Detoxification
Fasting Diet Benefits For Detoxification & Health (Book Extract)
Key to purification & super energy, fasting awakens mind, soul & spirit
excerpted from The Miracle of Fasting! Helps You Enjoy a Super Charged, Healthy, Happy Long Life, by Paul & Patricia Bragg
Note to cancer patients by Healing Cancer Naturally: While at least one “Natural Hygiene” proponent recommends water fasting to cancer patients, Max Gerson’s “conception of a prolonged fast or periodical three-day fast” was that “You can't let the cancer patient fast. In the cancer patient the body is so depleted, if you let them fast they go downhill terribly.” (Compare Gerson Therapy.) Also see Stanley Burrough’s objections to water fasting.
I have invited the above-mentioned Natural Hygiene proponent and his clients to (anonymously) share any cancer healing success stories achieved by water fasting with the visitors of Healing Cancer Naturally but have not heard of him since.
Conclusion: while fasting seems to be a great salutary tool for persons in generally good health or stricken with other diseases, cancer patients may be better advised to use juice fasting and/or a healthy diet to achieve recovery.
Notwithstanding the foregoing, we have two testimonials of Bladder Cancer Cures Achieved via Water Fasting (formerly stage 2 and 3, respectively).
Chapter 1
Every thinking person must at one time or another say to himself, "Am I getting the most out of life?" The great comedian, Ed Wynn said, "Without your health, riches, possessions and fame are all mud." What is a man without health, even though endowed with riches and fame? Riches cannot buy health and happiness. Just because a person has achieved fame, it does not follow that he is healthy and happy!
I do not discredit success and riches! I think money and possessions have a place in our lives. Physical comforts and luxuries are important to most people. Take away a man's wealth and give him only health and his first desire will be the return of his riches.
But with both achieved, a word remains which we hate to utter; a thought we dread to contemplate; a thing which gives sorrow, pain and grief. That word, that thought, that thing, is death! Even in cases where life appears a burden, how tenaciously does man cling to it! How the spirit recoils from a struggle with death! How fondly it retains its grasp on life! Man's great desire is for health and long life on earth; "Man clings to the world as his home, and would want to live here forever, if he had health and long-lasting youthfulness."
Note: My father and I wrote this book together. However, because my father is both my mentor and the American Pioneer of Fasting — with long years of experience overseeing the fasting of thousands of students with miraculous results — this text is mostly presented in his voice.
— Patricia Bragg
"Yet even now", says the Lord, "return to me with all your heart, with fasting."
— Joel 2:12
Fasting — The Key to Internal Purification
Remember that all those inorganic chemicals must be passed out of your body or they can cause great damage. If the body's Vital Force drops too low then it can't force these inorganic chemicals through your eliminative systems. Then they remain in the body and can cause grave health damage in the future!
If we are to get these poisons out of our bodies we must fast. By fasting we give our bodies a physiological rest. This rest builds Vital Force. The more Vital Force we have, the more toxins are going to be eliminated from the body to help keep it clean, pure and healthy.
Fasting is a Miracle — I Thank Paul Bragg
I really haven't had any health problems since I was 17, when I started reading about health and nutrition, especially the Bragg Miracle of Fasting book. I started realizing there was a real connection between what you put in your mouth and your health and how you felt.
So I immediately changed everything about my diet. I stopped eating refined white flour and sugar products, most dairy products and anything that was not a whole grain or whole food. What was left was a lot of healthy things: organic vegetables, fruits, legumes, seeds, nuts, etc. After years of asthma, within a month I could breathe almost normally for the first time in my life. Fasting is a miracle and I thank Paul Bragg!
— Paul Wenner, Creator Gardenburger, author of Garden Cuisine
Fasting Aids in Flushing Deadly Poisons from the Body
When we fast (stop eating) all the Vital Force that has been used to convert food into energy and body tissue is now being used to flush poisons from the body! When Patricia and I travel throughout America and the world lecturing, we are fortunate to know health-minded people everywhere. We are usually well supplied with organically homegrown fruits and vegetables from their health gardens. But sometimes only commercially grown foods are available, which may have been sprayed with poisonous pesticides. But, we fast faithfully to cleanse toxins out, even when traveling, one 24 hour fast weekly.
