Dietary excesses are the main cause of death in North America. Fasting balances these excesse s. If 
people were to eat a perfect diet and not overeat, fasting would rarely be necessary. There are two essential rules of fasting. If these rules are ignored or broken, fasting itself can be life threatening. But i f the rules 
are followed, fasting presents far less risk than any other important medical procedure with a far greater likelih ood of a positive 
outcome. And let me stress here, there is no medical procedure without risk. Life itself is fraught with risk, it is a one -way ticket 
from birth to death, with no certainty as to when the end of the line will be reached. But in my opinion , when handling 
degenerative illness and infections, natural hygiene and fasting usually offer the best hope of healing with the least possib le risk. The first vital concern is the duration of the fast. Two eliminatory processes go on simultaneously wh ile fasting. One is the 
dissolving and elimination of the excess, toxic or dysfunctional deposits in the body, and second process, the gradual exhaus tion of 
the body’s stored nutritional reserves. The fasting body first consumes those parts of the body tha t are unhealthy; eventually these 
are all gone. Simultaneously the body uses up stored fat and other reserve nutritional elements. A well -fed reasonably healthy body 
usually has enough stored nutrition to fast for quite a bit longer than it takes to "clean  house." While house cleaning is going on the body uses its reserves to rebuild organs and rejuvenate itself. Rebuilding starts out ve ry 
slowly but the repairs increase at an ever -accelerating rate. The "overhaul" can last only until the body has no m ore reserves. Because several weeks of fasting must pass by before the "overhaul" gets going full speed, it is wise to continue fasting as long as 
possible so as to benefit from as much rejuvenation as possible. It is best not to end the fast before al l toxic or dysfunctional deposits are eliminated, or before the infection is overcome, or 
before the cause for complaint has been healed. The fast must be ended when most of the body"s essential -to-life stored nutritional 
reserves are exhausted. If the fas t goes beyond this point, starvation begins. Then, fasting -induced organic damage can occur, and 
death can follow, usually several weeks later. Almost anyone not immediately close to death has enough stored nutrition to wa ter 
fast for ten days to two weeks . Most reasonably healthy people have sufficient reserves to water fast for a month. Later I will 
explain how a faster can somewhat resupply their nutritional reserves while continuing to fast, and thus safely extend the fa sting 
period. The second esse ntial concern has to do with adjusting the intensity of the fast. Some individuals are so toxic that the waste 
products released during a fast are too strong, too concentrated or too poisonous for the organs of elimination to handle saf ely, or 
to be handle d within the willingness of the faster to tolerate the discomforts that toxic releases generate. The highly -toxic faster 
may even experience life -threatening symptoms such as violent asthma attacks. This kind of faster has almost certainly been 
dangerously  ill before the fast began. Others, though not dangerously sick prior to fasting, may be nearly as toxic and though not in 
danger of death, they may not be willing to tolerate the degree of discomfort fasting can trigger. For this reason I recommen d that 
if at all possible, before undertaking a fast the person eat mostly raw foods for two months and clean up all addictions. This  will 
give the body a chance to detoxify significantly before the water fast is started, and will make water fasting much more 
comf ortable. Seriously, dangerously ill people should only fast with experienced guidance, so the rapidity of their detoxificatio n 
process may be adjusted to a lower level if necessary. A fast of only one week can accomplish a significant amount of healing . Slight healing does occur on shorter fasts, but it is 
much more difficult to see or feel the results. Many people experience rapid relief from acute headache pain or digestive dis tress 
such as gas attacks, mild gallbladder pain, stomach aches, etc., afte r only one day"s abstention from food. In one week of fasting a 
person can relieve more dangerous conditions such as arthritic pain, rheumatism, kidney pain, and many symptoms associated wi th 
allergic reactions,. But even more fasting time is generally nee ded for the body to completely heal serious diseases. That"s because 
eliminating life -threatening problems usually involve rebuilding organs that aren"t functioning too well. Major rebuilding begins 
only after major detoxification has been accomplished, an d this takes time. Yes, even lost organ function can be partially or completely restored by fasting. Aging and age -related degeneration is 
progressive, diminishing organ functioning. Organs that make digestive enzymes secrete less enzymes. The degenera ted immune 
system loses the ability to mobilize as effectively when the body is attacked. Liver and kidney efficiency declines. The adre nals 
tire, becoming incapable of dumping massive amounts of stress -handling hormones or of repeating that effort time af ter time 
without considerable rest in between. The consequences of these inter -dependent deterioration"s is a cascade of deterioration that 
contributes to even more rapid deterioration"s. The name for this cascading process is aging. Its inevitable result –death. Fasting can, to a degree, reverse aging. Because fasting improves organ functioning, it can slow down aging. Fasters are often surprised that intensified healing can be uncomfortable. They have been programmed by our culture and by 
allopathic doctors to think that if they are doing the right thing for their bodies they should feel better immediately. I wi sh it 
weren"t so, but most people have to pay the piper for their dietary indiscretions and other errors in living. There will be a ches and 
minor pains and uncomfortable sensations. More about that later. A rare faster does feel immediately better, and continu es to feel 
ever better by the day, and even has incredible energy while eating nothing, but the majority of us folks just have to tough it out, 
keeping in mind that the way out is the way through. It is important to remind yourself at times that even with some discomfort 
and considering the inconvenience of fasting that you are getting off easy –one month of self -denial pays for those years of 
indulgence and buys a regenerated body. Length Of The Fast  
    How long should a person fast? In cases where there are serious complaints to remedy but where there are no life threatening 
disease conditions, a good rule of thumb is to fast on water for one complete day (24 hours) for each year that the person ha s lived. If you are 30 years old, it will take 30 consecut ive days of fasting to restore complete health. However, thirty fasting days, done a 
few days here and a few there won"t equal a month of steady fasting; the body accomplishes enormously more in 7 or l4 days of  
consecutive fasting, than 7 or 14 days of fas ting accumulated sporadically, such as one day a week. This is not to say that regular 
short fasts are not useful medicine. Periodic day -long fasts have been incorporated into many religious traditions, and for good 
reason; it gives the body one day a week  to rest, to be free of digestive obligations, and to catch up on garbage disposal. I heartily 
recommend it. But it takes many years of unfailingly regular brief fasting to equal the benefits of one, intensive experience . Fasting on water much longer than fifteen consecutive days may be dangerous for the very sick, (unless under experienced 
supervision) or too intense for those who are not motivated by severe illness to withstand the discomfort and boredom. Howeve r, it 
is possible to finish a healing p rocess initiated by one long water fast by repeating the fast later. My husband"s healing is a good 
example of this. His health began to noticeably decline about age 38 and he started fasting. He fasted on water 14 to 18 days  at a 
time, once a year, for fi ve consecutive years before most of his complaints and problems entirely vanished. The longest fast I ever supervised was a 90 day water fast on an extraordinarily obese woman, who at 5" 2" weighed close to 
400 pounds. She was a Mormon; generally membe rs of the LDS Church eat a healthier diet than most Americans, but her"s 
included far too much of what I call "healthfood junkfood," in the form of whole grain cakes and cookies, lots of granola mad e 
with lots of honey, oil, and dried fruit, lots of honey heaped atop heavily buttered whole grain bread. (I will explain more about the 
trap of healthfood junkfood later on.) A whole foods relatively meatless diet is far superior to its refined white flour, whi te sugar 
and white grease (lard) counterpart, but it  still produced a serious heath problem in just 30 years of life. Like many women, she 
expressed love -for-family in the kitchen by serving too -much too -tasty food. The Mormons have a very strong family orientation 
and this lady was no exception, but she wa s insecure and unhappy in her marriage and sought consolation in food, eaten far in 
excess of what her body needed. On her 90 day water fast she lost about 150 pounds, but was still grossly overweight when the fast ended. Toward the end it 
became clea r that it was unrealistic to try to shrink this woman any closer to normal body weight because to her, fat represented an 
invaluable insulation or buffer that she was not prepared to give up. As the weight melted away on the fast and she was able to 
actual ly feel the outline of a hip bone her neurosis became more and more apparent, and the ability to feel a part of her skeleton 
was so upsetting to her that her choice was between life threatening obesity and pervasive anxiety. Her weight was still exces sive but the solace of eating was even more important. This woman needed intensive counseling not 
more fasting. Unfortunately, at the end she choose to remain obese. Fat was much less frightening to her than confronting her  
emotions and fears. The positive  side was that after the fast she was able to maintain her weight at 225 instead of 375 which was 
an enormous relief to her exhausted heart. Another client I fasted for 90 days was a 6" 1" tall, chronic schizophrenic man who weighed in at 400 pounds. H e was so big he 
could barely get through my front door, and mine was an extraordinarily wide door in what had been an upper -class mansion. This 
man, now in his mid twenties, had spent his last seven years in a mental institution before his parents decided to give him one last 
chance by sending to Great Oaks School. The state mental hospitals at that time provided the mentally ill with cigarettes, co ffee, 
and lots of sugary treats, but none of these substances were part of my treatment program so he had a lo t of immediate withdrawal 
to go through. The quickest and easiest way to get him through it was to put him on a water fast after a few days of preparat ion on 
raw food. This was not an easily managed case! He was wildly psychotic, on heavy doses of chl oropromazine, with many bizarre 
behaviors. Besides talking to himself continuously in gibberish, he collected bugs, moss, sticks, piles or dirt, and switched  to 
smoking oak leaves instead of cigarettes. He was such a fire hazard that I had to move him to a  downstairs room with concrete 
floor. Even in the basement he was a fire hazard with his smoking and piles of sticks and other inflammables next to his bed,  but 
all of this debris was his "precious." I knew that I was in for trouble if I disturbed his prec ious, but the insects and dirt piles seemed 
to be expanding exponentially. One day the dirt exceeded my tolerance level. To make a long story short he caught me in the act of cleaning up his precious. Was he furious! All 350 pounds of him! (By this tim e he had lost 50 pounds.) He barreled into me, fists flying, and knocked me 
into the pipes next to the furnace and seemed ready to really teach me what was what. I prefer to avoid fights, but if they a re 
inevitable, I can really get into the spirit of the thing. I"d had lots of childhood practice defending myself because I was an 
incurable tomboy who loved to wrestle; I could usually pin big boys who considered themselves tough. So I began using my fist s 
and what little martial arts training I had to good u se. After I hurt him a bit he realized that I was not going to be easily intimidated, 
and that in fact he was in danger of getting seriously damaged. So he called a truce before either of us were badly beaten up . He 
had only a few bruises and welts, nothin g serious. After that he refrained from collecting things inside the building (he continued to collect outside). This compromise was fin e 
with me, and the incident allowed me to maintain the authority I needed to bully him into co -operating with the p rogram: taking 
his vitamins, and sticking to his fast until he finally reached 200 pounds. After 90 days on water he actually looked quite 
handsome, he no longer smoked, he was off psychotropic medication, and his behaviors were within an acceptable range as long as 
your expectations were not too high. He was well enough to live outside a hospital and also clear -headed enough to know that if he let too many people know how 
well he really was, he might have to give up his mental disability pension and a ctually become responsible for himself. No way, 
Jose! This fellow knew a good thing when he saw it. So he continued to pull bizarre stunts just often enough in front of the right 
audience to keep his disability checks coming in, while managing to act sane enough to be allowed to live comfortably at home 
instead of in the hospital. By keeping to my program he could stay off mind -numbing psychotropic medication if he kept up his 
megavitamins and minerals. This compromise was tolerable from his point of view, because there were no side effects like he 
experienced from his tranquilizers. It is very rare for a mentally ill person who has spent more than a few months in a mental hospital to ever usefully return t o 
society because they find "mental illness" to o rewarding. My Own 56 Day Long Fast  
    Fasters go through a lot of different emotional states, these can get intense and do change quite rapidly. The physical body,  too, 
will manifest transitory conditions. Some can be quite uncomfortable. But, I don"t want to leave the reader with the impression 
that fasting is inevitably painful. So I will now recount my own longest fast in detail. When I did my own 42 day water fast followed by two weeks on carrot juice diluted 50/50 with water, which really amou nted to 
56 consecutive days, my predominant sensation for the first three days was a desire to eat that was mostly a mental condition , and 
a lot of rumbling and growling from my stomach. This is not real hunger, just the sounds the stomach likes to make wh en it is 
