Information on Fasting. A must read for anyone who is fasting...

[Aleesha Sattva]

Here are some links and information for all you fasters out there. If you have an informative link, feel free to share it and the info here!

Great info on your colon etc.

Info on drinking too much water.

A little info to share:

Proteins & Fasting
It was theorized that protein loss during fasting was harmful and that a fast should be supplemented with protein. Fasting with protein became known as the Opti-fast. Fasters took nothing but water and a protein drink. Sadly, several people died. Protein digestion during the fasting state created an overload of urea and the blood become acidic. In this condition, the organs become more damaged instead of healing. To the body, fasting is a natural process. During water or juice fasting, the protein levels of the blood remain constant. Although protein is being utilized, a person fasting 40 days on water will not suffer a deficiency of either protein, vitamins, minerals or fatty acids. In the breakdown of dying and diseased cells, all essential substances are available while fasting for reuse within the body. These dead cells are utilized in a systematic manner.

Protein deficiency is non existent in North America. You never hear of anyone being diagnosed with protein deficiency. Fruit and vegetable juices have water-soluble highly absorbable proteins. The body has a store of protein, and it uses it selectively. Dying cells are the first to be used and healthy and vital tissues are the very last and will only be used as a last resort. Only during starvation is protein being stripped from healthy tissue to be used to survive. This may take 30 to 80 days of fasting on water to reach this point.

The systematic searching of cells to be metabolized is crucial in the healing of cancer. A cancer cell represents protein and calories. Some cancers are so persistent that you have to force the body to choose between healthy cells and cancer cells. This requires a long fast on small portions of juice combined with days of water fasting.

VERY interesting:

Backache
Back pain may increase due to toxins in the lower intestine. The blood vessels that draw nutrients from the colon are very close to the nerves of the spine. Back pain often decreases after elimination of the toxins. Back exercises also can relieve some pain. A cold pack also will help. An enema may be in order...

more info... from the researcher today LOL (that would be me)

Fat is an efficient storage form of excess energy. At 9.3 calories per gram, it contains more than twice as much energy by weight as carbohydrate and protein do (4.1 cal/g each). An average 70 kg (155 lb.) male has about 12.6 kg (28 lb., or 18% of body weight in a slim individual) of fat storing approximately 117,000 calories. This supply of energy could, theoretically, last a resting, fasting person about 70 days at a rate of 1,680 calories (1 cal/kg/hr) per day. (After two weeks, protein provides only about 5% of the calories per day.) With moderate activity, this would last half that time.

[Aleesha Sattva]

Q&A ---- Interview with Dr. Bass:
What is important to know before ones first fast?
Water fasting is an ancient method, that is usually unequalled in speed and success for many hard-to-reverse diseases. But there are precautions: If your body is deficient in something, e.g. minerals, avoid water fasting. Vegans are often deficient. Newcomers to fasting need good supervision.

It is usually best to start with a short fast (max. 3 days, with bed-rest), then be on a good raw diet for a couple of months to let the body build health and strength, while removing its deficiencies. Then a short fast, then a good diet again, etc. In this way you'll avoid complications. Breaking the fast in a proper way is also very important.

Dr. Gian-Cursio observed migrating birds falling dead from the sky over New York on many occasions. Since these birds were fasting, his conclusion was that polluted air, as well as other toxins, can complicate fasts. Dr. Cursio therefore recommended fasting in an unpolluted environment. Persons who have been on drugs or are very toxic, or deficient / in a stage of depletion, always should be supervised professionally. Blood pressure and pulse are then checked daily, and the fast broken if necessary.

In the old days it was pretty easy and safe to go on a long water-fast.
Nowadays with all food additives, dangerous artificial fats and trans-fats, and potent drugs - all of which may have damaged people severely - it has become more difficult. E.g. almost all bakeries (and candy and ice cream makers) now use dangerous cheap artificial fats. Antibiotics can have damaged peoples immune systems. (Note: detoxification of antibiotics during fasting can give very high fevers.)
Actually it wouldn't surprise me if we within 20 years will get an enormous wave of mystery deaths, due to the low-quality foods and detrimental drugs we now give our children.

