Nature Cure by Henry Lindlahr (best short books to read txt) 📕

the negative, sensitive type on prolonged fasts and thus to expose them to the dangers just described is little short of criminal. Such patients need an abundance of the most positive animal and vegetable foods in order to build up and strengthen their physical bodies and their magnetic envelopes, which form the dividing and protecting wall between the terrestrial plane and the magnetic field.

A negative vegetarian diet, consisting principally of fruits, nuts, cereal and pulses, but deficient in animal foods (the dairy products, eggs, honey) and in the vegetables growing in or near the ground may result in conditions similar to those which accompany prolonged fasting.

Animal foods are elaborated under the influence of a higher life-element* than that controlling the vegetable kingdom, and foods derived from the animal kingdom are necessary to develop and stimulate the positive qualities in man.

*This subject will be treated more fully in another volume of this series entitled “Natural Dietitics.”

In the case of the psychic, who is already deficient in the physical (animal) and overdeveloped in the spiritual qualities, it is especially necessary, in order to restore and maintain the lost equilibrium, to build up in him the animal qualities.

How to Take an Occasional Therapeutic Fast

Before, during and after a therapeutic fast, everything must be done to keep elimination active, in order to prevent the reabsorption of the toxins that are being stirred up and liberated.

Fasting involves rapid breaking down of the tissues. This creates great quantities of worn-out cell materials and other morbid substances. Unless these poison-producing accumulations are promptly eliminated, they will be reabsorbed into the system and cause autointoxication.

To prevent this, bowels, kidneys and skin must be kept in active condition. The diet, for several days before and after the fast, should consist largely of uncooked fruits and vegetables and the different methods of natural stimulative treatment to assure proper bowel action should be systematically applied.

During a fast, every bit of vitality must be economized; therefore the passive treatments are to be preferred to active exercise, although a certain amount of exercise (especially walking) daily in the open air accompanied by deep breathing should not be neglected.

While fasting, intestinal evacuation usually ceases, especially where there is a natural tendency to sluggishness of the bowels. Injections [salt and baking soda enemas are best] are therefore in order and during prolonged fasts may be taken every few days.

By prolonged fasts we understand fasts that last from one to four weeks, short fasts being those of one, two or three days’ duration.

Moderate drinking is beneficial during a fast as well as at other times; but excessive consumption of water, the so-called flushing of the system, is very injurious. Under ordinary conditions from five to eight glasses of water a day are probably sufficient; the quantity consumed must be regulated by the desire of the patient.

Those who are fasting should mix their drinking water with the juice of acid fruits, preferably lemon, orange or grapefruit. These juices act as eliminators and are fine natural antiseptics.

Never use distilled water, whether during a fast or at any other time. Deprived of its own mineral constituents, distilled water leeches the mineral elements and organic salts out of the tissues of the body and thereby intensifies dysemic [blood deterioration] conditions.

While fasting, the right mental attitude is all-important. Unless you can do it with perfect equanimity, without fear or misgiving, do not fast at all. Destructive mental conditions may more than offset the beneficial effects of the fast.

To recapitulate: Never undertake a prolonged fast unless you have been properly prepared by natural diet and treatment, and never without the guidance of a competent Nature Cure doctor.

Fasting in Chronic Diseases

At all times some of our patients can be found fasting; but they do not begin until the right physiological and psychological moment has arrived, until the fast is indicated. When the organism, or rather the individual cell, is ready to begin the work of elimination, then assimilation should cease for the time being, because it interferes with the excretory processes going on in the system.

To fast before the system is ready for it, means mineral salts starvation and defective elimination.

Given a vigorous, positive constitution, encumbered with too much flesh and with a tendency to chronic constipation, rheumatism, gout, apoplexy and other diseases due to food poisoning, a fast may be indicated from the beginning. But it is different with persons of the weak, negative type.

Ordinarily, the organism resembles a huge sponge, which absorbs the elements of nutrition from the digestive tract. During a fast the process is reversed, the sponge is being squeezed and gives off the impurities contained in it.

However, this is a purely mechanical process and deals only with the mechanical aspect of disease: with the presence of waste matter in the system. It does not take into consideration the chemical aspect of disease. We have learned that most of the morbid matter in the system has its origin in the acid waste products of starchy and protein digestion.

