Should you juice fast or eat during a colon cleanse?- image by Savvy Boheme
Hey y'all!
I got a really nice comment from a reader in France in response to my post on making an herbal colon cleanse recipe yourself. Here is the comment:
" Hi,
Thank you for the quality of your blog that I have just discovered (I live in France ), and especially for this post.
I have two questions :
Is it possible to fast during this cleanse? Or is it better to eat ?....
Thank you for your answer. "
First, thank you for your kind words. I hope I can always provide quality information for all of my readers.
Second, thank you for your question, because this is the best way for all of us to learn. I invite all of my readers to ask questions, make comments, and engage in any way y'all like.
On to the question, is it possible to fast during this cleanse, or is it better to eat?
I answered that juice fasting during a colon cleanse is amazing, and the fastest way to see results. However, if you want to go slow, then eat.
It really depends on how fast you want to detox.
What is a juice fast?
Let me share a fantastic article explaining juice fasting to you. This is an interview with Dr. Richard Schulze, a famous master herbalist, from almost ten years ago. I have edited the piece slightly for copyright reasons and to make the article easier to read. I continue with a few comments afterwards. No copyright violations are intended, and all credit is given to the original authors of this post:
http://www.vegsource.com/talk/raw/messages/20067.html
JUICE-FASTING:
The powerful healing therapy that no-one ever uses.
Dr. Richard Schulze, N.D., M.H.
"When you don't feel well, stop eating and go to juices."
SCHULZE: The first thing an animal does when it is sick is stop eating. They fast themselves.
Likewise, the first thing we need to do when we don't feel well is: stop food.
There are a lot of reasons for that. Food takes a tremendous amount of energy to digest--and that's blood and energy. Our digestive system, basically the muscles and the tissues, fill with blood. When you stop eating, your digestive system rests, and all that blood and energy can be put somewhere else to heal you.
People have said to me, "What do I do for this particular disease?" Juice fasting. "What do I do for degeneration?" Juice fasting. "What do I do for heart disease?" Juice fasting.
Juice fasting is for the incurables. Juice fasting is the answer, because it allows your body to rest - and it lets your body choose what it wants to heal.
If you just keep cramming food down your mouth, you'll just get more tired. Your body has to digest large amounts of food, and it's the opposite of what you should do when you're not well.
"One of my first patients had lost a tremendous amount of blood from surgery--and doctors wanted to do a transfusion. In 24 hours on juices, I brought her blood levels back up."
Juice fasting is "like a blood transfusion"- image by Odia Kitchen
Interviewer: What does juice fasting do?
SCHULZE: Food has nutrition in it, but it takes a lot to break those nutrients down.
Juices are like a blood transfusion.
A glass of fruit and vegetable juice takes very little digestion, if any. It goes right into your body. We look at juices in the same way a doctor would look at an I.V It's something that can go right into your bloodstream.
One of my first learning experiences was a woman patient who was undergoing a surgery, a female surgery. The doctors nicked an artery, and she had tremendous hemorrhaging and bleeding. By the time they got her patched up, she was in intensive care, and had lost a tremendous amount of blood.
The doctors wanted to do a transfusion. She was scared to do a transfusion and the doctor said, "You're very anemic and your hemoglobin count is at the lowest end for a woman."
She said, "Is there anything you can do?"
And I said, "Sure," and I got the juicer out and juiced some juices. I made some carrot juice and some beet juice. I took it to the hospital and said, "Just let the doctors give you 24 hours."
They did, and, in 24 hours on juices, they said that her hemoglobin count was over the top end of the scale for a man, not even a woman, and men's hemoglobin counts are higher.
This was my first realization of the power of what juices can do to build the blood up.
Interviewer: Wait a minute, you gave her juices. How did she get juices when she went into the hospital for 24 hours?
SCHULZE: Oh, I went to the hospital too. I juiced the juices, put them in quart canning jars. Fresh beet juice, fresh beet greens, fresh carrot juice. I took it right to her hospital room and she drank it.
That's all she had for 24 hours and not only did her blood hemoglobin go up, but it went over the top of the scale for a man. The doctors said they were shocked, they had never seen anything like that.
Man cures his colon cancer by juice-fasting. The cancer came out in the toilet.