Also it is better to stay in bed, every day of the fast, with lots of sleep. I would not recommend ANY water-fast while working, long or short. If you want to work, you can instead go on a raw diet, or juice diet (juice fast). Download and read my Remarkable Recoveries booklet for descriptions of many different raw diets/juices, that have been used for disease-recovery. It will take longer time but essentially achieve the same result.
Also see How much weight-loss on juices vs. fasting?.

How should I break the fast?
Correctly ending a fast is extremely important. Since the stomach and digestive system have been taking a well-deserved rest, you have to start them up gently. Vegetable juices are fine, followed by small portions of raw foods over the next days. If you avoid sugar (fruits) for one week after a fast you should not develop the ravenous appetite that so easily can undo achieved weight loss. Note: serious (even life-threatening) problems can develop if you stuff yourself after a fast, especially with cooked foods.

What about enemas while fasting?
Many years ago, when I first started out I fasted many times while using enemas (colon cleansing). My experiences were negative, I often got weak and dizzy and experienced two blackouts. So I stopped the enemas, and never had any problems after that. Later I found out the Drs. Cursio and Shelton had had similar experiences, and also recommended against enemas.

What else do I need to know?
Don't take drugs, use toxins, or do anything enervating during a water fast. No acupuncture, no deep massage, no enemas, no work, no exercise allowed. Instead rest & sleep all the time, to conserve energy, which is needed for healing. If available energy is wasted, there will be no healing. If you need to work, instead go on a juice fast. If deficient (e.g. due to veganism), avoid water fasting - this is important. Water-fast maximally 3 days at a time, on your own.

This info comes from here. From what I've read water fasting should be done in bed... with total rest.


Here's some more info for you all...

1. Gastrointestinal Phase
The six-hour period following a meal, during which glucose, amino acids, and fat are absorbed into the blood, is the gastrointestinal phase. The hormone, insulin, is released from the pancreas into the blood in response to glucose and amino acids absorbed into the blood from the intestines. Insulin plays the major role in this phase and causes the liver and muscle to take the blood glucose into the cells and store it as glycogen. Insulin also allows all the other tissues of the body to take up glucose to be used as energy.

In muscle cells, insulin causes amino acids to be taken up from the blood to replace the contractile protein broken down and used as fuel since the previous meal. Proteins in the form of enzymes in other tissues are also replaced in this way. Excess glucose is converted into fatty acids by the liver and adipose tissue.

Those fatty acids formed in the liver are transported to the adipose tissue via the blood stream where they are stored as fat along with the fatty acids produced in the adipose tissue. Fat is absorbed from the intestines into the surrounding lymphatics which run together to form a common lymphatic duct called the thoracic duct which dumps the contents into the venous blood system at a point in the neck. This fat is then taken up from the blood and stored in adipose tissue. The uptake and storage of all these nutrients into the cells is due to the influence of elevated insulin levels in the blood.

2. Glycogenolysis
The period following the gastrointesting phase, which continues for the next two days, is the glycogenolysis phase, during which time the liver and muscle, under the influence of decreased insulin and increased glucogen (a second hormone released by the pancreas), break down their glycogen to glucose. Glucose from the liver is used mainly by the brain, which can use only glucose for energy at this stage. (Red blood cells and the adrenal glands also can only use glucose, but they require much less than the central nervous system.) The liver glycogen supply of glucose lasts about twelve hours.
Muscle glycogen produces glucose for consumption by muscle. This supply may last twelve to twenty-four hours depending on activity. With decreased insulin levels, fat is broken down by the adipose tissue into fatty acids which are released into the blood and used as fuel by liver and muscle cells. After eight to ten hours one-half of muscle fuel is from fatty acids.