In rheumatism and gout, the colloid (glue-like) and earthy deposits collect in the joints and muscular tissues; in arteriosclerosis, in the arteries and veins; in paralysis, epilepsy and kindred diseases, in brain and nerve tissues.

The accumulation of these waste products is due, in turn, to a deficiency in the system of the alkaline, acid-binding and acid-eliminating mineral elements. In point of fact, almost every form of disease is characterized by a lack of these organic mineral salts in blood and tissues.

Stones, gravel (calculi), etc., grow in acid blood only, and must be dissolved and eliminated by rendering the blood alkaline. This is accomplished by the absorption of the alkaline salts, contained most abundantly in the juicy fruits, the leafy and juicy vegetables, the hulls of cereals and in milk.

How, then, are these all-important solvents and eliminators to be supplied to the organism by total abstinence from food?

Prolonged fasting undoubtedly lowers the patient’s vitality and powers of resistance. But natural elimination of waste products and systemic poisons (healing crises) depends upon increased vitality and activity of the organism and the individual cells that compose it.

For these reasons we find, in most cases, that proper adjustment of the diet, both as to quality and quantity, together with the different forms of natural corrective and stimulative treatment, must precede the fasting.

The great majority of chronic patients have become chronics because their skin, kidneys, intestines and other organs of elimination are in a sluggish, atrophied condition. As a result, their system is overloaded with morbid matter.

Moreover, during the fast the system has to live on its own tissues, which are being broken down rapidly. This results in the production and liberation of additional large quantities of morbid matter and poisons, which must be eliminated promptly to prevent their reabsorption.

However, the atrophic condition of the organs of elimination makes this impossible and there are not enough alkaline mineral elements to neutralize the destructive acids. Therefore the impurities remain and accumulate in the system and may cause serious aggravations and complications.

Is it not wiser first of all to build up the blood on a normal basis by natural diet and to put the organs of elimination in good working order by the natural methods of treatment before fasting is enforced? This is, indeed, the only rational procedure and will always be followed by the best possible results.

When, under the influence of a rational diet, the blood has regained its normal composition, when mechanical obstructions to the free flow of blood and nerve currents have been removed by manipulative treatment, when skin, kidneys, bowels, nerves and nerve centers, in fact, every cell in the body has been stimulated into vigorous activity by the various methods of natural treatment, then the cells themselves begin to eliminate their morbid encumbrances. The waste materials are carried in the blood stream to the organs of elimination and incite them to acute reactions or healing crises in the form of diarrheas, catarrhal discharges, fevers, inflammations, skin eruptions, boils, abscesses, etc.

Now the sponge is being squeezed and cleansed of its impurities in a natural manner. The mucous membranes of stomach and bowels are called upon to assist in the work of housecleaning; hence the coated tongue, lack of appetite, digestive disturbances, nausea, biliousness, sour stomach, fermentation, flatulence and occasionally vomiting and purging.

These digestive disturbances are always accompanied by mental depression, the blues, homesickness, irritability, fear, hopelessness, etc.

With the advent of these cleansing and healing crises the physiological and psychological moment for fasting has arrived. All the processes of assimilation are at a standstill. The entire organism is eliminating.

We have learned that these healing crises usually arrive during the sixth week of natural treatment.

To take food now would mean to force assimilation and thereby to stop elimination and perchance to interfere with or to check a beneficial healing crisis.

Therefore we regard it as absolutely essential to stop eating as soon as any form of acute elimination makes its appearance and we do not give any food except acid fruit juices diluted with water until all signs of acute eliminative activity have subsided, whether this require a few days or a few weeks or a few months.

Some time ago I treated a severe case of typhoid malaria. No food, except water mixed with a little orange or lemon juice, passed the lips of the patient for eight weeks. When all disease symptoms had disappeared, we allowed a few days for the rebuilding of the intestinal mucous membranes. Thereafter food was administered with the usual precautions. The patient gained rapidly and within six weeks weighed more than before the fever. During the entire period I saw the patient only twice, the simple directions being carried out faithfully by his relatives.