I do four 7 to 10 day fasting periods yearly. When I go on a 7 to 10 day complete water fast, I take a specimen of my urine each morning upon arising. I put it in a small labeled bottle to let it cool and settle. In a few days, I can see little crystals forming in the urine. I have had my urine examined for chemicals, and the examiner has told me time and time again that traces of DDT and other deadly pesticide residues have appeared in my urine.
On one occasion, I took a 21 day complete water fast. On the 19th day, I had terrible pains in my bladder. When I urinated it felt like red hot water passing through me. I had this urine examined and sure enough, it was filled with DDT and other poisons!
A great feeling of energy flowed over my body when this poison had passed out of it. The whites of my eyes were as clear as new snow. My body took on a pink glow and my energy surged. Now, remember I had been fasting for 19 days. Yet, I drove from Pasadena, California to Mt. Wilson, which is six thousand feet high, and climbed the trail with absolutely no fatigue! I ran with ease most of the way down the winding trail. I felt that a tremendous burden had been lifted from my body! In my personal opinion, fasting is the only way to rid the body of the many commercial poisons found in foods.
Who's Eating Fast Foods? Americans — 30 Billion Times a Year!
USA Today said 44% of junk food eaters are 35 years or older. Only 23% are youth under 17 years old.
— Shocking Food Facts Causing Health Problems
Most people think they can attempt to break all of Mother Nature's good and just laws of Healthful Living. How very wrong they are. You can never break a natural law — it will break you! Many think they can break all of the natural laws of health — then run to a doctor to circumvent these natural laws by having a medical "miracle" fix-all bandage for their misery.
Chapter 2
What is the Most Significant Discovery of this Modern Age?
• The finding of Dinosaur eggs on the plains of Mongolia, which scientists assert were laid some 10,000,000 years ago?
• The unearthing of ancient tombs and cities, with their confirmations of the scriptural stories, and their matchless specimens of bygone civilizations?
• The radioactive time clock by which Professor Lane of Tufts University estimates the age of the earth as 1,250,000,000 years?
• Jet airplanes? Space travel? Lasers? Television? Radio? Computers? Telephones? Cell phones? Automobiles?
None of the above compare with fasting . . .
The Greatest Discovery of Modern Times
In our opinion, the greatest discovery by modern man is the method to rejuvenate himself physically, mentally and spiritually by fasting. Man can create a quality of agelessness and with fasting, can prevent premature ageing and a premature death!
The dread of "growing old" and becoming a burden to himself and others is one of man's greatest fears. The fear of becoming sick, senile, helpless and unable to care for oneself is rooted deep in every thinking person's mind.
With the complete knowledge of fasting and The Bragg Healthy Lifestyle, as outlined in this book, you can banish all your fears of premature ageing! With a 24 hour complete water fast weekly — setting aside 52 days and four 7 to 10 day fasts a year for body purification —you can keep the toxins removed and flush the rust and crystals from your moveable joints and muscles.
You must bear in mind that it is the toxic debris and wastes of metabolism (from the biological process of converting food into living matter and the matter into energy) that bring on many physical ailments and premature ageing.
When the Vital Force of your body drops below normal, then all your physical problems — as well as your mental ones — begin! Read the Bragg Build Powerful Nerve Force Book. (See back pages for booklist) It details how to reduce stress, fear, anger and worry — these negative factors can destroy your precious Vital Force and life!
Fasting Conserves Energy — Your Vital Force
Let me explain. We eat food and as it passes through the body, it must be masticated, digested, assimilated and then the waste is eliminated. We have four great organs of elimination: the bowels, the kidneys, the lungs, and the skin. In order for these eliminative organs to work perfectly, the body must build a high Vital Force of body energy reserves.
It takes a tremendous amount of Vital Force to pass a large meal through the gastrointestinal tract and also eliminate the waste via the 30 foot tube that runs from the mouth to the rectum. It takes the great power of Vital Force to pass liquids through the 2 million filters of the human kidneys. It takes Vital Force for the chemical power of the liver and the gallbladder to do their work in preparing food for the billions of body cells.
It takes great Vital Force for the lungs to deeply inhale up to 2 quarts of oxygen with each breath, to purify the entire bloodstream in your body and expel the toxins and the carbon dioxide. It takes great Vital Force for the skin (often called your third kidney) with its 96 million pores, to throw off body toxins in the form of skin rashes, pimples, sweat and foul body odors.