shrinking. After all, this organ is accustomed to being filled at regular intervals, and then, all of a sudden, it gets nothi ng, so 
naturally the stomach wants to know what is going on. Once it realizes it is on temporary vacation, the stomach wis ely decides to 
reduce itself to a size suitable for a retired organ. And it shuts up. This process usually takes three to five days and for most people, 
no further "hunger pangs" are felt until the fast is over. Real hunger comes only when the body is  actually starving. The intense discomforts many people experience upon missing a 
meal are frequently interpreted as hunger but they aren"t. What is actually happening is that their highly toxic bodies are t aking the 
opportunity presented by having missed a meal or two to begin to cleanse. The toxins being released and processed make assorted 
unpleasant symptoms such as headaches and inability to think clearly. These symptoms can be instantly eliminated by the intak e of 
a bit of food, bringing the detox to a screeching halt. Two weeks into the fast I experienced sharp abdominal pains that felt like I imagine appendicitis feels, which compelled me 
toward the nearest toilet in a state of great urgency where I productively busied myself for about half an ho ur. As I mentioned 
earlier, I was experimentally adhering to a rigid type of fast of the sort recommended by Dr. Herbert Shelton, a famous advoc ate of 
the Natural Hygiene school. Shelton was such a powerful writer and personality that there still exists a Natural Hygiene Society 
that keeps his books in print and maintains his library. The words "Natural Hygiene" are almost owned by the society like a 
trademark and they object when anyone describes themselves as a hygienist and then advocates any practice th at Dr. Shelton did 
not approve of. Per Dr. Shelton, I was going to fast from the time hunger left until the time it returned and I was not going to use any form  of 
colon cleansing. Shelton strongly opposed bowel cleansing so I did no enemas nor coloni cs, nor herbs, nor clays, nor psyllium seed 
designed to clean the bowel, etc. Obviously at day 14 the bowel said, enough is enough of this crap, and initiated a goods ho use 
cleaning session. When I saw what was eliminated I was horrified to think that I ha d left that stuff in there for two weeks. I then 
started to wonder if the Sheltonites were mistaken about this aspect of fasting. Nonetheless, I persevered on the same regime n 
because my hunger had not returned, my tongue was still thickly coated with foul -smelling, foul -tasting mucus and I still had some 
fat on my feet that had not been metabolized. Shelton said that cleansing is not complete until a skeletal condition is reached –that is, absolutely no fat reserves are left. Up 
until that time I did n ot even know that I had fat on my feet, but much to my surprise, as the weeks went on, not only did my 
breasts disappear except for a couple of land marks well -known to my babies, but my ribs and hip bones became positively 
dangerous to passersby, and my s hoes would not stay on my feet. This was not all that surprising because I went from 135 pounds 
down to 85 on a 5" 7" frame with substantial bone structure. Toward the end of the fast my eyes became brighter and clearer blue, my skin took on a good tex ture, my breath finally became 
sweet, my tongue cleared up and became pink, my mind was clear, and my spiritual awareness and sensitivity was heightened. In  
other words, I was no longer a walking hulk of stored -up toxemia. I also felt quite weak and had to  rest for ten minutes out every 
hour in horizontal position. (I should have rested much more.) I also required very little sleep, although it felt good to ju st lie 
quietly and rest, being aware of what was going on in various parts of my body. During the last few weeks on water I became very attentive to my right shoulder. Two separate times in the past, while flying 
head first over the handlebars of my bicycle I had broken my shoulder with considerable tearing of ligaments and tendons. At night 
when I  was totally still I felt a whole crew of pixies and brownies with picks and shovels at work in the joint doing major repair 
work. This activity was not entirely comfortable, but I knew it was constructive work, not destructive, so I joined the work crew 
with my mind"s eye and helped the work along. It seemed my visualizations actually did help. Ever since, I"ve had the fasters I supervised use creative imagery or write 
affirmations to help their bodies heal. There are lots of books on this subject. I"v e found that the techniques work far better on a 
faster than when a person is eating normally. After breaking the fast it took me six weeks to regain enough strength that I could run my usual distance in my regular time;  it 
took me six months to regai n my full 135 pound weight because I was very careful to break the fast slowly and correctly. Coming 
off water with two weeks on dilute carrot juice I then added small portions of raw food such as apples, raw vegetables, sprou ts, 
vegetable juices, and fina lly in the fourth week after I began drinking dilute carrot juice, I added seven daily well -chewed almonds 
to my rebuilding diet. Much later I increased to 14 almonds, but that was the maximum amount of such highly concentrated fare  
my body wanted digest a t one time for over one year. I found I got a lot more miles to the gallon out of the food that I did eat, and 
did not crave recreational foods. Overall I was very pleased with my educational fast, it had taught me a great deal. If I had undertaken suc h a lengthy fast at a time when I was actually ill, and therefore had felt forced into it, my experience 
could have been different. A positive mental attitude is an essential part of the healing process so fasting should not be un dertaken 
in a negative, pr otesting mental state. The mind is so powerful that fear or the resistance fear generates can override the healing 
capacity of the body. For that reason I always recommend that people who consider themselves to be healthy, who have no serio us 
complaints, b ut who are interested in water fasting, should limit themselves to ten consecutive days or so, certainly never more 
than 14. Few healthy people, even those with a deep interest in the process, can find enough personal motivation to overcome the 
extreme bor edom of water fasting for longer than that. Healthy people usually begin protesting severely after about two weeks. If 
there is any one vital rule of fasting, one never should fast over strong, personal protest. Anytime you"re fasting and you r eally 
desire  to quit, you probably should. Unless, of course, you are critically ill. Then you may have no choice –its fast or die. Common Fasting Complaints And Discomforts  
    The most frequently heard complaints of fasters are headaches, dry, cracked lips, dizziness, blurred vision with black spots that 
float, skin rashes, and weakness in the first few days plus what they think is intense hunger. The dizziness and weakness are really 
real, and are due to increased levels of toxins circulating in the blood and from unavoidably low blood sugar which is a natu ral 
consequence of the cessation of eating. The blood sugar does reestablish a new equilibrium in the second and third w eek of the fast 
and then, the dizziness may cease, but still, it is important to expect dizziness at the beginning. It always takes more time for the blood to reach the head on a fast because everything has slowed down, including the rate of  the 
heart  beat, so blood pressure probably has dropped as well. If you stand up very quickly you may faint. I repetitively instruct all  of 
my clients to stand up very slowly, moving from a lying to a sitting position, pausing there for ten or twenty seconds, and t hen 
rising slowly from a sitting to a standing position. They are told that at the first sign of dizziness they must immediately put their 
head between their knees so that the head is lower than the heart, or squat/sit down on the floor, I once had a faster  who forgot to 
obey my frequent warnings. About two weeks into a long fast, she got up rapidly from the toilet and felt dizzy. The obvious t hing 
to do was to sit back down on the toilet or lie down on the bath rug on the floor, but no, she decided that bec ause she was dizzy she 
should rush back to her bed in the adjoining room. She made it as far as the bathroom door and fainted, out cold, putting a d eep 
grove into the drywall with her pretty nose on the way down. We then had to make an unscheduled visit to  a nose specialist, who 
calmly put a tape -wrapped spoon inside her bent -over nose and pried it back to dead center. This was not much fun for either of us; 
it is well worthwhile preventing such complications. Other common complaints during the fast inc lude coldness, due to low blood sugar as well as a consequence of weight loss and 
slowed circulation due to lessened physical activity. People also dislike inactivity which seems excruciatingly boring, and s ome 
are upset by weight loss itself. Coldness is best handled with lots of clothes, bedding, hot water bottles or hot pads, and warm 
baths. Great Oaks School of Health was in Oregon, where the endlessly rainy winters are chilly and the concrete building neve r 
seemed to get really warm. I used to dream of  moving my fasters to a tropical climate where I could also get the best, ripest fruits 
to wean them back on to food. If the fast goes on for more than a week or ten days, many people complain of back discomfort, usually caused by over -worked 
kidneys. This passes. Hot baths or hot water bottles provide some relief. Drinking more fluids may also help a bit. Nausea is fairly 
common too, due to toxic discharges from the gall bladder. Drinking lots of water or herbal tea dilutes toxic bile in the sto mach 
and makes it more tolerable. Very few fasters sleep well and for some reason they expect to, certainly fasters hope to, because they think that if they sl eep all 
night they will better survive one more deadly dull day in a state of relative unconscious ness. They find out much to their 
displeasure that very little sleep is required on a fast because the body is at rest already. Many fasters sleep only two to four hours 
but doze frequently and require a great deal of rest. Being mentally prepared for this  change of habit is the best handling. Generalized low -grade aches and pains in the area of the diseased organs or body parts are common and can often be alleviated 
with hot water bottles, warm but not hot bath water and massage. If this type of discomfort  exists, it usually lessens with each 
passing day until it disappears altogether. Many fasters complain that their vision is blurred, and that they are unable to concentrate. These are really major 
inconveniences because then fasters can"t read or eve n pay close attention to video -taped movies, and if they can"t divert 
themselves some fasters think they will go stir crazy. They are so addicted to a hectic schedule of doingness, and/or being 
entertained that they just can"t stand just being with themsel ves, forced to confront and deal with the sensations of their own body, 
forced to face their own thoughts, to confront their own emotions, many of which are negative. People who are fasting release  a lot 
of mental/emotional garbage at the same time as they  let go of old physical garbage. Usually the psychological stuff contributed 
greatly to their illness and just like the physical garbage and degenerated organs, it all needs to be processed. One of the most distressing experiences that happen occasion ally is hair loss. Deprived of adequate nutrition, the follicles can 
not keep growing hair, and the existing hair dies. However, the follicles themselves do not die and once the fast has ended a nd 
sufficient nutrition is forthcoming, hair will regrow as we ll or better than before. There are also complaints that occur after the fast has been broken. Post -fast cravings, even after only two weeks of deprivation, 
are to be expected. These may take the form of desires for sweet, sour, salt, or a specific fo od dreamed of while fasting, like 
chocolate fudge sundays or just plain toast. Food cravings must be controlled at all costs because if acted upon, each indulg ence 
chips away the health gains of the previous weeks. A single indulgence can be remedied by a day of restricting the diet to juice or 
raw food. After the repair, the person feels as good as they did when the fast ended. Repeated indulgences will require anoth er 
extended bout of fasting to repair. It is far better to learn self -control. The Healing  Crisis And Retracing  
    Certain unpleasant somatics that occur while fasting (or while on a healing diet) may not be dangerous or "bad." Two types, t he 
healing crisis, and retracing, are almost inevitable. A well -educated faster should welcome these disc omforts when they happen. The healing crisis (but not retracing) also occurs on a healing diet. The healing crisis can seem a big surprise to a faster who has been progressing wonderfully. Suddenly, usually after a few da ys 
of noticeably increased wel l-being, they suddenly experience a set of severe symptoms and feel just awful. This is not a setback, 
not something to be upset or disappointed about, but a healing crisis, actually a positive sign  
    Healing crises always occur after a period of marked  improvement. As the vital force builds up during the healing process, the 
body decides it now has obtained enough energy to throw off some accumulated toxins, and forcefully pushes them out through a  
typical and usually previously used route of secondary elimination, such as the nose, lungs, stomach, intestines, skin, or perhaps 
produces a flu -like experience with fever chills, sweat, aches and pains, etc. Though unpleasant, this experience is to be 
encouraged; the body has merely accelerated its eliminati on process. Do not attempt to suppress any of these symptoms, don"t 
even try to moderate fever, which is the body"s effective way to burn out a virus or bacteria infection, unless it is a dange rously 
high fever (over 102° Fahrenheit). Fever can be lowered without drugs by putting the person into a cool/cold bath, or using cold 
towel wraps and cold water sponge baths. The good news is that healing crises usually do not last long, and when they are pas t you 
feel better than you did before the crisis. Asthmatics seem to have the worst crises. I have had asthmatics bring up a quart of obnoxious mucous from their lungs every 
night for weeks. They have stayed awake all night for three nights continuously coughing and choking on the material that was  
being eli minated. After that clearing -out process they were able to breath much more freely. Likewise I have had people who have 
had sinusitis have nothing but non -stop pussy discharge from their sinuses for three weeks. Some of this would run down the throat 
and c ause nausea. All I could say to encourage the sufferer was that it needed to come out and to please stand aside and let the 
body work its magic. These fasters were not grateful until the sinus problem that had plagued them since childhood disappeare d. 
