What Medical Doctors Say About Fasting

Scientific Juice Fasting Can Be Your Health Solution!

EVERY INTELLIGENT ADULT understands that a greater degree of health, clarity of consciousness, restored vitality, enhanced spirituality, and freedom from premature aging and disease are well worth the effort required to achieve them. Fasting Center International’s Scientific Fasting Programs can achieve all of these. Fasting works! Fasting cures, as this Father of Western Medicine learned: “Fasting is the greatest remedy–the physician within!”—Philippus Paracelsus

Here are the questions all should ask before you fast: who can fast, who can’t fast, why you fast, how you fast, should I fast, can I fast, what type of fast (for juice fasters or water fasters. . .short fasts or long fast), how do I fast and, of course, the fasting–program? In fact, you might wish to “Google“: fasting, why you should fast, is fasting difficult, how do I start fasting, fasting–problems, will I have energy fasting, does fasting cure, fasting–solution, fasting experiences, fasting cures, fasting for clarity, total detox. fasting program, fasting information, fasting journal(s), fasting saved my life, world’s largest fasting clientele, and fasting, itself?

As Michael Rosenbaum, M.D., Vice President of the California-based Society for Orthomolecular Health Medicine, notes: “The hidden cause of many chronic pains, diseases and illnesses may be invisible toxins, chemicals, heavy metals and parasites that invade our bodies. . . .Chances are slim that your doctor will tell you that toxins may be the root cause of your health problems. He or she may not even know about how these toxins are affecting your body. . . .As your cells go, so goes your health. If your cells have been invaded by toxins and dangerous chemicals, your resistance to disease is diminished. Clean and nourish your cells, and you’re on the road to better health.”

Fasting works! Fasting cures! Scientific Fasting works, as this Father of Western Medicine learned: “Fasting is the greatest remedy–the physician within!”—Philippus Paracelsus

Wonderfully, Scientific Fasting is both therapeutic or curative, as well as prophylactic or preventive. Therapeutically, according to Otto Buchinger, Sr., M.D., one of my greatest, unmet mentors of therapeutic fasting supervision, it’s advisable for many of our modern illnesses, including the following: allergies, cardiovascular disease, chronic diseases of the digestive system, degenerative and painfully inflammatory illnesses of the joints, myriad disturbances in one’s eating behavior, glaucoma, initial malfunction of the kidneys, tension and migraine headaches, as well as the skin diseases.

Preventively, it’s designed to cleanse, to regenerate, to rejuvenate and to restore a person’s sense of well-being–in body, mind and soul. As Dr. Buchinger concluded: “When the body fasts, the soul is hungry; when the body becomes lighter, the soul also craves relief.” Prophylactically, fasting also actively guards against physical and mental fatigue or exhaustion.

“Juice Fasting is, without any doubt, the most effective biological method of treatment. . .it is the ‘operation without surgery’. . .it is a cure involving exudation, reattunement, redirection, loosening up and purified relaxation. While fasting, the patient improves her or his physical health and gains much, but he or she will have neglected the most important thing if the hunger for spiritual nourishment that manifests itself during fasting is not satisfied.”–Otto Buchinger, Sr., M.D., 1876-1966, Germany’s great, self-described “fasting therapist” who founded several renowned Buchinger Kliniks in which he conducted “more than 100,000 juice fasting cures.” His grandson, Andreas Buchinger, M.D., my friend and colleague since 1998, currently directs Europe’s premier fasting clinic–the Buchinger Clinic in Bad Pyrmont, Germany. (Those requiring a residential facility may contact FCI for information regarding this preminent juice fasting clinic.)

PROPHYLACTICALLY, Doctor Buchinger proved that Preventive Fasting is indicated to reduce risk factors for:

1. hypercholesteraemia (elevated cholesterol level),
2. hypertonia (high blood pressure),
3. hyperlipoidaemia (elevated blood-fat level),
4. cigarette smoking,
5. obesity
6. gout,
7. hyperuricaemia (elevated uric-acid level),
8. lack of exercise, and
9. both psychological and social stress.

THERAPEUTICALLY, Buchinger’s 100,000-plus “juice fasting cures” proved the efficacy of Scientific Juice Fasting for:

1. cardiovascular and circulatory diseases, including coronary diseases (arterial sclerosis), infarct prophylaxis and its aftercare, circulatory disturbances in the arteries and veins, ulcus cruris (ulcers of the periosteum), migraine and glaucoma;
2. diseases of one’s digestive system, including gastroenteropathies (disorders of one’s stomach and intestines), chronic obstipation (sluggishness of one’s bowels and consequent constipation), chronic hepatopathies (diseases of the liver), cholecystopathy (bilary tract diseases), Crohn’s disease, both chronic colitis and ulcerative colitis (enteritis, intestinal ulcers);
3. all diseases of the locomotory system, including articular and non-articular rheumatism, arthroses and the degenerative diseases of the vertebral column, and also tendomyopathies (problems involving muscles and ligaments);
4. skin diseases, including allergies of the skin and of the mucus membranes, psoriasiform dermatoses (psoriasis and related skin diseases), and the chronic eczemas;
5. respiratory system diseases, including both bronchial asthma and chronic sinusitis bronchitis (diseases of the paranasal sinus and the upper respiratory tracts);
6. psychosomatic disturbances and states of exhaustion, including bulimic disturbances of eating habits, and depressive moods with various causes (eg., during menopause), and
7. as the follow-up treatment of malignant diseases (eg., cancer).

