I must make it clear at the outset that I am NOT in ANY WAY dispensing trustworthy medical advice in this webpage/website. Use this information at your own risk. As of the time of the writing of this draft, I personally have experimented only three times with fasting: one three-day fast, one five-day fast, and one eight-day fast. Please understand that I’m rethinking the subject of fasting because I don’t understand it to my own satisfaction and because I myself am not fully convinced of its alleged efficacy. I’m just a guy who has encountered some theories about fasting which I find fascinating and want to understand much better--that’s it. I’m not a graduate of any medical school of any kind. I’m not licensed in any way. The information here could be potentially be dangerous to your health and I’m so not responsible for any problems you cause to yourself by starving yourself or by depriving yourself nutritious food. Even if I report some good effects upon my health which I attribute to fasting there is no guarantee that fasting will affect your body in the same way. You should not trust anything I say here! If any of the ideas here interest you, research them yourself and discuss them with one or more of the professional health care advisors you rely on.

Definition

The word “fasting” has a wide number of usages and there is ample room for confusion. The English word “breakfast” intimates that we’ve been fasting between the last meal of the day and the first meal of the day and that after a sleep we are breaking a fast. This falls short of what I’m rethinking. The most popular type of fasting in the world is done in the month of Ramadan by those who abide by the five pillars of Islam. The type of fasting there seems to involve the abstinence from food during the day time (followed by eating or gorging after the sun has set) every day for a full month. This also is not the type of fasting I am attempting here to investigate. In this rethink “fasting” refers to abstaining from swallowing any food (including juices or anything containing sugars or other organic molecules) for seventy-two consecutive hours or more. Fasting here refers to consuming nothing but water for several days.

Hypothesis

Overview

By allowing the body an extended rest from the stress of digestion of food, the body can potentially re-focus its self on the task of healing at the cellular level. The body has a great potential for self-healing but daily eating hinders this potential by forcing the body to focus on digestion, metabolism, elimination, and nutrition routing rather than healing and purification of cells. The healing mechanisms/forces inside the body somehow know where various organs, tissues and cells fit into a prioritized list. Glycogen and glucose are scavenged first, the fat inside the fat cells is tapped next, and perhaps even diseased cells (such as cancers) are broken down and either scavenged or metabolized next. A seven or eight day fast might be ideal for “detoxification” while a twenty-five day fast might be ideal for the healing of some types of cancer.

Logic

Major Premise: Eating large meals every day forces (stresses) the body to devote tremendous levels of energy to digestion/metabolism

Minor Premise: The human body has more energy to devote to healing when it is given rest from stress

Conclusion: Therefore the human body has far more energy to devote to healing when it is allowed to rest from the stress of digestion/metabolism

Supposed Timeline

The first 72 hours of fasting are somewhat miserable (ravenous hunger) while the body consumes the blood sugars and the glycogen stored in the liver.

After fasting for ~72 hours (+/- 12 hours?) the body begins to tap into its fat reserves and hunger disappears. Mental energy increases and less sleep is needed.

After fasting for ~72 hours (+/- 12 hours?) the body begins to prove that it has begun a serious purification of its cells. The urine becomes unnervingly brown in color when the kidneys start filtering out all the “toxins” (whatever is undesirable) which are being expunged by cells into the blood. The sweat glands may also expel “toxins.” A thick white coat begins to cover the tongue.

After fasting for ~7 days (+/- 2 days?) the detoxification ends. The urine becomes crystal clear. The white coat is gone from the tongue and a healthy pink is seen again.

After 18-25 days of fasting some tumors supposedly are dismantled and cured (?!)

After 40 days (+/-5 days?) of fasting hunger returns and the body is forced to begin to cannibalize healthy tissues (such as muscle)

After 50 days (+/- 10 days?) of fasting the nervous system begins to become affected and blindness may ensue. Death would be soon to follow.

