The fever of Fasting For Detox is real, and people worldwide are eager to jump into such healthy practices, for health is wealth! The effectiveness of this kind of diet has been in the headlines now more than ever, as we are facing more health issues with every passing day.
Fasting for Detox
Building improved physical and mental health has become a pressing issue, and having a good diet constitutes a significant part of it. So, to feel alive from within, you must start treating your body like the temple it is and take all the precautions to win this battle of dealing with unwanted calories and an excess of harmful toxins.
Fasting, the deliberate avoidance of food, gives the body a rest, freeing large amounts of energy normally used by the digestive organs for use elsewhere. It is a an extremely rapid method of detoxification. Toxins are drawn out of cells and tissues throughout the body and eliminated, provided the organs of elimination are functioning well enough. Diseased cells are replaced with new healthy cells. Conditions in the body that could not be corrected on a normal diet are improved.
Fasting has been used for healing for centuries and has been mentioned in in all ancient medical texts. Hippocrates prescribed fasting as a means of healing. Animals are known to fast instinctively when they are sick or injured.
Elson Hass, MD, in his book The Detox Diet states:
“fasting is the single greatest natural healing therapy I know“.
He warns however that the various methods of fasting generate a high degree of detoxification, so, depending on the condition of the body, can be intense and may temporarily increase unwellness or be immediately helpful.
Let us now look at the different fasting diets you can follow to become renewed and rejuvenated.
Types of Fasting To Detox
Many studies have shown the sound effects of detoxification through fasting, and with good reason. Here are some famous kinds of fasting you can take up to stay clean and fit.
1. Water Fasting
Water fasting goes back to one of the oldest and unarguably the most popular types of fasting. As the name suggests, you intake only water, and there is absolutely no food in the picture. You can start with 24 hours initially and sometimes take up to 72 hours. People usually drink 2-3 liters of pure water daily in this fast. It’s important that you drink enough to flush out toxins and are not putting any toxins into your body.
However, do not get competitive on the first day and try to take the fasting up to several days. Understand your body first. If you wish to do it for longer, do it under medical supervision. Studies have revealed that when water fasting is done in animals and humans, it helps suppress genes that accelerate cancer cell growth. It also improves the efficacy of the chemotherapy process.
Fasting depletes glutathione
According to Dr Jeff Bland, Nutritional Biochemist and researcher, prolonged water fasting depletes glutathione. This amino acid is important for liver detoxification and also acts as an antioxidant. He pointed out that the herxheimer reactions that people can experience during water fasts are due to the liver being overwealmed with toxins released from cells that it cannot detox due to lack of glutathione.
Pro tip:- Do not exhaust or strain yourself much during a water fast, as it will make you feel dizzy or weak. Avoid operating heavy machinery, working too much, and other activities which ask you to invest your energy.
Benefits
- Promotes faster regeneration of cells by breakdown of old cells
- It helps lower the blood pressure of people with high blood pressure
- It helps nurture essential hormones like insulin and leptin
- Reduces risk of several chronic diseases
2. Juice Fasting
If your taste buds have tired of eating full platters of veggies and fruits, a satisfying juice cleanse can stimulate their interest again! The best part about a juice fast is anyone can do it, as fruits and vegetables are easily accessible. When fasting to detox, preparing DIY juices made of organic fruits, herbs, and vegetables refills your body with calories and nutrients.
According to a few surveys conducted on this type of fasting, it was revealed that people who did juice fasting, or broth fasting, were rewarded with certain health benefits like weight loss, better skin, and lower inflammation. It can also help cut down your sugar cravings.
For this fast, you can have 8–12 ounces of fresh vegetable and fruit juice every 3 hours in a day. You can also get yourself some nice vegetable broth in colder months. Make a habit of drinking 2-3 liters of pure water or herbal tea between intervals.
Related reading: Detox Water Recipes for Everyday Drinking
Joe Cross and the 60-Day Juice Fast
You can do longer juice fasts but it’s best to do it under the supervision of a doctor, naturopath or nutritionist who is experienced in it. Joe Cross is famous for doing a 60-day juice fast after his doctors told him that he was on a path to an early death due to his obesity and lifestyle. He lost 80 pounds in weight, came off all his medication, and said he never felt better. He was carefully monitored by a doctor while on the fast.
You can discover how he did it in his books The Reboot with Joe Juice Diet and Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead.
Pro tip:- You can do juice fasting for 1 to 3 days. During this fast, stop immediately if you start feeling weak or spaced out. This response is a way of your body telling you that you are pushing its limits. What you can do then is, get yourself some solid food, like you usually eat. While initially doing this fasting, stop after 3 days even if you do not experience any fatigue. Doing this will allow your body to heal.
