Joel Fuhrman has been another prominent figure in the development of the contemporary natural hygiene movement. Fuhrman, a board-certified family physician and researcher on nutrition, specializes in preventing and reversing disease through nutritional and natural methods (Fuhrman, 1995, back cover). Fuhrman is an outspoken promoter of natural hygiene, veganism, and fasting. According to Fuhrman (1995), “There is nothing that can be taken that will ever accomplish the biochemical changes that occur when we undergo a complete fast” (p. 11).
When Fuhrman was 20 years old, he was a world-class athlete and Olympic ice skating hopeful. After suffering a severe heel injury, he was unable to walk for almost a year. As a last resort, a U.S. Olympic Committee orthopedist suggested that Fuhrman undergo an experimental surgery. Remembering that his father had used fasting to treat his arthritis, Fuhrman decided it might be his best chance at recovery. Shortly after his realization, Fuhrman went to Dr. Shelton’s Health School in San Antonio, Texas. Fuhrman spent 46 days fasting at Shelton’s and lost 62 pounds, dropping to a mere 88 pounds. After the fast, he was not only able to walk again, he returned to figure skating and placed third in a world championship (Fuhrman, 1995). His experience inspired him to attend University of Pennsylvania medical school, where he earned a medical degree and specialized in nutritional medicine.
In 1995, Fuhrman wrote Fasting and Eating for Health: A Medical Doctor’s Program for Conquering Disease, one of the most comprehensive and well-received books on water-only fasting in medicine. The first sentence of Fuhrman’s book made his beliefs clear: “Therapeutic fasting accelerates the healing process and allows the body to recover from serious disease in a dramatically short period of time” (p. 1).
Fasting and Eating for Health: A Medical Doctor’s Program for Conquering Disease offers precise diet and fasting programs to relieve a variety of conditions. In his book, you’ll also learn:
- How to use fasting to lose weight
- How to start, what to expect, how to reintroduce food to maintain maximum benefits
- How to work with a physician for longer fasts (more than 3 days)
In his book, Fuhrman discussed how he successfully used fasting to help patients with conditions such as diabetes, arthritis, lupus, psoriasis, eczema, ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease, and cardiovascular diseases. After undergo water-only fasting under his supervision, patients were often able to get off of medication, avoid surgery, and, in many cases, illnesses were completely eliminated. In summary, Fuhrman said, “Fasting typically receives results whereas others have failed” (p. 20).
Author: Joel Fuhrman
Year of Release: 1995