Fasting to Protect the Immune System

“In recent years science has learned that the human immune system is much more complicated than we thought.” Dr. Philip F. Incao, M.D.

The immune system is the most aggressive age eraser for you. It protects your cells and maintains your overall health through its production of antibodies (specific proteins) to fight against antigens (invaders to your body system).

You body toxins impair and weaken your immune system.

Sources of toxins

All these years, knowingly or unknowingly, you may have poisoned your body with toxins coming from many different sources:

Pesticides and herbicides from agricultural products

Industrial wastes

Exhaust fumes from factories and automobiles

Polluted waters

Irradiation from use of cellular phones and towers, microwave ovens, power plants, radio satellite transmissions

Food contamination

Chemicals in food processing

Toxic pharmaceuticals

Toxic emotions and thoughts

Your body may have ingested these toxins through absorption, consumption, inhalation, and radiation, creating health hazards to your immune system, leading to the development of many autoimmune diseases.

Heavy metals, such as aluminum, cadmium, lead, and mercury, can cause damages to your immune system. Minerals, which make up approximately four percent of your total body weight, are essential for your immune system and energy production. However, heavy metals can also damage your DNA, adversely change neurons in your brain, elevate your cholesterol level and blood pressure, and deplete your bones of calcium.

Common symptoms of a toxic body

The toxins in your body may manifest physically, mentally, and spiritually in the form of bad breath, constipation, chronic fatigue, frequent gas and bloating, hemorrhoids, irritability, mental and spiritual lethargy, overweight, and recurrent headaches.

Internal cleansing

Internal cleansing is detoxification, which involves dislodging your body toxins and waste products from within and between cells and joints, and transporting these wastes from your body for removal. The benefits of internal cleansing are as follows:

Clean and clear skin

Disease prevention and treatment

Joint and muscle flexibility

Weight loss and effective weight management

Fasting to detoxify

Fasting is internal cleansing and rejuvenation—one of the most efficient ways to detoxify your body of toxins. Fasting is to recovery, as sleep is to recuperation.

Fasting is voluntary abstinence from food and drink, except water, for an extended period. Fasting is the best way to detoxify your body.

The benefits of fasting are many, and they are as follows:

Fasting accelerates the self-healing process of your body because fasting temporarily stops the continuing work of your digestive system, and therefore instrumental in reserving that energy for your self-healing.

Fasting benefits your cardiovascular system by softening your blood vessels to help decrease your blood pressure.

Fasting activates the immune system in your body to protect you from disease.

Fasting relieves the burden of not only your digestive tract, but also your liver and kidneys, which have to work extra hard to remove additives and toxins accumulated in your body through improper eating. Fasting removes the cause of any chronic disease you may have by removing the toxins, not just the symptoms, as in the case of medication.

Fasting enhances your body’s metabolism to control and manage your body weight.

To lose one pound of body weight, you need to burn up 3,000 calories more than you consume—which is virtually impossible unless you exercise vigorously. The body is composed of mostly water. Sodium in food retains water. As soon as you fast, huge amount of water is eliminated or flushed out from your system (that is how and why fasting cleanses), despite the large quantity of water you consume. In weight control, calories do count. In fasting, there is nothing—no calorie, no protein, no carbohydrate. The rate of losing weight is directly proportionate to the degree of your overweight.

Fasting enhances your taste, hearing, and eyesight. The ancient Greeks utilized fasting to purify their bodies and to sharpen their minds. The American Indians used fasting to induce better vision.

By conserving the energy otherwise used in digesting food, fasting provides you with more, not less, energy, contrary to the myth that fasting makes your body weak. Remember, eating and digesting food expends your energy too.

Fasting may alleviate your body pain and rid your body of drug dependence. Fasting facilitates you, if you are a smoker, to quit smoking during a fast.

Fasting slows down your aging process by keeping your arteries young (often hardened by cholesterol, fats, inorganic minerals and fibrous tissues).

Fasting facilitates the removal of accumulated substances that may damage cell functions, thereby slowing down your aging process and extending your lifespan. By removing stresses on your cellular cells, fasting may give your face a more radiant complexion, with fewer wrinkles. Rejuvenation in the skin helps your anti-aging. You would be no older in the body in the year’s end than you were in the beginning. Fasting rejuvenates an aging body.

The process of fasting

In the process of fasting, eat more vegetables and fruits prior to a fast; reduce the consumption of meat, and refrain from eating any meat the day before a fast.

On the first day, you may feel pangs of hunger, with a white coating on your tongue.

On the second day, you may begin to feel gradual dissipation of hunger, with more white coating on your tongue.

On the third day, you may feel complete disappearance of hunger and the clearance of coating on your tongue.

The first three days of a fast are most challenging. However, once the challenge is overcome, you are well on the way to rejuvenation of your entire body.

What to do during a fast

Drinking plenty of water is required since your body may easily become dehydrated due to the discharge of body fluids.

Continue your normal daily routine activities, but avoid all strenuous activities, especially those outdoor ones. Exercise as normal.

Bathe more frequently. Brush your body to stimulate your skin to rid toxins from your body.

Stop taking your daily vitamins while fasting.

Stop smoking, if you are a smoker. That is as good a time as any to quit smoking for good.

Stop taking medications, but consult your physician first regarding any prescribed medication.

How to break a fast

Break a fast on fruits and vegetables juice. An apple is ideal for breaking a fast.

Gradually increase your intake of solid food. Eat slowly and chew thoroughly. Overeating too soon may cause abdominal pain and even vomiting.

Avoid taking salt and pepper immediately after a fast, lest they damage your stomach lining.

Continue to drink plenty of water after a fast.

Remember, the longer the fast, the less you should eat at the first meal.

The duration of a fast is often determined by: a clear tongue and clean breath, indicating that the cleansing is more or less complete.

The length of a fast depends very much on an individual.

Fasting is the best way to remove toxins from your body to enhance your immune system to remove some of the symptoms of myasthenia gravis, which is one of the many autoimmune diseases due to a dysfunctional immune system.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau

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