Posts Tagged ‘Fasting’

Do you know how amazing our livers are? It’s the second largest organ of our body – our skin being the first largest organ. It’s on the right side of the body, just below the rib cage. It’s huge!

And it is the only organ that can regenerate itself – as little as 25% of a liver can regenerate into a whole liver. Amazing. (I had a tonsil grow back after removal when I was a kid, what’s up with that?)

It detoxifys our body, everything we eat, every nutrient and every bit of toxic junk we eat passes through the liver. Then the liver changes it into whatever it changes into and moves it onto where ever it needs to go. I’m sure there is a more scientific way to phrase that – but that’s how I see the liver working. It’s like a big bouncer at the door of the fancy nightclub – directing traffic here and there. And it does it all the time without any admiration and love and notice.

So this bouncer helps digest what we consume, it directs the bad stuff away and it makes proteins and stores glucose (and stores iron too). Proteins that help rebuild and grow and heal. It also makes bile – which is sent to the small intestine and the gall bladder – (the gall bladder stores the bile for times when it’s needed in the small intestine to help with the breakdown of  fats.)

So with our SAD (standard american diet) diets, our poor liver is overworked and desperately needs a vacation. If it doesn’t get a vacation soon, it’s going to protest and go on strike. And if it doesn’t go on strike, at the very least it’s not going to doing a very good job. Part of the not doing a good job is what it does with the bile. The liver also uses bile to clean up our blood. Our blood has all kinds of stuff floating around in it most of the time. Undigested food, yeast, parasites (“if you eat meat, you don’t eat alone”), dead red blood cells and such. All this stuff makes the blood thick. That’s why doctors often ask you to “not eat after midnight” before a procedure – they want the blood clean and free of undigested food.

Before I got into raw food, I had a live blood cell analysis done. This is where they stick your finger and put a drop of blood on a glass slide and put it under a microscope which is projected on a monitor (dark-field microscope). At the time, the lady had to jab my finger several times before it would bleed and then the blood was so sticky it barely came out. SO, on the screen, my blood cells were stacked up like checkers. She showed me parasites and undigested food. This was even after fasting since the night before, showing that I was not digesting effectively or efficiently.

She sent me away to spend a week eating lots of salad, drinking lots of water, taking lots of digestive enzymes.

I returned to do the procedure once again. What a difference the week made. She only had to jab me once and the blood flowed freely out. The red blood cells were floating freely around instead of being stacked up. There were no undigested food particles. I don’t recall about the parasites. I had not done a parasite cleanse, so chances were I still had them. The live visual evidence is a powerful tool.

There are many ways to aid and support the body for optimum health. Eating simply, more natural food. Fasting and cleansing when you can. Colonics and enemas when needed. And there is also the coffee enema – one of the cornerstones of the Gerson Institutes Cancer Healing program (coffee helps to open the bile ducts so that the liver may dump its toxins, in case you wondered.) And going the extra mile by supporting our bouncer with a much needed vacation – do a Liver and Gallbladder Cleanse.

I never updated about my fast…I completed 5 days of fasting with water only and began eating light on the 6th day. The major unexpected benefit was that my meditations were so amazing. The mind was so clear and undistracted. My sleep was sound.

Once a month I meet with a group for Insight Meditation – meditating in a group always seems more intense, so that, combined with the fast was incredible. I mentioned it at the meeting and another guy there said he had not eaten all day and found that the evening meditation was particularly clear as well.

Many use fasting as a means of allowing the body to heal itself (see Joel Fuhrmans book below). It is awesome what our body does when not encumbered with the effort of digestion – it makes way for healing and mental clarity.

Fasting Day 3 – Feel great, not hungry. When you fast, you take a break from all forms of toxins physical and non-physical, that your body usually has to deal with on some level. I am recalling memories of earlier fasts/feasts – how things change in and around you. You really do move inward. I don’t just fast from food – I’m finding that I begin to “fast” from things in my life that I know will give me stress. I don’t watch the news for example. I meditate deeper and longer. I listen to more soothing music. (I just bought ‘Edgar Cayce’s Sounds for Meditation’ CD from A.R.E. Very interesting, nice.)
Overall, I feel my body has a lot less toxins than it did a few years ago. I eat mostly raw and make the effort to reduce the toxic load to my body daily. It had become habit for me and I forget how different my lifestyle has become until my dad comes to visit.
He complains about me not having “real” soap, or “real” toothpaste. I don’t have “real” deodorant either. He has to live without a microwave while he is here too. I have glass food containers, having little by little purchased glass and donated the plasticware. I stick to natural fabrics (cotton, hemp etc).
It has been difficult at times to find clothing that is cotton and still “business” like. Most of it is too casual and sloppy for “work” clothes. Mostly I’ve been successful at finding natural fabrics from Ralph Lauren – finding suit jackets and tank tops that serve for business attire.