Prejudices admitted

To be upfront about my prejudices, I do want to believe, that fasting is a panacea. I hope that when my dear friends and family members tell me that they’re bodies are afflicted by some terrible malady which “scientific” or “western” medicine can’t seem to effectively treat that perhaps they can find healing by increasing the body’s ability to heal its self. I like the idea of someday my doctor telling me that my biopsy shows I have cancer, offering radiation and chemo therapies, and hearing me say, “No big deal. I’m just going camping in Costa Rica for a month instead and not taking any food with me.” I want to believe that a staggering amount of purification of the body’s cells and tissues occurs during the first seven days of fasting—a purification that a person who never fasts cannot accomplish. I also want to believe that fasting for twenty or thirty days greatly increases someone’s chance of the body healing its self of most types of cancer, endometriosis, etc. I even want to believe that twenty or thirty days of continuous abstinence from food can even increase the ability for the body to heal its self of the biochemical conditions underlying problems psychiatrists would diagnose as schizophrenia, major affective depressive disorder, etc. But I am a rethinker. I have learned by being so wrong so many times that my wanting to believe something to be true means I need to try extra hard to think objectively and dispassionately about it lest I ‘get suckered’ again.

Stress and rest

Are there any schools of medical thought which deny that giving the body rest increases the opportunity for the body to heal its self? I’m assuming for the moment that pretty much everyone from every medical discipline and theory would agree that giving the body some much needed rest allows the body a greater opportunity to heal on the cellular level. That the human body is constantly devoting energy to the maintenance and healing of its cells is a given. I seriously doubt there is any school of medical theory today which would deny that fact—except for the lunatic fringes such as pantheistic Christian Science which somehow thinks death its self is “an error of mortal mind.” Also I assume there is wide acceptance that the body’s ability to heal its self differs at various times and under various circumstances. For instance, those people who sleep eight or nine hours soundly each night are probably going to have better health than those who get less sleep. Similarly, those under substantial and constant stress tend to have relatively impaired opportunity for the body to maintain or heal its own cells. So far this is not controversial and will be treated as axiomatic in this rethink.

I take as fact here that a tremendous amount of energy is spent every day inside our bodies by our bodies to do all that goes along with digestion/metabolism of the foods we eat. I cannot quantify or substantiate this with statistics from testing done by medical schools because I haven’t looked into that side of it. But every time I eat a large meal during a festive holiday it becomes very clear to me that within thirty minutes of the end of the meal the blood that used to be going to my brain has been diverted to my stomach and intestines and my brain suffers from it. Conversely, if I eat a light meal my energy levels are renewed and my brain continues functioning at basically normal levels of alertness. This is proof enough for me that my body knows how to re-route resources for the task of digestion and that it does so with such ruthlessness that it’s willing to try to put my conscious mind into a sleep state to do it.

Fasting offers the body a rest from digestion. This in and of its self shouldn’t be controversial or in dispute. It’s just so obvious that we might call it a tautology.

The Natural Objection

If you discuss the question of fasting for several days to most any doctor or nurse trained in the “western” tradition of medicine, that doctor is probably going to discourage you from fasting. To suggest that food deprivation could offer health benefits is about as ludicrous as suggesting that we can fix the blown gasket in our automobile’s engine by trying to drive it around for a while without any gas in its gas tank.

There is an obvious and undeniable relationship between health and nutrition. Those who eat tend to live longer than those who do not eat. Those who eat highly nutritive meals tend to not suffer many of the diseases that those in impoverished places where good food is hard to find. Fasting is food deprivation. Eating and drinking are basically our only ways to take in the nutrients, minerals, and fuel from our environment we have. Everyone knows that we humans basically need to have a constant influx of these nutrients to have any health at all. So it is natural, normal, and rational for us to be dominated by the default assumption is that food intake needs to be constant and, in an ideal world, daily. Christians around the world, for example, pray to their God asking him to, “Give us our daily bread…” That the body needs a fairly constant influx of food is a “no brainer” to trained doctors and to pretty much everyone who has ever been hungry after skipping a meal or two. Also, most doctors know well that people who do not have any food to eat for fifty or sixty consecutive days will predictably die. And it’s obvious to anyone who has seen a commercial for any of many relief agencies that hunger and malnourishment is a huge problem in many parts of our world. While it is readily and whole-heartedly granted here that human health is contingent perhaps more than anything else on a constant intake of good food, the theory I’m rethinking suggests that the complexity behind it all allows for exceptions. Yes, generally we need good and constant and daily diet. But occasionally we need to let our digestive systems take a little holiday so that other mechanisms in the body can do maintenance, cleaning, and repair.