    The interesting thing about healing crises are that the symptoms produced retrace earlier complaints; they are almost never 
something entirely unknown to the patient. Usually they are old, familiar somatics, often complaints that haven’t bothered th e 
faster for many years. The reason the symptom is familiar but is not currently a problem is because as the body degenerates it los es 
vital force; with less vital force it loses the ability to create such acute detoxification episodes in non -life-threatening sec ondary 
elimination routes. The degenerated body makes less violent efforts to cleanse, efforts that aren"t as uncomfortable. The neg ative 
side of this is that instead of creating acute discomfort in peripheral systems, the toxemia goes to more vital organs  where it 
hastens the formation of life -threatening conditions. There is a very normal and typical progress for each person’s fatal illness. Their ultimate disease starts out in childhood o r 
adolescence as acute inflammations of skin -like organs, viral  or bacterial infections of the same. Then, as vital force weakens, 
secondary eliminations are shifted to more vital organs. Allergies or colds stop happening so frequently; the person becomes 
rheumatic, arthritic or experience weakness in joints, tendons,  ligaments, or to have back pains, or to have digestive upsets. These 
new symptoms are more constant but usually less acute. Ultimately, vital organs begin to malfunction, and serious disease dev elop. But a hygienist sees the beginning of fatal diseases su ch as cancer in adolescent infections and allergies. Retracing is generally seen only on water fasts, not on extended cleansing diets. The body begins to repair itself by healing  
conditions in the reverse order to that which they occurred originally. T his means that the body would first direct healing toward 
the lungs if the most recently serious illness was an attack of pneumonia six months previously. In this case you would expec t to 
quickly and intensely experience a mini -case of pneumonia while the body eliminates residues in the lungs that were not 
completely discharged at the time. Next the body might take you through a period of depression that you had experienced five 
years in the past. The faster may be profoundly depressed for a few days and co me out of it feeling much better. You could then 
re-experience sensation -states like those caused by recreational drugs you had playfully experimented with ten years previously 
along with the "trippiness" if it were a hallucinogen, speediness if it was “sp eed" or the dopiness if it was heroin. Retracing further, 
the faster might then experience something similar to a raging attack of tonsillitis which you vaguely remember having when y ou 
were five years old, but fortunately this time it passes in three days  (or maybe six hours), instead of three weeks. This is retracing. Please do not be surprised or alarmed if it happens to you on a fast, and immediately throw out the baby with the bath water 
thinking that you are doing the wrong thing because all thos e old illnesses are coming back to haunt you. It is the body’s 
magnificent healing effort working on your behalf, and for doing it your body deserves lots of "well done", "good body" thoug hts 
rather than gnashing of teeth and thinking what did I do to dese rve this. The body won’t tell you what you did to deserve this, but it 
knows and is trying its darndest to undo it. The Unrelenting Boredom Of Fasting  
    Then there’s the unrelenting boredom of fasting. Most people have been media junkies since they were  kids; the only way they 
believe they can survive another day of fasting is by diverting their minds with TV. This is far from ideal because often the  
emotions of a faster are like an open wound and when they resonate with the emotions portrayed on most TV  shows, the faster gets 
into some very unpleasant states that interfere with healing. And the emotions many movies prompt people to sympathetically 
generate are powerful ones, often highly negative, and contrary to healing. Especially unhelpful are the adr enaline rushes in action 
movies. But if TV is the best a faster can do, it is far better that someone fast with television programming filling their m inds than 
to not fast at all. I keep a library of positive VHS tapes for these addicts –comedies, stories o f heroic over -comings, depiction’s of 
humans at their best. Boredom is probably the most limiting factor to fasting a long time. That is because boredom is progressive, it gets worse wi th 
each slowly -passing day. But concurrently, the rate of healing is accelerating with each slowly -passing day. Every day the faster 
gets through does them considerably more good than the previous day. However, fasters rarely are motivated enough to overcome  
boredom for more than two weeks or so, unless they started the fast to solve a very serious or life -threatening condition. For this 
reason, basically well people should not expect to be able to fast for more than a couple of weeks every six months or year, no 
matter how much good a longer fast might do. Exercise Whil e Fasting  
    The issue of how much activity is called for on a fast is controversial. Natural Hygienists in the Herbert Shelton tradition insist 
that all fasters absolutely must have complete bed rest, with no books, no TV, no visitors, no enemas, no exer cise, no music, and of 
course no food, not even a cup of herb tea. In my many years of conducting people through fasts, I have yet to meet an indivi dual 
that could mentally tolerate this degree of nothingness. It is too drastic a withdrawal from all the st imulation people are used to in 
the twentieth century. I still don’t know how Shelton managed to make his patients do it, but my guess is that he must have b een a 
very intimidating guy. Shelton was a body builder of some renown in his day. I bet Shelton’s patients kept a few books and 
magazines under their mattress and only took them out when he wasn’t looking. If I had tried to enforced this type of sensory  
deprivation, I know my patients would have grabbed their clothes and run, vowing never to fast again . I think it is most important 
that people fast, and that they feel so good about the experience that they want to do it again, and talk all their sick frie nds into 
doing the same thing. In contrast to enforced inactivity, Russian researchers who super vised schizophrenics on 30 -day water fasts insisted that they 
walk for three hours every day, without stopping. I would like to have been there to see how they managed to enforce that. I 
suspect some patients cheated. I lived with schizophrenics enough yea rs to know that it is very difficult to get them to do anything 
that they don’t want to do, and very few of them are into exercise, especially when fasting. In my experience both of these approaches to activity during the fast are extremes. The correct  activity level should be arrived at 
on an individual basis. I have had clients who walked six miles a day during an extended water fast, but they were not feelin g very 
sick when they started the fast, and they were also physically fit. In contrast I have had people on extended fasts who were unable 
to walk for exercise, or so weak they were unable to even walk to the bathroom, but these people were critically ill when the y 
started fasting, and desperately needed to conserve what little vital force they had  for healing. Most people who are not critically ill need to walk at least 200 yards twice a day, with assistance if necessary, if only to move 
the lymph through the system. The lymphatic system is a network of ducts and nodes which are distributed th roughout the body, 
with high concentrations of nodes in the neck, chest, arm pits, and groin. Its job is to carry waste products from the extrem ities to 
the center of the body where they can be eliminated. The blood is circulated through the arteries and v eins in the body by the 
contractions of the heart, but the lymphatic system does not have a pump. Lymphatic fluid is moved by the contractions of the  
muscles, primarily those of the arms and legs. If the faster is too weak to move, massage and assisted mov ements are essential. Lymph nodes are also a part of our immune system and produce white blood cells to help control invading organisms. When the 
lymph is overloaded with waste products the ducts and nodes swell, and until the source of the local irrit ation is removed, are 
incapable of handling further debris. If left in this condition for years they become so hard they feel like rocks under the skin. Lumps in the armpits or the groin are prime sites for the future development of a cancer. Fasting, mass age, and poultices will often 
soften overloaded lymph nodes and coax them back into operation. The Stages Of Fasting  
    The best way to understand what happens when we fast is to break up the process into six stages: preparation for the fast, lo ss of 
hunger, acidosis, normalization, healing, and breaking the fast. A person that has consumed the typical American die t most of their life and whose life is not in immediate danger would be 
very wise to gently prepare their body for the fast. Two weeks would be a minimum amount of time, and if the prospective fast er 
wants an easier time of it, they should allow a month or  even two for preliminary housecleaning During this time, eliminate all 
meat, fish, dairy products, eggs, coffee, black tea, salt, sugar, alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, and greasy foods. This de -addiction will 
make the process of fasting much more pleasant, a nd is strongly recommended. However, eliminating all these harmful substances 
is withdrawal from addictive substances and will not be easy for most. I have more to say about this later when I talk about 
allergies and addictions. The second stage, psych ological hunger, usually is felt as an intense desire for food. This passes within three or four days of not 
eating anything. Psychological hunger usually begins with the first missed meal. If the faster seems to be losing their resol ve, I 
have them drink unlimited quantities of good -tasting herb teas. Salt -free broths made from meatless instant powder (obtainable at 
the health food store) can also fend off the desire to eat until the stage of hunger has passed. Acidosis, the third stage, usually begins  a couple of days after the last meal and lasts about one week. During acidosis the body 
vigorously throws off acid waste products. Most people starting a fast begin with an overly acid blood pH from the typical 
American diet that contains a predominance o f acid -forming foods. Switching over to burning fat for fuel triggers the release of 
even more acidic substances. Acidosis is usually accompanied by fatigue, blurred vision, and possibly dizziness. The breath s mells 
very bad, the tongue is coated with bad -tasting dryish mucus, and the urine may be concentrated and foul unless a good deal of 
water is taken daily. Two to three quarts a day is a reasonable amount. Mild states of acidosis are a common occurrence. While sleeping after the last meal of the da y is digested bodies normally work 
very hard trying to detoxify from yesterday’s abuses. So people routinely awaken in a state of acidosis. Their tongue is coat ed, 
their breath foul and they feel poorly. They end their brief overnight fast with breakfast, bringing the detoxification process to a 
screeching halt and feel much better. Many people think they awaken hungry and don’t feel well until they eat. They confuse 
acidosis with hunger when most have never experienced real hunger in their entire lives. If  you typically awaken in acidosis, you 
are being given a strong sign by your body that it would like to continue fasting far beyond breakfast. In fact, it probably would 
enjoy fasting long beyond the end of acidosis. Most fasters feel much more comfort able by the end of the first seven to ten days, when they enter the normalization phase; here 
the acidic blood chemistry is gradually corrected. This sets the stage for serious healing of body tissues and organs. Normal ization 
may take one or two more week s depending on how badly the body was out of balance. As the blood chemistry steadily 
approaches perfection, the faster usually feels an increasing sense of well -being, broken by short spells of discomfort that are 
usually healing crises or retracings. The next stage, accelerated healing, can take one or many weeks more, again depending on how badly the body has been 
damaged. Healing proceeds rapidly after the blood chemistry has been stabilized, the person is usually in a state of profound  rest 
and th e maximum amount of vital force can be directed toward repair and regeneration of tissues. This is a miraculous time when 
tumors are metabolized as food for the body, when arthritic deposits dissolve, when scar tissues tend to disappear, when dama ged 
organ s regain lost function (if they can). Seriously ill people who never fast long enough to get into this stage (usually it take s 
about ten days to two weeks of water fasting to seriously begin healing) never find out what fasting can really do for them. Breaking the fast is equally or more important a stage than the fast itself. It is the most dangerous time in the entire fast . If you 
stop fasting prematurely, that is, before the body has completed detoxification and healing, expect the body to reject foo d when 
you try to make it eat, even if you introduce foods very gradually. The faster, the spiritual being running the body, may hav e 
become bored and want some action, but the faster’s body hasn’t finished. The body wants to continue healing. By reje ction, I mean that food may not digest, may feel like a stone in your stomach, make you feel terrible. If that happens and 
if, despite that clear signal you refuse to return to fasting, you should go on a juice diet, take as little as possible, sip  it slow ly 
(almost chew it) and stay on juice until you find yourself digesting it easily. Then and only then, reintroduce a little soli d raw food 
like a green salad. Weaning yourself back on to food should last just as long as the fast. Your first tentative meals should be dilute, raw juices. After several days of slowly building up to solid raw fruit, small amounts of raw vegetable foods should be added. If it has been a 
long fast, say over three weeks, this reintroduction should be done gingerly over a few weeks. If this stage is poorly managed or 
ignored you may become acutely ill, and for someone who started fasting while dangerously ill, loss of self control and impul sive 
eating could prove fatal. Even for those fasting to cure non -life-threatening illnes ses it is pointless to go through the effort and 
discipline of a long fast without carefully establishing a correct diet after the fast ends, or the effort will have largely been wasted. Foods For Monodiet, Juice or Broth Fastin g 
 zucchini, garli c, onion, green beans, kale, celery, beet greens and root, cabbage, carrot, wheat grass juice, alfalfa 
juice, barley green juice, parsley juice, lemon/lime juice, grapefruit juice, apples (not juice, too sweet), diluted 
orange juice, diluted grape juice  
 
Less-Rigorous -Than -Water Fasts  
    There are gradations of fasting measures ranging from rigorous to relatively casual. Water fasting is the most rapid and effe ctive 
one. Other methods have been created by grasping the underlying truth of fasting, namely w henever the digestive effort can be 
reduced, by whatever degree, whenever the formation of the toxins of misdigestion can be reduced or prevented, to that extent  the 
body can divert energy to the healing process. Thus comes about assorted famous and someti mes notorious monodiet semi -fasts 
like the grape cure where the faster eats only grapes for a month or so, or the lemon cure, where the juice of one or more le mons is 
added to water and nothing else is consumed for weeks on end. Here I should also mention the "lemon juice/cayenne pepper/maple 
syrup cure," the various green drink cures using spirulina, chlorella, barley green or wheat grass, and the famous Bieler bro ths–
vegetable soups made of overcooked green beans or zucchini. I do not believe that mo nodiets work because of some magical property of a particular food used. They work because they are 
semi -fasts and may be extremely useful, especially for those individuals who can not or will not tolerate a water fast. The best foods for monodiet fast ing are the easiest ones digest: juices of raw fruits and nonstarchy vegetables with all solids 
strained out. Strained mineral broths made of long -simmered non -starchy vegetables (the best of them made of leafy green 
vegetables) fall in the same category. So if you are highly partial to the flavor of grapes or lemons or cayenne and (highly diluted) 
maple syrup, a long fast on one of these would do you a world of good, just not quite as much good as the same amount of time  
spent on water alone. If you select  something more "solid" for a long monodiet fast, like pureed zucchini, it is essential that you 
not overeat. Dr. Bieler gave his fasting patients only one pint of zucchini soup three or four times a day. The way to evalua te how 
