BEYOND cavils of the ignorant or sophistries of the learned, fasting is buttressed on sound scientific basis.

Regrettably most editors, journalists and the so-called educated who ought to know better English and correct diction often wrongly employ the two words ‘fasting’ and ‘starving’ synonymously. They perpetuate a popular fallacy that fasting and starving are similar, hence both are hazardous and life-threatening.

To dispel innate ignorance, the miseducated should consult a concise dictionary or the world authority on the subject, Dr Herbert M. Shelton’s master piece – ‘The Science and Fine Art of Fasting’.

To his distinction, the renowned American had supervised over 40,000 fasts for diverse disorders of short and long durations with remarkable results at his sanatorium in San Antonio, Texas. That very volume the venerable Gandhi treasured throughout turbulent tumultuous times and triumphed. The eminent, erudite Swami Dr Vaidya Bharti was exuberant when the writer presented His Holiness a copy of said text at the Vedic Cultural Centre located majestically in marvellous Markham City, Ontario, Canada a few years ago. He embraced it.

Fasting radically counterbalances ill effects of gormandising and insensible food choices. While aristocratic feasting inundates the body with filth, fat, fume and royal disease, rational fasting skillfully supervised efficaciously empowers the organism to cleanse and heal itself when casual factors are removed.

Our body is self-healing and all healing is biological and no art. It’s the living organism not the fast that heals. No physician, no matter how well qualified and experienced, heals anyone. Pretenders of healing are mere charlatans!
During a fast the body supports itself on stored reserves within its tissues. Starvation ensues when abstinence is prolonged beyond that time when all stockpiles are seriously depleted or have plummeted dangerously low. Whenever food is denied from a system clamouring for sustenance starvation results.
With over 30 years of fasting expertise Robert Walter M.D. in “Life’s Great Law” divulged: “No process invented fulfils so many indications for restoration of health as does fasting. It’s nature’s own primal process, her first requirement in nearly all cases.”
In ‘Vitality, Nutrition and Health’, Hereward Carrington PhD elucidated: “Fasting is the greatest remedial agent in the world today. It’s curative, purifying and therapeutic value is almost unlimited. It can restore health when all else fails. It can prolong life and prevent premature death.”
Did you know it was therapeutic fasting that restored former British Prime Minister Clement Atlee pronounced “incurable” by High Priests of the Church of Medicine? Prominent men as Mr Atlee, Austria’s Emperor Franz Josef and Paul Bragg, son of a former U.S. Senator and countless men, women and even children deemed ‘hopeless’ regained their health simply through fasting. At institutions worldwide, people continue to benefit from this inexpensive, painless, bloodless measure. Of course there are critics of fasting most of whom know nothing about it or its techniques. England’s Rabogliati AM, MD, FRCS puts it tersely: “The most popular criticisms of fasting are written by people who have never missed a meal in their lives.”
Reasoning is shallow when the unintelligent and biased babble balderdash about unsafe fasting. Yet unhesitatingly they drug customers with sleeping pills, tranquilisers, antibiotics and other harmful medications. Their competent prescriptions hospitalise two million Americans and decimate over 700,000 of those annually (‘Medical Mafia’, Guylaine Lanctot, MD). Is this a testimonial of the validity of invalidity of Medical System? Ponder on this.
Note, too, candid confessions from a few celebrated of their coterie. Dr Oliver Wendell Holmes of Harvard University once proclaimed: “If all drugs were cast into the sea it would be so much better for man, and so the worse for the fishes.” John Mason Good MD, FRS accomplished medial scholar lamented: “The effects of our medicine on the human system is in the highest degree uncertain, except indeed that they have destroyed more lives than war, pestilence and famine combined.”
Conversely, America’s brilliant and famous Joel Fuhrman MD writing in the prestigious ‘Health Science’ (Nov/Dec, 1995) stated that cardiovascular disease can be safely prevented and reversed naturally without medications, angioplasty, or bypass surgery. Dr Fuhrman further explained: “Through a properly conducted therapeutic fast, patients are able to improve a cardiac condition more quickly than they would through aggressive dietary changes alone avoiding the need for invasive medical procedures…Fasting allows the body to actually remove the plaque from within blood vessels. It allows the body to heal itself in the shortest amount of time possible.”
Incidentally, then younger Fuhrman before he qualified as a doctor was on crutches and wheelchair for over a year as a consequence of a serious heel injury. A reputable orthopaedic surgeon told him he’d never walk again unless he submitted to experimental surgery. Adamantly he refused; fasted 46 days at Dr Shelton’s and recovered. One year later Joel and gorgeous sister Gale placed third in the World Championships as figure skaters.
Is fasting the universal remedy? Let’s hear from another Harvard graduate. In his classic ‘The Genesis and Control of disease’ George Weger MD answered: “Many will say there is no such thing as a ‘cure all’. To all doubters we must say in all seriousness that fasting and a diet properly selected and combined are the nearest approach to a ‘cure all’ that is possible to conceive.”
Finally, objections to fasting based on post mortem findings of starvation do not negate its validity. Why not give it a try?
A. ZAHOOR
Natural Hygienist from Wakenaam, Guyana