Biblical Fasting and How it Activates a Physician Within

Fasting is not new to those people who are reading the Bible. It was mentioned 17 times in different verses. It is time tested and a tradition and maybe an ancient secret of health. During the times of our forefather, their life expectancy was higher than ours today. Though medication is not as advance as what we have now, they still lived more years than our generation. So what’s the secret of their health? The factual answer is fasting.

 Fasting was used by the ancient Greek and became part of their normal life. It is the oldest and most impressive dietary mediation. It gives significant help to improve their concentration and weight loss. And in some studies, it is linked to prevent insulin resistance and prevent the rapid aging process. Hippocrates of Cos known as the father of modern medicine prescribed and practiced the method of fasting. He quoted

“To eat when you are sick, is to feed your illness”

Hippocrates

Other Greek historian and Philosopher like Plutarch, Plato and Aristotle were supporters of fasting.

If we study the Bible about fasting, it is all related to purifying or cleansing the body and soul. It is scientifically proven effective but somehow we missed and overlooked its potential benefit.

However, people are now getting interested in this dietary intervention. Searches on the internet about this process have spiked for about 10,000 percent in 2010 and increasing rapidly every year.

What is Biblical fasting?

Fasting is simply saying “controlling yourself from eating”. The way of discretion of food for many purposes, like spiritual, health consciousness, or any other reason.

Biblical fasting refers to someone practicing a fast to improve their spiritual condition.

They surpass the addiction and attachment to food and keep in their mind that the man can’t live in bread alone. As a result, the mind gets clearer and spiritual relationships becomes broader.

Physically, fasting permits the organism to clean our bodies. From what we eat, vast of toxins are invading the body that causes diseases. Fasting can be a solution because it has wide-ranging therapeutic benefits.

Life is about balance. The same goes for fasting and eating, it should be balanced. While we eat, all of our food is the cause of raising the insulin level in our body. Eating the right food can intercept higher insulin levels but not to lower it down. 

If all our food causes insulin to rise, then to stop eating is the answer to drop it down.

Science explanation about biblical fasting method

Our body has Insulin, a hormone responsible for food energy storage.

If we eat, insulin stored excess energy in two separate ways. Carbohydrates from what we eat crushed into a single glucose unit(sugar) called glycogen for short term energy storage. 

However, the space for sugar storage is limited, therefore, all excess carbohydrates are converted by the liver into fats that can be stored in different parts of the body.

Consequently, there is two food energy storage system in our body. One is glycogen that has limited storage space but easily accessible, and the other one is fat, which has unlimited space but difficult to access.

In fasting, the body reverses the process. If there’s no energy coming from food, the insulin levels fall. The body will send a signal to start burning the stored energy and pull out the glucose. As a result, blood glucose falls.

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Introducing Body’s Inner Physician

Glycogen can power the body for about 36 hours. After that, it will use the stored fat for energy.

As a person is living, there is called metabolic fire. As long as the metabolic fire is burning it needs

something for fuel. But as we fast, we stop to supply the energy needed. So, the metabolic fire will start to eat its inner reserve.

Then the body’s inner physician will clean the house by its infinite cleaning wisdom. It first eliminates those not so essential in the body like toxins, waste, and superfluous morbid humor.

The Inner Physician knows exactly what to do, who’s to eliminate, and what to metabolize. This process is called Autolysis

Fasting allows your digestive organs to rest. Rather than digesting food, their enzymes can be used to digest and eliminate toxic waste from the body via the gastrointestinal tract.

After cleaning and eliminating the toxic waste and morbid humors, the body will show signals that the wastes are eliminated and passed off.

These are the signals:

• Head: headaches, vertigo, dizziness, wooziness, lightheadedness
• Nose or Sinuses: sneezing, runny nose, itching, stinging, postnasal drip
• Lungs: chest congestion, phlegm discharge, and foul odors, wheezing
• Skin: Acne, skin redness, abnormal sweating, strange body odors, pustules
• Stomach: stomach cramping, nervous stomach, belching, bad breath
• Liver: a bitter taste in mouth, sore eyes, pain under the ribs on the right side, dull complexion
• Gall Bladder: colic spasm, pain underneath the liver area
• Intestines: foul-smelling gas, cramping, diarrhea, irritable bowel
• Kidney: Low back pain, weakness, and fatigue, frequent urination, strongly colored or smelling urine

After three days of detoxification, there is a severe and intense loss of weight and muscle mass. Within these three days, a significant change happens in the internal energy economy called ketosis. Ketosis is a process where the body burns fat to use for fuel because carbohydrates were not available.

Note: During the fast, the body detoxifies itself at night. It leaves residue in the tongue that has a foul smell and bitter taste. It is better to scrape this residue in the morning by using a tongue scraper or a spoon.

Kinds of fast and detoxification diet 

There are plenty of fasts and cleansing diet methods that can be used depending on your preferences and situation.

• Simple fast – this is simply skipping meal usually at dinner
• Juice fasting- this is a method where deeper and more thorough detoxification is desired. A ratio of 50/50 of fruits, vegetable juice, and purified water is diluted to provide a base level of calories and nutrients to sustain energy. Therefore, ketosis isn’t that extreme. Fruit and vegetable juices are therapeutic if properly chosen. It aids the healing process in chronic and degenerative conditions. It also prevents old fecal waste restrain in the colon from being reabsorbed into the body and bloodstream.
• Detoxification diets- Eating very light food, simple, balanced, and easy to digest food. It allows cleansing and detoxification while providing the body’s energy and nutritional needs. It is recommended to those who cannot withstand in more radical detoxification of water and juice fasting

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Things to do before fasting

• Ask those who experienced doing fast. So that you can have the idea of what is to expect.
• For long fast more than three days, better to check your physician or holistic health care professional. Especially with those health conditions like Asthma or type 2 Diabetes.
• Better to have a fasting program designed by a holistic health professional.
• Prepare yourself drinking plenty of water.

Breaking a fast

After fasting, the next question is how you break your fast? Anyone can fast, but it’s not easy to break the fast. The body should adopt in a gradual and step by step transition back to a normal diet. If a prolonged fast isn’t broken properly, the benefits of the fasts nullified because toxins and fecal matter can fill the gut and the bloodstream.

Here are some ways to break a fast.

• On the first day, start eating gentle foods. Introduce light food like smoothies because it has less fiber. Slowly introduce little by little foods to prevent overwhelming the digestive system
• On the second day, try a soup that has protein and carbs that easily digestible like lentil, legumes, or tofu. Avoid food with high fiber, heavy cream, and raw vegetables.
• On the third day, you can introduce whole fats products such as Almonds, walnuts, avocado, or dried fruits.
• On the fourth day gradually add cooked vegetables, healthy fats, and fermented foods such as yogurt or kefir.
• On the fifth day, you can now tolerate foods in your digestive system. Meat and fish, nuts, and seeds and poultry can be added. And you can enjoy the normal eating habit.

Overall

Fasting is biblical. It cleanses your body and preparing your soul to perfection. It is an overall Physician within our self. If you don’t believe in what the bible says, at least you can rely on science that proved the power of fasting.

Before asking a doctor if you are sick, try to listen first to your body. It will express the time when it is needed to fast.

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