


Benefits of fasting

  1. Fasting provides the body with the opportunity for a ‘physiological rest’ which allows the speeding up of detoxification and healing processes. A demonstration of this was provided by fasting treatment in Japan of people poisoned by toxic cooking oil, in which ‘dramatic’ relief was seen after seven to ten day fasts (American Journal of Industrial Medicine (1984) 5:10-53), and also by treatment of acute pancreatitis where fasting was found to be preferable to drugs or other therapy (Digestion (1984) 30:224-30).



John Mann, writing in Secrets of Life Extension (Harbor, San Francisco, 1980) said: ‘The effectiveness of fasting as a life extension measure is fairly well backed by experimental evidence.’ He describes one research study in which rats were made to fast on one day out of three throughout their lives (normal eating on the other days). They achieved a 20 per cent increase in life span compared with non-fasted rats. This has nothing to do with calorie restriction, according to Mann, who cites enhanced general function and growth hormone stimulation as more likely factors.

Naturopathic medicine






  3. No-one who is currently taking prescription medication should fast unless under the supervision of an expert.


Technique for a short fast






  5. Take the day slowly, drinking water (it’s a good idea to add a mere touch of lemon juice to freshen your mouth) whenever thirsty and ensuring that through the day you drink no less than a litre and no more than three litres of water.













    2. a small bunch of grapes or

    3. a few prunes or
    4. a small bowl of live yogurt or

    Whichever of these you have, try to make each mouthful a meal in itself, chewing it thoroughly, even when in a liquid state. Take a long time eating this first ‘meal’, and then rest. An hour or so later have another of the choices offered on the list, in a slightly larger quantity.

Say that so far you have had some stewed apple at 4 pm, and a bowl of yogurt at 5:30 pm. Now, at around 7:30 to 8 pm have a slightly more substantial intake of food, but only if you feel like it. If you are hungry have either a small mixed salad with cottage cheese, or a lightly boiled egg, or a slightly more substantial (thicker) soup. As before, chew each mouthful for as long as you can. If you are not hungry, wait until breakfast the next morning, at which time resume your normal food intake, although you will probably want a little less than usual.

How often should you fast?

It is an excellent idea to introduce a two day fast as a quarterly part of your programme. Two days of fasting, every three months, is not going to place any great strain on your leisure or social time, and offers a magnificent method of regularly ‘spring cleaning’ yourself.

Some people increase their frequency of fasting to every six weeks, and this is a matter of personal choice. The truth is that the more often you fast, within reason, the less obvious are the symptoms of nausea etc. and the greater are the benefits of clarity of mind and sense of abundant energy and well-being which follow.

What about one day fasts?

A 24 hour fast achieves something, but not nearly as much as the 48 hour version, and the benefits from a one day fast take a lot longer to show. Nevertheless, 24 hour fasts are better than no fasts at all, and they can certainly be applied on a six-weekly or even monthly basis. All other guidelines are the same as for the 48 hour fast given above.


A variation of the fasting technique is the introduction of periodic days, or several days at a time, on one food only – a monodiet. The foods involved are open to personal taste, and among those most successful and popular are grape diet (a period during which grapes only are eaten), rice diet (said to be ideal for helping reduce high blood pressure) and potato diet (like the rice diet, often used for specific health purposes, such as treatment of rheumatic disorders). However, for the purposes of our life extension programme the monodiet is not being suggested as a therapeutic measure, but as an alternative to complete fasting aimed at encouraging general well-being, and preventing health problems rather than trying to deal with them.

If a monodiet is decided on, then all the same rules apply as for fasting. A weekend is ideal, following the monodiet for 48 hours. Less care is needed in breaking the monodiet than would be the case for a fast, so that in a weekend setting the Sunday evening meal could simply revert to a normal one, rather than
going through the various gentle stages required to safely break a fast.

Effects such as headache etc. are possible on a monodiet, but less intensely so than on a fast. Monodiets are recommended for people who wish to avoid the rigours of fasting but who want to increase the detoxification/health enhancing effects which fasting offers. They achieve the same thing as fasting but very much more slowly.

When eating whatever food has been selected, a small amount (say 6 or 7 grapes, or an ounce or two of cooked rice) should be very well chewed whenever hunger is felt, which could be seven or eight times during the day. The total amount eaten should be small (no more than a pound of cooked rice or a pound of grapes through the day). In between, drink water as required.

Raw food




Chelation therapy




He goes on to describe an important finding in Switzerland:

Free radical inhibition by EDTA may explain the recently
published observation of Blumer in Switzerland, who reported a 90 per cent reduction in deaths from cancer in a large group of chelated patients (they had all been chelated
following a lead toxicity scare in their area) who had been
carefully followed over an 18 year period. When compared
with a statistically matched control group (who had received
no chelation therapy) Blumer reported a ten times greater
death rate from cancer in the untreated group, compared to the
death rate of the patients who had been treated with EDTA.
A greatly reduced incidence of cardiovascular disease was also

Here then were people, all living in similar city environments, of the same age and sex, and eating roughly the same diets, who had a 10-fold difference in incidence of cancer, with the only difference between them being that some had received chelation therapy some 20 years earlier, and others had not.

As described earlier, it is now largely a matter of accepted medical fact that free radical damage plays a major part in the onset of cancer and in developing the scene for cardiovascular disease, and EDIA removes this risk dramatically by chelating surplus ionic metals from the system. Elmer Cranton has documented the benefits of EDIA therapy to people suffering cardiovascular and other diseases in his book Bypassing Bypass, and I have given my explanation of its value in my 1991 book Chelation Therapy. Chelation therapy’s only drawback is its cost, since it is generally only available privately unless you are suffering from obvious heavy metal toxicity.

Chelation therapy involves a series of infusions of EDIA in a solution into a vein, a process which takes up to 90 minutes, and which needs to be repeated as much as 20 times over a three month period in order to get maximum benefits. If you wish to learn more about this remarkable and useful approach to switching off free radical pathology you are referred to one of the books just mentioned.

In the next chapter I deal with the usefulness of additional supplementation to augment and support the calorie restriction programme.


Written by Leon Chaitow ND DO MRO

Explore Wellness in 2021