Читать книгу Fasting: The only introduction you’ll ever need - Leon Chaitow N.D. D.O. - Страница 12

Many other diseases and problems have been successfully treated using fasting as the main therapeutic tool. These include psoriasis, the often intractable skin condition. Scandinavian research showed that benefits could be obtained by fasting (eight out of 10 patients improved markedly after a 7–10 day fast) and a vegetarian diet, but that the condition returned if the diet reverted to the previous pattern.²⁴

Auto-immune bowel diseases such as ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease have responded extremely well to fasting and modified fasting (where liquid containing vitamins, minerals and some glucose was taken, but no food at all). In one study 84 per cent of those patients with Crohn’s disease who were treated with fasting went into remission. Just as in the way rheumatoid arthritis was treated (see above), after the fast, foods (usually cooked for ease of digestion) were slowly reintroduced, and eliminated if there was any sign of diarrhoea or pain. Only 30 per cent of the patients with Crohn’s disease who went into remission on the fast had relapses, whereas 66 per cent of those who were treated with cortisone type medication had relapses. The most provocative foods for irritable bowel diseases of this type are dairy products, most notably cow’s milk, tea, coffee, chocolate, corn, wheat, rye, apples, oats and mushrooms.²⁵

Among the many other conditions for which there is evidence of a useful role for fasting are eczema26, bronchial asthma27 and a variety of mental illness, including schizophrenia. Russia has been the country where mental illness has been most widely treated using fasting, most often by Professor Serge Nikoliav of the Moscow Psychiatric Institute. He has, with great success, treated over 6000 patients for chronic refractory schizophrenia by means of water fasts which run from 25 to 300 days (often accompanied by daily aerobic exercise).^28,29

Fasting for health is natural, efficient and, given the caveats already mentioned, safe. There are few conditions which cannot benefit from it and, as the brief survey in this chapter indicates, there is ample clinical evidence of its success.

The reason for this is that it allows healing to occur, and does not impose a solution on the body which, through its well-known homoeostatic (self-regulating) mechanisms, has an innate ability to normalize itself if it is given the chance. Fasting gives it that chance.