SCHULZE: I had a man who had a colon cancer and he basically refused to do anything, but he said he would stop eating and go on juices. This was early on in my practice, too. These were learning experiences.
He started on a multitude of fruit and vegetable juices and, I remember it was about a month later into his long juice fast, he pooped his cancer right out. It was 18" long.
It looked like a rope with figs attached to it. I had seen things like that before in pictures and books - but that was the first time I ever saw one come out.
Interviewer: A rope?
SCHULZE: Yeah, it was like a rope with sacs on it, they were about the size of figs. And, he actually eliminated his cancer just through juice fasting. He wasn't using any herbs or doing anything else, something I wouldn't recommend.
Juice fasting, through my experience and his, is more powerful than just water fasting. Juices not only fill you with nutrition - but they empty you out.
If you have any doubt about that, go home and drink a quart of prune juice and you tell me what happens.
Juices are flushing and cleansing to organs of the body.
Juices are enzyme therapy.
SCHULZE: Juices contain gigantic amounts of enzymes. And a lot of people nowadays are taking enzymes because of the benefits, but you don't have to, they're in the juices.
Enzymes are heat sensitive, meaning that when you cook food, you destroy all the enzymes. Now, when you eat that food or juice, it's okay. Your body will produce enzymes in order for you to digest that food. But when your body does that - it can't do something else. It only has a limited amount of energy.
So, one of the things that juices do, because they are loaded with enzymes, is they give your body a vacation.
Most of us live enzyme-free diets. If all we eat is cooked food, there are no enzymes in it. By supplying your body with high doses of enzymes, it gives many of your organs like your pancreas, your liver, your digestive system a holiday, because they don't have to try to manufacture chemicals that are coming in through your juices.
Interviwer: So it's an enzyme holiday!
"Thinning the blood is one the most important things you can do when you are sick, and juices do that."
SCHULZE: Yes, an enzyme holiday. And it also thins your blood. This is a major key.
Most of us who are ill are trying to do something to get blood to the area that is sick.
But our body is trying to pump around mud - and it can't get there. Thinning our blood is one the greatest keys to getting healthy. It increases our circulation because the blood becomes more like water than molasses. The bottom line is, juice fasting thins your blood. That allows your circulation to get deeper in your body into the vital areas, into the capillaries that were filled with fat and all clogged-up.
"Juice-fasting allows your body to balance its hormones and replace chemicals it is deficient in."
SCHULZE: Many people are sick because they don't produce enough insulin in their body. Or, they don't produce enough thyrox in their thyroid. Or, they don't produce enough interferon or immunoglobulin for the immune system to be strong. They don't produce enough estrogen or progesterone or testosterone.
Those chemicals are all built from nutrition. One of the things that juice fasting does is, it supplies your body with a tremendous amount of nutrition. So it balances your metabolism, balances your hormones, balances your endocrine system, your thyroid, your pancreas, and your reproductive organs.
And it does one other important thing: It allows you to get more work done.
Juice fasting clears the mind.
Interviewer: How can you get more work done when you're hungry? Because you're not eating solid foods?
SCHULZE: Let me tell you, it's just the opposite of what you think. If you want a gigantic change, stop eating for a couple days. It will feel like the fog is cleared.
You will be amazed at your sense of smell, your sense of taste, your eyesight, your perception, your thoughts.
All through history, from the Greek and Roman writings, to the Egyptians, from Jesus to Shakespeare, people talked about fasting for better mental clarity.
One thing I can guarantee you is that if you have a confusing problem, or a stressful issue that you don't know the answer to, stop eating. It enhances mental clarity.
We are drunk on food. Overeating makes you dull. Your blood, instead of going to your brain, is going to your digestive tract.
You read it in the Bible, Jesus going to the woods for his fasting. Everybody, throughout history, would go out of the city and go onto juices and water, and fast. Fasting clears the mind, and so it is a physical and emotional cleanse, and maybe even a spiritual cleanse when you stop your food from coming in.
No-one realizes how powerful juice-fasting is- until they do it. Then they will never live without it.
Everybody should do this periodically. I guarantee everybody who is reading this, if they just do a fast, for a couple of days, they will be amazed.
Interviewer: When you worked in Hollywood, you had all those people in the movie industry, did you give them the same advice?