The very fact alone that it takes more than forty days (sometimes up to sixty days) of foodlessness before death occurs is to me encouraging that there could be legitimate reason to explore the first ten, twenty, or thirty days of foodlessness.

But having opened the door to this exploration, I also suggest there is a need for caution. Keeping in mind the obvious relationship between nutrition and health, one of the things questions I’m trying to rethink here is whether only people who have already been enjoying a healthy diet should fast or if people with poor diets might need to be more cautious when considering a fast. Is fasting an alternative to a lifestyle of healthy diet? I’m not suggesting that in this theory and would rather suggest the opposite. It could be argued that one should spend a month or more of healthy, nutritious diet before experimenting with fasting. And perhaps one should consider a “juice fast” (where one only drinks vegetable juices and fruit juices) for a few days before embarking upon a total-foodlessness type fast. It is not difficult to theorize that if one is going to deprive the body of the nutrients it needs for three or more days that one should first try to fortify the body with the ideal nutrients, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fatty acids, etc before deprivation begins.

Also it is worthy of mentioning here that many of the benefits I’m hoping to attribute to fasting can also be attributed to dietary improvements without fasting. I can testify to the fact that my health improved noticeably in a few ways when I changed my lifestyle (with the help of Nutrisystem and lots of salads) to lose 25 lbs in six weeks. One of my close friends swears that The Zone diet helped his overall health and energy levels. Other close friends swear by The South Beach Diet. Some, I have heard, swear by The Hallelujah Diet or other Raw Foods diets. Other friends of mine swear their vegetarian diet is key to their good health. So I might suggest that before anyone considers attempts fasting for three or more days that they first make lifestyle changes and dietary changes which adhere to current medical wisdom: more vegetables, high fiber complex carbohydrates, lower fat, less or no processed foods, etc. The lifestyle change its self could quite possibly improve the body’s ability to heal its self.

What about a man who has ruined his health by years of eating excessively at the trough of fried, processed, low-nutrient foods? When his doctor tells a man who hasn’t eaten a vegetable in ten years that he has three or four serious health conditions which are beginning to threaten his life, should said man say, “Doc, keep your prescriptions. I don’t need them. I’m just going to not eat for ten or twenty days and see how that goes.” This is a hard question for me to rethink. It’s certainly not the ideal. I’m not sure I want to touch that question yet. In the theory I’m trying to consider, fasting could allow the unhealthy man’s body to heal himself temporarily. Maybe. But for such a man I’d imagine that if fasting could “get him out of trouble” he’d really need to get serious about learning to like vegetables. For now, assuming for the sake of discussion that my theory here is right and true, I’d think such a man should immediately start “eating healthy” and walking daily. I’m not going to touch the question of whether he should reject the offer of medications because I don’t feel my wisdom can touch that. Perhaps such a man should eat well for two or three months and then consider with his doctor(s) the possibility of a seven day fasting period followed by a few more weeks or months of healthy eating and walking followed perhaps by an attempt to try an extended fast under medical supervision. (But I really don’t know!)

Personal Anecdotes / Experiments

I’ve only tried three fasting experiments so far. For me it always coincided with a camping trip since that took me away from the temptation of instant food.

My first ill-advised attempt was in 1991 or so and it lasted seventy something hours. I went camping in the Wichita Mountains of Oklahoma with a friend. My friend wasn’t fasting and it was understood that if something bad happened, he’d be driving me to home or hospital. The weather was a bit on the cool side and I had to end my fast because I couldn’t maintain any inner warmth. I’m not sure if I was flirting with hypothermia or not there. All I know is that it was too cold for me to fast in. No matter how many layers of clothing and blankets and sleeping bags I tried to insulate myself with, there wasn’t enough fuel being burned inside me to keep me warm I suppose. So that was the first lesson I learned about my fasting dynamics: don’t bother trying to fast in a forest when the weather is cool. Also this attempt left me doubting the theories I had been reading about fasting. I had been led to believe that after seventy-two hours of being without food my hunger would disappear and my energy would come back. I never reached that point.

