I’ve been continuing to learn more about the healing power of fasting. Today I listened to a fantastic interview between Edward Group, DC, author of The Green Body Cleanse, and Gaia host, Regina Meredith, on Gaia.com.
In this conversation, Edward Group, DC, founder of Global Healing Center, explains how fasting triggers the body’s own self-healing mechanism, induces autophagy, and allows the body to fully focus on healing abnormal cells and tissues.
Below are notes I took from the conversation.
Fasting for Self-Healing with Dr. Edward Group, DC
Open Minds with Regina Meredith
- We have the ability to heal any condition we have. We all have a self-healing mechanism. We have to identify and address the root cause of any illness. When we address the root cause, the body will activate and heal itself.
- Detoxification and cleansing is an easier way to reactivate the body’s self-healing mechanism by starting and healing and cleansing the gut which is the #1 organ system that causes disease because all the chemicals and toxins that we consume enter through the gut lining.
- What’s the root cause of any disease or illness? It’s nothing more than a toxic load.
- Cleanse and heal the gut. Cleanse and heal the liver.
- Eliminate all the harmful organisms from the body because what we’re seeing now is that everyone has an accumulation of fungus, mold, bacteria, virus, worms – because of these chemicals and toxins and bad foods that are creating an imbalance of the body’s natural pH.
- We’re inviting all these organisms into our system and they’re living inside of us. So cleansing all that out of us and cleansing all the toxic heavy metals out of us is the last stage.
Vegan Keto Diet:
“Nothing will heal the body faster than water-only fasting.”
“This is the beginning of the keto story because this is how you get into a keto state. You can do it in two ways – either through fasting or through dietary. But the original form of ketogenic is through water-only fasting.”
“Ayurvedic tradition, the Bible, the Koran all talk about 40-day fasting.”
“Part of the healing process is going into a ketogenic state. How it works is they just have water, sunlight and rest.”
“A water-only fast is the fastest way to get into a ketogenic state. And it’s the fastest repair mechanism because it induces stem cell production and autophagy in which the body starts attacking any abnormal or dead tissues in the system. None of that is going to happen in a feeding keto state.”
“There’s different phases of ketogenic depending on what you want to use it for. You have the superb healing ability of water-only ketogenic state. You have the dietary keto state. And you have the variations of all the different keto states.”
“In general, ketogenic state means you’ve burned up all your glucose because you’ve gotten rid of all the sugars and carbs you’re ingesting. And you’ve gone onto a diet which consists of mostly fats or proteins that are not going to give you high amounts of glucose.”
“So when the liver runs out of glucose, it shifts into a state of ketosis.
“When you shift into a state of ketosis, you’re body starts relying on ketones for fuel and your body starts burning fat for fuel instead of sugars for fuel.”
Water-Only Fasting
“The #1 benefit of water-only fasting is that you shut down the digestive system. This means nothing but pure distilled water.”
“With water-only fasting, after 72 hours, around Day 4, your body goes through an autophagy phase.”
“Just one meal a day can utilize up to 70-80% of your energy stores every day. This means that your body only has energy to break down about one meal a day.”
“When the digestive system completely stops, the body can now focus 100% of energy on healing.”
“A USC study reported that after 72 hours of water-only fasting produced immune stem cells that regenerated the entire immune system.”
What is Autophagy?
“Autophagy is when the body searches and destroys any abnormal cells, any abnormal tissue, anything that’s not functioning at 100% inside the body. And the body knows, intuitively, where to focus.”
Water Fasting, Autophagy & Parkinson’s Disease
“They’ve even done studies on women with Parkinson’s Disease and had women go through a 21-day water-only fast for Parkinson’s Disease and completely eliminate all the tremors. And within one year’s time, the Parkinson’s Disease was completely gone.”
“Diabetes, PCOS, fibrocystic cancer. It doesn’t matter what you’re suffering from. This is the simplicity of things. The body can eliminate any acquired disease.”
“This will not happen on a juice fast. It will not happen on any ketogenic diet. It will not happen on anything else because the digestive system is still working.”
Fasting To Reverse Aging?
“University of Chicago did a study on a 40-year old unhealthy guy. They put him on a 14-day water-only fast.”
“When he was done with the fast, they re-did all his physiological testing. They found that in 14 days, he had the physiological body of a 20-year old. He reversed his age by 20 years in 14 days.”
“Modern” Medicine & The Plot To Ban Info On The Benefits Of Fasting
“Fasting was really big in the 1900s. There was a guy named Arnold Ehret who was promoting fasting. However most of the research was burned, most of the books were taken away.”
“When the American Medical System came in, they closed down all the spas and mineral springs.”
“When people needed to get healed, they went to a mineral spring, they drank water for ten days, they fasted and got healed.”
“We’ve been conditioned to believe that we have to eat.”
What to expect in the first few days when you start a fast:
“In the first few days, you might get dizzy a little bit. You might feel weak. You might have a headache.”
“Around the 72-hour mark, your glucose starts running down and your body is making that switch. This is the hardest part for most people because people may feel like they’re going to pass out. It can be a scary feeling.”
“But those feeling of anxiety and fear usually only last about an hour.”
“If you can just sit down or lay down and let the feelings pass, usually after about two hours when those ketones start coming into your blood, that’s when you’ll start feeling more energy.”
“Most people will tell you that the first four days are the hardest. Then you start having more energy.”
The Spiritual Experience
“When you take food out of your life and you’re just living on water, the first thing you realize is how much time in your life revolves around food.”
“When the liver starts to become cleansed when you’re fasting, the emotions start to evolve. The negative emotions that you stored, the anger, the guilt, the resentment, the jealousy, the lack of forgiveness.”
“A lot of people will say that on the fourth day, all these emotions come pouring out. So fasting is a cleansing.”
Intermittent Fasting
- 70% of your energy is spent digesting one meal.
- Consider skipping breakfast. Just give the body 16 hours of rest, no eating.
- Transition to eliminate meat, sugar from your diet.
Lemon Juice Master Cleanse
“Lemon juice is the highest concentration of negative ions. And the negative ions through a oxidative reduction reaction, are going to attach to any positively charged toxins, neutralize them, attach to any positively charged harmful organisms.”
“Most people are overrun with yeast and candida and mold and all these things. How big of a role do these organisms play inside our system?”
“When you do a fruitarian diet or water-only fast, the internal environment changes. The pH changes, your immune system becomes stronger. You’re allowing your body to heal itself.”
Fast 1 day/week and 1 week/year to prevent chronic illness.
“Gandhi was a big proponent of fasting and fasted once a day every week. And once a year, he fasted for 7-8 days.”
“Just fasting one day a week on nothing but water, and one week a year would give tremendous healing benefit. Dr Safer at University of Boston says that fasting one week a year would eliminate your chance of cancer by 99%.”
“Juice fasting, master cleanse, grape fasting, you’re just giving your body a rest. Anything you do to take time off for yourself. And it all starts with detoxification and cleansing.”