Interviewer: Yes, in fact many people came to me and they were worried about the first week, or a difficult part of the movie that they were having a problem with, or that they were worried about, "Can I do this?", or, "Is it going to go okay?", and I would suggest the five-day program.
Try two days of raw fruits and vegetables, two or three days of juices, and two days of raw fruits and vegetables for an amazing cleansing diet- image by Organic Other
The five day program is 2 days of light eating of fruits and salads only, with 2 days of juice fasting in the middle, and one day of fruits and salads at the end.
They would say to me, "Oh, God, I can't do that, that would even be more stress."
And, I would say, "Yes you can. It will be less stress when your body is using all its blood and energy to help you do what you need to do, and figure it out, and not be loaded down with food."
And those that would do it came back to me and said, "Oh my God, thank you."
I had one woman who hadn't worked in a couple of years, a quite famous actress.
She had to go out for four interviews during the week and these were the most interviews she had been to, in a long time. She said, "What should I do?" and I said "Fast." She said, "That sounds horrible. I need all my strength and energy." I said "Believe me, fast."
She fasted and got all four parts that she went out for. I've always seen it happen with all my clients.
I remember as a kid, I used to eat a big meal, thinking it was going to make me feel stronger. I felt more tired. So, I'd eat more and I felt more tired. And I'd eat more, then I felt more tired.
I've done many fasts - short fasts. I've done two thirty day fasts and one sixty-day juice fast. We can go months without food - - as long as we're getting our nutrients.
Interviewer: But did your body get run down without it?
SCHULZE: Oh no, in fact, in the last couple days of my thirty-day juice fast, I kick-boxed 17 rounds and I was better than ever before.
No one could come near me and touch me. I had better vision, I had better reflexes, I had better timing.
And I had endless amounts of strength. This is something we have to get away from - the idea that fasting weakens you. It's not true.
"When you fast, there are some things you need to be aware of."
SCHULZE: Sometimes when you fast, you have a little less body heat. So take a sweater with you when you go out. Every once in awhile, you may feel a little colder and it's because it is calories from heat units in food that warms up our body.
So, since you are reducing your food and you're on juices only, dress a little warmer and have a little blanket in the car or a sweater with you. That's one thing I tell people.
The other thing is, you have energy lows. And what that is, when you're fasting, is all of sudden, you might feel, especially if you're doing a longer fast, like a week or more, you might feel like, oh my gosh, I have no energy at all.
Don't pay any attention to that--because it will be gone in ten minutes. This is very common as your body is used to a solid fuel and now it's on a liquid fuel. And just like a machine, if you change its fuel, it adjusts a little bit. We have to make adjustments and once we make those adjustments, it's fine. So don't pay any attention to that.
A couple other things I'll throw in here. One thing I always tell people is, you get hunger pains when you're fasting.
Most of the time they're not real. All of a sudden, you have a dream or a vision of a baked potato covered with sour cream and chives. If that's real, you'll still have the urge in three or four hours. So, one of the ways to get by that, is just to ignore it and it will go away.
Most people think a fast means deprivation. I see it differently. A fast is a flush - a flush with liquids. Okay?
You are only going without solid food - but you are getting liquid food that does you more good.
"A fast is a flush and people need to consume a gallon a day of liquids: juices, water, herb tea. Most people make a mistake by not consuming enough - and if you're hungry drink more."
If you really want to detox quickly, drink wheatgrass juice during your colon cleanse- image by Path to Fat Loss
Interviewer: What juice do you use when you want to detoxify heavily?
SCHULZE: Wheat grass is great. It can detoxify when some people don't get a detoxification any more from anything. Or, when they've used a few herbs and they think they are clean.
I remember my own story. I thought I was very clean. It was after I spent six months at Dr. Jensen's eating only raw food and juice fasting and years after I had healed my heart.
I started drinking wheat grass, an ounce a day, then two ounces a day, then three ounces a day, and then four ounces a day, and I got up to eight ounces one morning and I remember feeling horrible - and I started vomiting.
It was just too strong of a dose, but at that point, wheat grass started creating all sorts of cleansing in my body - of old things I remembered I had. It finally cleaned them out and brought them to the surface.
Interviewer: What do you mean "old things'?