IN SHORT, Scientific Fasting has proved itself over millennia as humanity’s oldest, fastest, safest (biochemically), least expensive and most effective weight loss, detoxification, healing and longevity-enhancing modality–both curative, as well as preventive medicine of the very first order–and here are the reasons why:

1. Just as migrating whales and hibernating bears, as well as much smaller beings, including caterpillars, hedgehogs, salamanders, salmon, snakes, spiders, tadpoles, turtles and woodchucks live for many months each year without eating, your precious body is brilliantly designed to live on its own stored substances. As just one example of an animal close to many human’s size, a boa constrictor, up to 15′ in length and 200 lbs., can survive on its own stored substance, if it has to, for up to a year between kills. Similarly, during prolonged, therapeutic, Scientific Juice Fasts (and every reputable fasting book on Earth today begins with a warning that no one should ever undertake a prolonged fast–more than three days–without skilled, veteran, professional supervision, initially), your body will brilliantly live on its stored substance via autolysis, or autodigestion. Marvelously, it decomposes and burns the cells and tissue that are aged, damaged, diseased, weakened or dead.
   In other words, your body will self-digest its most inferior and impure materials and metabolic wastes, including: fat deposits, abcesses, bumps and protuberances, calluses, damaged tissue, dead and dying cells, furuncles (small skin abscesses, or boils), growths, morbid accumulations, and amazingly, various kinds of neoplasms (abnormal growths of tissue, or tumors). In “Fasting And Eating For Health,” Joel Fuhrman, M.D., notes, p. 10: “The fast does not merely detoxify; it also breaks down superfluous tissue–fat, abnormal cells, atheromatous plaque, and tumors–and releases diseased tissues and their cellular products into the circulation for elimination. Toxic or unwanted materials circulate in our bloodstream and lymphatic tissues, and are deposited in and released from our fat stores and other tissues. An important element of fasting detoxification is mobilizing the toxins from their storage areas.”
   Regarding benign tumors, Doctor Fuhrman adds, p. 176: “Fasting is a safe and effective approach for not only fibroid tumors, but also most of the noncancerous tumors. Nasal polyps, lipomas, benign ovarian tumors, and benign tumors of the breast often respond favorably to therapeutic fasting, especially when the person is not very overweight.” At FCI, our 35 years of experience in supervising the World’s Largest Fasting Clientele mirrors these findings. For example, read our site’s archieved Fasting Journal article entitled, “Scientific Juice Fasting Cures Benign Tumor.“
2. New cell growth is stimulated and speeded up as the required proteins are logically resynthesized from decomposed cells (during autolysis). Thus, your serum albumin reading, or blood-protein level, remains constant and normal throughout your fast, as your body very wisely uses protein and other stored nutrients where needed. Again, Germany’s late Otto Buchinger, M.D., after supervising over 100,000 “juice-fasting cures,” concluded in “Fasting: The Buchinger Method”: “The need for protein diminishes during the fast, until in the second week, it has been reduced from 100 grams to from 15-to-20 grams a day, and this amount is, in fact, quite sufficient while fasting.”
3. Unfortunately today, most Western diets are heavily laden with artificial flavors and chemically-created coloring agents; toxic pesticides, fungicides, herbicides and insecticides; rancid oils, and other indigestible chemicals which overburden our delicate system. As this toxic overload accumulates decade after decade, augmented by environmental pollution, medications and drugs (which are all toxic), it eventually interferes with normal functioning, and our body’s elimination becomes impaired. During Scientific Fasting, large amounts of these accumulated poisons and metabolic wastes are, during autolysis, very quickly eliminated through the greatly enhanced cleansing capacity of all the eliminative organs–kidneys, liver, lungs and skin. Several typical symptoms seen during this process could be darker urine, the possibility of catarrhal elimination of excess mucus (a.k.a. rhinorrhea–a mucous discharge from the nose), continuous discharge through the colon, etc.
4. For perhaps the first time in your life, you afford a physiological rest to the digestive, assimilative, eliminative and protective organs of your precious body. Fresh fruit and vegetable juices; an alkalinizing vegetable broth (scientifically designed to help rebalance you biochemically, as well as to maintain your body and brain’s electrolyte balance throughout your fast), plus specific detoxification teas require little digestion, and are quickly assimilated from the upper digestive tract.
   Thus, most of the energy normally involved in your mastication, digestion, assimilation, and elimination is freed (and digestion is your body’s most energy-consuming function). This is another reason you’ll feel more, not less, energy throughout Scientific Juice Fasting (unlike the physically debilitating weakness which water fasters experience, especially from their electrolytic imbalance–often forcing them into bed-rest, even in the very heart of their day. . .a situation FCI’s clients in 220 countries–all intelligent beings fully wishing not to interrupt their work, study, exercise and social routines throughout their Scientific Juice Fasts–have no time or desire for).
   Additionally, these many fruit and vegetable juices, plus our Program’s alkalinizing Vegetable Broth (wealthy in the four minerals necessary to maintain your body and brain’s electrolyte balance while fasting), and herbal detoxification teas all supply excellent energy, vitamins, minerals, live enzymes and other nutrients necessary to enhance health during the fast. By providing much of the body’s daily caloric needs with easily-absorbed juices, the release of toxins from the fat cells is much more gradual and gentle. In fact, FCI further advises our global clientele on how to intelligently supplement this process.
   Also, juice fasters will be far more likely to continue a healthy diet, once they’ve broken their fast, because they’ll have become naturally accustomed to the taste of raw vegetables and fruits, as well as to our Vegetable Broth. In fact, many of our clients on seven continents are happy to discover, post-fast, they’ve lost their appetite entirely for addictive, health-damaging drugs such as caffeine, nicotene and alcohol–none of which are taken during FCI Programs–as well as their old addictions to refined sugar, junk foods, and many other deleterious dietary habits (all covered in FCI’s 60-pg. “Lifetime Optimum Health Plan^TM,” which all our clients receive).