Benefits
- Cleanses and improves your gut from within
- It helps promote weight loss
- Supplies a truckload of essential nutrients
- It serves the taste buds of people who don’t like eating healthy
- It offers antioxidants, which help build back a strong immunity
3. Intermittent Fasting Diet
The Intermittent Fasting Diet is gaining popularity now with Dr Michael Mosley’s endorsement of it in his newspaper series about it. as well as his books Fast 800 and the Fast Diet. Most celebs are seen flaunting this on their individual media posts. This type of fasting emphasizes when you eat rather than what you eat. This pattern limits people to eating only during certain hours of the day.
There are 4 or 5 different methods by which you can follow this diet. The most popular of them is the 16/8 method. Here, you have to skip breakfast and restrict yourself to your meal eating time to be within 8 hours. Doing so, you fast for 16 hours in between. This diet also goes by the name The Leangains Method. This method is considered for some to be the easiest of all the processes.
Martin Berkhan a Swedish model turned powerlifter and nutrition consultant, is reputed to have popularized intermittent fasting. He endorsed it as a means for improving body composition and strength gains. Hence the name Leangains.
The various intermittent fasts are oten combined with the Keto Diet which has also become popular again in the last few years for rapid weight loss.
Benefits
- Initiates cellular repair process
- Improves benefits on insulin resistance, thereby lowering the risk of type 2 diabetes
- Heals body from oxidative stress
- It might help prevent Alzheimer’s disease
- Reduces the inflammation inside your body
- Accelerates better heart health
- It might help prevent cancer
- It might increase your lifespan
- Enhances better functioning of the brain
4. The Daniel Fast
The Daniel Fast is an exciting fast for a detox diet that is based on a Biblical story in the Book Of Daniel. The story sees Daniel as an Old Testament prophet who is placed under King Nebuchadnezzar’s rule at a young age. There are five individual verses that describe the diet. In this story, Daniel refuses to indulge in meats, dairy, wine, and other delicacies that might harm his belief in God.
Instead, Daniel and his friends consume only the foods God intends to consume for 10 days. They focus primarily on building a rich protein intake, for which they depend on foods like fruits, vegetables, pulses (beans), whole grains, and water.
After completing 10 days, Daniel and his friends felt stronger from within, both mentally, and physically. So, if you wish to achieve good health benefits, you can opt for this temporary detox. This is based on people’s faith and a form of sacrifice, as seen in many religious practices like Ramadan.
Pro tip:- There are a lot of dos and donts you need to follow depending upon the food you are taking in this diet, so make sure to do your research correctly beforehand on what foods to eat and what to avoid.
Benefits
- It helps promote both mental and emotional health
- Supports better physical health
- It helps leave behind bad habits and addictions
- Builds up spirituality
- Reduces the risk of heart disease
- It offers rich amounts of fiber
- It helps promote weight loss
- Very cheap and convenient
- It caters to all kinds of people
The first one day fasting to detox you do gives you a chance to see what a short fast can be like. Most find that it’s not too difficult and does not cause any major upset. You are likely to feel hungry which is normal. Drinking more pure water can help to take the edge off. You could also get a few minor symptoms like headache, fatigue or irritability. Distract yourself by going for a walk, doing some relaxation exercises or meditation or taking a shower.
Does Fasting to Detox Work?
You will see various claims that we do not need to do any detoxing because we have detox organs that detox our bodies every minute of every day. However, the people who say this are not taking into account that we are subjected to numerous toxins in quantaties that we have never encountered before. They get into our bodies where they are stored because the liver cannot cope or it lacks the vitamins, minerals or antioxidants it needs for it’s optimal function.
Researchers have shown without doubt that we harbour a lot of toxins in our bodies. And although the research was done on mice fasting can help enhance the production of specific enzymes that are involved in the processes of detoxification.
Certainly it’s known that various markers of health such as inflammation, high cholesterol triglycerides, inulin insensitivity, high glucose levels and high blood pressure can be improved by various forms of fasting.
Note that that you should not attempt to fast unless under strict supervision if you are malnourished, have an eating disorder, are pregant or nursing, have a weak heart or had a recent heart attack, diabetes, epilepsy, liver or kidney disease, bleeding ulcer, ulcerative colitis, low blood pressure or some types of cancer. Take also if you have or suspect food allergies as you could have severe withdrawal symptoms.
Should you have symptoms again several days after stopping your fasting to detox and become free of symptoms it’s a sign that your body is contimuing to detoxify.