SCHULZE: Well, when I started cleaning out my bowel years earlier, my hemorrhoids went away and I hadn't noticed any hemorrhoids for years.
Then - in the middle of this wheat grass purge, the hemorrhoids flared up again - and it wasn't because I was having diarrhea or straining or anything.
I think it was because there were small capillaries there that were still blocked, and that wheat grass was cleaning them out.
I started noticing things with my bronchials and my sinuses, and all sorts of problems that I had cleared away. But now they were kind of coming back again.
When you do a really good final cleansing and healing, a lot of your oldest problems come back, but just for a few days - as you clear them out.
So I noticed some tremendous differences in my skin, and to this day I still drink wheat grass. People always come up to me and say, "Your skin looks so great." I get this comment all the time, so I know that it's really done some good work inside me.
How to make wheatgrass juice to detoxify yourself.
Interviewer: What does a reader have to know to get going on this? It sounds powerful.
SCHULZE: They might have to grow their own wheat grass, and actually purchase a wheat grass juicer, or something they can juice with. If they don't have a wheat grass juicer, just soak the wheat grass in water and blend it up in your blender and drink it, grass and all.
Anybody can grow wheat. You grow wheat and it just grows into grass. You can grow it yourself. It's very easy to grow yourself. You just buy wheat, and you take organic wheat kernels, and you soak them for a few days until they actually sprout.
You can soak them for about 24 hours and then put them into a damp cotton cloth for another two or three days, until the wheat sprouts, and then you can just make them like other sprouts. Rinse them in water two or three times a day until they have tails on them about an inch long, and then you can go ahead and plant them right in the soil.
Some people plant them right away and then just keep the soil damp the first couple of days, and you grow your own wheat grass. Now you have what looks like your front lawn in a tray in your house.
What do you do with it? Well, you can run it through your juicer. A lot of people think you have to have a wheat grass juicer. A wheat grass juicer just gets more juice out of the wheat grass. There are hand-operated ones and there are electric ones. The hand-operated wheat grass juicers are about $70-80, and the electric ones are usually $300, but you could run the wheat grass right through your Champion juicer.
You can just cut it up and even soak it with water and put it in a blender. I've had many patients in areas just take the wheat grass, cut it up and put it in a blender, fill that blender with water and blend it up and you'll get a greenish water.
Or, you can run it through your juicer with other things like carrots, and it gets caught up in your juicer.
So wheat grass is something that everybody should consider as a medicinal cleansing and building juice, very bitter tasting. Start out with a little bit. I suggest people start out with an ounce a day and don't take it on its own. I like an ounce of wheat grass with 16 ounces of fresh carrot juice. It just gives the carrot juice a little greenish tint and it's very palatable.
There is also what I consider the wheat grass cocktail, which is a base of apple juice with, say, about 12 ounces of apple juice, a couple of ounces of lemon juice, a thumb size piece of ginger and an ounce of wheat grass.
One thing that is very interesting, is that lemon and lime tend to cover up the taste of wheat grass, which is good because a lot of people find it very strong to eat or drink, and lemon especially seems to cover up the taste.
Watermelon juice is a fantastic kidney cleanser- image by Juicing Expert
The watermelon flush for the kidneys. If you need it, you will be urinating fire.
Interviewer: What do you do with juices for the kidneys?
SCHULZE: I use two different things, one a vegetable, parsley, and the other, a fruit, watermelon.
I tell my patients to sit down for dinner and instead of dinner, crack open and eat a whole watermelon.
Inerviewer: Is this one of those wellness things or does it really cure?
SCHULZE: Oh, my gosh. I was down at Dr. Jensen's and they had some organic watermelon and I said "Okay, I'm just going to have watermelon tonight." I cracked open one, about the size of a basketball, and I ate that really quick, and I thought I want another one, so I ate one of those red-meated ones, and I basically went to bed.
The next morning, I woke up, and when I urinated it was like urinating fire. It burnt my prostate, my pen_s- it was so painful I was moaning in the bathroom.
Watermelon juice, watermelon itself and watermelon seeds are all diuretic and disinfecting. When you're juicing the watermelon, a lot of people just juice the meat, but you want to juice the rind too.