much to eat is by how much weight you are losing. When fasting, you must lose weight! And the faster the better. Pure absolute water fasting while not taking any vitamins or other nutritional supplementation has a very limited maximum 
duration, perhaps 45 days. The key concept h ere is nutritional reserves. Body fat is stored, surplus energy fuel. But energy alone 
cannot keep a body going. It needs much more than fuel to rebuild and repair and maintain its systems. So the body in its wis dom 
also stores up vitamins and minerals and  other essential substances in and in -between all its cells. Bodies that have been very well 
nourished for a long time have very large reserves; poorly nourished ones may have very little set aside for a rainy day. And  it is 
almost a truism that a sick per son has, for quite some time, been a poorly nourished one. With low nutritional reserves. This fact 
alone can make it difficult for a sick person to water fast for enough time to completely heal their damaged organs and other  
systems. Obese people have  fat reserves sufficient to provide energy for long periods, but rarely can any body, no matter how complete 
its nutrition was for years previously, contain sufficient nutritional reserves to support a water fast of over six weeks. To  water fast 
the very o bese down to normal weight can take months but to make this possible, rather diverse and concentrated nutrition 
containing few calories must be given. It is possible to fast even a very slim a person for quite a bit longer than a month w hen their 
body is r eceiving easily assimilable vitamins and minerals and small amounts of sugars or other simple carbohydrates. I estimate that fasting on raw juices and mineral broths will result in healing at 25 to 75 percent of the efficiency of wate r 
fasting, depend ing on the amount of nutrition taken and the amount the juices or broths are diluted. But juice fasting can permit 
healing to go on several times longer than water might. Fasting on dilute juice and broth can also save the life of someone whose organs  of elimination are insufficiently strong to 
withstand the work load created by water fasting. In this sense, juices can be regarded as similar to the moderators in a nuc lear 
reactor, slowing the process down so it won’t destroy the container. On a fast of  undiluted juice, the healing power drops 
considerably, but a person on this regimen, if not sick, is usually capable of working. Duration of juice fasts can vary greatly. Most of the time there is no need to continue fasting after the symptoms causing 
concern have been eliminated, and this could happen as quickly as one week or take as long as 60 days if the person is very o bese. Fasters also lose their motivation once the complaint has vanished. But feeling better is no certain indication that the need  to fast 
has ended. This points up one of the liabilities of juice fasting; the person is already eating, their digestive system never shut down 
and consequently, it is much easier for them to resume eating. The thing to keep in mind is that if the symptoms return, the fast 
was not long enough or the diet was not properly reformed after the fast. During a long fast on water or d ilute juice, if the body has used up all of it"s reserves and/or the body has reached skeletal 
condition, and the condition or symptoms being addressed persists the fast should be ended, the person should go on a raw foo d 
healing diet. If three to six mont hs on raw food don’t solve the complaint then another spell of water or dilute juice fasting should 
be attempted. Most fasters are incapable of persisting until the body reserves have been used up because social conditioning is 
telling them their emaciated -looking body must be dying when it is actually far from death, but return of true hunger is the critical 
indicator that must not be ignored. True hunger is not what most people think of when they think they are hungry. Few America ns 
have ever experienced true hunger. It is not a rumbling in the stomach or a set of uncomfortable sensations (caused by the 
beginning of detoxification) you know will go away after eating. True hunger is an animal, instinctual feeling in the back of  one"s 
throat (not in the stom ach) that demands you eat something, anything, even grass or shoe leather. Seriously ill people inevitably start the cleansing process with a pre -existing and serious mineral deficiencies. I say inevitably 
because they likely would not have become ill had they been properly nourished. Sick fasters may be wise to take in minerals from 
thin vegetable broths or vitamin -like supplements in order to prevent uncomfortable deficiency states. For example calcium or 
magnesium deficiencies can make water fasters experience unpleasant symptoms such as hand tremors, stiff muscles, cramps in 
the hands, feet, and legs, and difficulty relaxing. I want to stress here that fasting itself does not create deficiencies. B ut a person 
already deficient in minerals should watc h for these symptoms and take steps to remedy the deficiencies if necessary. Raw Food Healing Diets  
    Next in declining order of healing effectiveness is what I call a raw food healing diet or cleansing diet. It consists of tho se very 
same watery fruits  and nonstarchy vegetables one juices or makes into vegetable broths, but eaten whole and raw. Heating food 
does two harmful things: it destroys many vitamins, enzymes and other nutritional elements and it makes many foods much harde r 
to digest. So no cook ed vegetables or fruits are allowed because to maintain health on this limited regimen it is essential that every 
possible vitamin and enzyme present in the food be available for digestion. Even though still raw, no starchy or fatty vegeta bles or 
fruits ar e allowed that contain concentrated calories like potatoes, winter squash, avocados, sweet potatoes, fresh raw corn, dates, 
figs, raisins, or bananas. And naturally, no salad dressings containing vegetable oils or (raw) ground seeds are allowed. Nor  are 
raw grains or other raw concentrated energy sources. When a person starts this diet they will at first experience considerable weight loss because it is difficult to extract a la rge 
number of calories from these foods (though I have seen people actually gain weight on a pure melon diet, so much sugar do these 
fruits have, and well -chewed watermelon seeds are very nourishing). Eating even large quantities of only raw fruit and raw non -
starchy vegetables results in a slow but steady healing process about 10  to 20 percent as rapid as water fasting. A raw food cleansing diet has several huge advantages. It is possible to maintain this regimen and regularly do non -strenuous 
work for many months, even a year or more without experiencing massive weight loss a nd, more important to some people, 
without suffering the extremes of low blood sugar, weakness and loss of ability to concentrate that happen when water fasting . Someone on a raw food cleanse will have periods of lowered energy and strong cravings for more  concentrated foods, but if they 
have the self -discipline to not break their cleansing process they can accomplish a great deal of healing while still maintaining 
more or less normal (though slower paced) life activities. However, almost no one on this die t is able to sustain an extremely active 
life-style involving hard physical labor or competitive sports. And from the very beginning someone on a raw food cleanse must 
be willing and able to lie down and rest any time they feel tired or unable to face thei r responsibilities. Otherwise they will 
inevitably succumb to the mental certainty that their feelings of exhaustion or overwhelm can be immediately solved by eating  
some concentrated food to "give them energy." Such low -energy states will, however, pass q uickly after a brief nap or rest. Something else gradually happens to a body when on such a diet. Do you recall that I mentioned that after my own long fast I 
began to get more "mileage" out of my food. A cleansed, healed body becomes far more efficien t at digestion and assimilation; a 
body that is kept on a raw food cleansing diet will initially lose weight rapidly, but eventually weight loss slows to virtua lly 
nothing and then stabilizes. However, long -term raw fooders are usually thin as toothpicks. Once starchy vegetables like potatoes or winter squash, raw or cooked, or any cereals, raw or cooked, are added to a cleansin g 
diet, the detoxification and healing virtually ceases and it becomes very easy to maintain or even gain weight, particularly if larger 
quantities of more concentrated foods like seeds and nuts are eaten. Though this diet has ceased to be cleansing, few if any toxins 
from misdigestion will be produced and health is easy to maintain. "Raw fooders" are usually people who have healed themselves of a serious diseases and ever after continue to maintain 
themselves on unfired food, almost as a matter of religious belief. They have become convinced that eating only raw, unfired food 
is the key to extraordinarily long life and suprem e good health. When raw fooders wish to perform hard physical work or strenuous 
exercise, they"ll consume raw nuts and some raw grains such as finely -ground oats soaked overnight in warm water or deliciously 
sweet "Essene bread," made from slightly sproute d wheat that is then ground wet, made into cakes, and sun baked at temperatures 
below about 115 degrees Fahrenheit. Essene bread can be purchased in some health food stores. However, little or no healing o r 
detoxification can happen once concentrated energ y sources are added to the diet, even raw ones. During my days at Great Oaks School I was a raw fooder for some years, though I found it very difficult to maintain body heat  
on raw food during chilly, rainy Oregon winters and eventually struck a perso nal compromise where I ate about half my diet raw 
and the rest fired. I have listed some books by raw fooders in the Bibliography. Joe Alexander"s is the most fun. Complete Recovery Of The Seriously Ill  
    Its a virtual certainty that to fully recover, a  seriously ill person will have to significantly rebuild numerous organs. They have a 
hard choice: to accept a life of misery, one that the medical doctors with drugs and surgery may be able to prolong into an 
interminable hell on earth, or, spend several years working on really healing their body, rotating between water fasting, juice or 
broth fasting, extended periods on a cleansing raw food diet, and periods of no -cleansing on a more complete diet that includes 
moderate amounts of cooked vegetables and s mall quantities of cooked cereals. And even after recovery someone who was quite 
ill may have to live the rest of their life on a rather restricted regimen. It is unrealistic to expect one fast to fix everything. The body will heal as much as it can in  the allotted time, but if a dangerous 
illness has not been fully remedied by the first intense fast, a raw food diet must be followed for three to six months until  weight 
has been regained, nutritional reserves have been rebuilt and it is safe to undertak e another extended fast. More than two water or 
juice fasts a year of thirty continuous days are not recommended nor should they be necessary unless the life is in imminent danger 
and there is no other option. The story of Jake"s catastrophic illness a nd almost -cure is a good example of this type of program. Jake was from back East. He 
phoned me because he had read a health magazine article I had written, his weak voice faintly describing a desperate conditio n. He 
was in a wheelchair unable to walk, una ble to control his legs or arms very well, was unable to control his bladder and required a 
catheter. He had poor bowel control, had not the strength to talk much or loudly and most frightening to him, he was steadily  
losing weight although he was eating l arge amounts of cooked vegetables and grains. Jake had wasted away to 90 pounds at 5"10" 
and looked pathetic when I first saw him wheeled off an airplane at my local airport. Jake had seen a lot of medical doctors and had variously been diagnosed as h aving chronic fatigue syndrome, chronic (whatever 
that is) meningitis, and multiple sclerosis. He had been treated by virtually every medical expert and many famous alternativ e 
practitioners, utilizing a host of old and new techniques, all to no avail. He had even tried intravenous chelation therapy and 
colonics. It had also been suggested that he enter a hospital for the treatment of eating disorders and/or see a psychiatrist . He had 
tried to gain admittance to a number of holistic fasting institutions bac k east, but they all refused him because they considered the 
risk was too high to fast a person at such a low body weight. But I had previously fasted emaciated people like Jake, and the re was 
something I liked about his telephone presence. Perhaps this is  why I foolishly decided I knew better than the other experts. People commonly waste away and die while eating large amounts of food. Obviously they are unable to digest or assimilate 
nutrients or they wouldn’t be wasting. Eating further increases the ir toxic burden from undigested meals, further worsening their 
already failing organs. The real solution is to stop feeding them altogether so that their digestive functions can heal. In J ake’s case, 
his body’s nutritional reserves had already become sadly  depleted due to poor absorption over such an extended period, so I could 
not fast him on water. I immediately put Jake on a rich mineral broth prepared from everything left alive in our garden at th e end 
of winter –leaves of kale, endive plants, whole huge  splitting Savoy cabbages, garlic, huge leeks including their green tops, the 
whole stew fortified with sea weed. It did not matter too much what vegetables I used as long as there were lots of leafy gre ens 
containing lots of chlorophyll (where the most co ncentrated mineral nutrition is located). Jake was given colonics every day, but had to be carried to the colonic table because he could not support his own weight. Whoever had given him colonics previously had not accomplished much for I must say that  Jake had the most foul smelling 
discharges that I had ever encountered in administering over 6,000 colonics over many years. It was as if his body was litera lly 
rotting from the inside out. After 30 days on mineral broth Jake, who really did weigh 90  pounds when he arrived, was only down to 85! When a person 
already close to skeletal weight starts fasting, to conserve vital tissue the body goes rapidly into a state of profound rest  so it uses 
very little energy, thus it loses very little weight each d ay. This degree of resting also helps heal abnormal body parts earlier. After 
one month on mineral broth Jake began to show signs of mineral deficiencies in the form of a fine tremor of the hands, and cr amps 
in the feet, so I put him on mineral supplements  too. Jake was in my house for a long time. At the end of the second month on broth he started two weeks on raw carrot juice with a  
lot of chlorophyll added from sources such as algae (spirulina), wheat grass juice, alfalfa, etc.. This was followed by  two more 
weeks on small quantities of raw fruits and vegetables, and then followed by two weeks with added steamed vegetables, and 
finally, he achieved a diet which included small amounts of grain, cooked legumes and raw nuts, plus the fruits and vegetabl es 
previously mentioned. Jake health steadily improved. He gained control of his bladder, bowels, speech, hands, and legs. He be gan 
to exercise in the living room on a stationary bike, and walked slowly up and down our long driveway, picking daffodils in t he 
beautiful spring weather. Sadly, though I could help his body to heal it was next to impossible to stem the tides of Jake’s appetites or to pleasantly 
withstand his tantrums when he was denied; he always wanted more in terms of quantity, more in te rms of variety, and at more 
frequent intervals. Though his organs had healed significantly, his digestive capacity was not nearly as large as he remember ed 
himself enjoying before he got sick. And never would be. Jake was not happy about the dietary restri ctions necessary for him to 
retain his newly attained health, and unwilling to stay within the limits of his digestive system’s ability to process foods. He had 
gained weight and was back up to 120 pounds. It was time for him to go home before I lost my go od humor. Jake left with a lot of "good lucks" and stern admonitions to stick to his stringent diet and supplement program. It was a bi g 
moment for Jake. He had arrived in a wheelchair three months before. Now he walked unaided to the airplane, someth ing he had 
not been able to do for two years. Back at home Jake had no one courageous enough to set limits for him. His immediate family and every one of his brow beaten 
associates were compelled to give him everything that he wanted. So his appetite and lack of personal discipline got the better of 
him. He started eating lots of dates and figs. These had been eliminated from his diet because he was unable to process foods  
which such a high sugar content.
