How does fasting clean out the body and repair the skin?

[Meat_Juice]

Fasting is supposed to help clear out toxins.

All I know is that during the process of fasting, your body begins to think that it is starving, and so it tries to preserve energy by allowing digestion to slow down and your elimination systems to not work as well.

Many people have claimed that fasting improves digestion, but is there any scientific proof? One study claimed that fasting actually DECREASES the livers ability to eliminate toxins, by decreasing the bowel movements:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJG34iZV6Rk&feature=channel_video_title


If fasting is supposed to clear up skin, how does your body elliminate the dead tissue when your body can't even eliminate it properly through bowel movements during the fast?

[Revvell]

Colonics.....

[CathyA.]

I have fasted several times and had no problems with eliminations. That being said, everyone is different.

[Revvell]

Methinks it also depends on what one calls "fasting"... are we talking water? Fruit juice? Veggie juice? Master cleanse?

Methinks each person will have a different experience even each person using the above. When I did fast, I used the Paavo Airola way with enemas because it was stated that the toxins would move through the body faster than the body could eliminate them.

[BeingK8]

well, I have no scientific anything to substantiate this, but here's a thought that occurred to me:

What IF, after "starving," either from an intended fast done today or from lack of food in a primitive human a few thousand years ago, the body DID become better at digesting as means of efficiency for survival because the body "didn't KNOW" when it was going to get more food so it wanted to eek out every last bit of nutrition after not getting food???

Just thinking out loud. And I tend to go with what feels good in my heart and head and of course what feels good to my body because I think far too much science is bunch of baloney, seeing as, for one thing, there is no such thing as objective observation. By its very nature, observing alters the observed.

[Aleesha Sattva]

I fasted on juice and water for 209 days last year. My blood work was taken every four weeks. My heart and liver function was excellent. All my results came back stellar every time during the fast. The only time anything changed for the worse was when I did a water fast within the fast and my protein levels dropped slightly. They came back up though once I went back on juice.

So... I have to respectfully disagree with that video.

And... I've never done an enema or colonic. When I'm water fasting I don't have bowel movements often but when I'm juice fasting I have regular bowel movements the entire time (yes... even for the 209 days I fasted!)

[streetsurfer]

If fasting is supposed to clear up skin, how does your body elliminate the dead tissue when your body can't even eliminate it properly through bowel movements during the fast?


I disagree with the premise of the post as well.

How does it do it? By the use of all the freed up a large portion of your blood that no longer has to be directed toward operating the digestive system. It is used instead by the brain and the rest of the body to do what it usually does but at an accelerated rate. Aside from the digestive tract's elimination, you have your lungs, skin, lymphatic (saliva and mucous), and urine, which are the other four of your five eliminatory routes.

[GreginND]

While I am admittedly a skeptic of cleansing in general I find the conclusions of the video to be less than compelling. They did not inform us of the "detox regimen" that their three subjects were following. How can we make any conclusions about their lab results without knowing what they were ingesting? I have lots of unanswered questions. THis one limited experiment is not enough to draw a conclusion from. As Aleesha pointed out her liver function was normal during her juice fasts.

I will also say that as much as this video does not support the hypothesis that detox fasting hurts, I have not seen compelling evidence to suggest that detoxing helps any more than eating a clean diet without fasting.

There may be other benefits (weight loss, psychological, bowel issues) that would make detox fasting something one would want to do. This is a very individual thing.

[light food]

Many people have claimed that fasting improves digestion, but is there any scientific proof?

A lot of things in the raw world are not proven because that would take too much money, and there is too little profit in raw food to attract that kind of research money to prove things beyond a shadow of doubt. The proof then is in your own experience.

Does fasting improve digestion? Paul Bragg wrote about how he fasted underweight people to improve their digestion. He even fasted his own sister to improve her weight (page 121)
http://books.google.com/books?id=H7sUwWlMblIC&pg=PT138&dq=fasting+underweight+119&hl=en&ei=pr31TYvkF4b0swP13oDMCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=fasting%20underweight%20119&f=false

Fasting gave their digestive system a vacation and it healed and then they gained weight after the fast!

[BeingK8]

A lot of things in the raw world are not proven because that would take too much money, and there is too little profit in raw food to attract that kind of research money to prove things beyond a shadow of doubt. The proof then is in your own experience.



most excellent point! The "powerhouses" in the food industry (the beef, pork, chicken, and dairy industries), as well as Monsanto/biotech companies (ARE there any besides Monsanto???), the AMA and entire medical establishment and Big Pharma do NOT want people to know how easy it can be to get well and stay well. They do NOT benefit by you knowing about things like fasting or simple, raw, vegan living, so there won't be studies demonstrating anything BUT the negative experiences of a fast or on vegan diets.

You ALWAYS have to follow the money and QUESTION EVERYTHING. Who sponsored the research? Why? Who benefits (or loses out...sometimes research is done to discredit the "opposition").

[MysticTree]

When those who grow fruit and veg realise that there is probably more money to be made selling healthful foods then maybe the studies will be forth-coming ... of course they will still be studies with agendas so really you can't win.

I don't think it is as simple as this though. The reality is that it is not going to be possible to change the world diet in a significant way - probably ever. Those recommending even 5-a-day are falling short in getting the message across. The vast majority of people across the world don't want to eat healthy foods. They want a pill that lets them eat whatever they want without consequences ... that's if they even stop to think about it at all!

Studies into raw and high raw diets would be very interesting and research about fasting and detox would be very valuable. In the meantime we can only do what we can to show people the alternatives.

I don't know what I think about cleanses to be honest. There is a lot of snake oil about and that doesn't help at all to promote any benefits.