Fasting for Health
Benefits of Fasting
How Do I Fast?
Symptoms of a Healing Crisis
Spring Is the Time to Fast
When spring arrives, oh how fine it is. As the days warm and the sunlight increases, life is brought forth: tulips bloom, oak trees are renewed, and robins mate. For me, a woman who continues to heal from a chronic illness, spring brings with it the inspiration to further cleanse my body of stored toxins. The human body responds to warmer temperatures and more sunlight by releasing toxins and mucus. With nutritional, herbal, and cleansing support, the body is geared to go through a deep tissue cleanse at this time of the year. The rewards of a deeply cleansed body are many and profound.
Exposure to Toxins
A properly functioning elimination system is the key for optimal health. In our modern society, our bodies often cannot work quickly enough to eliminate environmental and dietary toxins which we absorb. Some examples of accumulated toxins are undigested proteins, pesticides, poorly combined fruit, and the physical byproducts of stress. (You'd be amazed at how much mucus stress can cause in the body.)
Each year humans release billions of pounds of chemical pollutants into the environment. In the United States alone, we allow well over 10,000 chemical additives into our food supply. This overload of toxins causes the metabolic processes of the body to slow down, leading to illnesses such as sinus infections, allergies, chronic fatigue, yeast infections, and cancer.
For most of us, exposure to environmental toxins has been occurring throughout our entire lives. It has become clear to me that many people are silently struggling with low-level health problems that are due to a toxic system. How to respond? Cleanse thyself!
Reclaim the Art of Fasting
As Dr. Bernard Jensen states in Tissue Cleansing through Bowel Management, "It is an indisputable fact that not only illness and old age, but even death, are due to the accumulation of waste products of body chemistry... Therefore, immunity and freedom from disease can be had and old age and death can be deferred only as long as body wastes are kept at a minimum."
This, to me, is common sense. When I put a client on a fast and long strands of mucus or black fecal matter appear in my colon therapy machine, I know that our bodies can be renewed with cleansing, just as the giant oak trees are renewed with spring. Health and longevity are a promise that is reflected all around us through nature.
Historically, people have realized that paying attention to the content and amount of what we eat and drink can change not only health, but even human nature. For our ancestors, eating and drinking were thought to be the most important rituals in the divine art of life. Ritual fasting has been common practice throughout history in many cultures around the world. I propose that we reclaim the art of fasting to bring our lives into balance, to bring our health to optimal levels, and to bring our spirits to the heights where they belong.
Benefits of Fasting
Being a colon hydrotherapist, I have the honor of seeing that the human body is designed to be healthy and to live long. It is my belief that humans have the potential to live well past their 90s with fully functioning bodies. I find that we have to work for health, and that we will have to make it a priority, but the promise is there. When clients seek colon hydrotherapy and fasting consultations from me, they have the distinct opportunity to be able to see that cleansing the body has the promise of adding years onto their lives. I find that being part of an individual's perception that he or she has just done something that will increase life span is quite moving.
People don't have to suffer in order to enjoy the benefits of fasting. We will only have to sacrifice our hurried lifestyles, wasteful activities, and thoughtlessness. Many of us confuse fasting with starvation and exhaustion. This is not the case with a properly developed fasting program. Hunger often disappears after a day or two. One of my clients teaches physical education and adult spinning classes. She continued to do these activities during her six-day fast.
What impresses me over and over again with my clients is how cleansing their bodies changes their lives, sparks new energies, and ignites old passions. People feel more powerful, more in charge of themselves. A toxic body leaves us feeling drained and not in control of our lives. Internal cleansing is about a lifestyle, and an attitude of living and caring for ourselves that increases our energies.
