Juice fasting is the oldest, fastest, least expensive and most effective healing method known to humankind, with more testimonials from our species' greatest thinkers and spiritual teachers than all other healing modalities combined. Unfortunately, today's most Western diets are heavily loaded with artificial flavors and chemically-created coloring agents, toxic pesticides, herbicides and fungicides, and insecticides, and other toxic chemicals which overburden our bodies. As this toxic overload accumulates decade after decade, augmented also by environmental pollution, drugs and medications, it eventually interferes with normal functioning and our body's elimination becomes impaired. During fasting, large amounts of these accumulated metabolic wastes and poisons are very quickly eliminated through the greatly enhanced cleansing capability of all the organs of elimination - liver, kidneys, skin and lungs.
Several common symptoms of detoxification seen during this process could be darker urine, the possibility of catarrhal elimination of excess mucus. During fasting, your body will "autolyze", or self-digest, its most inferior and impure materials and metabolic wastes, including: fat deposits, abcesses, dead and dying cells, bumps and protuberances, damaged tissue, calluses, furuncles (small skin abscesses, or boils), morbid accumulations, growths, and amazingly, various kinds of neoplasms (abnormal growths of tissue, or tumors). German and Swedish biological clinics, operated by medical doctors, routinely treat nearly every disease, from cardiovascular and digestive disorders to rheumatic and skin conditions, with scientific, therapeutic fasting. Germany's late Otto Buchinger, Sr., M.D., supervised over 100,000 successful "juice fasting cures." In Russia, fasting has been used for over a half-century as the most effective treatment for schizophrenia, with irrefragable studies showing that 70% of patients improved mentally after 20-to-30 days of controlled fasting. Similarly, one Japanese research clinic fasted 382 patients, all suffering psychosomatic disease, with a success rate of 87%.
North America is still far behind the learning curve, nevertheless, as is clear to Dr. Charles Goodrich of the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, who has fasted countless times: "People don't realize that the chief obstacle to fasting is overcoming the cultural, social and psychological fears of going without food. These fears are ingrained. . . .However, fasting is not starving, not even in a medical sense or the natural sense." Dr. George Cahill of Harvard Medical School emphasized the point: "Man's survival [of long abstentions from food] is predicated upon a remarkable ability to conserve the relatively limited body protein stores, while utilizing fat as the primary energy producing food." 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."
A juice extractor is able to extract 70% to 98% of the nutrients from vegetables. When you pass a vegetable through the juice machine, it effectively separates the juice that is locked in the fibers. In drinking the juice, the majority of nutrients are absorbed directly into the bloodstream without the work of digestion. An abundant supply of nutrients in conjunction with minimum digestive effort is a perfect healing environment. bodily energy normally involved in your mastication, assimilation, digestion, and elimination is freed up. This is another reason you'll feel more - not less - energy throughout properly-done juice-fasting.
The main difference in juicing versus smoothies is the fiber content.Fiber is good during eating but not when you are fasting. When you juice you withold the fiber.
What Should I Do 1st?
Start a raw-foods diet 7 days prior to juice fasting. Eliminate ALL caffeine, sweets, refined foods and junkfoods a week prior and through your juice fast.
What will I need?
~A juicer (which can range from $60 to over $300)
Great lower-end are Jack LaLanne and Juiceman.
Great higher-end are Champion and Breville.
~Fresh, preferably organic vegetables and fruit.
~Herbal, non-caffeinated teas (Great to drink 2-4 cups throughout your juicing days)
~Pure water (You may find that you need only 6 cups, than your normal 8 cups/day)
WHAT Do I Juice?
You can juice almost anything you can eat raw. Vegetables are best, especially carrots, cucumbers, beets, tomatoes, zucchini squash, romaine lettuce, sprouts, celery and cabbage. You may juice fruits also, with your vegetables. Make sure that you juice more vegetables than fruit each time. It is not generally a good idea not to juice potatoes, eggplant, bananas or avacado.
HOW MUCH JUICE TO DRINK?