I have found a perfect health, a new state of existence, a feeling of purity and happiness, something unknown to humans!
— Novelist Upton Sinclair, a frequent faster[1]
The Endless Quest
Freedom and progress rest in man's continual search for truth. Truth is the summit of being.
— Emerson
Who is strong? He that can conquer his bad habits.
— Ben Franklin
The Miracles Are Within You
The human being craves sudden miracles. Not fully aware of the actual achievements of natural nutrition, exercise and fasting — which are in themselves miraculous — he searches in the realm of the unknown for manifestations that he cannot understand. Simply obeying Mother Nature's great laws is too simple a procedure to follow!
People full of miseries and premature ageing want a quick, easy way to find health and youthfulness. Just remember: You must earn your health! You cannot buy it. No one can give it to you.
I have boundless energy, great power, wonderful strength and radiant, vibrant health because I have studied with respect Mother Nature and God's Natural Laws and followed them faithfully! These healthy, natural nutritional laws, the Laws of Self-Purification — fasting, keeping the circulation healthy, free-flowing and the skin and muscle tone active by exercise — lead to agelessness.
Do You Have Harmful Habits to Overcome?
Do you eat salt and salty foods? Do you drink coffee? Use tobacco? Alcohol? Use refined white sugar or eat products with this devitalized material in it? What devitaminized and demineralized foods are dragging you down and enervating you?
Is your willpower weak or strong? Who is the boss of your body? Your bad habits? Or does your mind control your appetites? Remember that flesh is dumb and can't think for you. Only with positive thinking can you overcome the bad habits that your flesh might crave. If you really crave glorious health, unbelievable strength, tremendous vital force and a trim and fit body you will be proud of, start working with Mother Nature today and not against her![2]
Fasting — the Key to Super Energy
Fasting is the key which unlocks Mother Nature's storehouse of energy. It reaches every cell in the body, the inner organs and generates the Life Forces. No one can do it for you! It's a personal duty that only you can perform. No one can eat for you. And I believe that 99% of all human suffering is caused by wrong and unnatural eating. The efficiency of any machine depends upon the quality and amount of fuel for generating power it is given. And that goes double for the human machine!
Some people will blame everything on earth except food as the cause of their physical miseries and premature ageing. Why they are suffering is always a mystery to them. The average person does not know how horribly unclean the inside of their body is, caused by years and years of overeating, eating when not really hungry and, in many cases, wrong-minded eating of dead, devitalized foods. All these unhealthy habits build up internal poisons and clogging toxic wastes in their bodies.
Put the person who brags that he "enjoys perfect health" on a complete distilled water fast for 5 or 6 days. His breath will become putrid and his tongue will have a foul-smelling, white coating. His urine will become dark and evil-smelling. This definitely proves that his whole body is filled up with decayed and uneliminated toxic materials brought in by eating the wrong foods.
The continual accumulation of increasingly foul body poison is the buried or latent unknown ailment. When Mother Nature wants to get rid of this ailment by a "crisis" commonly known as sickness, people look for an easy "quick fix" to get rid of their troubles. They usually ignore the miraculous one Mother Nature has given us which has no dangerous side effects: FASTING!
Now learn what and how great benefits a temperate diet will bring along with it. In the first place, you will enjoy good health.
— Horace, 65 B.C.
Over the next decade nutritionists expect to see those pursuing the more healthy lifestyle move from meat to beans to avoid saturated fat, toxins and cholesterol found in all animal products.
— Reader's Digest
Fasting — A Natural Instinct and Great Purifier
Sickness is Mother Nature's way of showing you that you are filled with toxic wastes and internal poison. Dead people don't have colds. It is only when you are alive and have Vital Force that you have physical problems.
By fasting, you are working with Mother Nature to help expel the wastes and poisons you have accumulated in your body. Every animal in the wilderness knows fasting, for it's the only method animals use to help overcome any physical trouble that befalls them. This is pure animal instinct. We humans have lived so long in this soft civilization that we have lost this natural instinct to fast when health problems occur in our bodies.