3. Gluconeogenesis
Although it begins a few hours after the last meal, in two days gluconeogenesis, the process of converting amino acids into glucose, becomes the major source of glucose for the brain. Non-essential proteins found in muscle and digestive enzymes are broken down into their individual amino acids which are then transported to the liver. The liver converts amino acids into glucose and urea. Urea is excreted by the kidneys, and the glucose is used mainly by the brain for energy. After two weeks of fasting, the kidney gradually takes on the majority of gluconeogenesis.

4. Ketosis
By the third day, ketosis becomes significant and increases up to the second week of fasting. Due to the low insulin levels and increase release of fatty acids from adipose tissue, the liver, under the influence of high levels of fatty acids, begins converting them to ketones to be used by muscle and brain for energy. As the concentration of ketones increases in the blood during the first two weeks of fasting, more is able to cross the blood brain barrier and supply fuel to the brain. In this way, the brain can use less glucose, and therefore, the demand for gluconeogenesis and breakdown of protein becomes less.

Protein consumption
The consumption of protein decreases from 75 grams per day in the first week to 20 grams per day by the end of the second week. Muscle tends to use mainly fatty acid and saves the ketones for use by the brain. It should be noted that protein is still a required source of energy.

Obese persons with an apparent abundant source of energy as fat would have to be careful not to exhaust their much smaller amounts of non-essential proteins in very long fasts. An average adult male whose ideal weight is 70 kg (155 lb.) would have 30 kg (66 lb.) of muscle tissue which contains 6 kg (13.2 lb.) of muscle protein once water is excluded. Assuming that the majority of the protein used in a fast is from muscle, this man would lose 4kg (8.8 lb.) of muscle tissue in the first two weeks and 0.7 kg (1.5 lb.) every two weeks thereafter. In three months, he would have lost one-half this muscle mass. A moderately obese person, who has fat stores which can easily last longer than three months, would be very weak after three months from loss of muscle mass and would be in danger of using essential proteins such as cardiac muscle.

[Aleesha Sattva]

I want to give this link it's own post... cause honestly... it has a LOT of great info.


link .

[Aleesha Sattva]

Here is some information I've gathered... specifically for water fasting:

~ anything you take that has any taste to it can and will most likely stop ketosis from continuing (even if only for a short period of time). Your body will use the energy within that item instead of eating your dead cells, tumours etc (which is what we want when water fasting).
~ consuming things with taste also signals the brain that food is coming and it changes your metabolism accordingly and we want our metabolism to be working optimal for fasting - not eating while fasting.
~ do not brush your teeth with toothpaste or use mouthwash when water fasting as this impedes ketosis.
~ try to reduce or discontinue all meds including homeopathy (so I've stopped using arnica as of this morning)
~ water fasting is anti-inflammatory
~ if you begin to black out, lower your centre of gravity (you butt) towards the floor and you will be okay in seconds. (go down on one knee)
~ taking 2 deeeeep breaths before getting up from laying or sitting helps to raise your blood pressure and reduces black outs. (yes the room goes black and warns you to get your butt down)
~ before beginning a water fast it is best to have a fatty meal the night before you begin. This starts up your ketone production which is needed for water fasting. Ketones stimulate brain activity.
~ The human body, in a well nourished state, contains adequate (micro-)nutrients for a 40 day water fast.

[Aleesha Sattva]

Description

This section of the book is from the "How and When to Be Your Own Doctor" book, by Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon, published in 1997.

How Fasting Heals

Its an old hygienic maxim that the doctor does not heal, the medicines do not heal, only the body heals itself. If the body can"t heal then nothing can heal it. The body always knows best what it needs and what to do.

But healing means repairing damaged organs and tissues and this takes energy, while a sick body is already enervated, weakened and not coping with its current stressors. If the sick person could but somehow increase the body"s energy resources sufficiently, then a slowly healing body could heal faster while a worsening one, or one that was failing or one that was not getting better might heal.

