Fasting as a religious rite has long been practiced “for the fulfillment of certain good deeds.” Religious fasting has ancient origins, going back into prehistory. Partial or complete abstinence from food or from certain types of food at set periods of time existed in Assyria, Persia, Babylon, Scythia, Greece, Rome, India, Palestine, China, in Europe among the Druids and in America among the Indians. It was a widespread practice, often used as a means of penance, in mourning, and as preparation for participation in religious rituals such as baptism and communion.

At the very dawn of civilization, the ancient sacraments, secret worship or religion that flourished for millennia in Egypt, India, Greece, Persia, Thrace, Scandinavia, the Goths and the Celts, prescribed and practiced fasting. The Druid religion among the Celtic tribes required long periods of transitional fasting and prayer before the initiate could advance further. The religion of Mithra (ancient Iran) required a fast of fifty days. In fact, fasting was common to all the sacraments, which were similar to the sacraments of ancient Egypt and perhaps originated from them. It is said that Moses, who was taught "all the wisdom of Egypt", fasted for over 120 days on Mount Sinai. The ordinances of Tire, which were introduced into Judea by a secret society known as the Essenes, also prescribed fasting. In the 1st century AD in Alexandria there was a sect of Jewish ascetics called the Therapeute, who resembled the Essenes and borrowed much from the Kabbalah and from the Pythagorean and Orphic systems. Therapists paid great attention to the sick and highly valued fasting as a therapeutic measure. Fasting is mentioned quite often in the Bible, where several long-term fasts are recorded: Moses - 40 days (Exodus 24:18, 34:28), Elijah - forty days (First Book of Samuel), David - seven days (Fourth Book of Kings) , Jesus - forty days (Gospel of Matthew, 4:2), Luke: “I fast twice a week” (Gospel of Luke, 18:12), “This generation is driven out only by prayer and fasting” (Gospel of Matthew, 17: 21). The Bible warns against fasting for the sake of vanity (Matthew 6:17,18). She also advises the holy fathers not to wear a sad expression on their faces (Gospel of Matthew, 6:16), but to seek pleasure in fasting and doing their work (Book of the Prophet Isaiah, 58:3), fasts should be fasts of joy (Book of the Prophet Zechariah, 8 :19).

We may well assume that some great good was the purpose of many of the fasts mentioned in the Bible, even if (one might take it) they were not always intended to “cure” “diseases.” We can also be sure that the ancients had no fear of mortal famine as a result of missing several meals.

For two thousand years the Christian religion has recommended "prayer and fasting," and thousands of preachers have told the story of forty days of fasting in the desert. Religious fasting was often practiced in early Christianity and in the Middle Ages. Tommaso Campanella relates that sickly nuns, during periods of hysterics, often sought salvation by fasting “seven times seventy hours” or for twenty-one and a half days. John Calvin and John Wesley both strongly advocated fasting as a beneficial measure for both nobles and common people. Among early Christians, fasting was one of the rites of purification. Fasting is still a common practice among peoples Far East, especially among East Indians. Gandhi's numerous hunger strikes are well known.

Members of the early Christian church who were subject to penance often retired to the desert for a month or two to overcome temptations. At this time, they drank water from an old decrepit vessel, and the intake of even a grain of millet was considered by them as a violation of the vow and destroyed the virtues of repentance. At the end of the second month, the “emaciated and detached from the world” usually had enough strength to return home without outside help.

The author of the book "Pilgrim Sylvius", describing Lent in Jerusalem when visiting it around 386 AD. e., notes: “During Great Lent, they completely abstained from all food, with the exception of Saturdays and Sundays. They ate on Sunday afternoon and after that did not take anything until the following Saturday morning. And so on throughout Lent.” Although the Catholic Church does not have a law requiring fasting, it has been voluntarily practiced by many Catholics in the past. This church views abstinence—either total or from prescribed foods—as penance. It also teaches that Jesus fasted to teach and encourage faith in the practice of repentance.

The Roman Church has both “days of famine” and “days of abstinence,” which are not necessarily the same thing. The “law of abstinence” is based on food differentiation and regulates not the quantity, but the quality of permitted food. It reinforces the intake of meat or meat broth, but not eggs, milk or seasonings of any kind, even from animal fat. In fasting, the rule of the church is: “What constitutes fasting is only one meal a day.” In ancient times, strict fasting was observed until sunset. Nowadays, a full meal can be taken at any time after noon or, as recognized church authors believe, shortly after it. Some even believe that a full meal can be taken at any time of the day. However, this one full meal in twenty-four hours does not prohibit eating any food in the morning and evening. In fact, "local custom", which is often some vague expression emanating from the local clergyman, determines what additional food can be taken daily. In America the rule is that the morning meal should not exceed two ounces of bread; in Westminster (England) the limit is three ounces of bread. Of course, this kind of “fasting” is not what we mean by actual fasting, for in this way a person can eat enough to gain weight. Hygienists also cannot accept the so-called moral principle of the Roman Church - “parvum pro nihilo reputator” and “ne potus noceat”: “small things are considered nothing,” so that “drinking, not accompanied by anything solid, does not become harmful.” We believe, as Page stated, that small, split meals are not fasting.

Lent for Catholics is only a period of abstinence from certain types of food, although some of them use this period for fasting. The ancient practice of fasting until sunset followed by a feast is similar to the practice of Muslims - their so-called fasting during Ramadan. During this period they do not eat, have no right to drink wine, or smoke from sunrise to sunset. But as soon as the sun goes down, they start smoking and feasting. The nightly feast compensates for their daytime abstinence. In the cities there are night carnivals, restaurants are illuminated, the streets are filled with revelers, the markets are illuminated, and street vendors selling lemonade and sweets are celebrating. Rich people sit up all night, receive and return visits, and hold receptions. After days of such feasting and fun, people celebrate the end of the month of “fasting” with the holiday of Bayram.