In your life you may have experienced physical suffering, when you felt no desire for food — it might even have repulsed you. Then, kind but ignorant relatives or friends may have told you to "eat to keep up your strength." The very last thing you needed was food, because your body was signaling you to stop eating. Mother Nature wanted you to fast so she could use your Vital Force to cleanse and then heal your body.
The soft voice of Mother Nature is often hard to hear and understand. By fasting, your extra-sensory instinct becomes very keen. The fast sharpens your mind and tunes you in with the gentle inner voice of Mother Nature and God. Fasting has made my inner body, mind and soul alert! My body and mind work better after each fast. I know yours will, too! Fasting is for sure a miracle!
Fasting clears away the thousand little things which quickly accumulate and clutter the body, mind and heart. It cuts through corrosion and renews our contract with God and Mother Earth.
When health is absent, wisdom cannot reveal itself, strength cannot be exerted, wealth is useless and reason is powerless.
— Herophiles, 300 B.C.
Fasting Saves You 15% Yearly Off Your Food Bill
Do you want to live a longer, happier, healthier life and save hundreds of dollars annually? Following The Bragg Healthy Lifestyle with water fasting one day a week not only provides life extension values, but an extra big savings of 15% off your annual food bill.
— Patricia Bragg
Raw, Organic Fruits and Vegetables Are Mother Nature's Miracle Cleansers
When you get a bad reaction from certain raw fruits and vegetables, remember that these are cleansing and purifying foods. Use a small amount until you can reduce your body's toxic poisons. Your weekly 24 hour fast is going to get rid of a lot of your body wastes. If you have the intestinal strength to fast for 3 to 7 days, most troubles from cleansing foods disagreeing with you will be over. What are the acid-forming foods? Chiefly sugar, its products and coffee, tea, alcohol, meats and fish.
No doubt the idea of excluding even a portion of the latter will dismay you, but if you want to live agelessly you must do many things at first that dismay you. Eventually you will be dismayed at your dismay. Often a new task is difficult because you think it will be. Tackle it with the idea that it is easy and it becomes easier!
Living on a diet composed mainly of organic fruits, veggies, salads, nuts and seeds isn't difficult. No one will deny that fruits are luscious. Salads may be enjoyed in great variety. The list of vegetables is long and diversified. All the raw nuts and seeds, raw or lightly roasted pecans, almonds, walnuts, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, etc. are nutritious and delicious. You need not confine yourself to these foods, but if you lean towards acidosis you should combine fasting with a diet of fruits, salads and veggies.
If you must eat meat, it should be only 2 or 3 times weekly. On the least symptom of feeling bad, get back to the healthier vegetarian alkaline diet quickly. Headaches, dizziness, specks in the vision, bitterness in the mouth, body fatigue and mental blockage merely denote a bile attack, but again the disorder may be more deep seated.
If you think it's your liver, you should cut out all fats and flesh foods. Also, cut out all refined sugars and refined starches. The little protein you need you can get from organic healthy plant sources, beans, raw nuts and seeds, etc. The Vegetable Protein % Chart on page 233 will give you some healthy ideas.[3]
Bad unhealthy cooking diminishes happiness and shortens life.
— Wisdom of Ages
Fasting is as Old as Man
The instinct that leads us to fast when the body is sick or wounded resides in the cells of every living being. The reason sick or wounded animals refuse to eat is that the instinct of self-preservation takes away their hunger so they will not eat. In this way, the Vital Force (which would otherwise have to be used in the digestion of food) is concentrated at the site of the injury to remove waste products, thus purifying and healing the body.
The fasting instinct is so powerful and of such vital importance that, even though semi-civilized man has strayed from the natural path, he is still greatly influenced by this wonderful saving scheme of Mother Nature! If he would obey the silent voice of this infallible, natural instinct and stop eating when hunger has been withdrawn, he would soon get well. Better still, he would never get sick again, provided he ate natural food, lived in a natural environment and lived a sane, sensible, healthy and natural life.
Since the infallible intelligence of the living organism withdraws the sensation of hunger when there is an excess of food or when the body has been wounded, the desire to fast begins when either of these happen.
We read in ancient history that fasting has been practiced since time immemorial by the religious people of the East and by most ancient civilizations. They practiced fasting not only for the recovery of health and preservation of youth, but for spiritual illumination as well.