Fasting does just that. To whatever degree food intake is reduced the body"s digestive workload is proportionately reduced and it will naturally, and far more intelligently than any physician could order, redirect energy to wherever it decides that energy is most needed. A fasting body begins accessing nutritional reserves (vitamins and minerals) previously stored in the tissues and starts converting body fat into sugar for energy fuel. During a time of water fasting, sustaining the body"s entire energy and nutritional needs from reserves and fat does require a small effort, but far less effort than eating. I would guess a fasting body used about five percent of its normal daily energy budget on nutritional concerns rather than the 33 percent it needs to process new food. Thus, water fasting puts something like 28 percent more energy at the body"s disposal. This is true even though the water faster may feel weak, energyless.

I would worry if sick or toxic fasters did not complain about their weakness. They should expect to feel energyless. In fact, the more internal healing and detoxification the body requires, the tireder the faster feels because the body is very hard at work internally. A great deal of the body"s energy will go toward boosting the immune system if the problem is an infection. Liberated energy can also be used for healing damaged parts, rebuilding failing organs, for breaking down and eliminating deposits of toxic materials. Only after most of the healing has occurred does a faster begin to feel energetic again. Don"t expect to feel anything but tired and weak.

The only exception to this would be a person who has already significantly detoxified and healed their body by previous fasting, or the rare soul that has gone from birth through adulthood enjoying extraordinarily good nutrition and without experiencing the stressors of improper digestion. When one experienced faster I know finds himself getting "run down" or catching a cold, he quits eating until he feels really well. Instead of feeling weak as most fasters do, as each of the first four or five days of water fasting pass, he experiences a resurgence of more and more energy. On the first fasting day he would usually feel rotten, which was why he started fasting in the first place. On the second fasting day he"d feel more alert and catch up on his paper work. By his third day on only water he would be out doing hard physical chores like cutting the grass, splitting wood or weeding his vegetable garden. Day four would also be an energetic one, but if the fast extended beyond that, lowering blood sugar would begin to make him tired and he"d feel forced to begin laying down.

After a day of water fasting the average person"s blood sugar level naturally drops; making a faster feel somewhat tired and "spacey," so a typical faster usually begins to spend much more time resting, further reducing the amount of energy being expended on moving the body around, serendipitously redirecting even more of the body"s energy budget toward healing. By the end of five or six days on water, I estimate that from 40 to 50 percent of the body"s available energy is being used for healing, repair and detoxification.

The amount of work that a fasting body"s own healing energy can do and what it feels like to be there when it is happening is incredible. But you can"t know it if you haven"t felt it. So hardly anyone in our present culture knows.

As I mentioned in the first chapter, at Great Oaks School I apprenticed myself to the traveling masters of virtually every system of natural healing that existed during the '70s. I observed every one of them at work and tried most of them on my clients. After all that I can say with experience that I am not aware of any other healing tool that can be so effective as the fast.

taken from here.

[Aleesha Sattva]

Description

This section of the book is from the "How and When to Be Your Own Doctor" book, by Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon, published in 1997.

Common Fasting Complaints And Discomforts

The most frequently heard complaints of fasters are headaches, dry, cracked lips, dizziness, blurred vision with black spots that float, skin rashes, and weakness in the first few days plus what they think is intense hunger. The dizziness and weakness are really real, and are due to increased levels of toxins circulating in the blood and from unavoidably low blood sugar which is a natural consequence of the cessation of eating. The blood sugar does reestablish a new equilibrium in the second and third week of the fast and then, the dizziness may cease, but still, it is important to expect dizziness at the beginning.

It always takes more time for the blood to reach the head on a fast because everything has slowed down, including the rate of the heart beat, so blood pressure probably has dropped as well. If you stand up very quickly you may faint. I repetitively instruct all of my clients to stand up very slowly, moving from a lying to a sitting position, pausing there for ten or twenty seconds, and then rising slowly from a sitting to a standing position. They are told that at the first sign of dizziness they must immediately put their head between their knees so that the head is lower than the heart, or squat/sit down on the floor, I once had a faster who forgot to obey my frequent warnings. About two weeks into a long fast, she got up rapidly from the toilet and felt dizzy. The obvious thing to do was to sit back down on the toilet or lie down on the bath rug on the floor, but no, she decided that because she was dizzy she should rush back to her bed in the adjoining room. She made it as far as the bathroom door and fainted, out cold, putting a deep grove into the drywall with her pretty nose on the way down. We then had to make an unscheduled visit to a nose specialist, who calmly put a tape-wrapped spoon inside her bent-over nose and pried it back to dead center. This was not much fun for either of us; it is well worthwhile preventing such complications.