5. Part of the heightened clarity of consciousness which Scientific Fasters experience results from fasting’s rejuvenating, regenerating, normalizing and stabilizing effect on all the most vital physiological, nervous and mental functions. As early as 1972, Dr. Yuri Nikolayev, director of the fasting clinic of the Moscow Research Institute of Psychiatry, reported on the use of therapeutic fasting to successfully treat over 7000 patients, all suffering from neuropsychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and various neuroses, concluding:
   “The hunger treatment [as Soviet physicians term fasting] gives the entire nervous system and the brain a rest. The body is also cleansed of poisons, and the tissues and the various glands are renovated. Resting of the brain forms the basis for the treatment of various neuropsychiatric disorders. Treatment through fasting is an internal operation, without a scalpel.”
   In a 4.3.72 “Los Angeles Times“ article entitled “Soviet Cure-All: Eat Nothing For 30 Days,” staff writer Murray Seeger wrote: “The Soviet Union, which has one of the largest and best organized systems of public health protection in the world, has several clinics devoted to research and practice of the hunger cure. In the clinic he heads, Dr. Nikolayev specializes in using controlled starvation to treat mental disorders. Another clinic at People’s Friendship University of Russia has used the same method to treat psoriasis, and at the Moscow Medical Academy, controlled hunger is prescribed to cure other skin disorders.
   “Other Soviet doctors have written papers on their successes in treating metabolism disorders, bronchial asthma, hypertension, gallstones, tumors, pancreatitis and early forms of artery hardening. Said Dr. Nikolayev in a statement to the “Moscow News“: ‘There is a German saying that the illness which cannot be cured by fasting, cannot be cured by anything else.’ The physician traced the origins of hunger therapy to ancient Egypt, Greece and India.
   “Starting in the 18th century, Russian doctors at Moscow University experimented with the treatment, beginning a series of case histories that is still being extended. ‘Our innovation’ Dr. Nikolayev said, ‘is that we initiated the use of controlled hunger for the treatment of psychic disorders, primarily sluggish forms of schizophrenia. Particularly good results have been obtained in the treatment of hypochondriac conditions–when patients are over-anxious about their health, are likely to greatly exaggerate their existing ailments, and believe they are suffering from diseases which they do not have.'”
   As the late Allan Cott, M.D., noted in “Fasting: The Ultimate Diet“: “Seventy percent of those treated by fasting improved so remarkably that they were able to resume an active life.” About Dr. Nikolayev, who eventually had over 30 years’ experience fasting over 10,000 patients, fellow psychiatrist Dr. Cott (1910-1993; fasted psychiatric patients while an attending physician at Gracie Square Hospital in New York City) wrote: “An epochal breakthrough in the treatment of schizophrenia came when Doctor Nikolayev discovered that his patients responded to fasting treatment after all other forms of therapy had failed.”
   Many FCI clients arrive each year suffering various levels of depression, some already on antidepressant drugs and wanting off them, but all wondering how therapeutic fasting will affect this aspect of their body-mind-spirit healing. In “Fasting And Eating For Health,” Joel Fuhrman, M.D., notes, page 19: “Fasting has been repeatedly observed to alleviate neuroses, anxiety and depression. (Yashiro, N., “Clinico-Psychological & Pathophysiological Studies On Fasting Therapy,” “The Sapporo Medical Journal”/Japan, 1986; 55(2): 125-136.) It appears from these studies that fasting improves our ability to adapt to frustration and external stress. One Japanese clinic fasted 382 patients with psychosomatic disease, with a success rate of 87%.”
   Neither depression nor institutionalization are necessary to gain fasting’s mental benefits, of course, as U.C.L.A. research associate Dr. Amy Mathews attests: “I had absolutely lost all hope of losing weight, especially in my thighs, when I decided to try fasting. On a FCI’S 40-day Fasting Program, I lost 26 lbs.; had more energy than usual; was never hungry; slept very well; felt extremely upbeat; was always calm and exceptionally relaxed, even in very stressful situations; often experienced unusual perception and mental clarity concerning my life’s situations and problems, and felt quite peaceful. This is one of the best things I’ve ever done for myself–not only physically rewarding, but also mentally and spiritually, as well.”
6. Signs of premature aging, loss of one’s interest in sex, and a bulging waistline–all obvious signs of insufficiently-functioning endocrine or sex glands, and diminished sex-hormone production–are usually reversed during all the revitalizing effects of Scientific Juice Fasting. Thus, perhaps you can now understand why all three Fathers of Western Medicine—Hippocrates, Galen and Paracelsus (who concluded, nearly 500 years ago, that: “Fasting is the greatest remedy–the physician within!”) practiced and prescribed prolonged fasting.
7. Scientific Fasting enhances longevity, as Doctor Fuhrman notes in “Fasting And Eating For Health,” p. 27: “If we restrict the calories an animal can eat, by underfeeding it or periodically fasting it, we can significantly prolong its life. In fact, periodically fasting animals can double their natural life span. (Masoro, E.J., Shimokawa, I., Yu, B.P., “Retardation of the Aging Process In Rats by Food Restriction,” “Annals of the New York Academy of Science,” 1990; pp. 337-52; Goodrick, C.L., Ingram, D.K., Reynolds, M.A., Freeman, J.R., Cider, N.L., “Effects of Intermittent Feeding Upon Growth, Activity, and Lifespan In Rats Allowed Voluntary Exercise,” “Experimental Aging Research,” 1983; 9: 1477-94.)”
8. Finally, both therateutic and preventive fasts have always addressed all aspects of mind-body-spirit medicine, as Doctor Buchinger noted in “About Fasting: A Royal Road to Health”: “During the 5000-odd years of humankind’s history which today we can survey, fasting represented, in all ages and climes, a way of healing and sanctification of far-reaching importance. The religious fast, which we find in all the higher religions of humankind, served at the same time to preserve the health of the body, the temple of the immortal soul. But, greatly to the loss of sick humanity, the healing fast was overlooked by Medicine during the many decades of scientific-materialistic thought. Newly discovered at the turn of the 20th Century, it has today regained a worthy position as a royal road of healing. . . .We must restore fasting to the place it once occupied in an ancient hierarchy of values ‘above medicine.’ We must rediscover it and restore it to honor, because it is a necessity,” concluded this giant among Europe’s finest fasting therapists–Otto Buchinger, M.D.

