Fasting and Eating for Health: A Medical Doctor's Program for Conquering Disease
by Joel Fuhrman
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Book Summary Information
Author: Joel FuhrmanForeword: Neal D. Barnard
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1995-04-15
ISBN: 031218719X
Number of pages: 255
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
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Book Reviews of Fasting and Eating for Health: A Medical Doctor's Program for Conquering Disease
Book Review: Fhurman: Fasting - a Fast-Track to Health!
Summary: 5 Stars
Fuhrman's sourcebook on fasting is fascinating. Although over the years I read a few of Paul Bragg's books, Bragg's books, while clearly empowering, are a bit bombasting in style and read more like "amazing fasting adventures" rather than serious literature about fasting. As a result, I remained skeptical about fasting until several years ago I stumbled upon Fuhrman's writings.
Fuhrman, I feel is a new Paul Bragg, but better: a seeming paragon of health himself, he is, like Paul Bragg, leading by example, but, unlike Paul Bragg, he offers the educational reassurance of a board-certified physician, most evident in his lucent and clear presentation style. Perhaps, the best way to do his book justice is offer a prospective buyer a few brief excerpts that illustrate both the calm rationality of his positions and the accessibility of his writing style.
Fuhrman offers an enticing rationale for fasting:
Fasting, he writes, "is a state of relative physiological rest." "Health is the normal state. Most chronic disease is the inevitable consequence of living a life-style that places disease-causing stressors on the human organism. Fasting gives the body an interlude without those stressors so that it can speedily repair or accomplish healing that could not otherwise occur in the feeding state. Fasting stops the continual work of the digestive tract, whose activity can drain the body of energy and divert the healing processes." (pp. 7-8).
Fuhrman's writing on autolysis shines with a sense of awe for the homeostatic wisdom of the body:
"The innate wisdom of the body is such that, while fasting, it will consume for its sustenance superfluous tissues, carefully conserving vital tissues and organs. The body's wondrous ability to autolyze (ore self-digest) and destroy needless tissue such as fat, tumors, blood vessel plaque, and other nonessential and diseased tissues, while conserving essential tissues, gives the fast the ability to restore physiological youth to the system." (p. 16).
Fuhrman debunks the myths and misperceptions of fasting:
"The body will not starve or in general even be hungry while fasting because it is `eating'. It is consuming the substances the individual consumed last week, last month, last year that have been converted into body tissue. In fact, the symptoms of hunger generally disappear by the second day of the fast. This illustrates that the body has entered a fasting, and (lean) tissue-sparing metabolism" (p. 12).
"The average individual (not overweight) would have to fast for approximately 40 days or more to exhaust nutrient reserves" (p. 13).
He contrasts juice fasts (very low calorie diets, "supplemented fasting," or, essentially, pseudo-fasts) with water-only fasts and cautions against juice fasts:
"Normally, if we don't eat for a day or two, we start to utilize muscle tissue to make the glucose needed by the body, since glucose can be manufactured from amino acids stored in our muscles. If we continue to fast, however, the body senses what is occurring and attempt to conserve its lean muscle mass by a few different mechanisms. <...> A special adaptation occurs in the fasting state whereby the brain can fuel itself with ketones instead of glucose. By the third day of total fast, the liver starts generating a large quantity of ketones from the body's fat stores. <...> This significantly limits muscle wasting. <...> With severely restricted diets, like juice fasts, the body does lose weight, but the brain and other organs do not subsist mainly on ketones. Therefore, proportionately to weight lost, juice fasts and severely restrictive diets cause to lose more lean body tissue and less fatty tissue than do total fast" (pp. 11-12).
"Juice fasting also does not have the powerful anti-inflammatory properties of the pure water fast that are essential for recovery in autoimmune illnesses" (p. 9).
In describing the healing/detoxifying aspects of fasting, Fuhrman, once again, argues for total (water-only) fasts over juice pseudo-fasts:
"Only when there is total abstinence from all calories do we observe waste products being heavily excreted from the breath, the tongue, the urine, and the skin. <...> This kind of dramatic detoxification cannot occur with supplemented eating plans." (p. 10).
In terms of the organization of the book, Fuhrman offers problem-focused rationale, with a separate chapter on how fasting can be useful in recovery from diabetes, autoimmune disease, cardiovascular problems, and hypoglycemia and headaches. He offers a separate chapter on overeating and how to use fasting to normalizing eating style. For the professional or particularly curious reader, Fuhrman offers a chapter with additional "technical information" about what happens in the body during fasting. This is, perhaps, where Fuhrman's coverage of fasting differs the most from Paul Bragg's.
Fuhrman's book ends with a no-nonsense highly-detailed discussion of what to expect during the first fast. Having enticed the reader to try out a fast, he shares a step-by-step know-how of fasting. For example, on the issue of vitamin supplementation during fasting, he writes: "levels of vitamins and minerals are exceedingly stable during the fast and, if normal to begin with, remain normal throughout the period of fasting" and "Even in prolonged fasts (those lasting from 20 to 40 days) no deficiency develops, illustrating that the body has the innate ability to utilize its stored reserves in a highly exacting and balanced manner." (p. 9).
In conclusion of this review, I want to highlight Fuhrman's writings on the subject of hunger sensations (which he redefines as withdrawal symptoms rather than true hunger), as these have an important implication as to the "next step" in the process of preparation for a fast:
"True hunger is a mouth and throat sensation, felt in the same spot that one feels thirst. Gnawing in the stomach, stomach cramping, headaches, and generalized weakness from not eating or skipping a meal or two are experienced only by those who have been eating the standard American diet with all its shortcomings. <...> Those who have been consuming healthier, low-fat, low-protein, plant-based diet for months prior to the fast typically experience no such typical hunger pains when they fast. <...> Symptoms traditionally thought of as hunger symptoms, are not really symptoms of hunger. <...> These symptoms are signs of withdrawal that indicate healing is beginning when the body has the opportunity to rest from the continual intake of food." (p. 18).
While Fuhrman appears to have tried to pack two books into one - at least, on the level of the book cover ("Fasting and Eating for Health), - the current book is largely about fasting, and, in my opinion, does not do justice to his particular vision of "healthy eating." With this in mind, it would appear to make sense to first read Fuhrman's "Live to Eat" (which introduces the essentially Vegan, plant-based eating lifestyle that he refers to in the above cited paragraph), as a prelude to any fast.
Pavel Somov, Ph.D.
Author of "Eating the Moment: 141 Mindful Practices to Overcome Overeating One Meal at a Time" (New Harbinger, Nov. 2008).
More Fasting and Eating for Health: A Medical Doctor's Program for Conquering Disease reviews:
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Summary of Fasting and Eating for Health: A Medical Doctor's Program for Conquering Disease
Precise diet and fasting programs to relieve headache, hypoglycemia, rheumatoid arthritis, asthma, heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, colitis, psoriasis, lupus, and uterine fibroids.
Using 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)
Using 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)
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