Food and Fasting for Healing and Health

If the body naturally detoxes every day, even while we sleep, why is it still important to detox with a juice cleanse or alkaline superfoods? Because the food we eat is not always healthy or alkaline; it may contain too much acid-producing processed flour, sugar, animal fat, and dairy. When we overeat, too many toxins are left in the body. Stress is another reason; too much work and too little sleep will create imbalances in the body’s digestive ecology.

The body’s digestive system has two main functions: bringing nutrients in and removing toxins.  When we digest food and liquids, the nutrients are absorbed into the bloodstream and used by the body’s cells for fuel. What the blood doesn’t use to keep our cells, muscles, nerves, and bones energized and healthy is excreted through urine, skin, and stool as toxins.

Scientists today are calling our digestive system the “second brain.” This digestive brain is highly sophisticated and intimately linked to our immune system. When we are under stress or eat the wrong type or too much food, our immune system is also compromised. This ecological crisis in our digestive system is one of the leading causes of autoimmune diseases such as thyroid imbalances, lupus, fibromyalgia, arthritis, and more.

How does this happen? Stress causes indigestion and acid reflux, and so does eating too many hard-to-digest foods, such as red meats, cookies, pizza, and ice cream. Overeating under stress, and especially if we overeat foods that have a lot of animal fat and sugar, is the main cause of indigestion, constipation, and eventually a reduced immune system. In fact, the combination of overeating and stress is one of the most common causes of illness in today’s fast-paced, fast-food world.

Even if we don’t eat too many fatty and sugary foods and our lives are relatively stress-free, a juice fast can still benefit our health by regularly detoxing the body. A juice fast gives the body time to rest and rejuvenate by flooding the bloodstream with easy-to-digest superfoods, so the digestive organs can take a well-deserved vacation and release long-accumulated fats and toxins.

Studies with rats have found that fasting increases longevity and reduces the risk of the three most common lifestyle diseases in our culture: cancer, diabetes, and heart disease.  Regular fasting and a healthy lifestyle have also been found to increase lifespan by changing our genetic makeup and literally extending our telomeres, the genes responsible for regulating lifespan.

Juice fasting is a powerful, fun, and very tasty way to improve our health and well-being. In summary, juice fasting does what the body knows best: it helps us to easily ingest super-nutrients and to effectively expel the body’s long-held toxins. Juice fasting is the most effective way to ingest and digest nutrients and to expel what the body does not need. When the body can do that regularly, it will experience balance and rejuvenation—quite naturally.

About The Author

Ramesh Bjonnes

Ramesh Bjonnes has been teaching and writing about yoga philosophy and history for the past 25 years. He is the co-founder of the Prama Institute, a yoga retreat center in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, USA, where he is director of the Prama Wellness Center. He is the author of three books on yoga and Tantra, including A Brief History of Yoga. His forthcoming book is titled The Lost Teachings of Tantra. Websites: www.prama.org  www.rameshbjonnes.org