FCI IS PROUD to have spent these past 35 years helping to polish the cutting edge of this globally emerging paradigm shift into Integrative Medicine. . .into the new, preventive, mind-body-spirit Healing Revolution presently sweeping the U.S. and much of our developed world, thanks in no small part to this mighty Internet now connecting our human family as never before. Einstein concluded that NOTHING happens in this Universe by accident, so we’ll take him at his word and accept that it’s no accident that today, FCI is blessed to supervise our World’s Largest Fasting Clientele, with clients on seven continents representing 220 nations.

May all our past, present and future clients making this possible, year in and decade out, be blessed with the FAR greater health, happiness and healing power they all deserve, as the reward for their exemplary courage, discipline and commitment to themselves which allow 98.5% of them to complete their Fasting Programs each year, no matter what length they undertake, keeping in mind the amazing fact that since 1996, FCI’s ‘average’ client has undertaken what has now become our most popular Program: FCI’s Total Detoxification Program–requiring 5 days of transitioning on each end, to intelligently enter and skillfully break one’s fast, plus one’s chronological-age number + 17 in number of actual juice-fasting days!

As FCI’s Founder/Director, I find this incredibly humbling, and am constantly filled with admiration and happiness for these extraordinary accomplishments FCI clients achieve in our healing partnerships (see FCI’s online Fasting Journal for just a few, representative, post-fast testimonials of what’s possible). Respectfully, Dennis Paulson

By Sheikh Alie Kallay

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