When we are told that Archangel Michael appeared to a certain priest from Sipponte after the latter had been fasting for a year, we must understand that this priest then abstained not from food at all, but from some types of it. This is only a religious application of the term, behind which many of the stories that have come down to us about religious fasts are hidden; we are not always sure that a person abstained from food, he probably simply abstained from taking certain prescribed types of food.

When religion obliges people to abstain from meat on certain days of the week to reduce their "animal appetite", but allows them to drink wine, freely consume fish (which is also meat), to which are added spicy and stimulating sauces, such as are added to eggs, lobsters and shellfish, then this is clearly a rejection of what may originally have been a sound dietetic view and the observance of a superstitious ritual. When Muslims are forbidden to drink wine, but allow themselves to be poisoned by the unlimited consumption of coffee, tobacco and opium, then this is definitely a departure from the previous rule against intoxication of any kind. If during Ramadan a Muslim is obliged not to touch either solid or liquid food from sunrise to sunset, but has the right to wallow in gluttony, drunkenness, and debauchery from sunset to sunrise, then what is the benefit of this? Here we have only symbolic abstinence, a mere ritual or ceremonial rite that only loosely imitates what was originally a healthy practice.

The fact is, and this should be clear to anyone who thinks the slightest bit, that there is nothing in the law of Nature that allows for any violations or deviations from sobriety, abstinence, moderation and righteous behavior. The laws of Nature do not indicate any specific days or specific numbers of days for special fasts or special periods of abstinence from any food or excess. According to natural law, fasting should be followed when there is a need for it, and one should abstain from it if there is no such need. Hunger and thirst should be satisfied on all days and in all seasons, and they should always be satisfied with healthy food and clean water. A person who refuses to satisfy the normal needs of the body, prompted by thirst and hunger, is just as guilty of violating the natural law as a person who tortures his body with excesses.

Nowadays, Christians of all stripes and denominations rarely expose themselves to real fasting. Most fasts of the Roman, Orthodox and Protestant churches are merely periods of abstinence from meat foods. Abstaining from meat, but not fish, during “fasting” days seems to be simply to promote the fishing and shipbuilding industries.

Among Jews, fasting always means complete abstinence from food, and at least one of the days of fasting is spent also abstaining from water. Their periods of fasting are usually only very brief.

Although the Hindu nationalist leader Gandhi fully understood the hygienic benefits of fasting and often fasted for hygienic purposes, most of his hunger strikes were fasts of "purification", repentance and a political means by which he forced England to agree to his demands. He fasted even in the name of purification of India, not just his personal purification. “Self-purification” fasts of several days are a common occurrence in India. Several years ago, Indian Socialist Party leader Jayaprakashan Narain undertook a twenty-one-day hunger strike to enable himself to better perform his own tasks in the future. He did this cleansing fast at a natural healing clinic under the supervision of a man who had observed several of Gandhi's hunger strikes.

Fasting was part of the religious rituals of the Aztecs and Toltecs in Mexico, among the Incas in Peru and among other American peoples. Fasting was practiced by the Pacific Islanders, and fasting was noted in China and Japan even before their contact with Buddhism. Fasting continued in East Asia and where Brahmanism and Buddhism are widespread.

According to Dr. Benedict, many recorded cases of long and more or less complete religious fasts are somewhat "clouded by superstition and lack clear observation of them, and are therefore of no value to science." Although I agree that their value for science is limited, I do not agree that they are devoid of any value. They certainly have value, confirming the possibility of abstaining from food for a long time in various life circumstances. The point is that scientists have so few observations of starving people that their views on the process of starvation are as confused as the stories of the starving people themselves.

FASTING AS MAGIC

We have nothing to do with fasting as magic, except to study this phenomenon. Fasting among tribes, for example, among American Indians, in order to ward off impending danger, or by Gandhi to purify India, there is the use of fasting as a magical remedy. Among the American Indians, fasting was widely used in private and public ceremonies. In Melanesia, the father of a newborn is required to fast. Among many tribes, fasting is often part of the rite of passage at the age of a man and a woman, or in the name of sacred and ritual acts. David's seven-day fast (as described in the Bible) during his son's illness was a magical fast. Ceremonial fasting in some religions can also be called magical. If we carefully consider the difference between magical fasting and protest hunger strikes, such as during strikes, we can say that magical fasting is carried out to achieve some desired goal outside the personality of the starving person himself. We are interested in such fasting simply as another evidence that a person, like a lower animal, can fast for a long time and do it not only without harm to himself, but with obvious benefit.

FASTING AS A DISCIPLINATING FACTOR

As Dr. W. Gotschell says, “Fasting is nothing new. The ancients recognized it as an excellent method of achieving and maintaining better mental and physical activity. Two of the greatest Greek philosophers and teachers, Socrates and Plato, regularly fasted for ten days at a time. Another Greek philosopher, Pythagoras, fasted regularly for forty days before taking an exam at the University of Alexandria. He required his students to fast for forty days before entering his class.” In “The History of the Chectaw, Chickasaw and Natchez Indians,” H. Cushman says that the Chectaw warrior and hunter “often undertook long fasts” in order to train himself to “withstand hunger.”

PERIODIC AND ANNUAL FASTING

The Gospel of Luke mentions the practice of fasting for one day each week, which was apparently very common in his day. Intermittent fasting has been practiced by many peoples and individuals. It is said that the ancient Egyptians had the custom of fasting for a short period of time - about two weeks every summer. Many still do this today; They go hungry once or twice every year. Others follow the custom of Luke mentioned, fasting one day every week. Others fast for three to five days every month. The practice of intermittent fasting varies from person to person. different shapes. Usually these are just short fasts, but they always bring distinct benefits.

