Fasting

What Fasting really means

If we look at the actual definition of fasting, it means not eating food voluntarily for any length of time.

Fasting is practiced as medical therapy as well as spiritual practice. If we go way back in time, we see that primitive man lived by the food he hunted and ate. So he could never really tell when exactly he would be successful in getting his prey.

So the human body was conditioned to digesting food when it got it and existing on the stores in the body when it didn’t. So in those early days, fasting as we know it was probably a way of life. What’s more, no one really seemed to suffer from it. It is estimated that even a very thin person can live 40 days without food and this is a conservative estimate (see also: biblical fasting).

So when we talk of fasting, we do not mean starvation but a state in which the human body, not getting food from the regular sources, burns the stored energy in the body for its many functions. It is only when all this stored energy is over and the tissues start getting used for this purpose that the state of starvation occurs.

Fasting when done as it should, never enters this state. The underlying principle of fasting is really quite simple. It is a means of giving the body and all its organs a rest. Digestion is one of the toughest functions that the body has to perform and our modern lifestyles really tax our bodies to the limit. When it is rested, it can go about its other functions like healing, repairing and eliminating waste and toxins.

Let’s take a look at what happens in the system during fasting. In the beginning, the body gets its energy from the sugars. Once these are over, it has to look elsewhere for its energy supplies because the brain needs it to function.

This is then got from the muscle tissue. This usually occurs in the second day of the fast. On the third day, the body does not deplete the muscles but goes instead to stored fat which is broken down by the liver.

At this point of time, one stops feeling hungry and in fact you might just experience an increase in energy levels. Certain functions in the body as well as the hormone production stabilize and this state is called ‘ketosis’ and this is when all the non-essential fat and tissue get burned away. So it is only fasts of three days or more that can really deliver quantifiable results. Most fasts show a weight loss of around a pound a day (see also: fasting and weight loss).

The focus during a normal day in the body is the digestive tract. Through this passes not just food but a whole horde of parasites, toxins and bacteria. So the body expends a lot of energy digesting the food as well as fighting these intruders.

This detoxification process is done in the liver so when the body goes into the fasting mode, the liver is freed to detoxify other things in the body.

Many natural remedy experts in the U.S state that it is possible that the average American has over five pounds of toxins in his body. Fasting is one way to start getting rid of it.