Other common complaints during the fast include coldness, due to low blood sugar as well as a consequence of weight loss and slowed circulation due to lessened physical activity. People also dislike inactivity which seems excruciatingly boring, and some are upset by weight loss itself. Coldness is best handled with lots of clothes, bedding, hot water bottles or hot pads, and warm baths. Great Oaks School of Health was in Oregon, where the endlessly rainy winters are chilly and the concrete building never seemed to get really warm. I used to dream of moving my fasters to a tropical climate where I could also get the best, ripest fruits to wean them back on to food.

If the fast goes on for more than a week or ten days, many people complain of back discomfort, usually caused by over-worked kidneys. This passes. Hot baths or hot water bottles provide some relief. Drinking more fluids may also help a bit. Nausea is fairly common too, due to toxic discharges from the gall bladder. Drinking lots of water or herbal tea dilutes toxic bile in the stomach and makes it more tolerable.

Very few fasters sleep well and for some reason they expect to, certainly fasters hope to, because they think that if they sleep all night they will better survive one more deadly dull day in a state of relative unconsciousness. They find out much to their displeasure that very little sleep is required on a fast because the body is at rest already. Many fasters sleep only two to four hours but doze frequently and require a great deal of rest. Being mentally prepared for this change of habit is the best handling. Generalized low-grade aches and pains in the area of the diseased organs or body parts are common and can often be alleviated with hot water bottles, warm but not hot bath water and massage. If this type of discomfort exists, it usually lessens with each passing day until it disappears altogether.

Many fasters complain that their vision is blurred, and that they are unable to concentrate. These are really major inconveniences because then fasters can"t read or even pay close attention to video-taped movies, and if they can"t divert themselves some fasters think they will go stir crazy. They are so addicted to a hectic schedule of doingness, and/or being entertained that they just can"t stand just being with themselves, forced to confront and deal with the sensations of their own body, forced to face their own thoughts, to confront their own emotions, many of which are negative. People who are fasting release a lot of mental/emotional garbage at the same time as they let go of old physical garbage. Usually the psychological stuff contributed greatly to their illness and just like the physical garbage and degenerated organs, it all needs to be processed.

One of the most distressing experiences that happen occasionally is hair loss. Deprived of adequate nutrition, the follicles can not keep growing hair, and the existing hair dies. However, the follicles themselves do not die and once the fast has ended and sufficient nutrition is forthcoming, hair will regrow as well or better than before.

There are also complaints that occur after the fast has been broken. Post-fast cravings, even after only two weeks of deprivation, are to be expected. These may take the form of desires for sweet, sour, salt, or a specific food dreamed of while fasting, like chocolate fudge sundays or just plain toast. Food cravings must be controlled at all costs because if acted upon, each indulgence chips away the health gains of the previous weeks. A single indulgence can be remedied by a day of restricting the diet to juice or raw food. After the repair, the person feels as good as they did when the fast ended. Repeated indulgences will require another extended bout of fasting to repair. It is far better to learn self-control.

taken from here.

[Aleesha Sattva]

Some very interesting reading that anyone doing a juice fast may enjoy knowing.

1 Ian Shillington N.D.
The Passing of a Great Healer
Dr. Bernard Jensen

Excerpts from an article by Dr. Richard Schulze in his May, 2001 Get Well Newsletter!

Dr. Bernard Jensen died near the end of February in his sleep. I’ll give you a tiny bit of his history, and my history with this great man. Mostly I will give you his pearls of Natural Healing Wisdom.