HUNGER STRIKES

Such hunger strikes have become very frequent over the past forty years. Probably the most famous of these were the hunger strikes protested by Gandhi and McSweeney and his political associates in Cork (Ireland) in 1920. Joseph Murphy, who began a hunger strike with McSweeney, died on the 68th day of fasting, McSweeney on the 74th day. Older readers will recall that a few years ago, when the suffragettes of England went on hunger strikes, they were force-fed, which was very painful, although at the same time there was much talk of them being allowed to starve to the point of exhaustion in prison. Since Gandhi began popularizing the practice, the number of men and women who have fasted in India, largely as a protest against some kind of oppression, numbers in the many thousands. In many cases, mass hunger strikes were carried out on a large scale. Most of them lasted only a few days, but in some cases they were declared “hunger strikes to death” until the goal was achieved. Until now, every hunger strike has been interrupted to death, usually due to persistent requests from relatives, friends, and doctors to stop it. One of the hunger strikes "to death" that did not go that far was carried out by the leader of the Workers' and Peasants' People's Party of India, Shibban Lal Saxena. Ramchandra Sharma carried out a forty-day hunger strike, and Swami Sitaram carried out a thirty-six day hunger strike. All these hunger strikes were in the nature of political strike hunger strikes.

Political hunger strikes are not complete without a humorous touch. On October 2, 1961, the media reported on Sikh leader Tara Singh's hunger strike demanding the creation of a separate Sikh state in Punjab, India. On the same day, the ascetic and religious leader Khojraj Survadev, aged seventy-six, began his hunger strike to protest the Sikh demands for their own staff. Both hunger strikes neutralized each other, although, clearly maintaining the status quo, Survadev won the contest. It must be admitted, however, that I think that a struggle of this kind is less burdensome for the people and involves less bloodshed than a traditional bloody revolution.

Gandhi's four hunger strikes were generally protests against British policies in India, although he sometimes went on hunger strikes to cleanse India because of mistakes it made. But he was well acquainted with the hygienic benefits of fasting and was aware of the literature on this subject. His longest fast lasted twenty-one days. In all parts of the world, many men and women went on hunger strikes for more or less long periods of time.

"EXHIBITIONIST" OR STUNK FASTING

There were people who were more or less professional starvationists and starved for the sake of show and money. They fasted in public and charged money to those watching their hunger strike. Such were, for example, Sacchi and Merlatgi in Italy, as well as Jaques. In 1890, Jaquez starved in London for 42 days and in 1891 in the same place for 50 days. In Edinburgh in 1880, he fasted for 30 days. Merlatgui fasted for 50 days in Paris in 1885, and Sacchi undertook several long fasts for the same purpose, ranging from 21 to 43 days. One of his hunger strikes was carefully analyzed by the famous Italian nutritionist Professor Luciani.

EXPERIMENTAL FASTING

There are probably more experimental fasts involving both men and women than we think. Several years ago, Professors Carlson and Kunde (University of Chicago) conducted several similar experiments. Their fasts were relatively short. Shortly before his death, Carlson conducted several experimental fasts with patients and had several short ones himself. A number of experimental fasts of long duration were carried out. Thus, professor of physiology Luigi Luciano (University of Rome) studied thirty-day fasting. The director of the Imperial Military Medical Academy in St. Petersburg, V. Pashutin, carried out a number of experiments on animals and studied deaths from exhaustion in humans, publishing the research results in the work “Physiology of Pathology in Exhaustion.” Several years ago, Dr. Francis J. Benedict (Carnegie Institute) published a book called "Depletion Metabolism."

Despite the careful observation of the progress of experimental fasting and the use of various tests and measurements, these experiments yielded very few results, because they were based on short-term fasting, the longest of which was seven days. The first few days of fasting are when the most severe anxiety is observed, so the results of these short fasts were very misleading or, as Professor Levanzin says, “that big book on which the Carnegie Institute spent six thousand dollars is not worth the paper on which it is printed.” . And Dr. Benedict's study of earlier experiments with fasting is devoted to fasting of healthy people, which may shed only a little light on the value of fasting in illness.

In 1912, Professor Agustino Levanzin (Malta) arrived in America to study Levanzin's thirty-one-day fast by Professor Benedict. This fast began on April 13, 1912, with the hunger weighing “a little over 132 pounds, normal by Yale standards, and standing five feet six and a half inches.”

Levanzin believes that this is an important indicator during every fast. Professional fasters, like hibernating animals, typically overeat before they begin fasting and accumulate large number fat and other reserves. He believes that due to this, long-term fasting, previously studied, occurred at the expense of fat, and not the whole body. He tried to get around this “mistake” by starting the fast at a “normal” body weight. In his opinion, the duration of fasting does not matter if it is not started at normal body weight. He believes that a person can lose sixty percent of his normal weight without any risk of dying or harming your body, since the largest part of the normal body weight is food surplus. “At the beginning of the fast, my exact weight was just over 60.6 kg. At the end of the thirty-one day fast I weighed barely 47.4 kg, i.e. lost 13.2 kg. During the fast, pulse, blood pressure, breathing rate and volume were measured, blood samples were taken, body measurements were taken, urine tests were performed, hair growth was checked, not to mention countless daily observations of my mental and physical state.”

FASTING IN CASES WHEN NUTRITION IS IMPOSSIBLE

There are pathological conditions when power is not possible. Conditions such as stomach cancer, destruction of the stomach by acids, and other factors make it further impossible to eat. People in these conditions often stop eating for long periods of time before finally dying. Several such cases will be discussed below in the text as our research progresses. In some cases of gastric neurosis, food is vomited immediately after ingestion, or it passes into the small intestine at a rate almost equal to its intake and leaves the body undigested. Such a patient, although he eats, is practically deprived of nutrition. And such a state can last for a long time.

STARVING OF SAILORS AND PASSENGERS DURING A SHIPWRECK

Shipwrecked sailors, as well as pilots who have fallen into the sea, in many cases are forced to live for a long time without food and often without water. Many endured long periods without food in the harsh conditions imposed by being at sea. Many similar cases during the last war were widely reported in the press.