The rind has the minerals. You run it through the Champion juicer. You run the watermelon and the rind right through there, and it is delicious. You can taste the salt, the sodium, in the rind, and the minerals in the rind - very cleansing to the kidneys.
Interviewer: Why do people eat watermelon and not get any kidney cleansing, or kidney cures?
SCHULZE: I think because they don't juice the rind, and I think that a lot of the watermelons today are seedless. And I would suggest that people do not buy the seedless. Juice the watermelon, seeds and all.
"Make parsley juice - not parsley tea. It's a whole lot more healing."
Interviewer: I thought parsley was just one of these feel good, wellness herbs. Not for heavy curing.
SCHULZE: No, it's an intense one. The problem is that people only make tea out of it. When you just pour boiling water over dried parsley you're going to get a little bit of the essential oils.
Now, if you use fresh parsley and grind it in a Champion juicer, it's a lot more intense.
It's like the herb plantain. Dr. Christopher talks about plantain for blood poisoning. You can make a little plantain tea, or mash up a plantain leaf. Or, you can take plantain and run it right through the juicer. If you've got blood poisoning, who the heck wants to worry about making plantain teas with a little boiling water over it?
Get it through the juicer and get yourself two or three ounces of plantain juice. I've done that.
Juice radishes to cleanse the liver.
SCHULZE: If you want to add a juice in to stimulate the liver more, all the radishes work real well.
Some people talk about the black radishes, or other kinds, but you can use the red radishes and even use wild radishes you have growing wild in the United States. Remember, where you have mustard growing, you also have wild radish growing.
You can even pick the pods off, or use the radish leaves or sprouts, but radishes of all types stimulate the liver and clean it out. As far as bad digestion, I've seen a lot of people helped in their digestion with celery and cabbage juices.
Interviewer: You mean cabbage juice doesn't cause gas?
SCHULZE: No. Cabbage is a great cleanser and healer to the digestive tract. I've seen a lot of people with ulcers and digestive problems have great results drinking cabbage and celery juice.
Cabbage juice is excellent and I've had patients drink about 8 ounces of cabbage juice a day in one ounce doses. It can be mixed with other juices too. The celery juice works really nice to cool the system, especially with ulcerative conditions.
It's important with vegetables, but especially fruit, if you're not getting organic, you need to wash it. Use a little bit of soap and water, a good natural soap and even a scrub brush, because most of the sprays and things are put right on the fruit themselves.
Leukemia: A man regenerates his bone marrow with months of juice-fasting.
SCHULZE: I had a man with leukemia. He had fairly severe leukemia. He had undergone a couple different treatments and a couple shots of chemotherapy. He felt so horrible, he said that dying would be better than his experience on the chemotherapy.
He quit the chemotherapy, and came to me right away. He wanted to do something quite radical and I turned him onto juice fasting. He really got into it.
The first month he didn't get any better. In fact, some of his blood counts were even worse. Then, he ate a little bit of raw foods, took a break for about a week. Then he went back onto a juice fast and the second month he was stabilizing and some of his blood counts were coming up. Then he went back on some raw foods and health building.
Then we went into a third month of juice fasting - and that's when we really saw the big changes.
His blood chemistry changed dramatically. He didn't start really showing the cancer changing greatly until the end of the second month and into the third month, but, by the fourth to fifth month he was clean.
Interviewer: Why do you think in the first month his blood counts got worse in spite of . ..
SCHULZE: Well, I think because he was so sick. He had spent 40 years - he was about 55 years old - but he spent about 40 of those years basically trying to kill himself...
Interviewer: What do you mean, trying to kill himself?
SCHULZE: Well, you know with his food program, no exercise, high cholesterol, family history...
Interviewer: You mean the numbers had a downward trend and you couldn't stop them, right?
SCHULZE: Yes, and a lot of people expect that, the minute they take three herb capsules and stop eating for a day, their disease is going to start to go away.
Beets and beet tops help build the blood- image by Dana Herbert
Interviewer: What juices did you use to build his blood?
SCHULZE: When people are thinking about building that blood, I like beets and beet greens. So go to your organic market, but make sure you get your greens.
In some studies, I've seen the beets and beet greens analyzed. They have three times the iron in the beet greens than in a beet root, and sometimes, I've seen it the other way around. But greens are loaded with different minerals than the beets have. Together, they are a perfect food.