3-4 16 to 20 ounce cups/day is average, but you can have up to a gallon of juice/day.
What If I Have To GO To Work?
Put your juice in a thermos or tightly sealed juice jar and keep it refrigerated or in a cooler tote bag.
What Are The Benefits?
Mental clarity is improved and brain fog is lifted.
Rapid, safe weight loss is achieved without flabbiness
The nervous system is balanced
Energy level and sensory perception is increased. The longer the fast, the bigger increase in energy and vitality. You normally need less sleep.
Organs are revitalized
Cellular biochemistry is harmonized
The skin becomes silky, soft, and sensitive
There is greater ease of movement
Breathing becomes fuller, freer and deeper
reduced allergy symptoms
overcome addictions
overcome eat
The digestive system is rejuvenated and becomes more effective; the peristaltic action of the intestines (the cause of a natural bowel movement) is stronger after fasting.
Fasting retrains your tasting sense back to more healthy food as acute sensitivity is restored.
Fasting can increase confidence in our ability to have control over our lives and our appetite, and that our body is self-regulating and self-healing organisms capable of establishing balance when given the possibility to do so.
Normal metabolic and cell oxygenation are restored.
Detoxification - as soon as the body realizes that it's fasting it will begin to eliminate those things that cause disease, such as fat cells, arterial cholesterol plaques, mucus, tumors, stored up worries and emotions.
Longer juice fasts enable the body to cleanse toxins that have been accumulating in your cellular tissues from birth.
How Long Do I Fast?
The length of juice fasting can range anywhere from 1 to forty days. Three days is an excellent tune up. Five-day fasts are long enough to begin the process of healing and rebuilding the immune system. Ten-day fasts act as prevention to fight off illness including degenerative diseases.
Twenty-one - thirty days is the standard therapy used by health sanitariums in Europe. If you deal with compulsive eating, start with shorter fasts so you may learn how to break the fast correctly. Most severe health conditions require fasts over 20 days, as it takes that long to repair damaged tissue. Remember, you are not the first to try it - millions of people have done it successfully before you.
Personally I tested juicec fasting the 1st 3 days of the Month for almost a year and enjoyed that. I am currently juice fasting every Monday and I am enjoy this as well. I always do an extended juice fast in January. If I am prompted to do a fast for any specific reasons, I do so and it usually yields many benefits, including spiritual. I prefer to fast at the beginning of a new week, Month or Year. Some people do juice fast for the 4 seasons. You can test different ones and you will end up with a preference. I must admit that I saw a man being interviewed a long time ago who looked AMAZING for his age and he claimed to have done juice fasts once per week for several years.
Will there be any fasting side effects?
There are numerous minor discomforts you may notice during juice fasting. These include:
feeling cold
light headedness/dizziness
bad breath
body odor
fatigue for 1st few days
constipation or diarrhea
stomach ache
acne or other skin eruptions
increased dreaming
changes in sleep patterns
aches and pains
frequent urination
coated tongue - a result of your body shedding toxins and cleansing itself
headaches – possibly the result of withdrawal from caffeine or a withdrawal in salt or sugar consumption.
What Can I Read For Support?
My 1st and favorite book on juice fasting was Toxic Relief and Fasting Made Easy, both by Don Colbert, M.D.
My favorite online resource is Fasting by Tom Coghill
Also google juicing recipes or get a few juicing books for recipes.
What Do I Do When I Am Finished?
Afterwards, after the fasting period, a lot of people go on the wrong diet - and waste the whole fast. DO NOT binge or eat junk foods after your fast. What you do after the juice fast is the MOST important part. Remember that after fasting you must always improve your diet! You want to only consume fresh vegetables, fruit and vegetable soup for 3 -7 days after extended juice fasts. I have eating plans available in a menu style journal that is a beneficial tool to use when you end your juice fast. It can help you with accountability and give you an exact plan to keep your results and your health.
(Diabetics and persons on medication requiring meals should check with their physician, of course. Fasting is not for children, pregnant women or nursing women. If there is a medical reason why you should not fast, then don't. Check with your doctor first.)
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