BURIED MINERS

Often, in mine collapses, one or more miners are buried for a more or less long period of time, during which they are left without food and often without water. Their survival until they are rescued depends not on food, but on air. If their oxygen supply runs out before rescuers reach them, they die; otherwise, they survive without food. A buried miner is like an animal buried in a snowdrift for days and weeks. And he is able to live for a long time in such conditions and survive, like this animal.

FASTING IN ILLNESS

It has been established that fasting to alleviate human suffering has been practiced continuously for ten thousand years. There is no doubt that it has been used since the time man first became ill. Fasting was part of the healing method in the ancient temples of Aesculapius 1300 years before Jesus. The mythical Greek “father of medicine” Hippocrates, apparently prescribing complete abstinence from food when the “disease” is active and especially during its crisis period, in other cases a modest diet. Tertullian left us a treatise on fasting, written around 200 AD. e. Plutarch said: “Instead of taking medicine, fast for a day.” The great Arab physician Avicenna often recommended fasting for three weeks or more. I think, undoubtedly, man, like animals, always starved during acute illness. In later times, medicine taught the sick that they must eat to maintain strength and that if they did not eat, their resistance would decline and they would become weak. Behind all this is the idea that if the patient does not eat, he will surely die. But the truth is the opposite: the more he eats, the more likely he is to die. In the work “Nutrition for Strengthening,” the outstanding hygienist of the last century M.L. Holbrook wrote: "Fasting is not some clever trick of the clergy, but the most powerful and safest of all medicines." When animals are sick, they refuse to eat. Only after they have recovered, and not before, do they start eating. It is just as natural for a person to refuse food when sick, as animals do. His natural aversion to food is a reliable indicator to not eat. The patient's antipathies and dislikes, especially towards food, noise, movement, light, stuffy air, etc., cannot be ignored lightly. They express the protective measures of a sick organism.

HUNGER AND WAR

War and famine caused by drought, pests - insects, floods, snowstorms, earthquakes, frosts, snowfalls, etc., often deprived entire peoples of food for a long time, so that they were forced to starve. In all these cases they had limited food supplies, and in some cases there was no food at all for a long time. The ability of man to fast, even for a long time, turns out, like that of lower animals, to be an important means of survival under such circumstances. Such long periods of deprivation were more common in the past than they are today, when modern transportation and communications bring food to people in famine areas in a very short time.

FASTING WITH EMOTIONAL STRESS

Grief, excitement, anger, shock and other emotional irritations are almost as fraught with a decreased desire to eat and the practical impossibility of digesting food as pain, fever and severe inflammation. An excellent example of this is the case of a young woman from New York who attempted to drown herself several years ago and, after being rescued by two sailors, explained that when her lover, who had been in port for two days, did not call to meet her, she thought that she had been deceived . Her sailor friend, who was delayed on duty and unable to meet her, was allowed to visit her in the hospital. In particular, he asked her when she ate. And she answered: “I haven’t been able to eat anything since yesterday, Bill.” Her suffering and sense of loss led to a cessation of digestive secretions and a loss of desire to eat.

FASTING IN MENTAL PATIENTS

Mentally ill people usually exhibit a strong aversion to food, and unless they are force-fed, they often go for long periods of time without eating. In institutions where the mentally ill are housed and treated, patients are usually force-fed and often by very crude methods. This aversion to food in mentally ill patients is undoubtedly an instinctive urge, a movement in the right direction. In Natural Cure, Dr. Page gives a very interesting case of a patient who regained his mental health by fasting for forty-one days after other treatments had completely failed. A mentally ill young man who was under my supervision fasted for thirty-nine days and on the morning of the fortieth day he resumed eating, greatly improving his condition. I used fasting for different types mental disorders, and I have no doubt that it is an instinctive remedy designed to assist the body in its restorative work.

Hibernation in humans

It is said about possible hibernation in humans that it is “a condition absolutely inexplicable by any principle.” However, there are a certain number of people who exhibit a state close to hibernation during the winter. This is true for the Eskimos of northern Canada, for some tribes of northern Russia. By accumulating fat and hibernating like a bear, only to a much lesser extent, the Eskimos prove that humans have the ability to hibernate by keeping themselves warm by huddling together. And, moving little, during the long winter they make do with half their usual diet. With the onset of winter, the Eskimos wrap themselves in their fur clothing "parka", leaving only a small opening in it for certain physiological needs, and remain in their homes, eating dry salmon, sea crackers, flour cakes and water. By exhibiting little physical activity, they reduce their energy expenditure, thereby maintaining nutrient reserves in the body at a level at which there is no danger of harming themselves.

INSTINCTIVE FASTING

Fasting is the only one among all other means that can claim to be a natural method. This is undoubtedly the most ancient method of overcoming those crises in the body that are called “diseases.” It is much older than the human race itself, since sick and wounded animals instinctively resort to it. “The hunger-healing instinct,” Oswald writes, “is not limited to our silent animal friends. Our common experience is that pain, fever, gastric and even mental disorders discourage appetite, and only unreasonable nurses try to ignore the expediency of nature in this regard.” The doctrine of "total deprivation" is taught to instill in man a distrust of the promptings of his natural instincts, and although it is slowly disappearing even from religion, it is still as strong as ever in medicine. Instinctive urges are ignored, and the sick are stuffed with “good nutritious food” in order to “keep them strong.” “There is a very common view,” writes Jennings, “that the aversion to food, which characterizes all cases of acute disease, and is directly proportional to the severity of its symptoms, is one of the failures of Nature, requiring skillful intervention and, therefore, force-feeding, regardless of the aversion to it. " Dr. Shew stated: “Abstinence from food is too often feared in the treatment of disease. We have good reason to believe that many lives have been ruined by the indiscriminate eating so often practiced among the sick.” In the human sphere, instinct prevails only to the extent that we allow it to.