The beet and the beet greens, added to the carrot juice, is the one that I use with patients that have had either a lot of blood loss due to surgical trauma, or from cancer, where the body won't build blood any more.
When you start getting that beet and beet greens in, along with the carrot juice, you see a big change. Now if you want to build the blood, the extra juices to remember, the fruit ones, are the dark blue, red and purple - that would be raspberries, blackberries and blueberries or prunes, plums and cherries - these are all the super blood builders.
They are loaded with iron, and you start getting a blue purple juice, and you start drinking that, and now you have the fruit blood builders.
Getting children to drink healthy juices.
Interviewer: How do you get kids to get on juices for their health?
SCHULZE: The way I got the kids started was making apple juice in the juicer - and just throwing one carrot through.
You start out with about 90 percent apple and 10 percent carrots and the kids will eventually start drinking that like it's perfect. When they really get used to it, then go up to 20 percent of carrot and 80 percent apple and just work that ratio till you get it about 50-50.
A lot of people might say that is a vegetable and a fruit combination, but every juice specialist seems to agree that the one food combining exception with fruits and vegetables is carrot with apple.
Juices help thin people gain weight.
Interviewer: Wouldn't a juice fast be bad for people who are underweight?
SCHULZE: No - it's how I brought people's weight back, even when they had AIDS.
I had a man come to see me that had a complete turn around and he had a T-cell count which would fluctuate between five and twenty-five, depending on when they took it. That's about as low as it gets.
He had loads of opportunistic AIDS infections. We started him on juice fasting right away.
This is one I want to talk about - because he was quite thin and a lot of people think "I can't juice fast or I'll lose weight." I've had people gain weight on juice fasting and this man was one of them.
He started juice fasting and started gaining weight and people asked, "How is that?" It's very simple. A lot of food that people eat, they can't assimilate. When you are sick, your digestion, your assimilation and elimination doesn't work very well. But, you start putting juices in your body, and you'll see the weight come back. This is why I call juices "the natural healers IV."--it's like a hospital I.V. naturally. Within a couple of weeks, from juices and the other programs I used, the man's T-cell count was over a thousand.
Interviewer: How much weight did he gain?
SCHULZE: I think he gained about 15 pounds in the first couple months, and he was mainly on a liquid diet.
Interviewer: You would think he'd lose twenty-five pounds.
SCHULZE: Absolutely. But now he was getting nutrition that he couldn't get, so I think the main thing I've really come to see is that juice fasting builds blood, and I believe personally that it turns on the bone marrow.
Fresh citrus juices with their rind are great liver cleansers
SCHULZE: The bitter oils in citrus are big time liver cleansers. They disinfect and create more bile flow. And you have to get in the rind, which contains pectin. Run that rind through your juicer or your Vita-Mix.
I look at citrus more as kidney and liver cleaning. It's also very effective for cleaning the blood and joints, like with arthritis.
Removing parasites with fruits.
SCHULZE: I remember my first bowel cleanse, because I didn't know about herbs yet. I drank two quarts of apples, fresh squeezed apple juice, and a quart of fresh made prune juice.
Not only did I have parasites, but I had casing from my colon. I also had all sorts of dark flecks of things of old come out of my bowel. That was my first bowel cleanse.
Interviewer: Just from fruit?
SCHULZE: Just from fruit.
Interviewer: But you took more of it. Most people don't take enough to cause parasites or anything else to come out.
SCHULZE: No, they don't. Take two quarts of apple and a quart of prune as your juice for the day on a juice fast and you will notice a dramatic bowel cleanse.
You can also make fig water by just taking figs and putting them in a blender with water. The problem is that a lot of people eat dried prunes and dried figs. They are constipating.
On a juice fast you should only have the juices that come out of the juicer. You should have no pulp at all. The pulp that's in most fruit is fiber that's not digestible. All it does in a juice fast is it might cause your digestive tract to work a little bit more.
Interviewer: Okay, so a juicer would be slightly preferable.
SCHULZE: Yes, it would. If you're doing your fast to really shut down your digestive tract and to really put all your body's energy into healing something, yes- avoid the pulp.
However, if you are using a juice fast to clean your bowel out, you're better off with the pulp, because it activates the digestive system, and, of course, this will give you bowel movements.