Dr. Jensen was born in Stockton, CA and at the age of 18 he entered Chiropractic college. In 1929 he opened his first clinic. Even while he practiced he continued to study at various Naturopathic colleges. He was even a classmate at the Dominion Herbal College, with the late Dr. John R. Christopher, America’s greatest herbalist of the twentieth century. He worked at Battle Creek Sanitarium under Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and knew just about every prominent Natural Healer of the era. Even Dr. Kirshner, who specialized in juice therapy, visited Dr. Jensen’s Health Ranch to observe the extremes Dr. Jensen would go to, to create healing miracles, like a 365 day juice fast, WOW. Dr. Jensen, like myself, was a perpetual student and that is what made him a master. After 25 years in practice, in 1955, he opened his Hidden Valley Health Ranch near Escondido, when I was just a kid. He continued his practice and taught there for almost 30 more years, writing more than 50 books and seeing more than 350,000 patients.

That’s what is important to me, seeing more than 350,000 patients. THIS MAN KNEW WHAT OTHERS ONLY TALK ABOUT. So I would like to tell you what this man learned during his OVER 70 years of clinical practice, studying, teaching, and a life of helping people to get well. Dr. Jensen also took more than a half a dozen worldwide trips in his life to meet and study people, his favorite subject. He would often travel to areas of the world where people were known to live the longest from the Hunza mountain valleys of Asia to Soviet Georgia. He would then observe and study what these people ate and how they lived, to add this information to his storehouse of knowledge. He would even bring back vegetable seeds to grow their foods in his own organic garden.

Dr. Jensen put Nutrition as #1. I remember many times when a patient wouldn’t get it, he would grab his body, or theirs, then squeeze their arm, shake it and yell, "This stuff, YOU, your body, your flesh and bones, It’s all made with nutrition, Nutrition is what YOU are made out of!" He was a Nutritional Healer meaning he was a FOOD healer. His main therapy was Organic Food and Juice way back when the word organic wasn’t yet heard of. He was obsessed with his organic garden, at one time growing up to 3,000 carrots a month for his juicing program for himself and his patients. He knew that our body was made from nutrients, and even studied which organs and systems of the body thrived on which nutrients. He would stuff his patients full with raw, organic food and down them with raw organic juices. He know the best way to get a patient well and assist a body to repair itself was to FLOOD the system with vitamins, minerals and every nutrient that God has provided, but the way Nature provides it, NEVER man made, synthesized, laboratory crap. With his food and the juice therapy I saw thousands of miracles happen, including the continuation of my own healing.

As I mentioned earlier, Dr. Jensen was also an herbalist. While many herbalists of the past century were looking for the healing or medicinal phytochemicals in an herb. Dr. Jensen was more interested in the vitamins and minerals in an herb. We would occasionally walk together through his gardens and then out into the surrounding countryside and he would ask me to identify for him some of the wild herbs that grew on his Health Randy. Since I was an apprentice to the late Dr. Jon R. Christopher and sometimes even passed messages between these two great healers, he knew I was a good herbalist. But when I would tell him about the essential oils in a particular plant that were urinary disinfectants or the alkaloids in other plants that were muscular antispasmodics I could see he wasn’t that interested. He wanted to know what vitamins and minerals were in the herbs, because he was a nutritional healer and he knew if he could get the nutrition in, he could get his patients well. He was a FOOD HEALER!

We would also discuss super concentrated herbs that were now to be the richest sources of particular vitamins and minerals. He was a big fan of alfalfa grass, wheat grass, barley grass, rose hips and he was very interested in Chlorella algae.

During the 1940’s, WWII and after, the great blitz of modern medicine and the AMA came close to obliterating Natural Healing. Dr. Jensen not only kept it alive and well in America, but he also promoted a form of genetic analysis called Iridology - observing a person’s genetic constitution from the study of the iris of the eye. In the early 1940’s he began an a11 year research project that resulted in a 360 page book on Iridology. One thing that his observations into the analysis proved, but what he had already confirmed in his practice, was that many people had genetically weak digestive systems, were chronically constipated, and that this backup of poisons in their systems was a major cause of disease and illness.