Although one of the first things that Nature does to a person during an acute illness is the cessation of all desire for food and goodwill - the patient’s friends encourage him to eat. They bring him delicious tempting dishes to appease his palate and whet his appetite. But the most they can sometimes do is get him to eat a few bites. An ignorant doctor may insist that he eat “to maintain strength.” But Mother Nature, who is wiser than any doctor who ever lived, keeps saying, “Don’t eat.” A sick person who is not yet able to work complains of lack of appetite. He doesn't like food anymore. This is a consequence of the fact that his natural instincts know that to eat in this case in the usual way means to intensify the disease. A person usually believes that loss of appetite is a great disaster and strives to restore it. In this he is helped by a doctor and friends, who also mistakenly believe that the patient must eat to maintain strength. The doctor prescribes a tonic and feeds the patient and, of course, worsens his condition.

STARVING ABILITY AND SURVIVAL

From the above it is clear that fasting by man is practiced under as many different circumstances as by living beings of lower forms of life, and for many reasons of adaptation and survival. Fasting is an important part of human life until the present day, when we have a fetish and have developed a ridiculous fear of being deprived of food even for a day. It is quite obvious that the ability to go for long periods of time without food is just as important as a means of survival under many human conditions as in lower animals. It is likely that primitive man was forced, even more often than modern man, to rely on this ability to survive periods of food shortage. In acute illness, in particular, the ability to go a long time without food is very important for man, since he apparently suffers from disease much more than lower animals. In this state, when, as will be shown below, there is no strength to digest and assimilate food, he is forced to rely on his internal reserves, which, like lower forms of life, stores within himself nutritional reserves that can be used in an emergency or when absence of new substances.

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The Seven Deadly Sins, or Psychology of Vice [for believers and non-believers] Shcherbatykh Yuri Viktorovich

Therapeutic fasting

Therapeutic fasting

The look of one woman at another is reminiscent of baggage control at customs.

Yanina Ipohorskaya

Therapeutic fasting is widely used in various health systems - both classical and “traditional” medicine. It is used as a treatment various diseases, and for hygienic purposes - to preserve health, prolong life and prevent obesity.

As the famous abstinence advocate Paul Bragg noted, fasting under intelligent supervision or deep knowledge is the safest path to health ever known to mankind. Temporary deprivation of food puts the body in such conditions when all its vital force is used to cleanse and heal a person. Fasting helps the body help itself, increases performance internal organs, restores the internal adjustment of self-regulation systems. In addition, fasting promotes the release from the body of inorganic chemical poisons and other accumulations that cannot be removed by any other ways or means. According to Bragg, fasting sharpens and strengthens mental abilities. It improves the mechanisms of digestion, absorption and excretion of food. The liver, known as the chemical laboratory of the human body, changes during fasting to increase vitality and functions more efficiently after fasting. Personal experience Bragg and his followers show that after fasting, food is better absorbed, endurance and muscle strength increase, and the mind becomes more receptive to new knowledge. Fasting brings self-confidence, gives a person a positive mental attitude, brings peace of mind and a desire for body activity, which cannot be achieved by any method of drug therapy.

Bragg wrote: “With a complete knowledge of fasting and its rules, you can get rid of the fear of premature old age. By doing a weekly 24-hour fast, which is 52 days a year, cleansing your body and finally doing three 7-10 day fasts every year, you will be able to remove all the unnecessary deposits and waste from your joints and muscles. Fast for 4 days, drinking only distilled water. Pay attention to the tone of your muscles, skin and the fact that your body will look thinner and younger. Body lines become natural, fullness disappears, and you see your natural figure again. You will hardly believe your eyes, the amazing change that occurs during hunger. The powerful vital force that was spent on processing food is now used to remove waste, waste, poisons that accumulate in the cells and organs of the body, and thus each of the millions of cells of our body is rejuvenated.”

Bragg believed that fasting was a natural process that our ancestors went through from time to time (out of necessity). Accordingly, the human body has adapted to periodic abstinence from food and reacts positively to it. According to Bragg, abundant and regular eating is unnatural and harmful, and a person must consciously take breaks from eating if he wants to keep his body clean and healthy. In his famous book, The Miracle of Fasting, he wrote: “Fasting is a natural instinct. Illness is nature's natural way of indicating that you are filled with toxic waste and internal poison. By fasting, you help nature remove toxins and poisons accumulated in the body. Any wild animal knows this. Fasting is the only way that helps him overcome physical suffering. This is a purely animal instinct. We humans have lived in a comfortable civilization for so long that we have lost this instinct when suffering takes over our body. When we feel physically unwell, we don't feel like eating. Food even repels you, but “caring” relatives and friends force you to eat in order to maintain strength to fight the disease. Nature wants to make you starve, because only if you are hungry will it be able to cleanse your body using your own life force. But Mother Nature’s soft voice is not easy to hear and understand.”

Bragg himself lived to be more than 90 years old and maintained mental clarity and muscle strength until the end of his life.

The fact is that organisms different people can vary quite significantly by gender, age, metabolic level, hormonal and vegetative status, etc. As noted by one of the leaders of the Doctor Bormental center, Candidate of Medical Sciences M. A. Gavrilov, the energy need of young people is 1. 5–2 times higher than the energy consumption of elderly people. Accordingly, if a 70-year-old person can normally endure a week-long fast, then for a 20-year-old person such an experience can negatively affect his health.

As a physiologist, I will add that there is also such a thing as vegetative status. If a person has a predominant activity of the parasympathetic system (he is a vagotonic), then he will easily endure fasting, but sympathicotonic people require an increased amount of energy, and its reserves are small. Accordingly, fasting can do them more harm than good. In addition, therapeutic fasting has many medical contraindications, in the presence of which it is not used. These are malignant neoplasms, tuberculosis, thyrotoxicosis, hepatitis, chronic renal failure, persistent heart rate and conductivity, periods of pregnancy or lactation and, of course, severe body mass deficiency. In general, the author’s opinion is probably clear - it is better to fight gluttony under the guidance of experienced specialists - doctors and psychologists. Then victory over this sin is guaranteed to you!