When_to_Be_Your_Own_Doctor.txt
Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        Dietary excesses are the main cause of death in North America. Fasting balances these excesse s. If 
people were to eat a perfect diet and not overeat, fasting would rarely be necessary. There are two essential rules of fasting. If these rules are ignored or broken, fasting itself can be life threatening. But i f the rules 
are followed, fasting presents far less risk than any other important medical procedure with a far greater likelih ood of a positive 
outcome. And let me stress here, there is no medical procedure without risk. Life itself is fraught with risk, it is a one -way ticket 
from birth to death, with no certainty as to when the end of the line will be reached. But in my opinion, when handling 
degenerative illness and infections, natural hygiene and fasting usually offer the best hope of healing with the least possib le risk. The first vital concern is the duration of the fast. Two eliminatory processes go on simultaneously wh ile fasting. One is the 
dissolving and elimination of the excess, toxic or dysfunctional deposits in the body, and second process, the gradual exhaus tion of 
the body’s stored nutritional reserves. The fasting body first consumes those parts of the body tha t are unhealthy; eventually these 
are all gone. Simultaneously the body uses up stored fat and other reserve nutritional elements. A well -fed reasonably healthy body 
usually has enough stored nutrition to fast for quite a bit longer than it takes to "clean  house. " While house cleaning is going on the body uses its reserves to rebuild organs and rejuvenate itself. Rebuilding starts out ve ry 
slowly but the repairs increase at an ever -accelerating rate. The "overhaul" can last only until the body has no m ore reserves. Because several weeks of fasting must pass by before the "overhaul" gets going full speed, it is wise to continue fasting as long as 
possible so as to benefit from as much rejuvenation as possible. It is best not to end the fast before al l toxic or dysfunctional deposits are eliminated, or before the infection is overcome, or 
before the cause for complaint has been healed. The fast must be ended when most of the body"s essential -to-life stored nutritional 
reserves are exhausted. If the fas t goes beyond this point, starvation begins. Then, fasting -induced organic damage can occur, and 
death can follow, usually several weeks later. Almost anyone not immediately close to death has enough stored nutrition to wa ter 
fast for ten days to two weeks. Most reasonably healthy people have sufficient reserves to water fast for a month. Later I will 
explain how a faster can somewhat resupply their nutritional reserves while continuing to fast, and thus safely extend the fa sting 
period. The second esse ntial concern has to do with adjusting the intensity of the fast. Some individuals are so toxic that the waste 
products released during a fast are too strong, too concentrated or too poisonous for the organs of elimination to handle saf ely, or 
to be handle d within the willingness of the faster to tolerate the discomforts that toxic releases generate. The highly -toxic faster 
may even experience life -threatening symptoms such as violent asthma attacks. This kind of faster has almost certainly been 
dangerously  ill before the fast began. Others, though not dangerously sick prior to fasting, may be nearly as toxic and though not in 
danger of death, they may not be willing to tolerate the degree of discomfort fasting can trigger. For this reason I recommen d that 
if at all possible, before undertaking a fast the person eat mostly raw foods for two months and clean up all addictions. This  will 
give the body a chance to detoxify significantly before the water fast is started, and will make water fasting much more 
comf ortable. Seriously, dangerously ill people should only fast with experienced guidance, so the rapidity of their detoxificatio n 
process may be adjusted to a lower level if necessary. A fast of only one week can accomplish a significant amount of healing. Slight healing does occur on shorter fasts, but it is 
much more difficult to see or feel the results. Many people experience rapid relief from acute headache pain or digestive dis tress 
such as gas attacks, mild gallbladder pain, stomach aches, etc. , afte r only one day"s abstention from food. In one week of fasting a 
person can relieve more dangerous conditions such as arthritic pain, rheumatism, kidney pain, and many symptoms associated wi th 
allergic reactions,. But even more fasting time is generally nee ded for the body to completely heal serious diseases. That"s because 
eliminating life -threatening problems usually involve rebuilding organs that aren"t functioning too well. Major rebuilding begins 
only after major detoxification has been accomplished, an d this takes time. Yes, even lost organ function can be partially or completely restored by fasting. Aging and age -related degeneration is 
progressive, diminishing organ functioning. Organs that make digestive enzymes secrete less enzymes. The degenera ted immune 
system loses the ability to mobilize as effectively when the body is attacked. Liver and kidney efficiency declines. The adre nals 
tire, becoming incapable of dumping massive amounts of stress -handling hormones or of repeating that effort time af ter time 
without considerable rest in between. The consequences of these inter -dependent deterioration"s is a cascade of deterioration that 
contributes to even more rapid deterioration"s. The name for this cascading process is aging. Its inevitable result –death. Fasting can, to a degree, reverse aging. Because fasting improves organ functioning, it can slow down aging. Fasters are often surprised that intensified healing can be uncomfortable. They have been programmed by our culture and by 
allopathic doctors to think that if they are doing the right thing for their bodies they should feel better immediately. I wi sh it 
weren"t so, but most people have to pay the piper for their dietary indiscretions and other errors in living. There will be a ches and 
minor pains and uncomfortable sensations. More about that later. A rare faster does feel immediately better, and continu es to feel 
ever better by the day, and even has incredible energy while eating nothing, but the majority of us folks just have to tough it out, 
keeping in mind that the way out is the way through. It is important to remind yourself at times that even with some discomfort 
and considering the inconvenience of fasting that you are getting off easy –one month of self -denial pays for those years of 
indulgence and buys a regenerated body. Length Of The Fast  
    How long should a person fast. In cases where there are serious complaints to remedy but where there are no life threatening 
disease conditions, a good rule of thumb is to fast on water for one complete day (24 hours) for each year that the person ha s lived. If you are 30 years old, it will take 30 consecut ive days of fasting to restore complete health. However, thirty fasting days, done a 
few days here and a few there won"t equal a month of steady fasting; the body accomplishes enormously more in 7 or l4 days of  
consecutive fasting, than 7 or 14 days of fas ting accumulated sporadically, such as one day a week. This is not to say that regular 
short fasts are not useful medicine. Periodic day -long fasts have been incorporated into many religious traditions, and for good 
reason; it gives the body one day a week  to rest, to be free of digestive obligations, and to catch up on garbage disposal. I heartily 
recommend it. But it takes many years of unfailingly regular brief fasting to equal the benefits of one, intensive experience. Fasting on water much longer than fifteen consecutive days may be dangerous for the very sick, (unless under experienced 
supervision) or too intense for those who are not motivated by severe illness to withstand the discomfort and boredom. Howeve r, it 
is possible to finish a healing p rocess initiated by one long water fast by repeating the fast later. My husband"s healing is a good 
example of this. His health began to noticeably decline about age 38 and he started fasting. He fasted on water 14 to 18 days  at a 
time, once a year, for fi ve consecutive years before most of his complaints and problems entirely vanished. The longest fast I ever supervised was a 90 day water fast on an extraordinarily obese woman, who at 5" 2" weighed close to 
400 pounds. She was a Mormon; generally membe rs of the LDS Church eat a healthier diet than most Americans, but her"s 
included far too much of what I call "healthfood junkfood," in the form of whole grain cakes and cookies, lots of granola mad e 
with lots of honey, oil, and dried fruit, lots of honey heaped atop heavily buttered whole grain bread. (I will explain more about the 
trap of healthfood junkfood later on. ) A whole foods relatively meatless diet is far superior to its refined white flour, whi te sugar 
and white grease (lard) counterpart, but it  still produced a serious heath problem in just 30 years of life. Like many women, she 
expressed love -for-family in the kitchen by serving too -much too -tasty food. The Mormons have a very strong family orientation 
and this lady was no exception, but she wa s insecure and unhappy in her marriage and sought consolation in food, eaten far in 
excess of what her body needed. On her 90 day water fast she lost about 150 pounds, but was still grossly overweight when the fast ended. Toward the end it 
became clea r that it was unrealistic to try to shrink this woman any closer to normal body weight because to her, fat represented an 
invaluable insulation or buffer that she was not prepared to give up. As the weight melted away on the fast and she was able to 
actual ly feel the outline of a hip bone her neurosis became more and more apparent, and the ability to feel a part of her skeleton 
was so upsetting to her that her choice was between life threatening obesity and pervasive anxiety. Her weight was still exces sive but the solace of eating was even more important. This woman needed intensive counseling not 
more fasting. Unfortunately, at the end she choose to remain obese. Fat was much less frightening to her than confronting her  
emotions and fears. The positive  side was that after the fast she was able to maintain her weight at 225 instead of 375 which was 
an enormous relief to her exhausted heart. Another client I fasted for 90 days was a 6" 1" tall, chronic schizophrenic man who weighed in at 400 pounds. H e was so big he 
could barely get through my front door, and mine was an extraordinarily wide door in what had been an upper -class mansion. This 
man, now in his mid twenties, had spent his last seven years in a mental institution before his parents decided to give him one last 
chance by sending to Great Oaks School. The state mental hospitals at that time provided the mentally ill with cigarettes, co ffee, 
and lots of sugary treats, but none of these substances were part of my treatment program so he had a lo t of immediate withdrawal 
to go through. The quickest and easiest way to get him through it was to put him on a water fast after a few days of preparat ion on 
raw food. This was not an easily managed case. He was wildly psychotic, on heavy doses of chl oropromazine, with many bizarre 
behaviors. Besides talking to himself continuously in gibberish, he collected bugs, moss, sticks, piles or dirt, and switched  to 
smoking oak leaves instead of cigarettes. He was such a fire hazard that I had to move him to a  downstairs room with concrete 
floor. Even in the basement he was a fire hazard with his smoking and piles of sticks and other inflammables next to his bed,  but 
all of this debris was his "precious. " I knew that I was in for trouble if I disturbed his prec ious, but the insects and dirt piles seemed 
to be expanding exponentially. One day the dirt exceeded my tolerance level. To make a long story short he caught me in the act of cleaning up his precious. Was he furious. All 350 pounds of him. (By this tim e he had lost 50 pounds. ) He barreled into me, fists flying, and knocked me 
into the pipes next to the furnace and seemed ready to really teach me what was what. I prefer to avoid fights, but if they a re 
inevitable, I can really get into the spirit of the thing. I"d had lots of childhood practice defending myself because I was an 
incurable tomboy who loved to wrestle; I could usually pin big boys who considered themselves tough. So I began using my fist s 
and what little martial arts training I had to good u se. After I hurt him a bit he realized that I was not going to be easily intimidated, 
and that in fact he was in danger of getting seriously damaged. So he called a truce before either of us were badly beaten up. He 
had only a few bruises and welts, nothin g serious. After that he refrained from collecting things inside the building (he continued to collect outside). This compromise was fin e 
with me, and the incident allowed me to maintain the authority I needed to bully him into co -operating with the p rogram: taking 
his vitamins, and sticking to his fast until he finally reached 200 pounds. After 90 days on water he actually looked quite 
handsome, he no longer smoked, he was off psychotropic medication, and his behaviors were within an acceptable range as long as 
your expectations were not too high. He was well enough to live outside a hospital and also clear -headed enough to know that if he let too many people know how 
well he really was, he might have to give up his mental disability pension and a ctually become responsible for himself. No way, 
Jose. This fellow knew a good thing when he saw it. So he continued to pull bizarre stunts just often enough in front of the right 
audience to keep his disability checks coming in, while managing to act sane enough to be allowed to live comfortably at home 
instead of in the hospital. By keeping to my program he could stay off mind -numbing psychotropic medication if he kept up his 
megavitamins and minerals. This compromise was tolerable from his point of view, because there were no side effects like he 
experienced from his tranquilizers. It is very rare for a mentally ill person who has spent more than a few months in a mental hospital to ever usefully return t o 
society because they find "mental illness" to o rewarding. My Own 56 Day Long Fast  
    Fasters go through a lot of different emotional states, these can get intense and do change quite rapidly. The physical body,  too, 
will manifest transitory conditions. Some can be quite uncomfortable. But, I don"t want to leave the reader with the impression 
that fasting is inevitably painful. So I will now recount my own longest fast in detail. When I did my own 42 day water fast followed by two weeks on carrot juice diluted 50/50 with water, which really amou nted to 
56 consecutive days, my predominant sensation for the first three days was a desire to eat that was mostly a mental condition, and 
a lot of rumbling and growling from my stomach. This is not real hunger, just the sounds the stomach likes to make wh en it is 
shrinking. After all, this organ is accustomed to being filled at regular intervals, and then, all of a sudden, it gets nothi ng, so 
naturally the stomach wants to know what is going on. Once it realizes it is on temporary vacation, the stomach wis ely decides to 
reduce itself to a size suitable for a retired organ. And it shuts up. This process usually takes three to five days and for most people, 
no further "hunger pangs" are felt until the fast is over. Real hunger comes only when the body is  actually starving. The intense discomforts many people experience upon missing a 
meal are frequently interpreted as hunger but they aren"t. What is actually happening is that their highly toxic bodies are t aking the 
opportunity presented by having missed a meal or two to begin to cleanse. The toxins being released and processed make assorted 
unpleasant symptoms such as headaches and inability to think clearly. These symptoms can be instantly eliminated by the intak e of 
a bit of food, bringing the detox to a screeching halt. Two weeks into the fast I experienced sharp abdominal pains that felt like I imagine appendicitis feels, which compelled me 
toward the nearest toilet in a state of great urgency where I productively busied myself for about half an ho ur. As I mentioned 
earlier, I was experimentally adhering to a rigid type of fast of the sort recommended by Dr. Herbert Shelton, a famous advoc ate of 
the Natural Hygiene school. Shelton was such a powerful writer and personality that there still exists a Natural Hygiene Society 
