area. At my suggesiton, she stopped fasting and thus drinking all that fluid, added some aduki beans( which have a diuretic effect) and seaweed to her diet, and began to feel much better. 3. Monodiets consist of eating only one category of food for a given period of time. Like other fasts, their goal is to give the metabolism less work to do. Monodiets are as varied as the people who invent them: Among the better known ones are the grape diet, the apple diet, and the macrobiotic all-grain“ number seven” diet( which, as the last of a series of ten variations, for a long time was misunderstood as the ultimate goal of“ pure” macrobiotic eating). In my experience, alkalizing monodiets based on fruits and vegetables— just as with juice fasting— are helpful in cases of protein and fat overload. The macrobiotic all-grain fast, because it is acidforming, is most effective when cushioned by some alkalizing seaweed, miso, and sea salt; it has had some excellent results when followed for seven to ten days by people coming off sugar and recreational drugs. It should be considered a therapeutic fast and in no case followed for more than ten days, as it could be overly acidifying. How Will It Feel? Once a fast is under way, there is usually a small“ healing crisis” on the second or third day: headache, stomachache, coated tongue, foul breath, and so forth. Those symptoms usually disappear after the fourth day, as do hunger pangs. Once you cease to feel the initial hunger, it is safe to fast until real hunger sets in. Real hunger is usually accompanied by feelings of deprivation, emptiness, and fatigue. Its onset will depend on the backlog of metabolic debris: Some people have been known to fast cheerfully for forty days, whereas the last time I fasted I couldn’ t go longer than four. I guess I have a nicely cleaned-out metabolism— but, on the other hand, I’ d probably cave in quickly during a famine. Ironically, some people who survived starvation in concentration camps during World War II found that their aches, pains, and infirmities disappeared during their ordeal, only to return full force or worse once they resumed“ normal” eating after the war. Several family members and friends of my parents had just such experiences. One of them was a pianist whose hands had been hurting for years, forcing her to curtail her career. The pain disappeared while she was imprisoned but returned after she came home.“ I know that it has something to do with the food I’ m eating,” she repeatedly told my mother,“ but I don’ t know what it is that’ s wrong.” Breaking the Fast It’ s important to break a fast gently, eating small amounts of light( no fat, low protein) foods. Take as much time as you spent fasting to return gradually to regular eating. All the good done by a fast can be wiped out with hasty or excessive eating immediately afterward. In fact, you can make yourself quite sick that way. One friend of mine plunged back into normal eating two days after a week-long fast, she got so sick that she had to do the whole fast over again and come out of it very gradually. Then she was fine. Basic Rules of Successful Fasting 1. Fast when you are ill and have no appetite. 2. Fast only when you really want to, not when you think you should. 3. Stop when you begin to feel deprived and empty. 4. Careful with reentry! Come back slowly, taking as many days to return to your usual diet as you spent fasting. 5. Fasts longer than ten days should be done in a sunny, natural setting, away from normal work activites and under professional supervision. 6. In warm weather, fast with juices, fruit, raw vegetables. In cold weather, fast with broth, cooked vegetables, grain. Appropriate fasting is one of our greatest healing tools. Let’ s learn to use it wisely. CONDITIONS THAT RESPOND TO DIETARY MANAGEMENT AND HOME REMEDIES Now that we’ ve looked at various dietary systems and natural remedies, we are ready to examine both the conditions to which they can be applied and the approximate time frames for the abatement or disappearance of symptoms. These timetables depend on the particulars of each case and certainly do not apply universally. On the whole, they are broad generalizations based on my observation of specific cases and on the rates of body-tissue regeneration( see this page). What follows then is a listing of specific conditions, the simplest remedies that I have found to help rebalance them, and approximately how long they will take to abate. Headaches The most common and at times the most debilitating of adjustment symptoms, headaches invariably herald a general systemic imbalance. Their prevalence is testified to by the myriad over-the-counter medicines designed to eliminate them, the headache clinics, the dates canceled, the love not made. We hear of sick headaches, tension headaches, migraines, hangovers. According to the Bircher-Benner headache clinic in Zurich, Switzerland, headaches can be caused by metabolic overload, arteriosclerosis, heart ailments, disorders of the liver, of the gastrointestinal tract, and of the kidneys; but also by narrowed space in the skull, mental illness, heat and sunstroke, sinus congestion, infectious disease, tuberculosis, eye strain, misaligned cervical vertebrae, neuralgia, shingles, and allergies. In all these