My second attempt was in the summer of 1997, was fairly successful and lasted five days total. Having been previously impressed with the need for warm weather when fasting, I chose to fast in a swampy area called “The Big Thicket” in south-east Texas in the summer time. The low temperatures at night perhaps got down to 95F. Humidity was very high and wind was almost non-existent. A constant cloud of mosquitoes required me to wear two layers of cotton clothing, gloves, mosquito net hood. No problem staying warm that time. Actually I think the fasting made the heat more tolerable. This fast went well on the whole. I backpacked into the swamp for a few miles, set up a hammock above the height I imagined an adult alligator could lunge, and enjoyed a time of reading and meditation/rethinking. I drank nothing but tap water from canteens and bottles the entire time. After three days I got tired of the mosquito cloud and lack of wind, walked out, drove my 4x4 to the Texas coast somewhere northeast of Galveston, and ended up stringing my hammock on an uninhabited, road-less stretch of beach. The beach was more enjoyable and I didn’t miss food after about 75 hours or so. I felt like I was starting to be able to believe some of the theory I had encountered about fasting. For one thing I had proven that I could go for five days without food and not die. I did reach the point where I didn’t care about food and where my mental energies soared. And even though there was a bit of a physical weakness that I felt, I proved that I could still carry a heavy backpack for a few miles on day three or so.

I did end up breaking fast sooner than I wanted, however, due to some unexpected health concern. Something weird started to occur in my throat, roof of my mouth, and perhaps my sinuses. At the time I assumed it was some type of infection trying to develop and to this day I can’t make a better informed guess. Five days of sweating had depleted me of salt. I could tell that I was no longer very salty and started to think that maybe I should consider adding a small amount of sodium chloride and perhaps some potassium chloride to my water when fasting in the swamp. I’m not sure about my self-diagnosis and my own attempt to prescribe a remedy there. But that was my best guess at the time and it’s still my best guess.

It does bring up a fair question: if one is only going to drink water in a fast, what type of water should it be? Some purists argue that you should only drink distilled water. I had so far settled for tap water with its chlorine and fluorides and whatever else they add to it these days. Some suggest mineral water and that’s a tempting option to me. All I can say for now is that my current rethinking says I’m going to at least bring some sodium and potassium salts to add to my water just in case I start to “lose my saltiness.” Potassium and Sodium are very important minerals/elements for the human body. Depletions of them can, as I understand it, affect the way the heart muscle functions. So I’d take this question seriously.

My third experiment with fasting was in 1998 and it lasted just under eight days. Again I was backpacking but this time it was on an island in South East Alaska. I had a friend drop me and my backpack off at the end of a logging road. It took me the better part of a day to hike up one mountain pass and down into a quiet valley. Instead of a tent I made a rectangular frame of wood, lashed it to some tree trunks a few feet above the ground (but still where bears could get to me if they wanted), and stretched a shock of seiners net over the frame to make a mattress/platform. I had a tarp above me to shed the rain and plenty of fallen timber to make fires during the cool nights. I took with me a bag of uncooked rice and a bag of uncooked lentils thinking that the need to boil water and cook them wouldn’t make them very tempting to me. While backpacking in I drank fruit juices in the thought that it would sustain my energy. So basically it was one day of juice fasting and seven days of just-water fasting. I drank water from the streams in the valley without boiling or purifying it. It was nice cool snow melt and basically pure. I’m sure there were microorganisms, organic plant particulate and maybe some parasites in it somewhere but since it was all invisible to my eye, I’m just calling it water. I enjoyed the increased mental energy as I read and meditated and soaked in the beauty of southeast Alaska.

I didn’t miss food at all and at some point became concerned with the question about whether or not I’d ever want food again!

It was fascinating to see the urine turn so dark yellow that it was almost brown on day four or so and then to see it turn clear again on day seven. This inclines me to think that at least one claim about fasting is true: it does allow the body to seriously purify its self on a deep level.

I definitely felt physically weak while gathering firewood and while making short hikes here and there. After a week of splendid and delicious weather it began to rain hard. And since this was temperate rain forest that receives three times more rainfall than Seattle receives, I thought it wise to try to make it back up and over the mountain ridge before all navigable avenues in the harsh terrain were turned into deep and cold streams. Interestingly, after six days of no food I found that my body was able to carry a fairly heavy backpack through the rain up and over a rough mountain for a full day. I was very impressed with that surprising fact and marveled at what the human body is capable of. All my clothing was soaked and I was definitely flirting with hypothermia by the time the sun was starting to set. I lucked out by finding an unlocked door on an abandoned ski lodge. The next day I walked a mile or so before I was able to hitch-hike back to the nearest town. Needing to get on with my life I chose to break fast with a can of soup once back in the world of people.