I’ll start posting some of my natural recipes (lotions, facial scrubs, soap, toothpaste, household cleansers…) but for now, here is a book recommendation for soap making. This was my first soap making book – I’ve purchased more complicated ones after this, but always came back to this because its so simple and I have never ruined a batch of soap using their base recipes. I purchase pure essential oils in bulk online (mostly from Snowdriftfarm.com - nice site, lots to learn).

The Soap Book: Simple Herbal Recipes by Sandy Maine. I was amazed at the bad reviews of the book on Amazon. The bad ones all sounded like they critiqued the book without making any of the recipes. They complained that it didn’t go into lye calculations and superfatting and that the amounts of essential oil was too high and too expensive and that there was only one recipe.

I think they want soap making to be complicated and it doesn’t have to be! I have read lots of info about what to do with ruined soap batches (shave it and use it in your laundry) – With this book, I have never ruined a batch of soap. I make lovely bars and have sold them at gift shops and made a profit – yes using only pure essential oils, extra virgin olive oils, coconut oil etc. The good stuff – that costs a bit more. That’s the point of making your own products so you don’t have to buy the processed stuff that has cheap ingredients. I age the bars, they are hard and they last a long time in the shower – the coconut oil makes them lather very nicely!

So keep it simple, try the recipes in the book – make them for your friends and family and coworkers. They make great gifts.

Pay attention to what you put on your body – it adds up. Your body has to continuously clean up those toxins – give it a break.

The annual 92 day Global Juice Feast will be underway again soon. They added a 30 day Feast in January – the 92 day feast begins in March. This will be their 2nd annual Juice Feast. I feasted with the Global Juice Feasters for 35 days last March – quite a ride! Met lots of people from all over the world. I recommend it even if you only do a week.

I myself have been gearing up to do another fast. Preparing the body by eating less, eating light and eating raw. I felt called to do another extended fast for some deep physical and emotional healing. I’ll start in a day or so and listen to the intelligence of the body to see how long I should fast.
I realized that without consciously planning it, I have engaged in an annual cleansing or fast once a year for a few years. Most experts agree that an annual cleanse is beneficial to your health and longevity.

• I enjoyed a 35 day juice feast with the Global Juice Feasters in March this year. It was a blast meeting people from all over the world. I recommend it even if you only do it for a week. The site is a social network site so you can create your own blog, participate in discussions, upload photos and learn from each other.

• Last year I did a 21 day internal cleansing program that included eating very light, juicing, raw foods using the Blessed Herbs Internal Cleansing Program. This is a good “kit” to order if you need direction and dicipline for a lengthy cleanse. (As a designer, I thought the package design was outstanding) Everything is spelled out for you with the included how-guides. It was pretty cool, people noticed saying things like my skin looked so great.

• The year before that I attended the 2 week raw food fast and detox program at Creative Health Institute – (based on Dr. Ann Wigmores program)

• The year before that I did a week long juice fast.

I first learned of fasting in high school when I began the first of many years of yoga classes. It wasn’t until my 20s that I tried 3 and 5 day water fasts. I learned that for me, anything less than 5 days was cutting short the healing opportunity. 3 days is right when things start going easy, your energy returns, you aren’t hungry, you quit thinking about food every hour of the day.

Fast – True fasting is taking nothing by mouth except water. This stops the continual overloaded work of our digestive tract. When eating a SAD diet (standard American Diet) the poor overworked digestion never gets a break and often works into the night. This work diverts the energy from what it should be doing – healing, cleaning and repairing the body. Our amazing bodies are designed to heal themselves – we just never give it a chance.

Feast – When juice feasting, you are drinking only fresh juices and lots of them. Drinking 4-5 or more quarts a day you are receiving all the calories needed and there is no deprivation. Being total liquid (juices preferably strained through nut milk bags to remove all pulp) the digestion is given a rest. In the Global Juice Feast logo it says “Cleanse, Rebuild, Rehydrate, Alkalize.”

I had an interesting side benefit – I wonder if it had to do with being more cleansed and alkalized: I used to be plagued by mosquitoes – during mosquito season, I walk outside and will get 10 bites right away. They loved me. During the feast, I noticed that they would fly around me, but not light on my skin! I never wanted to spray toxic repellant on myself, so walking the dog was a real pain – I would get so many bites sometimes that I would have a histamine reaction. They would swell, my whole body would itch and it would hurt under the skin so bad. It was something I just lived with. So this benefit of the Feast was a real miracle to me! And it has continued. I no longer get swarmed by mosquitoes. When I do get an occasional bite, it doesn’t swell and itch and hurt all over.

Recommended reading for fasting info – Fasting and Eating for Health: A Medical Doctor’s Program for Conquering Disease by Joel Fuhrman, MD. Interesting overall good health info book – not just about fasting.
Recommended sites for Juice Feasting info – JuiceFeasting.com lots of info, but if you choose to do the paid membership (I did it for a month) you will have access to an unbelievable quantity of information you can download. And GlobalJuiceFeast.com – both hosted by David and Katrina Rainoshek.