It’s almost spring which means it’s time to fast. Today, more than any previous time in human history, fasting holds the key to good health. Realizing that the vast majority of our human suffering is caused by wrong, unnatural eating, combined with the failure to periodically remove accumulated toxins, fasters become nine times as conscious about what they put into their bodies, post-fast, for solid reasons: they enjoy what it feels like being closer to optimum health and happiness, plus they’ve worked hard to clean their body.
Finding a universal definition of fasting is a challenge. Some physicians, including Elson Haas, M.D., author of Staying Healthy with Nutrition (Celestial Arts Press, 1992) recommend both water and juice fasting. According to Haas, “The potential for developing problems, like excessive weight loss and nutritional deficiencies, is maximized with lengthy, non-caloric or water fasts and minimized with juice fasting of reasonable length, such as one to two weeks.”
Others, such as Gregory Haag, M.D., a natural hygienist and proponent of fasting, say that juice fasting is a misnomer because “fasting only occurs in the absence of all nutritional sustenance from outside sources (when pure distilled water is the only substance taken by mouth).” At his treatment centers, GLH Center in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. and Mountain Mist in Waynesville, N.C., where he is health director, fasting is incorporated into patients’ regimens.
Frank D. Sabatino, D.C., Ph.D., health director of the Regency Health Resort and Spa in Hallandale, Fla., offers patients both complete water fasts (which he believes to be the only true fasting) and what he prefers to call “juice diets.” Sabatino is a former president of the International Association of Professional Natural Hygienists, a group that stresses fresh raw foods, exercise, fresh air and fasting as healing tools.