This was a very positive experience.

My fourth experiment in water-only fasting occurred in early August, 2007. My wife and kids were away for a few days and I had a persistent headache I wanted to get rid of. I was able to juice-fast for one day and water-only fast for five additional days. Part of the reason I didn’t fast longer was that I began to figure if the headache was somehow food related five days was surely more than enough for it to be out of my system. Wrong. About two weeks after eliminating soy, yeast, peanut and caffeine from my diet the headache relented. I suspect that if I had continued my fast for eight or nine days the headache would have relented. One thing that may have sabotaged this experiment was that I may have taken some vitamins during my fast in addition to water. My multivitamin had soy in it and my b-complex vitamin had compressed yeast in it. [More about IgE and IgG allergies can be found here: http://rethinker.net/health/headaches-soy-tyramines.htm.]

Other observations... It wasn’t too difficult to avoid food those five days. Perhaps the constant headache was a reminder of my desperate need to do something. I did feel weak pretty much the entire time. Was able to take long walks through the forest, however, without any problem. The energy was there even if I didn’t feel like it was there?

Fasting as a Spiritual Discipline?

Occasionally I’m asked if I believe fasting (water only) gives a spiritual benefit or not. I can’t answer that with a simple yes or no.

To begin to answer this I have to start with questioning what is truly spiritual. Much of what has been touted as “spiritual” in ancient times in both the western and eastern religious traditions involves harsh treatment of the body. The underlying philosophy would be a type of dualism which assumes that that the material world is somehow inferior to the invisible/spiritual world. Notable examples would include Greek Neo-Platonism, Greek Christianity (especially the Desert Fathers -- very neo-platonic), Roman Christianity (especially Augustinianism), the Hinduisms and the Buddhisms. This is where we see the ascetics living in caves owning nothing and eating little. This includes the Greek and Latin Christian monks renouncing the world in favor of desert communes with vows of silence and flagellation of the body to supposedly purify the soul. But this dualistic philosophy is not part of the traditional Hebrew-Biblical worldview. In the Hebrew creation story, whenever God made something he pronounced it good. In the Hebrew view of things, things like marriage, family, and sexuality—things the ascetic avoids—are held in highest esteem. In the Hebrew-Biblical view, food is considered a really good thing and one of the greatest things to do in life is to share a meal with family and friends. I grew up with a largely platonic understanding of spirituality and have since rejected it for a more Hebrew-and-Biblical view.

In that Hebrew-biblical vane, the Rabbi Paul, writing to the disciples in Colossae, detected and addressed a heresy that looks like a Hellenistic mingling with Hebrew thought into some kind of cult. I believe his words help make the case for fasting not being of any true spiritual value in and of its self:

Colossians 2

16Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. 17These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ. 18Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you for the prize. Such a person goes into great detail about what he has seen, and his unspiritual mind puffs him up with idle notions. 19He has lost connection with the Head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow. 20Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules: 21"Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!"? 22These are all destined to perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings. 23Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.

This is interesting in light of the fact that Paul was no hedonist. He was used to harsh treatment of the body. But I believe for Paul the harsh treatment of the body was not a method of purifying the soul; it was simply a means to the more important end of carrying out his mission as an ambassador of Christ. Paul was no ascetic. His goal in life was to be Christ’s ambassador in most of the major cities of the Roman Empire. To the Greeks in Corinth, Paul also touched heavily on the Greek tendency towards Epicurean type philosophy (which would tend to exalt the material world and neglect the spiritual dimensions) . See how these three excerpts harmonize with one another:

1^st Corinthians 4

1So then, men ought to regard us as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the secret things of God. 2Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful . . . it seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like men condemned to die in the arena. We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to men. 10We are fools for Christ, but you are so wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are honored, we are dishonored! 11To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless. 12We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; 13when we are slandered, we answer kindly. Up to this moment we have become the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world. 14I am not writing this to shame you, but to warn you, as my dear children. 15Even though you have ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel. 16Therefore I urge you to imitate me. 17For this reason I am sending to you Timothy, my son whom I love, who is faithful in the Lord. He will remind you of my way of life in Christ Jesus, which agrees with what I teach everywhere in every church.

