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Starvation

Categories: Fasting
Sources: How And When To Be Your Own Doctor

It is true that ethical medical doctors use the least-risky

procedure they are allowed to use. But this does not mean there are

no risks to allopathic treatment. The medical doctor justifies

taking the risks by saying that the risk/reward ratio is the best

possible. Any sick person is already at risk. Life comes with only

one guarantee: that none of us gets out of it alive.



Compared to the risks of allopa
hic medicine, fasting is a far safer

method of treating disease. The oft-repeated scare stories medical

doctors and their allies circulate about fasting are not true, and

it is important to remember that none of these people portraying

fasting as evil and dangerous have ever fasted themselves--I'll put

money on that one. Or, on the slim possibility that someone telling

fasting horror stories did actually not eat for 24 hours (probably

because some accident or acute illness prevented them), they had a

terrible experience because they didn't understand the process, were

highly toxic, and were scared to death the whole time.



Or worse yet they fasted for a short period with an "open mind"--a

very dangerous state in which to approach anything new. I have found

through considerable experience with people professing to have open

minds that the expression "I'm open minded" usually means that

someone has already made up their mind and new data just passes

straight through their open mind--in one ear and out the other. Or

sometimes, the phrase "open mind" means a person that does not

believe any information has reality and is entirely unable to make

up their mind.



The most commonly leveled criticism of fasting is that in its

efforts to survive self-imposed starvation the body metabolizes

vital tissue, not just fat, and therefore, fasting is damaging,

potentially fatally damaging. People who tell you this will also

tell you that fasters have destroyed their heart muscle or ruined

their nervous system permanently. But this kind of damage happen

only when a person starves to death or starves to a point very close

to death, not when someone fasts.



There is a huge difference between fasting and starvation. Someone

starving is usually eating, but eating poorly and inadequately,

eating scraps of whatever is available such as sugar, white flour,

rancid grease, shoe leather, or even dirt. Frequently a starving

person is forced to exercise a great deal as they struggle to

survive and additionally is highly apprehensive. Or someone starving

to death is confined to a small space, may become severely

dehydrated too and is in terror. Fear is very damaging to the

digestive process, and to the body in general; fear speeds up the

destruction of vital tissue. People starve when trekking vast

distances through wastelands without food to eat, they starved in

concentration camps, buried in mind disasters, they starve during

famines and starve while being tortured in prisons.



Until water fasting goes on past the point where all fatty tissues

and all abnormal deposits have been burned for fuel and recycled for

the nutritional elements they contain, vital muscle tissues and

organs are not consumed. And as long as the body contains sufficient

nutritional reserves, vital organs and essential tissues are rebuilt

and maintained. In fact the body has a great deal of intelligence

that we don't give it credit for. It knows exactly which cells are

essential to survival, which ones are not. The body knows which

cells are abnormal deposits, and it goes to work to metabolize them

first. For example, the body recognizes arthritic deposits, cysts,

fibroids, and tumors as offensive parts of the landscape, and

obligingly uses them for foods in preference to anything else. A

starving (not fasting) body also knows precisely in what order of

priority body cells should be metabolized to minimize risk of death

or permanent disability.



After a starving body has reached skeletal condition, or where some

small amount of fat remains but nutritional reserves (vitamins and

minerals) are exhausted and there is insufficient nourishment

forthcoming, the body begins to consume nutrient-rich muscle and

organ tissue in a last-ditch effort to stay alive. Under these dire

circumstances, the least essential muscles and organs from the

standpoint of survival are metabolized first. For example, muscles

in the arms and legs would be consumed early in the process, the

heart muscle used only toward the very end. The very last part of

the body to be metabolized when one is starving and as has come very

close to death would be the brain and the nervous system.



Starvation begins where fasting ends, which is when real hunger

begins. If the return of hunger is ignored whenever it takes place,

whether it is in 30, 60, or 90 days depending upon body weight and

type of fast, at that point exactly, not a day before, starvation

begins very slowly. Usually it takes a considerable period of time

after that before death occurs. It is important to note that this

discussion applies only to the abstention from food, not water.

Death takes place very quickly in the absence of water.



The chart on the previous page shows numerically the phenomenal

ability of the body to protect the most essential tissues of the

body right up to the time of death. If a person fasted for 30 days,

the average time it takes for the return of hunger in a person that

is not overweight, and then ignored the return of hunger, and

continued to abstain from food--if the person could avoid forced

exercise, keep warm, and had enough hydration, it could take as much

as an additional 20 to 60 days to die of starvation! At death the

body would have experienced losses of 40 to 60 percent of its

starting body weight. (Ancel Keys et al, 1950) A emaciated person

can not afford to lose nearly as much weight as an obese person, and

death under conditions of starvation will occur earlier. In all

cases of starvation the brain, nerves, heart, lungs, kidneys and

liver remain largely intact and functional to the very end. During a

fast, it is almost impossible to damage essential organs, unless of

course the person creates the damage by fears about the process, or

by internalizing the fears of others. If those fears are present,

the fast should not be attempted.



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