Accordingly, we see the great philosopher, Pythagoras, requiring his disciples to undertake a fast of 40 days before they could be initiated into the mysteries of his philosophical teachings. He claimed that only through a 40 day fast could the minds of his disciples by sufficiently purified and clarified to understand the profound teachings of the mysteries of life.
As it was in the old days, fasting will not only purify the body and help restore it to well-being, but has a great effect on the mental and spiritual parts of man.
Mother Nature and its beauty is the signature of God.
Fasting Awakens the Mind and Soul
In my own personal life, as well as in the lives of many of my students who have been conscientious and persistent in their fasting program, great mental and spiritual doors have been opened! If I read a book today, my mind retains what I read as clearly as if the book were in front of me . . . that is, I have a photographic memory. Hundreds of my students write that they, too, have developed a keen photographic mind.
After a fast of 1 to 3 days, you will notice that a dark cloud has been lifted out of your mind. You can think more logically and you can come to decisions quite quickly. What was once a great problem becomes trivial! After a fast, you seem to fear nothing any more and things you worried about are solved easily by your purified mind.
In my personal life, fasting helped me develop a keen extrasensory perception. I can find solutions for many problems that once caused me many hours of anxiety and nerve-exhausting worrying. My fasting program has created an inner peaceful tranquillity of mind. I feel more serene and at peace with myself and the world because of my continued fasting program. As you purify your body and mind, you seem to come closer to a power higher than yourself! This inner strength and inner power, makes you a positive-thinking person.
The memory becomes sharp as a razor's edge. You can remember names, places and events that go back many years. You have a better capacity for self-education. Education is not a preparation for life, but education is life itself!
To grow mentally and spiritually is the greatest goal we humans can have on this earth. So fasting works in three ways. You purify your body physically, mentally and spiritually and therefore enjoy super vitality and health. Your mind becomes a sponge which can absorb new facts and knowledge. Greatest of all are the inner peacefulness and spiritual tranquillity that make life worth living. Through fasting you find "Peace of Mind," the greatest and rarest gift of life.
You are encircled by the arms of the mystery of God.
— Hildegard of Bingen
Fasting — The Safe, Perfect Cleanser
Of course, if you are loaded with toxic poisons, fasting will flush these poisons out of the body and you will feel a little uncomfortable, but these are momentary experiences and should cause no concern. This means only that fasting is working for you. You know you are fasting to purify the body of the accumulated toxic poisons and waste. When you feel uncomfortable, you can say to yourself, "This is only temporary. This will pass as soon as these old toxins are flushed out of my body." And what miracle rewards you'll receive for the small, temporary discomfort you may have experienced.
Your eyes become brighter and all the natural senses of the body seem to be sharper! After a fast, your food tastes better — the fruits and the vegetables taste so marvelous, because of your newly revitalized taste sense! Your body seems to be tireless and you will sleep like a baby after a fast. There are so many rewards from a fast that only a person who has actually fasted can truly realize the great benefits that are achieved.
Don't be a Slave to Foods
Most humans are slaves to foods; they must have breakfast, lunch and dinner at regular meal hours every day, year in and year out. They eat whether they are hungry or not, and their poor bodies are burdened by overeating . . . and usually poor nutrition as well! No wonder we have so many physical wrecks!
One of the greatest nutritional teachers in the world, Professor Arnold Ehret, said, "Life is a tragedy of nutrition." How true is the old trite saying, "Man digs his grave with his knife and fork!"
Many people never give their stomachs a rest. They continually stuff and work the digestive and eliminative functions with an overabundance of food. This excessive burden means that the functions of digestion and elimination become so overworked and so exhausted that they simply collapse. The entire body then becomes enervated! Millions suffer from fatigue.[4]
Old age is not a time of life. It is a condition of the body. It is not time that ages the body, it is abuse that does.
— Herbert Shelton
Copyright Bragg, Live Food Products Inc. 1995–2004
Footnotes
1 In fact, Upton Sinclair was so taken with the positive effects of fasting on health that he wrote a book about it, see The Fasting Cure.
2 Compare Healing Cancer & Your Mind.
3 Compare Vegetarians live longer (Vegetarians Study of German Cancer Research Center).
4 Compare Arnold Ehret On Intestinal and Colon Cleansing & Detoxification as Basis of Physical Strength & Healing of Disease.
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