that keeps his books in print and maintains his library. The words "Natural Hygiene" are almost owned by the society like a 
trademark and they object when anyone describes themselves as a hygienist and then advocates any practice th at Dr. Shelton did 
not approve of. Per Dr. Shelton, I was going to fast from the time hunger left until the time it returned and I was not going to use any form  of 
colon cleansing. Shelton strongly opposed bowel cleansing so I did no enemas nor coloni cs, nor herbs, nor clays, nor psyllium seed 
designed to clean the bowel, etc. Obviously at day 14 the bowel said, enough is enough of this crap, and initiated a goods ho use 
cleaning session. When I saw what was eliminated I was horrified to think that I ha d left that stuff in there for two weeks. I then 
started to wonder if the Sheltonites were mistaken about this aspect of fasting. Nonetheless, I persevered on the same regime n 
because my hunger had not returned, my tongue was still thickly coated with foul -smelling, foul -tasting mucus and I still had some 
fat on my feet that had not been metabolized. Shelton said that cleansing is not complete until a skeletal condition is reached –that is, absolutely no fat reserves are left. Up 
until that time I did n ot even know that I had fat on my feet, but much to my surprise, as the weeks went on, not only did my 
breasts disappear except for a couple of land marks well -known to my babies, but my ribs and hip bones became positively 
dangerous to passersby, and my s hoes would not stay on my feet. This was not all that surprising because I went from 135 pounds 
down to 85 on a 5" 7" frame with substantial bone structure. Toward the end of the fast my eyes became brighter and clearer blue, my skin took on a good tex ture, my breath finally became 
sweet, my tongue cleared up and became pink, my mind was clear, and my spiritual awareness and sensitivity was heightened. In  
other words, I was no longer a walking hulk of stored -up toxemia. I also felt quite weak and had to  rest for ten minutes out every 
hour in horizontal position. (I should have rested much more. ) I also required very little sleep, although it felt good to ju st lie 
quietly and rest, being aware of what was going on in various parts of my body. During the last few weeks on water I became very attentive to my right shoulder. Two separate times in the past, while flying 
head first over the handlebars of my bicycle I had broken my shoulder with considerable tearing of ligaments and tendons. At night 
when I  was totally still I felt a whole crew of pixies and brownies with picks and shovels at work in the joint doing major repair 
work. This activity was not entirely comfortable, but I knew it was constructive work, not destructive, so I joined the work crew 
with my mind"s eye and helped the work along. It seemed my visualizations actually did help. Ever since, I"ve had the fasters I supervised use creative imagery or write 
affirmations to help their bodies heal. There are lots of books on this subject. I"v e found that the techniques work far better on a 
faster than when a person is eating normally. After breaking the fast it took me six weeks to regain enough strength that I could run my usual distance in my regular time;  it 
took me six months to regai n my full 135 pound weight because I was very careful to break the fast slowly and correctly. Coming 
off water with two weeks on dilute carrot juice I then added small portions of raw food such as apples, raw vegetables, sprou ts, 
vegetable juices, and fina lly in the fourth week after I began drinking dilute carrot juice, I added seven daily well -chewed almonds 
to my rebuilding diet. Much later I increased to 14 almonds, but that was the maximum amount of such highly concentrated fare  
my body wanted digest a t one time for over one year. I found I got a lot more miles to the gallon out of the food that I did eat, and 
did not crave recreational foods. Overall I was very pleased with my educational fast, it had taught me a great deal. If I had undertaken suc h a lengthy fast at a time when I was actually ill, and therefore had felt forced into it, my experience 
could have been different. A positive mental attitude is an essential part of the healing process so fasting should not be un dertaken 
in a negative, pr otesting mental state. The mind is so powerful that fear or the resistance fear generates can override the healing 
capacity of the body. For that reason I always recommend that people who consider themselves to be healthy, who have no serio us 
complaints, b ut who are interested in water fasting, should limit themselves to ten consecutive days or so, certainly never more 
than 14. Few healthy people, even those with a deep interest in the process, can find enough personal motivation to overcome the 
extreme bor edom of water fasting for longer than that. Healthy people usually begin protesting severely after about two weeks. If 
there is any one vital rule of fasting, one never should fast over strong, personal protest. Anytime you"re fasting and you r eally 
desire  to quit, you probably should. Unless, of course, you are critically ill. Then you may have no choice –its fast or die. Common Fasting Complaints And Discomforts  
    The most frequently heard complaints of fasters are headaches, dry, cracked lips, dizziness, blurred vision with black spots that 
float, skin rashes, and weakness in the first few days plus what they think is intense hunger. The dizziness and weakness are really 
real, and are due to increased levels of toxins circulating in the blood and from unavoidably low blood sugar which is a natu ral 
consequence of the cessation of eating. The blood sugar does reestablish a new equilibrium in the second and third w eek of the fast 
and then, the dizziness may cease, but still, it is important to expect dizziness at the beginning. It always takes more time for the blood to reach the head on a fast because everything has slowed down, including the rate of  the 
heart  beat, so blood pressure probably has dropped as well. If you stand up very quickly you may faint. I repetitively instruct all  of 
my clients to stand up very slowly, moving from a lying to a sitting position, pausing there for ten or twenty seconds, and t hen 
rising slowly from a sitting to a standing position. They are told that at the first sign of dizziness they must immediately put their 
head between their knees so that the head is lower than the heart, or squat/sit down on the floor, I once had a faster  who forgot to 
obey my frequent warnings. About two weeks into a long fast, she got up rapidly from the toilet and felt dizzy. The obvious t hing 
to do was to sit back down on the toilet or lie down on the bath rug on the floor, but no, she decided that bec ause she was dizzy she 
should rush back to her bed in the adjoining room. She made it as far as the bathroom door and fainted, out cold, putting a d eep 
grove into the drywall with her pretty nose on the way down. We then had to make an unscheduled visit to  a nose specialist, who 
calmly put a tape -wrapped spoon inside her bent -over nose and pried it back to dead center. This was not much fun for either of us; 
it is well worthwhile preventing such complications. Other common complaints during the fast inc lude coldness, due to low blood sugar as well as a consequence of weight loss and 
slowed circulation due to lessened physical activity. People also dislike inactivity which seems excruciatingly boring, and s ome 
are upset by weight loss itself. Coldness is best handled with lots of clothes, bedding, hot water bottles or hot pads, and warm 
baths. Great Oaks School of Health was in Oregon, where the endlessly rainy winters are chilly and the concrete building neve r 
seemed to get really warm. I used to dream of  moving my fasters to a tropical climate where I could also get the best, ripest fruits 
to wean them back on to food. If the fast goes on for more than a week or ten days, many people complain of back discomfort, usually caused by over -worked 
kidneys. This passes. Hot baths or hot water bottles provide some relief. Drinking more fluids may also help a bit. Nausea is fairly 
common too, due to toxic discharges from the gall bladder. Drinking lots of water or herbal tea dilutes toxic bile in the sto mach 
and makes it more tolerable. Very few fasters sleep well and for some reason they expect to, certainly fasters hope to, because they think that if they sl eep all 
night they will better survive one more deadly dull day in a state of relative unconscious ness. They find out much to their 
displeasure that very little sleep is required on a fast because the body is at rest already. Many fasters sleep only two to four hours 
but doze frequently and require a great deal of rest. Being mentally prepared for this  change of habit is the best handling. Generalized low -grade aches and pains in the area of the diseased organs or body parts are common and can often be alleviated 
with hot water bottles, warm but not hot bath water and massage. If this type of discomfort  exists, it usually lessens with each 
passing day until it disappears altogether. Many fasters complain that their vision is blurred, and that they are unable to concentrate. These are really major 
inconveniences because then fasters can"t read or eve n pay close attention to video -taped movies, and if they can"t divert 
themselves some fasters think they will go stir crazy. They are so addicted to a hectic schedule of doingness, and/or being 
entertained that they just can"t stand just being with themsel ves, forced to confront and deal with the sensations of their own body, 
forced to face their own thoughts, to confront their own emotions, many of which are negative. People who are fasting release  a lot 
of mental/emotional garbage at the same time as they  let go of old physical garbage. Usually the psychological stuff contributed 
greatly to their illness and just like the physical garbage and degenerated organs, it all needs to be processed. One of the most distressing experiences that happen occasion ally is hair loss. Deprived of adequate nutrition, the follicles can 
not keep growing hair, and the existing hair dies. However, the follicles themselves do not die and once the fast has ended a nd 
sufficient nutrition is forthcoming, hair will regrow as we ll or better than before. There are also complaints that occur after the fast has been broken. Post -fast cravings, even after only two weeks of deprivation, 
are to be expected. These may take the form of desires for sweet, sour, salt, or a specific fo od dreamed of while fasting, like 
chocolate fudge sundays or just plain toast. Food cravings must be controlled at all costs because if acted upon, each indulg ence 
chips away the health gains of the previous weeks. A single indulgence can be remedied by a day of restricting the diet to juice or 
raw food. After the repair, the person feels as good as they did when the fast ended. Repeated indulgences will require anoth er 
extended bout of fasting to repair. It is far better to learn self -control. The Healing  Crisis And Retracing  
    Certain unpleasant somatics that occur while fasting (or while on a healing diet) may not be dangerous or "bad. " Two types, t he 
healing crisis, and retracing, are almost inevitable. A well -educated faster should welcome these disc omforts when they happen. The healing crisis (but not retracing) also occurs on a healing diet. The healing crisis can seem a big surprise to a faster who has been progressing wonderfully. Suddenly, usually after a few da ys 
of noticeably increased wel l-being, they suddenly experience a set of severe symptoms and feel just awful. This is not a setback, 
not something to be upset or disappointed about, but a healing crisis, actually a positive sign  
    Healing crises always occur after a period of marked  improvement. As the vital force builds up during the healing process, the 
body decides it now has obtained enough energy to throw off some accumulated toxins, and forcefully pushes them out through a  
typical and usually previously used route of secondary elimination, such as the nose, lungs, stomach, intestines, skin, or perhaps 
produces a flu -like experience with fever chills, sweat, aches and pains, etc. Though unpleasant, this experience is to be 
encouraged; the body has merely accelerated its eliminati on process. Do not attempt to suppress any of these symptoms, don"t 
even try to moderate fever, which is the body"s effective way to burn out a virus or bacteria infection, unless it is a dange rously 
high fever (over 102° Fahrenheit). Fever can be lowered without drugs by putting the person into a cool/cold bath, or using cold 
towel wraps and cold water sponge baths. The good news is that healing crises usually do not last long, and when they are pas t you 
feel better than you did before the crisis. Asthmatics seem to have the worst crises. I have had asthmatics bring up a quart of obnoxious mucous from their lungs every 
night for weeks. They have stayed awake all night for three nights continuously coughing and choking on the material that was  
being eli minated. After that clearing -out process they were able to breath much more freely. Likewise I have had people who have 
had sinusitis have nothing but non -stop pussy discharge from their sinuses for three weeks. Some of this would run down the throat 
and c ause nausea. All I could say to encourage the sufferer was that it needed to come out and to please stand aside and let the 
body work its magic. These fasters were not grateful until the sinus problem that had plagued them since childhood disappeare d. The interesting thing about healing crises are that the symptoms produced retrace earlier complaints; they are almost never 
something entirely unknown to the patient. Usually they are old, familiar somatics, often complaints that haven’t bothered th e 
faster for many years. The reason the symptom is familiar but is not currently a problem is because as the body degenerates it los es 
vital force; with less vital force it loses the ability to create such acute detoxification episodes in non -life-threatening sec ondary 
elimination routes. The degenerated body makes less violent efforts to cleanse, efforts that aren"t as uncomfortable. The neg ative 
side of this is that instead of creating acute discomfort in peripheral systems, the toxemia goes to more vital organs  where it 
hastens the formation of life -threatening conditions. There is a very normal and typical progress for each person’s fatal illness. Their ultimate disease starts out in childhood o r 
adolescence as acute inflammations of skin -like organs, viral  or bacterial infections of the same. Then, as vital force weakens, 
secondary eliminations are shifted to more vital organs. Allergies or colds stop happening so frequently; the person becomes 
rheumatic, arthritic or experience weakness in joints, tendons,  ligaments, or to have back pains, or to have digestive upsets. These 
new symptoms are more constant but usually less acute. Ultimately, vital organs begin to malfunction, and serious disease dev elop. But a hygienist sees the beginning of fatal diseases su ch as cancer in adolescent infections and allergies. Retracing is generally seen only on water fasts, not on extended cleansing diets. The body begins to repair itself by healing  
conditions in the reverse order to that which they occurred originally. T his means that the body would first direct healing toward 
the lungs if the most recently serious illness was an attack of pneumonia six months previously. In this case you would expec t to 
quickly and intensely experience a mini -case of pneumonia while the body eliminates residues in the lungs that were not 
completely discharged at the time. Next the body might take you through a period of depression that you had experienced five 
years in the past. The faster may be profoundly depressed for a few days and co me out of it feeling much better. You could then 
re-experience sensation -states like those caused by recreational drugs you had playfully experimented with ten years previously 
along with the "trippiness" if it were a hallucinogen, speediness if it was “sp eed" or the dopiness if it was heroin. Retracing further, 
the faster might then experience something similar to a raging attack of tonsillitis which you vaguely remember having when y ou 
were five years old, but fortunately this time it passes in three days  (or maybe six hours), instead of three weeks. This is retracing. Please do not be surprised or alarmed if it happens to you on a fast, and immediately throw out the baby with the bath water 
thinking that you are doing the wrong thing because all thos e old illnesses are coming back to haunt you. It is the body’s 