Because of this Dr. Jensen used colon cleansing as a fundamental in his clinic. He did a special type of gravity/slant board/enema/colonic combination that he developed which he called the colema. It was very effective at getting the old, impacted fecal matter out. In addition he used raw foods, juices, herbs, etc. To this day Dr. Jensen might hold some Guinness record for the most enemas given or for the tons of fecal matter removed, but I can attest that cleansing the bowel, like with most natural healers, was one of the most important foundations of this program. In the summer I interned at his Health Ranch I never saw more fecal matter in my life. Buckets full - wheelbarrows full.

Dr. Jensen was a master at simplicity, breaking things down to their simplest level. Obviously an extremely intelligent man, he was also a master at seeing what so many of us miss, what is right in front of our noses. I remember when he was observing a patient that was having a 3 year bout with sciatica. The pain was so extreme that the man was going to let medical doctors carve into his body and cut and cauterize his sciatic nerve. He couldn’t stand the pain anymore. It was literally killing him. The patient described the pain as continual. It was a sharp and burning pain down the right side from his lower back all the way to his right foot. Dr. Jensen simply told this man he had too much money, and that the patient had to give Dr. Jensen his wallet and his money and not come back to the clinic for 2 weeks.

The Man looked quite startled, but was desperate, and willing to do anything including this. I thought, "Oh no, Dr. Jensen is really a quack, or some gypsy thief." After the patient left, Dr. Jensen proceeded to explain to me that this man had a very thick wallet that he carried in his right back pants pocket. This man had a desk job and was sitting all day long on this thick leather wallet that was pressing directly on his sciatic nerve. The patient returned 2 weeks later with no pain, a miracle healing after 3 years of excruciating, debilitating pain. Even as a trained Doctor of Chiropractic, who could have treated this man with countless adjustments and numerous types of body work, he was always searching for the simplest of solutions first, and the real cause of the disease.

Well Dr. Jensen never worked on anyone for free. NEVER, EVER. Everyone paid, period. He knew that if he let anyone slide, that he would be commiserating and backing up the person’s belief that they were poor, incapable, unfortunate, unable, or that life was tough, or a million other negative affirmations that many people develop as part of their disease. Or maybe the other way around, they develop their disease because of their negative mind or loser attitude. He also knew that the patient had to make getting well the most important thing in their life, even if it meant selling their furniture, their clothes, or event their car, as I did to intern with him.

Anyway everyone paid, and if you didn’t have any money, then you went to work, gardening, plumbing, cleaning, whatever, but there were no free rides. Dr. Jensen knew that energetically there had to be what he referred to as an "energy exchange", and without it, there would be no healing.

to be continued

[Aleesha Sattva]

continued from above...

Finally, in the final years I saw Dr. Jensen in practice, COLOR was becoming very important to him. I should say that it was actually always important. He felt a great way to make sure that you got all of your needed vitamins and minerals was (always to make sure) that your food, your lunch or dinner bowl looked like a rainbow, was colorful. He knew that whatever made different colors in foods were actually different vitamins and minerals.

But later on he was moving more and more into color. Scientists tell us that different colors have different wave lengths, different vibrations, and therefore Dr. Jensen knew that different colors affect us in different ways physically, emotionally and spiritually.

One of the last things Dr. Jensen told me, in his beautifully simplistic, natural way, was to take the time to watch the sunrise in the morning and the sunset in the evening. He felt that all of the colors changing at this time of the day was food for our body. He felt that it was a different type of nutrition that we assimilated through our eyes directly into our brain, but necessary nutrition nonetheless.

I have never fully agreed with anyone’s approach to health and healing, even Dr. Jensen’s. When I was very young and I interned with this great man he had already been in practice for over 50 years and I, only a few years. I was the toughest, roughest, most headstrong natural healing Gestapo student practitioners he had ever seen. Some times when he would prescribe cod liver oil, pig digestive juices, kefir or veal joint broth and because I have always been a strict vegetarian, I would utter comments, kind of under my breath but loud enough to be heard. One day in the clinic he had heard enough. He looked me right in the eye and yelled, "I want to see you in my office." He sat me down and very loudly told me that his methods were based on the best of his over 50 years of clinical practice and that I needed to observe, have more respect for him and keep my mouth shut. He was right.

