indeed help speed recovery from fevers and infections. Not eating, in short, is as important as eating. For just as our bodies require both sleep and wakefulness, movement and rest, so we alternate between eating and not eating. Too much of either, and we go off-balance. It is important to differentiate between fasting and starvation. Fasting is entirely voluntary and an individual choice; it has a beginning, an end, and a clear goal, be it healing, a political objective, or a spiritual vision. If prudently done, its effects are almost invariably beneficial. Starvation, on the other hand, is involuntary; it involves no freedom of choice, but occurs as a result of external circumstances, such as war, drought, crop failure, poverty. It means not having enough to eat for a long time and results in a weakening and wasting away of the body. Today in our society there are also a number of people who starve themselves voluntarily, thinking that they are either“ too fat” and need to“ diet” or that they are actually following a“ healthy diet”; strong willpower, ideology, and fear keep them on a narrow food path, making them ignore their true hunger and think that their deepest instincts are somehow“ wrong” or“ bad.” Such rigidity only brings misery and pain, and has nothing to do with using food as a healing tool. How to Fast There are various ways to fast. A fast can last from four hours to many days, and the reduction of food can be in terms of quantity and / or quality. In all cases, however, liquid intake must be abundant, or else dehydration and shrinkage will quickly set in. We can fast: a. Daily b. Unto the ninth hour c. One or more days d. One or more weeks We can follow: 1. A water fast 2. A juice and broth fast 3. A monodiet Let’ s examine each of these possibilities in turn. a. The most sensible and natural way to fast is once a day. 7 Ideally, this means abstaining from food for ten to fourteen hours, or from about 6:00 P. M. to 8:00 A. M., give or take an hour or two. This practice allows the body enough time to cleanse the waste products of metabolism; it also facilitates the release of the hormones that stimulate the immune system, which are released by both fasting and sleep. If such a fast is practiced regularly, there will be no buildup or backlog of metabolic debris in the body, the possibility of serious illness will be diminished, and prolonged fasts will be unnecessary. b. With a small buildup, such as when you feel a fullness in the stomach, or are bloated and have overeaten, a few days of“ fasting unto the ninth hour” will be sufficient to cleanse the system. It means avoiding solid food until 3:00 P. M., then eating a light snack of fruit, salad, or whole-grain bread or crackers, and a full, wellbalanced vegetarian meal at about 6:00 P. M. Between dinner and 3:00 P. M. of the following day, only tea, water, or juice are to be taken. This type of fasting is excellent if it is necessary to keep up with daily work and normal activities. People whose metabolism is slow, but clean and efficient, can often live on this eating schedule for prolonged periods of time with excellent results. c. A fast or monodiet from one to ten days, either abstaining from food or eating only one kind, can be safely