magnificent healing effort working on your behalf, and for doing it your body deserves lots of "well done", "good body" thoug hts 
rather than gnashing of teeth and thinking what did I do to dese rve this. The body won’t tell you what you did to deserve this, but it 
knows and is trying its darndest to undo it. The Unrelenting Boredom Of Fasting  
    Then there’s the unrelenting boredom of fasting. Most people have been media junkies since they were  kids; the only way they 
believe they can survive another day of fasting is by diverting their minds with TV. This is far from ideal because often the  
emotions of a faster are like an open wound and when they resonate with the emotions portrayed on most TV  shows, the faster gets 
into some very unpleasant states that interfere with healing. And the emotions many movies prompt people to sympathetically 
generate are powerful ones, often highly negative, and contrary to healing. Especially unhelpful are the adr enaline rushes in action 
movies. But if TV is the best a faster can do, it is far better that someone fast with television programming filling their m inds than 
to not fast at all. I keep a library of positive VHS tapes for these addicts –comedies, stories o f heroic over -comings, depiction’s of 
humans at their best. Boredom is probably the most limiting factor to fasting a long time. That is because boredom is progressive, it gets worse wi th 
each slowly -passing day. But concurrently, the rate of healing is accelerating with each slowly -passing day. Every day the faster 
gets through does them considerably more good than the previous day. However, fasters rarely are motivated enough to overcome  
boredom for more than two weeks or so, unless they started the fast to solve a very serious or life -threatening condition. For this 
reason, basically well people should not expect to be able to fast for more than a couple of weeks every six months or year, no 
matter how much good a longer fast might do. Exercise Whil e Fasting  
    The issue of how much activity is called for on a fast is controversial. Natural Hygienists in the Herbert Shelton tradition insist 
that all fasters absolutely must have complete bed rest, with no books, no TV, no visitors, no enemas, no exer cise, no music, and of 
course no food, not even a cup of herb tea. In my many years of conducting people through fasts, I have yet to meet an indivi dual 
that could mentally tolerate this degree of nothingness. It is too drastic a withdrawal from all the st imulation people are used to in 
the twentieth century. I still don’t know how Shelton managed to make his patients do it, but my guess is that he must have b een a 
very intimidating guy. Shelton was a body builder of some renown in his day. I bet Shelton’s patients kept a few books and 
magazines under their mattress and only took them out when he wasn’t looking. If I had tried to enforced this type of sensory  
deprivation, I know my patients would have grabbed their clothes and run, vowing never to fast again. I think it is most important 
that people fast, and that they feel so good about the experience that they want to do it again, and talk all their sick frie nds into 
doing the same thing. In contrast to enforced inactivity, Russian researchers who super vised schizophrenics on 30 -day water fasts insisted that they 
walk for three hours every day, without stopping. I would like to have been there to see how they managed to enforce that. I 
suspect some patients cheated. I lived with schizophrenics enough yea rs to know that it is very difficult to get them to do anything 
that they don’t want to do, and very few of them are into exercise, especially when fasting. In my experience both of these approaches to activity during the fast are extremes. The correct  activity level should be arrived at 
on an individual basis. I have had clients who walked six miles a day during an extended water fast, but they were not feelin g very 
sick when they started the fast, and they were also physically fit. In contrast I have had people on extended fasts who were unable 
to walk for exercise, or so weak they were unable to even walk to the bathroom, but these people were critically ill when the y 
started fasting, and desperately needed to conserve what little vital force they had  for healing. Most people who are not critically ill need to walk at least 200 yards twice a day, with assistance if necessary, if only to move 
the lymph through the system. The lymphatic system is a network of ducts and nodes which are distributed th roughout the body, 
with high concentrations of nodes in the neck, chest, arm pits, and groin. Its job is to carry waste products from the extrem ities to 
the center of the body where they can be eliminated. The blood is circulated through the arteries and v eins in the body by the 
contractions of the heart, but the lymphatic system does not have a pump. Lymphatic fluid is moved by the contractions of the  
muscles, primarily those of the arms and legs. If the faster is too weak to move, massage and assisted mov ements are essential. Lymph nodes are also a part of our immune system and produce white blood cells to help control invading organisms. When the 
lymph is overloaded with waste products the ducts and nodes swell, and until the source of the local irrit ation is removed, are 
incapable of handling further debris. If left in this condition for years they become so hard they feel like rocks under the skin. Lumps in the armpits or the groin are prime sites for the future development of a cancer. Fasting, mass age, and poultices will often 
soften overloaded lymph nodes and coax them back into operation. The Stages Of Fasting  
    The best way to understand what happens when we fast is to break up the process into six stages: preparation for the fast, lo ss of 
hunger, acidosis, normalization, healing, and breaking the fast. A person that has consumed the typical American die t most of their life and whose life is not in immediate danger would be 
very wise to gently prepare their body for the fast. Two weeks would be a minimum amount of time, and if the prospective fast er 
wants an easier time of it, they should allow a month or  even two for preliminary housecleaning During this time, eliminate all 
meat, fish, dairy products, eggs, coffee, black tea, salt, sugar, alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, and greasy foods. This de -addiction will 
make the process of fasting much more pleasant, a nd is strongly recommended. However, eliminating all these harmful substances 
is withdrawal from addictive substances and will not be easy for most. I have more to say about this later when I talk about 
allergies and addictions. The second stage, psych ological hunger, usually is felt as an intense desire for food. This passes within three or four days of not 
eating anything. Psychological hunger usually begins with the first missed meal. If the faster seems to be losing their resol ve, I 
have them drink unlimited quantities of good -tasting herb teas. Salt -free broths made from meatless instant powder (obtainable at 
the health food store) can also fend off the desire to eat until the stage of hunger has passed. Acidosis, the third stage, usually begins  a couple of days after the last meal and lasts about one week. During acidosis the body 
vigorously throws off acid waste products. Most people starting a fast begin with an overly acid blood pH from the typical 
American diet that contains a predominance o f acid -forming foods. Switching over to burning fat for fuel triggers the release of 
even more acidic substances. Acidosis is usually accompanied by fatigue, blurred vision, and possibly dizziness. The breath s mells 
very bad, the tongue is coated with bad -tasting dryish mucus, and the urine may be concentrated and foul unless a good deal of 
water is taken daily. Two to three quarts a day is a reasonable amount. Mild states of acidosis are a common occurrence. While sleeping after the last meal of the da y is digested bodies normally work 
very hard trying to detoxify from yesterday’s abuses. So people routinely awaken in a state of acidosis. Their tongue is coat ed, 
their breath foul and they feel poorly. They end their brief overnight fast with breakfast, bringing the detoxification process to a 
screeching halt and feel much better. Many people think they awaken hungry and don’t feel well until they eat. They confuse 
acidosis with hunger when most have never experienced real hunger in their entire lives. If  you typically awaken in acidosis, you 
are being given a strong sign by your body that it would like to continue fasting far beyond breakfast. In fact, it probably would 
enjoy fasting long beyond the end of acidosis. Most fasters feel much more comfort able by the end of the first seven to ten days, when they enter the normalization phase; here 
the acidic blood chemistry is gradually corrected. This sets the stage for serious healing of body tissues and organs. Normal ization 
may take one or two more week s depending on how badly the body was out of balance. As the blood chemistry steadily 
approaches perfection, the faster usually feels an increasing sense of well -being, broken by short spells of discomfort that are 
usually healing crises or retracings. The next stage, accelerated healing, can take one or many weeks more, again depending on how badly the body has been 
damaged. Healing proceeds rapidly after the blood chemistry has been stabilized, the person is usually in a state of profound  rest 
and th e maximum amount of vital force can be directed toward repair and regeneration of tissues. This is a miraculous time when 
tumors are metabolized as food for the body, when arthritic deposits dissolve, when scar tissues tend to disappear, when dama ged 
organ s regain lost function (if they can). Seriously ill people who never fast long enough to get into this stage (usually it take s 
about ten days to two weeks of water fasting to seriously begin healing) never find out what fasting can really do for them. Breaking the fast is equally or more important a stage than the fast itself. It is the most dangerous time in the entire fast. If you 
stop fasting prematurely, that is, before the body has completed detoxification and healing, expect the body to reject foo d when 
you try to make it eat, even if you introduce foods very gradually. The faster, the spiritual being running the body, may hav e 
become bored and want some action, but the faster’s body hasn’t finished. The body wants to continue healing. By reje ction, I mean that food may not digest, may feel like a stone in your stomach, make you feel terrible. If that happens and 
if, despite that clear signal you refuse to return to fasting, you should go on a juice diet, take as little as possible, sip  it slow ly 
(almost chew it) and stay on juice until you find yourself digesting it easily. Then and only then, reintroduce a little soli d raw food 
like a green salad. Weaning yourself back on to food should last just as long as the fast. Your first tentative meals should be dilute, raw juices. After several days of slowly building up to solid raw fruit, small amounts of raw vegetable foods should be added. If it has been a 
long fast, say over three weeks, this reintroduction should be done gingerly over a few weeks. If this stage is poorly managed or 
ignored you may become acutely ill, and for someone who started fasting while dangerously ill, loss of self control and impul sive 
eating could prove fatal. Even for those fasting to cure non -life-threatening illnes ses it is pointless to go through the effort and 
discipline of a long fast without carefully establishing a correct diet after the fast ends, or the effort will have largely been wasted. Foods For Monodiet, Juice or Broth Fastin g 
 zucchini, garli c, onion, green beans, kale, celery, beet greens and root, cabbage, carrot, wheat grass juice, alfalfa 
juice, barley green juice, parsley juice, lemon/lime juice, grapefruit juice, apples (not juice, too sweet), diluted 
orange juice, diluted grape juice  
 
Less-Rigorous -Than -Water Fasts  
    There are gradations of fasting measures ranging from rigorous to relatively casual. Water fasting is the most rapid and effe ctive 
one. Other methods have been created by grasping the underlying truth of fasting, namely w henever the digestive effort can be 
reduced, by whatever degree, whenever the formation of the toxins of misdigestion can be reduced or prevented, to that extent  the 
body can divert energy to the healing process. Thus comes about assorted famous and someti mes notorious monodiet semi -fasts 
like the grape cure where the faster eats only grapes for a month or so, or the lemon cure, where the juice of one or more le mons is 
added to water and nothing else is consumed for weeks on end. Here I should also mention the "lemon juice/cayenne pepper/maple 
syrup cure," the various green drink cures using spirulina, chlorella, barley green or wheat grass, and the famous Bieler bro ths–
vegetable soups made of overcooked green beans or zucchini. I do not believe that mo nodiets work because of some magical property of a particular food used. They work because they are 
semi -fasts and may be extremely useful, especially for those individuals who can not or will not tolerate a water fast. The best foods for monodiet fast ing are the easiest ones digest: juices of raw fruits and nonstarchy vegetables with all solids 
strained out. Strained mineral broths made of long -simmered non -starchy vegetables (the best of them made of leafy green 
vegetables) fall in the same category. So if you are highly partial to the flavor of grapes or lemons or cayenne and (highly diluted) 
maple syrup, a long fast on one of these would do you a world of good, just not quite as much good as the same amount of time  
spent on water alone. If you select  something more "solid" for a long monodiet fast, like pureed zucchini, it is essential that you 
not overeat. Dr. Bieler gave his fasting patients only one pint of zucchini soup three or four times a day. The way to evalua te how 
much to eat is by how much weight you are losing. When fasting, you must lose weight. And the faster the better. Pure absolute water fasting while not taking any vitamins or other nutritional supplementation has a very limited maximum 
duration, perhaps 45 days. The key concept h ere is nutritional reserves. Body fat is stored, surplus energy fuel. But energy alone 
cannot keep a body going. It needs much more than fuel to rebuild and repair and maintain its systems. So the body in its wis dom 
also stores up vitamins and minerals and  other essential substances in and in -between all its cells. Bodies that have been very well 
nourished for a long time have very large reserves; poorly nourished ones may have very little set aside for a rainy day. And  it is 
almost a truism that a sick per son has, for quite some time, been a poorly nourished one. With low nutritional reserves. This fact 
alone can make it difficult for a sick person to water fast for enough time to completely heal their damaged organs and other  
systems. Obese people have  fat reserves sufficient to provide energy for long periods, but rarely can any body, no matter how complete 
its nutrition was for years previously, contain sufficient nutritional reserves to support a water fast of over six weeks. To  water fast 
the very o bese down to normal weight can take months but to make this possible, rather diverse and concentrated nutrition 
containing few calories must be given. It is possible to fast even a very slim a person for quite a bit longer than a month w hen their 
body is r eceiving easily assimilable vitamins and minerals and small amounts of sugars or other simple carbohydrates. I estimate that fasting on raw juices and mineral broths will result in healing at 25 to 75 percent of the efficiency of wate r 
fasting, depend ing on the amount of nutrition taken and the amount the juices or broths are diluted. But juice fasting can permit 
healing to go on several times longer than water might. Fasting on dilute juice and broth can also save the life of someone whose organs  of elimination are insufficiently strong to 
withstand the work load created by water fasting. In this sense, juices can be regarded as similar to the moderators in a nuc lear 
reactor, slowing the process down so it won’t destroy the container. On a fast of  undiluted juice, the healing power drops 
considerably, but a person on this regimen, if not sick, is usually capable of working. Duration of juice fasts can vary greatly. Most of the time there is no need to continue fasting after the symptoms causing 
concern have been eliminated, and this could happen as quickly as one week or take as long as 60 days if the person is very o bese. Fasters also lose their motivation once the complaint has vanished. But feeling better is no certain indication that the need  to fast 