He then proceeded to tell me that I reminded him of a very tough, headstrong, young natural healing student he once knew a long time ago - himself. Cocky, brash, tough, self assured and not afraid to try anything on himself or with a patient. He told me that his greatest desire was that someday, I and his other interns, would take all of his work to an even higher level, improve on his protocols, make his programs cleaner and make natural healing even more effective. I apologized, we hugged and that day I grew a little bit taller, and a lot wiser.

Dr. Jensen, my great teacher, thank you for your patience with me. We two rams butted heads many times and the few times you threw me out you always welcomed me back. Wherever you may be, you, your work and your experiences changed my life, and I used it to help change the lives of a million more people that you never met.

I would say goodbye but you will always be in my heart. I would say, "may you rest in peace", but I know wherever you are, you are still preaching the gospel of Natural Healing, because you know, I know, a half a million of our patients know and millions more of our followers know, Natural Healing Works!
Ian "Doc" Shillington N.D.505-772-5889Dr.IanShillington@...

[Aleesha Sattva]

and of course... there is the lovely miss linda and her fasting advice:

http://www.rawfoodtalk.com/showthread.php?t=12099

it's also here:

http://www.timelessspirit.com/JAN08/tom.shtml

[Aleesha Sattva]

here's some interesting info:

On Irregular Bleeding in Women
By Victoria Boutenko

I am not a medical doctor and that is why I refrained from commenting on this topic for many years. However, recently my dear friend had her uterus removed, because she experienced unexpected bleeding soon after she adopted a vegetarian diet. In this article I am attempting to share with you my important observations, as a friend.
Here is my story. When I was 19 years old, after giving birth to my first son, I developed a condition called cervical erosion. My gynecologist horrified me by suggesting cryotherapy, which is application of liquid (frozen) nitrogen. She said that if it didn’t work I would have to undergo a hysterectomy. She scheduled my procedure to take place in one week. Frightened, I decided to perform a water fast. I was hoping that it would help me heal faster after cryotherapy, and thus avoid the hysterectomy.
To my horror, on the third day of my water fast I started to bleed profusely. It lasted for two days and then stopped. However, when I came to the scheduled cryotherapy, to my greatest thrill, the gynecologist told me I must have been misdiagnosed, and that I didn’t have any sign of erosion. I did not tell her what I did, but I remembered this episode vividly.
Throughout my life, when different girlfriends of mine shared about their gynecological problems, I told them my story. Only a few of them chose to take such a drastic measure, and fasted on water. Amazingly all of those women were helped, to various degrees.
Since I published my book Green for Life, I am constantly receiving emails from women who started to bleed suddenly after either adopting a raw food diet or drinking green smoothies. This article is my response to all these sisters. Don’t rush to do a hysterectomy. Maybe your bleeding is the way of your body to clean your organism of toxins. Give it a chance to run its course.
Think about this: If I hadn’t done my three day fast and instead had followed my doctor’s recommendations, I would not have the amazing experience of Sergei and Valya in my life.
It is true I am not a medical doctor, but I am a woman, mother and grandmother. If my experience could help improve somebody’s health, I choose to share it.

[ReneeH]

Thank you!!! I love this thread!!! I always come back to it when I'm ready to fast again! What a treasure this is!!! :)

[KaleMama]

I agree with ReneeH! THANK YOU SO MUCH for posting all this information! I am ready to embark on this amazing fasting journey!

::Much, much love::

[Aleesha Sattva]

So glad it has assisted you both!!!

[Zuri]

Most definitely helpful and even more motivating. :)

[gryph]

Hi Aleesha,
Thanks for all the great information. I am starting a 10-day water fast in a couple days. Reading these posts has been extremely helpful. I have already lost almost 100 pounds and I decided to fast to jump-start the weight loss again. I am not working atm, so I think this is the perfect time.