What is fasting for health?
Fasting means giving rest to your body by doing two things:
- Stop eating – Resting the digestive system.
- Stop working – Resting the body and mind.
This type of fasting is different from what people do for religious and social reasons. Even though the original intention of religious fasting is for health, people misunderstood the whole concept and do which ever way they like and get into lot of trouble.
How does the body clean and repair itself?
Did you notice small deposits at the corners of your eyes or thick deposit on your tongue when you get up in the morning? Your eyes got cleaned of all the air pollutants that entered your eyes. The How did the cut on your skin get healed? How do broken bone pieces join? The doctor only aligns the two pieces; your body does the rest.
To do the repair and cleaning fast and efficient, your body needs sufficient rest. Fasting for health is a method that gives your body all the needed rest.
Why should you do fasting? What does the body do during fasting?
The question that comes to the mind is – Is fasting a must for the body to do all the cleaning work?
No, it is not a must. No animal or bird does fasting. Still they are healthy for life. Like animals and birds, if you strictly do the day and night duties as nature stipulated, you don’t need to do fasting. But if you over-use the body, like majority of us do, it needs periodic fasting to finish the pending cleaning work and recoup the energy.
Nothing else benefits the body the way fasting does. Fasting for health is a way of getting rid of your health problems without medical help.
Body performs 4 functions during the cleaning process:
- Waste removal
- Repair damaged and sick cells
- Remove infections caused by bacteria, virus etc.
- Recharge tired cells to make them ready for next action.
Waste gets generated in the body during the normal functioning (metabolism). . Waste consists of undigested food, dead cells and bacteria, toxins, chemicals, carbon dioxide etc. This waste should be thrown out on a regular basis to keep the body healthy. Fasting for health is the best way to do this.
Where is waste generated?
Your body needs energy. Energy is produced in the cell by way of metabolism. Air, water and food are required for this. The waste generated during this process is also in three forms – gas, liquid and solid.
Metabolism is the set of chemical processes in the body that converts food into energy and transportation of substances to and between cells. We grow, reproduce and respond to the environment through metabolism.
These three forms of waste are taken to the respective ‘waste eliminating organs’ from where, the waste goes out of the body. There are 4 waste eliminating organs – lungs, kidneys, skin and colon. If all the waste is removed from the body on daily basis, your body remains healthy. If not, it causes auto intoxication-toxins are reabsorbed into the system and make you sick.
The sad part is, when you fall sick because of accumulated waste, you run to the doctor. You will find very few doctors who aim at removing the cause. Majority of them aim at relieving the symptoms, instead of the cause. The result is, you end up swallowing some pills – adding chemicals into your body. As soon as the effect of medicines is gone, you will find sickness in another form – since the source of the problem is still there.
Why waste is not removed regularly?
Every machine needs energy to run. Certain waste is generated during this process and a certain amount of wear and tear is also unavoidable. Periodic servicing (cleaning and repair) minimizes breakdowns and increases its life.
Your body is also a machine and needs periodic servicing for functioning trouble free for a long time. If you don’t give periodic servicing, it breaks down. Such breakdown is illness. We fall sick because of no or improper servicing. The good news is, our body can do servicing on its own and it is automatic. The bad news is, we don’t give enough opportunity. Fasting for health is such an opportunity.
Every object of the nature is made in a certain way. Every living thing, whether it is a human being, bird or animal, is designed to follow certain natural laws for healthy existence. Breaking the natural laws invites illness.
All living beings are either diurnal (active during the day time and take complete rest during night) or nocturnal (active during the night, rest during the day time).
Since any animal or bird follows this rule of the nature very strictly, its body remains healthy as long as it lives. No heart ailments, no diabetes, no kidney failure, etc… No constipation either.
Humans are thinking animals. They break all the rules, particularly, rules of nature. This is the exact reason why the body to become unhealthy and suffer from many diseases.
Nature designed us to be diurnal – Eat and work during the day time and take rest during the night to give time for the body for recharge, repair and clean. Unfortunately, majority of us don’t follow this rule. We eat and work not only during day, but also at night and are wakeful most of the night.
As your body muscles are not designed to work for longer than 12 hours, they get drained of all the energy and more toxins get accumulated. The body has practically no time for repair and cleaning.
The result is – repair takes very long time and cleaning doesn’t happen at all. Toxins get accumulated, get reabsorbed, body immune system weakens, diseases invade the body and functioning of some parts of the body may be affected. This is where fasting for health can save your body.
What are the daily activities of your body?
Day time: 12 hrs
Your body does two functions during the day – digest the food you eat and take care of your work activities. All the organs are busy in these two functions.
Night: 12 hrs
When you rest during the night, except essential organs like heart, lungs and kidneys, all other organs take rest. Activity of even the essential organs slows down.
Hence, the secret of keeping your body healthy is, live the nature’s way. Keep the day’s activities for day time and night activities for night. That is what other animals do. You can’t reverse or mix the activities.
When majority of the organs take rest; body starts the process of repair, cleaning and recharge. The more time your body gets to do this, the better. It is true that today’s lifestyle demands eating and working during night also. But, it is not good for the body. Postponement of cleaning and repair activities makes your body unhealthy.
The basic fact one shouldn’t forget is: If you keep your lifestyle hectic and don’t look after your body, you become sick and end up in hospital with prolonged rest forced on you. Instead, if you look after your body well and keep it fit all the time, you can do much more.
Who can do fasting?
Fasting for health immensely benefits your body. It is particularly useful if you are troubled by constipation frequently. Since fasting prevents additional generation of fecal matter, your colon will not face additional load. If your constipation a long standing one, the best way to clean your colon is to go for seven day colon cleanse enema with two or three days of water fasting.
However, there is one exception: If all the points mentioned below apply to you, you need not do fasting, because, your body is doing the repair, cleaning and recharge regularly. You mostly don’t have health problems if you…
- Are a vegetarian
- Consume 50 to 60% of raw food
- Avoid junk food
- Drink 4 to 5 liters of water everyday (depends on your age),
- Have satisfactory, semi-solid stool 2 or 3 times a day
- Finish your dinner by 6.30 or 7.00pm
- Have 6-7hrs of sound sleep every night
- Use zero/minimum medication
- Exercise regularly
- Are stress and tension free
You may ask: ‘If I follow strict and healthy lifestyle and satisfy all the above points, I should never fall sick. But does it really happen?’
Yes, partially true.
We all live in real world –
- Water and air pollution
- Adulteration of food items
- Use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers
- Use of preservatives
In the event of sickness like cold, fever etc., instead of using medication, if you do water fasting until the symptoms are gone (A maximum of 6 days only. or more with the advice and supervision of qualified naturapath), you will further strengthen your immune system.
However, there are some exceptions. Under certain circumstances, you should avoid fasting - fasting for health or any type of fasting. The exceptions are given below.
Who shouldn’t do fasting?
- Growing children
- Pregnant women
- Recently delivered women
- Diabetics
- People aged above 65-70 years
- People addicted to coffee, tea etc…(If you stop it for a day, you may get a severe reaction like headache etc.)
- Alcoholics
- Heavy smokers
- People using a number of medicines
- People that do hard physical work
- People who consume 100% raw food.
Related Topics
No comments:
Post a Comment