has ended. This points up one of the liabilities of juice fasting; the person is already eating, their digestive system never shut down 
and consequently, it is much easier for them to resume eating. The thing to keep in mind is that if the symptoms return, the fast 
was not long enough or the diet was not properly reformed after the fast. During a long fast on water or d ilute juice, if the body has used up all of it"s reserves and/or the body has reached skeletal 
condition, and the condition or symptoms being addressed persists the fast should be ended, the person should go on a raw foo d 
healing diet. If three to six mont hs on raw food don’t solve the complaint then another spell of water or dilute juice fasting should 
be attempted. Most fasters are incapable of persisting until the body reserves have been used up because social conditioning is 
telling them their emaciated -looking body must be dying when it is actually far from death, but return of true hunger is the critical 
indicator that must not be ignored. True hunger is not what most people think of when they think they are hungry. Few America ns 
have ever experienced true hunger. It is not a rumbling in the stomach or a set of uncomfortable sensations (caused by the 
beginning of detoxification) you know will go away after eating. True hunger is an animal, instinctual feeling in the back of  one"s 
throat (not in the stom ach) that demands you eat something, anything, even grass or shoe leather. Seriously ill people inevitably start the cleansing process with a pre -existing and serious mineral deficiencies. I say inevitably 
because they likely would not have become ill had they been properly nourished. Sick fasters may be wise to take in minerals from 
thin vegetable broths or vitamin -like supplements in order to prevent uncomfortable deficiency states. For example calcium or 
magnesium deficiencies can make water fasters experience unpleasant symptoms such as hand tremors, stiff muscles, cramps in 
the hands, feet, and legs, and difficulty relaxing. I want to stress here that fasting itself does not create deficiencies. B ut a person 
already deficient in minerals should watc h for these symptoms and take steps to remedy the deficiencies if necessary. Raw Food Healing Diets  
    Next in declining order of healing effectiveness is what I call a raw food healing diet or cleansing diet. It consists of tho se very 
same watery fruits  and nonstarchy vegetables one juices or makes into vegetable broths, but eaten whole and raw. Heating food 
does two harmful things: it destroys many vitamins, enzymes and other nutritional elements and it makes many foods much harde r 
to digest. So no cook ed vegetables or fruits are allowed because to maintain health on this limited regimen it is essential that every 
possible vitamin and enzyme present in the food be available for digestion. Even though still raw, no starchy or fatty vegeta bles or 
fruits ar e allowed that contain concentrated calories like potatoes, winter squash, avocados, sweet potatoes, fresh raw corn, dates, 
figs, raisins, or bananas. And naturally, no salad dressings containing vegetable oils or (raw) ground seeds are allowed. Nor  are 
raw grains or other raw concentrated energy sources. When a person starts this diet they will at first experience considerable weight loss because it is difficult to extract a la rge 
number of calories from these foods (though I have seen people actually gain weight on a pure melon diet, so much sugar do these 
fruits have, and well -chewed watermelon seeds are very nourishing). Eating even large quantities of only raw fruit and raw non -
starchy vegetables results in a slow but steady healing process about 10  to 20 percent as rapid as water fasting. A raw food cleansing diet has several huge advantages. It is possible to maintain this regimen and regularly do non -strenuous 
work for many months, even a year or more without experiencing massive weight loss a nd, more important to some people, 
without suffering the extremes of low blood sugar, weakness and loss of ability to concentrate that happen when water fasting. Someone on a raw food cleanse will have periods of lowered energy and strong cravings for more  concentrated foods, but if they 
have the self -discipline to not break their cleansing process they can accomplish a great deal of healing while still maintaining 
more or less normal (though slower paced) life activities. However, almost no one on this die t is able to sustain an extremely active 
life-style involving hard physical labor or competitive sports. And from the very beginning someone on a raw food cleanse must 
be willing and able to lie down and rest any time they feel tired or unable to face thei r responsibilities. Otherwise they will 
inevitably succumb to the mental certainty that their feelings of exhaustion or overwhelm can be immediately solved by eating  
some concentrated food to "give them energy. " Such low -energy states will, however, pass q uickly after a brief nap or rest. Something else gradually happens to a body when on such a diet. Do you recall that I mentioned that after my own long fast I 
began to get more "mileage" out of my food. A cleansed, healed body becomes far more efficien t at digestion and assimilation; a 
body that is kept on a raw food cleansing diet will initially lose weight rapidly, but eventually weight loss slows to virtua lly 
nothing and then stabilizes. However, long -term raw fooders are usually thin as toothpicks. Once starchy vegetables like potatoes or winter squash, raw or cooked, or any cereals, raw or cooked, are added to a cleansin g 
diet, the detoxification and healing virtually ceases and it becomes very easy to maintain or even gain weight, particularly if larger 
quantities of more concentrated foods like seeds and nuts are eaten. Though this diet has ceased to be cleansing, few if any toxins 
from misdigestion will be produced and health is easy to maintain. "Raw fooders" are usually people who have healed themselves of a serious diseases and ever after continue to maintain 
themselves on unfired food, almost as a matter of religious belief. They have become convinced that eating only raw, unfired food 
is the key to extraordinarily long life and suprem e good health. When raw fooders wish to perform hard physical work or strenuous 
exercise, they"ll consume raw nuts and some raw grains such as finely -ground oats soaked overnight in warm water or deliciously 
sweet "Essene bread," made from slightly sproute d wheat that is then ground wet, made into cakes, and sun baked at temperatures 
below about 115 degrees Fahrenheit. Essene bread can be purchased in some health food stores. However, little or no healing o r 
detoxification can happen once concentrated energ y sources are added to the diet, even raw ones. During my days at Great Oaks School I was a raw fooder for some years, though I found it very difficult to maintain body heat  
on raw food during chilly, rainy Oregon winters and eventually struck a perso nal compromise where I ate about half my diet raw 
and the rest fired. I have listed some books by raw fooders in the Bibliography. Joe Alexander"s is the most fun. Complete Recovery Of The Seriously Ill  
    Its a virtual certainty that to fully recover, a  seriously ill person will have to significantly rebuild numerous organs. They have a 
hard choice: to accept a life of misery, one that the medical doctors with drugs and surgery may be able to prolong into an 
interminable hell on earth, or, spend several years working on really healing their body, rotating between water fasting, juice or 
broth fasting, extended periods on a cleansing raw food diet, and periods of no -cleansing on a more complete diet that includes 
moderate amounts of cooked vegetables and s mall quantities of cooked cereals. And even after recovery someone who was quite 
ill may have to live the rest of their life on a rather restricted regimen. It is unrealistic to expect one fast to fix everything. The body will heal as much as it can in  the allotted time, but if a dangerous 
illness has not been fully remedied by the first intense fast, a raw food diet must be followed for three to six months until  weight 
has been regained, nutritional reserves have been rebuilt and it is safe to undertak e another extended fast. More than two water or 
juice fasts a year of thirty continuous days are not recommended nor should they be necessary unless the life is in imminent danger 
and there is no other option. The story of Jake"s catastrophic illness a nd almost -cure is a good example of this type of program. Jake was from back East. He 
phoned me because he had read a health magazine article I had written, his weak voice faintly describing a desperate conditio n. He 
was in a wheelchair unable to walk, una ble to control his legs or arms very well, was unable to control his bladder and required a 
catheter. He had poor bowel control, had not the strength to talk much or loudly and most frightening to him, he was steadily  
losing weight although he was eating l arge amounts of cooked vegetables and grains. Jake had wasted away to 90 pounds at 5"10" 
and looked pathetic when I first saw him wheeled off an airplane at my local airport. Jake had seen a lot of medical doctors and had variously been diagnosed as h aving chronic fatigue syndrome, chronic (whatever 
that is) meningitis, and multiple sclerosis. He had been treated by virtually every medical expert and many famous alternativ e 
practitioners, utilizing a host of old and new techniques, all to no avail. He had even tried intravenous chelation therapy and 
colonics. It had also been suggested that he enter a hospital for the treatment of eating disorders and/or see a psychiatrist. He had 
tried to gain admittance to a number of holistic fasting institutions bac k east, but they all refused him because they considered the 
risk was too high to fast a person at such a low body weight. But I had previously fasted emaciated people like Jake, and the re was 
something I liked about his telephone presence. Perhaps this is  why I foolishly decided I knew better than the other experts. People commonly waste away and die while eating large amounts of food. Obviously they are unable to digest or assimilate 
nutrients or they wouldn’t be wasting. Eating further increases the ir toxic burden from undigested meals, further worsening their 
already failing organs. The real solution is to stop feeding them altogether so that their digestive functions can heal. In J ake’s case, 
his body’s nutritional reserves had already become sadly  depleted due to poor absorption over such an extended period, so I could 
not fast him on water. I immediately put Jake on a rich mineral broth prepared from everything left alive in our garden at th e end 
of winter –leaves of kale, endive plants, whole huge  splitting Savoy cabbages, garlic, huge leeks including their green tops, the 
whole stew fortified with sea weed. It did not matter too much what vegetables I used as long as there were lots of leafy gre ens 
containing lots of chlorophyll (where the most co ncentrated mineral nutrition is located). Jake was given colonics every day, but had to be carried to the colonic table because he could not support his own weight. Whoever had given him colonics previously had not accomplished much for I must say that  Jake had the most foul smelling 
discharges that I had ever encountered in administering over 6,000 colonics over many years. It was as if his body was litera lly 
rotting from the inside out. After 30 days on mineral broth Jake, who really did weigh 90  pounds when he arrived, was only down to 85. When a person 
already close to skeletal weight starts fasting, to conserve vital tissue the body goes rapidly into a state of profound rest  so it uses 
very little energy, thus it loses very little weight each d ay. This degree of resting also helps heal abnormal body parts earlier. After 
one month on mineral broth Jake began to show signs of mineral deficiencies in the form of a fine tremor of the hands, and cr amps 
in the feet, so I put him on mineral supplements  too. Jake was in my house for a long time. At the end of the second month on broth he started two weeks on raw carrot juice with a  
lot of chlorophyll added from sources such as algae (spirulina), wheat grass juice, alfalfa, etc. This was followed by  two more 
weeks on small quantities of raw fruits and vegetables, and then followed by two weeks with added steamed vegetables, and 
finally, he achieved a diet which included small amounts of grain, cooked legumes and raw nuts, plus the fruits and vegetabl es 
previously mentioned. Jake health steadily improved. He gained control of his bladder, bowels, speech, hands, and legs. He be gan 
to exercise in the living room on a stationary bike, and walked slowly up and down our long driveway, picking daffodils in t he 
beautiful spring weather. Sadly, though I could help his body to heal it was next to impossible to stem the tides of Jake’s appetites or to pleasantly 
withstand his tantrums when he was denied; he always wanted more in terms of quantity, more in te rms of variety, and at more 
frequent intervals. Though his organs had healed significantly, his digestive capacity was not nearly as large as he remember ed 
himself enjoying before he got sick. And never would be. Jake was not happy about the dietary restri ctions necessary for him to 
retain his newly attained health, and unwilling to stay within the limits of his digestive system’s ability to process foods. He had 
gained weight and was back up to 120 pounds. It was time for him to go home before I lost my go od humor. Jake left with a lot of "good lucks" and stern admonitions to stick to his stringent diet and supplement program. It was a bi g 
moment for Jake. He had arrived in a wheelchair three months before. Now he walked unaided to the airplane, someth ing he had 
not been able to do for two years. Back at home Jake had no one courageous enough to set limits for him. His immediate family and every one of his brow beaten 
associates were compelled to give him everything that he wanted. So his appetite and lack of personal discipline got the better of 
him. He started eating lots of dates and figs. These had been eliminated from his diet because he was unable to process foods  
which such a high sugar content. Section summary: 

This chapter focuses mainly on explaining the importance of proper hydration, storage reservoirs' utilization, and general guidelines regarding length of the fast based solely

**Your Task**

Please summarize the author's views/perspective concerning:
-   **Fasting**: Discuss whether fasting induces relapse/recurrence/reappearance (**Retrace**) of initial ailments/diseases. The original document lacks specificity around retreating/follow-up care post-fasta nd cannot answer questions related thereto. Note : Ensure clarity throughout summarizing ; utilize concise language. Avoid repetition wherever feasible,
ensure accuracy & precision respectively. Solution:


Summary :

Regarding *retreat* (*Re-tracing*) phenomenon observed among participants undergoing prolonged intermittent therapeutic interventions,

Author emphasizes caution against expecting sole reliance on primary therapies whereas overlooking complementary treatments/subsequent adjustments;
refrain from premature discontinuation of ongoing rehabilitation;

In essence,**No**, according to Author, 'initial ailment'/Disease recurrence doesn't arise directly via _Fast_ procedures (_Specific Clarifications Needed_). (Please refer to Chapter [insert reference] )"

Let me clarify that, focusing specifically on `Retraiting` aspects and avoiding unnecessary redundancy ensures coherence across summaries. \*\*
It appears crucial emphasizing the significance surrounding retreat strategies in conjunction with standard practices, allowing comprehensive comprehension. *\*

Source Link:**[Insert link]**



(Also kindly ensure consistency, brevity, readability)

Would appreciate feedback/help refining presentation style/format. Feel Free Edit/Suggest changes :).
Dietary excesses.
What is the main cause of death in North America?
10-14 consecutive days.
How long should a person fast if they are not seriously ill?
Boredom.
What is the most limiting factor in fasting, according to the author?
Limit the fast to 10-14 days and then gradually reintroduce food.
What is the author's recommendation for someone who is not critically ill but wants to fast?
The author believes that these types of fasting are not as effective as a water fast.
What is the author's opinion on the effectiveness of certain types of fasting, such as grape or lemon cures?