Fasting : Part 5

Maintaining Health
by R. L. Alsaker

(Page 29 of 35)

Some people fast repeatedly, and are somewhat proud of it. They should be ashamed of the fact that they must fast time after time, for it shows either ignorance or a weak, undeveloped will power. The fast should teach every intelligent being that it is an emergency measure, and emergencies are but seldom encountered in a well regulated life.

Food debauches following fasts should be avoided. A little will power properly applied will prevent them. Gross eating may compel another fast. We must eat and it is better to eat so that we can take sustenance regularly than to be compelled to go without food at various intervals. He who is moderate in his eating, uses a fair degree of intelligence in the selection of his food, is temperate in other ways and considerate and kind in his dealings with others will not be ill.

A fast is efficacious in clearing up a brain that is unable to work well because it is bathed in unclean blood. It is remarkable how well the brain works when the stomach is not overworked. Overfeeding the body causes underfeeding of the brain. On a correct diet the brain is efficient and clear and able to bear sustained burdens.

There is no question but that a fast, followed by a light diet, containing less of the heavily starchy and proteid foods and more of the succulent vegetables and fresh fruits, with their cleansing juices and health-imparting salts, would result in the recovery of over one-half of the insane. Most of them are suffering functionally and here the outlook is very hopeful. Christ cured a lunatic "by prayer and fasting." Proper feeding would work wonders in prisons. It would also be very beneficial for wayward girls and young men who are passion's slaves. St. Peter recommended fasting as an aid to morality, which is another evidence of the profundity of his wisdom.

How long should a fast last? Until its object has been accomplished. It is rarely necessary to fast a month, but sometimes it is advisable to continue the fast for forty days, or even longer. If the fast is taken on account of pain, continue until the pain is gone. If for fever, until there is no more fever. In chronic cases it is not always necessary to continue the fast until the tongue is clean. When the patient is free from pain and fever and comfortable in every way, start feeding lightly. People who are thin and have sluggish nutrition, one symptom of which is dirty-gray mucous membrane in mouth and throat, should not be fasted any longer than it is absolutely necessary, for they generally react slowly and poorly.

If people would miss a meal or two or three as soon as they begin to feel bad, no long fasts would be necessary, because when the system first begins to be deranged it very quickly rights itself when food is withheld. It is impossible for a serious disease to develop in a fasting person, unless he is in an exceptionally bad physical condition at the beginning of the fast, for when food is withheld there is nothing for disease to feed upon. No new disease can originate during a fast.

Fasts often bring people back to health, who can not recover through any other means known to man, unless it be eating almost nothing - a semi-fast. Occasionally a patient dies while on a long fast or immediately thereafter, but please remember that millions die prematurely on this earth every year who never missed their meals for one day. Also remember that those who go on prolonged fasts are generally "hopeless cases," who have been given up to die by medical men. People who fast generally become comfortable, so why envy a few men and women an easy departure when they are no longer able to live, and why heap undeserved censure on those who are doing their best to ease the sufferers by means of our most valuable therapeutic measure, fasting?

There is much prejudice against fasting, but a calm study of the facts will remove this. Typhoid fever, conventionally treated, often proves fatal in 15 per cent. or more of the cases and those who survive have to undergo a long, uncomfortable illness which often leaves them so weakened and with such degenerated bodies that the end is frequently a matter of a few months or years. Pneumonia and tuberculosis find a favorable place to develop and in these cases prove very fatal. On the other hand, cases of typhoid treated by the fast, and the other hygienic measures necessary, recover in a short time, there are no evil sequels and the body is in better condition than it was before the onset of the disease. I have never seen a fatality in a properly treated case, and the mortality is conspicuous by its absence. It is the same in curable chronic diseases. Where feeding and medicating add to the ills, fasting with proper living afterwards brings health.

It is also well to remember that where one individual dies while fasting (not from the effects of fasting, but from the disease for which the fast was begun), perhaps one hundred thousand starve because they have too much to eat. Silly as this may sound, it is the truth, and this is s the explanation: Overfeeding causes digestive troubles and a breakdown of the assimilative and excretory processes. The more food that is taken while this condition exists the less nourishment is extracted from it. The food ferments pathologically, instead of physiologically, and poisons the body. The more that is eaten under the circumstances, the worse is the poisoning and at last the tired body wearily gives up the fight for existence, perhaps after a long chronic ailment has been suffered, or perhaps during the attack of an acute disease. The chief cause of death is too much food.

Avicena, the great Arabian physician, treated by means of prolonged fasts.

For the benefit of those who fear the effects of fasts of a few days' duration a few quotations are given from various sources:

"My next marked case is a wonderful illustration of the self-feeding power of the brain to meet an emergency, and a revelation, also, of the possible limitations of the starvation period. This was the case of a frail, spare boy of four years, whose stomach was so disorganized by a drink of solution of caustic potash that not even a swallow of water could be retained. He died on the seventy-fifth day of his fast, with the mind clear to the last hour, and with apparently nothing of the body left but bones, ligaments, and a thin skin; and yet the brain had lost neither weight nor functional clearness.

"In another city a similar accident happened to a child of about the same age, in whom it took three months for the brain to exhaust entirely the available body-food." - Dr. E. H. Dewey.