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Hello dear friends.

Today is the main article on this site. She's boring, but still the main one.

So, What is therapeutic fasting? For many people this phrase may seem absurd. At least most of the people around me offline looked at me in surprise when I did this.

After all, many remember the words of their grandmother: “Eat, grandson, otherwise you will weaken and get sick” or something like that.

Therapeutic fasting is a voluntary abstinence from food carried out according to certain rules in order to restore health.

The therapeutic fasting procedure is divided into three parts:

1. Preparation.
2. Immediate abstinence from food.
3. Exit.

What “certain rules” are we talking about?

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When preparing for therapeutic fasting, you must:

Go to the so-called " ", which contains 80% natural natural food (fruits, vegetables, nuts, honey, herbs, ); I would recommend the period of the preparatory period to be as long as possible, but no less than the period of abstinence from food itself;

The second stage of preparation is bowel cleansing (enemas, shankh prakshalyana);

The third is liver cleansing (especially before long fasting);

_______________________

During immediate abstinence from food DO NOT TAKE ANYTHING INSIDE In addition to clean (ideally distilled) water, in some cases you can use a weak solution of honey. If you eat vegetables or fruits, this will mean breaking the fast. If you eat anything protein - meat or dairy - you will cause harm to yourself, even death.

_______________________

Exit. This stage is very individual. Some people go out on citrus juices, and everything is fine. This method is suitable for people who have been practicing this lifestyle for a long time. This method did not work for me. You can also come out of therapeutic fasting on combined fruit and vegetable juices, as well as on the vegetables, fruits, and salads themselves. You can even use porridge or sprouted wheat or buckwheat seeds. This is a broad topic.

_______________________

Therapeutic fasting is a natural method of healing and rejuvenating your body. It has been known for as long as life has existed. Animals do not eat anything when they are sick. Most likely, most people have done this before. However, for some reason this method has become “littered”. The principle of therapeutic fasting has been forgotten and the theory of chemical drugs has been inspired.

I almost forgot. In addition to the three 3 parts, there is one more condition. It is necessary to perform the following set of measures:

1. Provide yourself with a source .
2. Eating natural food during the winter (how to preserve the naturalness of vegetables and fruits for the winter period of time in urban conditions).
3. Quitting drugs (including smoking and alcohol) COMPLETELY!
4. Refusal of junk food (fast food, sweet carbonated water, hormonal meat, yeast bread, etc.).

Even if you don’t delve into the practice of therapeutic fasting, but simply adhere to at least these four points, life will become much easier for your body. Fulfillment of these conditions is the foundation

“Fasting, or fasting-dietary therapy (RDT), is a very powerful therapeutic method that can cure severe physical and mental illnesses,” says senior researcher at the Research Institute of Psychiatry of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation Valery Gurvich. - But it should be used exclusively by doctors - specialists in RDT. Self-indulgence is extremely dangerous.”

Stronger than a scalpel

The concept of therapeutic fasting is associated with Paul Bragg and Herbert Shelton. This fashion came to Russia in the 70s. And Shelton’s followers did not suspect that a scientific one had long existed in Moscow, created by Doctor of Medical Sciences, psychiatrist Yuri Nikolaev.

“Russia is still the leader in the scientific study of fasting,” says Valery Gurvich (he is a student of the professor). According to him, the best schools operate in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Buryatia, Rostov-on-Don, and Tyumen.

Not fully studied. But no one doubts that the most main point- transition to endogenous nutrition. Stocks of animal sugar - glycogen - dry up on the second day, and the body begins to break down fat. At the same time, toxic substances deposited in adipose tissue - preservatives, drugs, dyes - are released into the blood. You need to be prepared for headaches, nausea, feelings of weakness and malaise. A heightened sense of smell (familiar aromas become unbearable), the smell of acetone from the mouth, and a tongue coated with an unpleasant coating are mandatory companions for cleansing the body. To reduce self-poisoning, enemas and showers are used. Those who managed to survive the crisis will be rewarded. Around the 10th day there is a sharp improvement. A sparkle appears in the eyes, energy is in full swing. A person can easily tolerate fasting as long as the body has reserves of fat and protein. First of all, diseased tissue is “eaten away” - tumors, adhesions, scars.

Sign in and sign out

The most important thing is to carefully follow the rules for exiting the RTD.

“You need to spend as many days on it as it took,” recalls Valery Gurvich. “They use fresh, initially diluted fruit and vegetable juices, then add porridge, vegetable decoctions, and kefir.”

At this time, meat, eggs and fish are completely excluded. During RDT, the stomach and intestines do not contract, and the liver and pancreas do not produce enzymes. If you immediately eat protein food, it will decompose in the stomach without being digested, which will lead to poisoning of the body. Possible death.

RDT was so successful that it was officially approved by the Ministry of Health as a method of treating mental illnesses, including schizophrenia, epilepsy and depression.

And bodily ailments. It is used for hypertension and asthma, diseases of the digestive system and diabetes mellitus, arthritis and arthrosis. It is believed that during fasting, a dominant is formed in the brain, which displaces painful symptoms. We can say that the body is “rebooting”. After recovering from fasting, he begins to work without remembering the illness. True, if a person has been sick for a long time and seriously, a one-time fast will not cure him, but his condition will improve. To maintain the effect, you will need to fast again. The doctor will decide how many days and how many times a year.