Fasting Improves Overall Bowel Function
For those of us who are in the position of having no health problems, and consider themselves above the need to fast, consider this: The human body is basically strong and can take a lot of abuse from unhealthy eating. Most people believe that if they have one good bowel movement a day that they are free of constipation. This is not so. A person should have a bowel movement for each meal. The bowel should move 2-4 times per day. Once on the toilet, elimination should be easy and take no more that 10 to 20 seconds. The healthy stool will be long, large in diameter, light brown in color, without offensive odor, and should float or sink very slowly. When the toilet is flushed, the stool will break apart immediately. An unseen consequence of a sluggish bowel is the body full of rotten, putrefying waste lying undischarged in the intestine, where it undergoes enzymatic and bacteriological changes that poison the body. A minimum of one fast a year improves bowel function.
Fasting Works to Improve Your Health
For those people who struggle with health, cleansing the body has proven time and again to bring optimal wellness. I have seen people with fibromyalgia make great strides in overcoming their challenges. I have seen people lose 20 pounds, as well as uncover hidden food allergies. Fasting helps to lower and normalize cholesterol and blood pressure levels. Fasting can assist in eliminating or modifying smoking, drug, and drinking addictions. I find that fasting can successfully help to treat many physical and emotional illnesses. Studies have also shown that intermittent fasting can improve one's long-term gut health.
▶︎ Intermittent Fasting: Learn More
Intermittent Fasting
Kristina Amelong, CCT, CNC, discusses different methods of intermittent fasting, the benefits that can accompany fasting, and how to fast safely.
▶︎ Intermittent Fasting: Learn More
How Do I Fast?
Work through my book, Ten Days to Optimal Health. It is important to have assistance during a fast.
First, a healing crisis may occur. In most cases these symptoms are a good sign, but can lead a person to panic — to take antibiotics or to break their fast at a critical time in the body's healing cycle. A healing crisis is the opposite of a disease crisis, yet in many ways the crisis feels the same, and symptoms are often similar.
A healing crisis may last a few days. Each healing crisis releases deep physical imbalances. When a healing crisis comes, do not attempt to stop it! This confuses most people because they think, "If I feel sick, I must be sick", when in actuality the discomfort of the healing crisis is an indication of your own body working to heal itself, from the inside out. The fastest, easiest, and most effective method to promote healing is to detoxify the body tissue. By working through the 35-day program laid out in Ten Days to Optimal Health, you will increase your chances of a healthy and easy fast.
Symptoms of a Healing Crisis
A cleansing program ultimately leads to the beneficial and important healing crisis, which manifests as the recurrence of old physical problems, such as a runny nose, flu-like symptoms, and fever, which occurs to burn out toxic waste. The ills that were once suppressed by drugs are now released. This is a sure sign that the right path has been taken, and that the body has gained the strength to heal itself naturally. The body does its best with whatever materials it receives. Therefore we must learn to work with nature and not against nature.
Typically as a condition proceeds toward the chronic stage, the allopathic approach calls for powerful drugs to suppress symptoms. To begin the reversal path and return to a higher level of health, we must retrace the path from illness to wellness. To bring about a reversal, and a healing, we must understand that suppression is the approach. Rejuvenation cannot be accomplished by using drugs or suppressing symptoms. Elimination of toxic material must be assisted rather than repressed. Don't settle for short-term suppression; reach for long-term tissue rejuvenation!
Completing a Successful Fast
The second important reason for having assistance has to do with successful fasting. The success of a fast, physically and emotionally, comes with completion. This means that each of us needs to know how to assess our situation accurately in order to be able to set realistic goals that we will be to follow through on.
Another important issue is the fact that ending the fast is just as important as the fast itself. It is important to start eating slowly and with care. If you sit down at your first meal and eat everything in sight, you may find yourself with a terrible ache in the stomach. This too can wreak havoc on your body and diminish the benefits of all your good work.
If you are interested in effectively detoxifying your body, work through the highly effective detox diet laid out in my book, Ten Days to Optimal Health. I have seen over and over again that by making health a priority, people renew every area of their lives. I wish for you the promise that spring brings with her.
By Kristina Amelong, CCT, CNC
I-ACT-Certified Colon Hydrotherapist
Certified Nutritional Consultant