1^st Corinthians 6

12 [Greek Epicurean philosophy says,] “Everything is permissible for me"—but [I say] not everything is beneficial. [Some say,] "Everything is permissible for me"—but [I say,] I will not be mastered by anything. 13[Some say,] “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food"—but [I say] God will destroy them both. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.

1st Corinthians 9

24Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. 25Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. 26Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. 27No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.

So far I haven’t detected any hint in the Bible about fasting for the sake of physical health or for spiritual health. {To see a search throughout the Bible for the word fasting, click here.}

Generally it seems that fasting in the Bible among the Jews and early Christians was done for one of the following purposes:

1. An integral part of mourning, sorrow, and grief; a response to terrible times

2. An integral part of repenting from sin and turning to God. When people realized “I have offended the holy God!” it was not uncommon to seek reconciliation to God with humility, prayer, repentance, asking for forgiveness, and fasting. Perhaps this might show that the need for reconciliation to God was more important than food—something most of us take to be of utmost importance.

3. Possibly a way of seeking God’s favor while making petitions in prayer. Possibly a way of showing sincerity and humility to God. Possibly a way of showing God that this is more important to them than food.

4. Was part of religious ordinances for certain days in the Jewish tradition – but these were usually a day at a time?

5. Perhaps done as part of seeking God’s will? (The church in Antioch was fasting and praying when they were informed by the Spirit to send Saul and Barnabas out on their first missionary journey)

6. Fasting was NOT done to help drive out demons. (The bit about “this type [of demon] only comes out with much prayer and fasting” was probably a scribal addition to the gospel account and was not original.)

7. Paul does mention that a husband and a wife should not separate from one another or deprive one another from sexual relations “except for a [short] time that is devoted to prayer and fasting.”

But it is quite true that Jesus, somewhere around the age of thirty, fasted for forty days in the wilderness. At the end of the forty days he was put through some major temptation/testing. And only then did his campaign to be the Messiah/King-of-the-Jews kick into high gear. It was after the fasting and passing of the testing that he was baptized by John and the Spirit of God began to empower Jesus to do great miracles as signs that he was the Messiah sent by God. So from this fact one might assume that fasting has some spiritual benefit. But I’m not sure if this can be assumed safely. I don’t really understand why Jesus had to go into the wilderness for forty days. I don’t know why he couldn’t eat for forty days. I don’t know why he had to undergo severe testing/temptation/trials at the end of the forty days. So in my ignorance of what Christ needed to do in that time, I would be cautious in trying to extract spiritual principles for us. There isn’t really emphasis laid on the fasting. The apostolic writer doesn’t explain the significance of having no food. Perhaps it was only to make the temptations at the end more tempting? I also might remind that you and I are not the Christ. So I’d allow for the likelihood that he was supposed to go through something that we aren’t necessarily supposed to go through. From his forty days in the wilderness I believe we are to learn to resist the temptations that he resisted; I’m not so sure we’re supposed to emulate him in extreme camping. I might also point out that over the next three years we don’t have any hint about Jesus doing long fasts again.

If I were in a state of remorse or facing great tribulation of life, I would consider devoting myself to fasting and praying. If my soul were not right with God—if I knew I was not right with God rather—I would encourage fasting and repentance and prayer. If my body needed the healing that can come from rest I would consider an extended fast.

Other resources

Here is one of the books that woke me up to the idea of fasting for the sake of health:

The Science and Fine Art of Fasting (Paperback)
by Herbert M. Shelton (Author)

Seems like there are some very similar sounding books and websites out now:

http://fasting.com

http://fasting.ws

Here are some other books that seem enticing but which I have never read:

Juice Fasting and Detoxification: Use the Healing Power of Fresh Juice to Feel Young and Look Great : The Fastest Way to Restore Your Health by Steve Meyerowitz

Fasting and Eating for Health: A Medical Doctor's Program for Conquering Disease (Paperback)
by Joel Fuhrman (Author),

Review

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