Spiritual fasting, physical fasting and therapeutic fasting

Fasting and therapeutic fasting are different concepts and should not be confused with each other. Fasting is an abstinent way of life undertaken for spiritual purposes to calm passions and strengthen prayerful appeal to God. There are two types of fasting: spiritual fasting is abstaining from judging one’s neighbor, swearing, bad thoughts and intensifying prayer; bodily fasting is abstinence in diet, abstinence from smoking, from marital relations, etc. However, physical fasting is undertaken in the same way as spiritual fasting, for the sake of Christ, while therapeutic fasting (fasting-dietary therapy, or RDT) is abstaining from food for the sake of the flesh, that is, to get rid of illnesses and diseases. Thus, spiritual fasting, physical fasting and therapeutic fasting are different phenomena of life, and in some cases their implementation may contradict each other. For example, a wife who has family responsibilities, preparing food for the family, often cannot go hungry because fasting means an interruption in her obedience to her husband and service to the family. If attempts are made to create a so-called healthy lifestyle without an agreement between family members, tension in the family increases. In addition, therapeutic fasting for long periods is often associated with weakness, then a person will not be able to go to Church, confess, or receive communion. And in any of the four long periods Orthodox posts we must confess and receive communion. Then will we be given health? To a certain extent, fasting (RDT) is not an easy procedure, and at the end of a long fast, some people’s appetite increases so much that for several weeks a person is engaged only in satisfying his flesh and only thinking about food. Then what kind of liberation from the slavery of the sin of gluttony do we pray for? Considering the many, many contradictions, to a certain extent we must try to find a compromise in which central place takes obedience: an Orthodox person must discuss with a priest familiar with the practical results of therapeutic fasting, and receive a blessing to carry it out.

However, it is necessary to clearly understand that fasting does not heal, it provides detoxification, cleansing crises, enzyme and immune changes, the release of one’s own defenses, but getting rid of ailments is entirely in the power of the Lord. This central point must always be kept in mind and fasting should be carried out in such a way that it does not contradict Orthodox traditions and complies with them to the maximum extent possible. For example, therapeutic fasting in chronic cases is better carried out during fasting, and not during non-fasting times. During the RDT period, it is imperative to confess and receive communion more often. Every day you need to read prayers, canons, psalms, asking advice from a clergyman. Carry out those Sacraments that the priest recommends.

Professor Yuri Sergeevich Nikolaev in his book “Fasting for Health” writes that the first fasting is the most effective. Many have somehow lost sight of this fact, and yet ignorance of it gives rise to many negative consequences and suffering. The view is intensively cultivated, as if a person is a mechanism that needs to be cleaned regularly, including by fasting, and he will recover. The popularizer of this simplified view was the American Paul Bragg. But a person is not a machine, and by fasting often, he can get even sicker than without fasting. Because the processes occurring with the patient’s flesh at the RDT and at the exit from it are very complex and have not yet been studied enough. That is why another American, but unlike amateurs, a specialist doctor with extensive experience, Herbert Shelton, recommends not torturing yourself with short fasts, but immediately carrying out the first and long course of fasting in order to achieve the most complete result. Then the result is much better and much less trouble, of course, if RDT is carried out under the guidance of an experienced mentor. In our practice, we have repeatedly noted that in solving the problems of serious illnesses, it is the first fasting that plays the most important role and provides the most important chance for getting rid of ailments. For example, with bronchial asthma, the first fast after 5 days allows most asthmatics to throw away all medications and pocket inhalers, because asthma attacks stop completely. But if after a course of RDT there was non-compliance with the diet and fasting, there were cases when asthma returned again after a few months or a year, and repeated fasting for 20, 30 and sometimes more days did not produce results and the sufferers despaired. There is an opinion that if RDT does not help with asthma, nothing will help the patient. This means not just relief, but the dream of all asthmatics - to breathe deeply and quit all medications. But the duration of fasting should always be clarified by a specialist individually. For example, the work of a group of doctors led by Professor Alexey Nikolaevich Kokosov has proven that for different pathologies, approaches should be different. In particular, for bronchial asthma, they recommend two fasts per year for two weeks, since a decrease in autoimmune reactions of the bronchial tree occurs after a 14-day fast and lasts exactly six months, after which a second course of RDT is required.

In most cases of serious pathology, the course of RDT must be long and all conditions must be created to exclude a negative impact on the course of treatment. It is in the first year of RDT that it is especially necessary to saturate every hour of the patient with spiritual work on himself: reading spiritual books, prayers, visiting church, conversations with worthy people.

Receiving in most cases bright results after a course of RDT, the patient should not make hasty conclusions about absolute healing. Therapeutic fasting has one secret feature that few who write about RDT reveal to readers. But we will reveal it. This feature is that after fasting... the disease often returns again! This is reality, this is a fact, and you can’t escape it. And those who advise fasting, promising complete healing, are lying. Such pseudo-experts cannot be trusted. But one should not rush into disappointment, because for some reason RDT is steadily widespread in treatment centers here and abroad. And here's why. The reality of the healing process is that any chronic disease after any treatment (and without treatment) it can go away, but then returns again, that is, periods of exacerbation and periods of remission alternate. Likewise, after a course of RDT, for example, asthma disappears, but after a few months or years the person comes to the doctor again with blue lips, breathing heavily and wheezing. Why is this happening? In the case of bronchial asthma, for example, when after RDT the patient does not follow a diet, if he eats a lot of mucus-forming foods (sweet and dairy), gluten (flour and potatoes), then the mucus “seals” part of the respiratory tract and the asthmatic has nothing to breathe. In addition, sweets, flour, and dairy are hyperergic foods that increase the body's reactivity, including the immune one. It is known that bronchial asthma- autoimmune disease. One’s own immunity “hits” the lungs’ own tissues and increases swelling of the airways, making it even more difficult for an asthmatic to breathe. Eating meat, canned food, fried foods, vinegar, acidifies the blood, and in case of asthma we must alkalize the blood. By the way, to alkalize the blood, asthmatics are given a soda solution via dropper to relieve an attack.

