What is a water fast?
Water fasting also known as Therapeutic Fasting, is taking nothing into your body, except water for a period if time.
There are many other types of fasting, each with their benefits and drawbacks. Juice fasting, carb fasting, sugar fasting, intermittent fasting, fasting from work (Sabbath)
Water fasting vs. juice fasting.
Some proclaim water Fasting too dangerous and thus a juice fast preferable. This may be true for some. But the juice fast will not allow your body the rest it needs to heal, and will not allow your body time to adjust insulin and prolactin levels, while under constant fructose assault.
Lets talk about what happens when you water fast. I am not a scientist. Nor an expert writer. So the following are copied from sites and books across the web and library, with links and references attached.
Fasting, step by step
On the first day of fasting, the body burns stored sugar for energy. Those reserves will not last very long, since we only store about 100 g of glucose as glycogen in the liver, which will be depleted in the first 18 to 24 hours. The body will start using muscle tissue in order to make glucose from amino acids. This will also end shortly because it would be a bad idea for the body to eat up all the muscles in order to survive (the heart is a muscle!)
Glycerol will then be produced from adipose tissue, but not sufficiently to meet the body’s needs. Note that the brain absolutely needs to receive glucose continuously to function. On the third day, the body will maximize the breakdown of fats and the liver will start producing ketones to supply the energy for the central nervous system. This is a natural survival mechanism called ketosis or protein sparing. Weight Loss can be impressive, but different from one person to another.
During this process, blood levels of cholesterol and uric acid tend to increase. This is because the body it stirring up stored toxic waste materials and expelling them into the bloodstream to be eliminated from the body. This can provoke symptoms like headache, fatigue, nausea and dizziness, similar to a hangover. Some people will experience skin rashes, muscle pain and joint aches. This is all part of the process of detoxification. While this is happening, the organs receive more oxygen, the tissues purify themselves, blood vessels soften and begin to let go of cholesterol plaque, the blood pressure drops and the intestinal walls loosen up and let go of mucoid plaque. While the digestive system is able to rest, the rest of the body can heal. Calcification is reduced, inflammation disappears and pain finally leaves the body.
During the fast, you might also go through an emotional detox. Negative feelings may come up, like sorrow and anger. Their manifestation is an opportunity for you to finally release them. Sometimes, you might feel like crying, for no particular reason. Everyone goes through a different process as they detox. We all have different lives, experiences and stories. We all have different problems and needs, as well as emotional, physical or spiritual blockages to work on. You should not have any expectations on how you should react emotionally during the detox. Allow the healing process to happen intuitively, without any judgment.
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The following I think is the most influential to me in my desire to fast. This Shelton is a doctor from the early 1900s and proves in my mind the benefits of fasting. Even doing studies that compare extended fasting to starvation, that clearly show that there is a difference.. a significant one.
By Shelton
"It will be observed that during the fast the tissues do not all waste at an equal rate; those that are not essential are utilized most rapidly, those least essential less rapidly and those most essential not at all at first and only slowly at the last. Nature always favors the most vital organs. The fat disappears first, and then the other tissues in the inverse order of their usefulness. The essential tissues obtain their nourishment from the less essential, by enzymic action, a process which has been termed autolysis."
Here you can read his whole book. Herbert Shelton's work is world renowned and he is considered a father if fasting.
" In more than thirty years of conducting fasts, I have conducted over twenty-five thousand fasts, ranging in duration from three days to more than two months. I have conducted about six fasts that have gone sixty or more days, the longest being sixty-eight days. I have had literally hundreds of fasts that have lasted from forty to fifty and more days." Despite Shelton's possible overstatement of "twenty-five thousand," likely no one else has ever equalled his experience with fasting for the purpose of healing disease
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