Thus, well understanding the essence of the process, we can describe it as follows: when receiving remission through therapeutic fasting, with further recommendations we “stretch” the remission period as much as possible. Or perhaps several years. Then a long course of RDT must be repeated. And again, having surrendered to the will of the Lord, to abstain in prayer and repentance, for who knows what His providence is for our fate. Yes, and asking about the future is a sin.

1. Pray and observe fasting abstinence, as well as moderation outside of fasting.

2. Do not do anything to others that we do not want for ourselves.

3. If possible, avoid chemical-electric treatment.

4. Lead an active lifestyle, have a vegetable garden, a garden, be in the clean air, fish, swim in the river in summer and steam in a bathhouse in winter (except for the phase of exacerbation of diseases).

5. Eat domestic products, preferably from your own garden and garden, or proven and from familiar people in the market.

6. Eliminate foreign products.

7. Monitor the ecology in the surrounding space (air, water) and fight for cleanliness.

8. Drink medicinal plants and eat healing greens throughout the year, if possible, with minimal interruptions. Individual selection according to diseases is contained in our methods.

By the way, this is what Cain’s medicine does with illness: it shortens periods of remission. This is noted during the treatment of radiculitis with diodynamic currents - without DDT, the process will pass and may not be repeated for several years, but after electrical exposure to DDT, exacerbations can become frequent - every year and even sometimes several times a year. The same thing is observed during treatment peptic ulcer stomach and duodenum H 2 -histamine blockers - after their use, exacerbations become more frequent, becoming annual or several times a year. The same is true after the use of antibiotics and sulfonamides for many diseases. Perhaps the biggest champions in shortening remission are hormones, including hormonal ointments for skin diseases.

Cain products: pasteurized milk, sweets, chocolate, canned food, sausages are also often a factor that constantly shortens remission and contributes to the exacerbation of many diseases.

A logical question arises: it is impossible for us to give up everything and leave life, is that what you preach? No, I just want to convey to the reader thoughts that often conflict with reality. And thinking is a purely personal, individual process. But there are special questions - what to avoid and what not to avoid in this or that health problem. That is why we need a parish doctor, with whom we can determine the level of compromise individually. For example: for flying rashes in children, we recommend giving them dates, raisins, figs instead of chocolate. But with the rheumatoid process or systemic scleroderma, we completely exclude most carbohydrates: not only all sweets, but also bread and potatoes. In this case, the compromise has much less degrees of freedom and much less choice.

And again let's return to the three main concepts that non-Orthodox authors try to confuse: spiritual fasting, physical fasting, therapeutic fasting. One of the most important laws of human existence is law of contradiction of flesh and spirit. Orthodox Church firmly and clearly indicates this, which is terribly disliked by pseudo-Christian ideologues. The Apostle Paul points this out directly: Those who live according to the flesh set their minds on carnal things, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on spiritual things (Rom 8:5). I say: walk in the Spirit, and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh, for the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh: they oppose each other, so that you do not do what you would like. (Gal 5:16)

Replicated lately ideas about supposed harmony between the spiritual and physical principles are impossible. Those who practically try to achieve harmony between body and spirit through cleansing, exercise, fasting, super-diets inevitably slide into indulging carnal thoughts, from which slavery sooner or later arises. And doctors are witnesses to personal and family disasters or spiritual degradation.

A surprised question may arise: Is the author against a healthy lifestyle? - No, I don’t mind. But you cannot put “healthy lifestyle activities” at the center of your life, because this is carnal and base. Dealing too much with one’s flesh is dangerous because the identification of the human “I” with the body increases. And the desires of the flesh can turn into desires of the soul. Perhaps a reasonable compromise is to carry out a course of RDT, achieve a stable remission of the disease and, in the meantime, eat normal foods and drink herbal tea. Visit the bathhouse once a week. THIS IS NORMAL AND REASONABLE. But doing qigong bodily exercises for several hours a day is a huge waste of time. Take an enema for weeks without a doctor's prescription, drink vegetable oil once every three months and then drag your feet for a week or two with nausea - this is excessive and unnecessary.

When receiving health as a gift from God, you need to spend time and energy on repentance, prayer and doing good, but not on qigong exercises or auto-training. Practical experience shows that the more a person deals with health during this period, the faster it eludes him. A healthy lifestyle also does nothing for the soul, it is only for the flesh. One day a woman came to me and said that she and her husband were vegetarians. She heard that the author of these lines is a vegetarian and suggested: “You and your wife are vegetarians, and we are vegetarians with your husband, let’s be friends as families.” I was a little surprised by this proposal and began to think. I really wanted to be friends, but after many minutes of silence I did not find any reason to be friends on the basis of vegetarianism. What, discuss cooking methods? - It’s not clear. And he admitted to her: “You know, I don’t understand how to do this.” You can be friends, loving your Fatherland and rooting for it, you can be friends with Orthodox families, go to the same church and read and exchange books. But it is not clear how to carry out the process of friendship based on vegetarianism.

We use the closest approximation to Orthodox tradition, recommending the components of fasting in the process of therapeutic fasting, but should never confuse these different concepts and different goals, achieved by the practice of fasting and the practice of RDT. In a sense, even the personality of the doctor is divided into two aspects. The medical doctor strives to correctly carry out RDT, to influence various links in the pathogenesis of the disease with herbs, and by all means strives to achieve the recovery of the patient. The Christian doctor contemplates what is happening and is amazed at the reversal of human destinies and the wisdom of God’s Providence for man. Let us remember the Apostle Paul, who had illness in his flesh: And so that I would not be exalted by the extraordinary nature of the revelations, a thorn was given to me in the flesh, the angel of Satan, to depress me, so that I would not be exalted. Three times I prayed to the Lord to remove him from me. But the Lord said to me: My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness. (1 Cor. 12:7)

The purpose of this book is not to analyze spiritual issues, for everyone should mind their own business. For the author, it’s a healing thing. Therefore, we will continue to consider medical issues.