The number one mistake people make on a juice fast.
Interviewer: Why do so many people fail to get results on juice-fasting?
SCHULZE: It's because they don't cleanse their colon before they do it. Every day, have that bowel flushed out, and a person might want to use herbs for a couple of days and then do it with enemas; see the difference; see what happens and experiment that way.
High enemas are also something to do during a juice fast, to get all the pulp and solid bits out of our system and they work very nice too. But, the main thing is, during a fast you need to have your bowels work every day. They don't have to work necessarily three times a day.
With some people they're bowels will work seven times a day, depending on the person, but those who have a tendency towards slower, sluggish, sleepy bowels, they can go on a fast for a week and not have a bowel movement at all, so they don't want to do that.
Use powdered super foods during a fast.
SCHULZE: Fasting can be even more powerful when people maximize their nutrition. Super nutrition can cause the body to detoxify more by flushing your body with vitamins and minerals, and it can also build your blood faster.
So, I always suggest people add super foods to their juice fast. Some of the best ones are spirulina and chlorella.
If someone can't get fresh wheat grass, you can use wheat grass powder, barley grass powder and alfalfa grass powder or alfalfa herb. They're detoxifying, and they have vitamins and minerals. I usually, once a day during a fast, tell people to add some of these particular foods to their fruit smoothie.
Sea weeds are also good. You can get sea weed powders in the health food stores like Dulse or Kelp. I have many patients that have fasted using the nutritional yeast too. I've really seen the results when people have done a juice fast on just juices and a juice fast using super food powders.
Interviewer: You mean they feel a lot better.
SCHULZE: Well, they have a lot more energy when they do it on super foods - and it can also cause the body to purge and eliminate more. It builds the blood faster.
Heart patients need juice-fasting.
Interviewer: Some people say a heart patient should never do a fast. It would be a strain on the system.
SCHULZE: That's the first thing a heart patient should Do - a juice-fast. The first thing is stop eating, because 99 percent of the time the heart patient's blood cells are like mud and their coronary arteries are congested.
When the circulation is that bad, even becoming a vegetarian won't unclog the blood. You have to do a juice fast to thin the blood back to a healthy state.
Interviewer: What does it feel like when the blood is thick?
SCHULZE: When you feel very sluggish, you feel - full, bloated, not only in your digestion, but you run two blocks and you're sweating and you just feel full of fat.
You feel it. You feel like blood doesn't even want to pump around your body. You are breathing heavy. Then you stop eating - and it's just the greatest cure for anything, just stop eating. Stop eating food and get the juicer going.
How I helped my heart disease with long fasts.
Interviewer: I know from your beginnings that you weren't always such a believer in juice fasts?
SCHULZE: Oh no. I took lots of vitamins and mineral pills. I didn't realize that when you thin your blood, you improve your circulation to every capillary in your body.
So, I did my first fast and didn't expect much. But when I finished, I felt so much better, I said, "Wow, this is something that is much more powerful than anyone ever told me."
I remember, I did a fast for about a week. Then one for about ten days. Then I thought, okay, "I'm going to do a thirty-day fast and see what happens."
That was probably the biggest change that I had in my health, and this was early on, when I was living in New York, and I did that thirty-day fast. I think that after the first couple days, I never felt a heart palpitation from that point on. I never felt my heart dysfunctioning. It was like the missing link in my health program that I hadn't seen.
Then, about a year later, I did a two-month fast. That one was really life transforming to me. I have barely had a down day since then.
What I suggest to most of my patients is, two or three days fast in the middle of five days of raw foods, once a season. That's what my five day program is.
"But to anybody who came to me dying - when you're dealing with someone who has a life-threatening situation, stop all food. "
SCHULZE: Many of my patients walked in the door and they had done just about every program under the sun, and sometimes even all at once or almost at once, but they hadn't really fasted.
Many people are afraid to fast. They are afraid of the one treatment that can cure them. We have this old American idea, that we need to have that bacon and eggs breakfast to get us going, and, of course, that's one of the things that gets us dead. I always called that the heart attack plate.
Interviewer: I thought before I met you that juices were mainly a feel good, wellness kind of thing, but not powerful enough for serious diseases.
SCHULZE: Many people feel that way. I myself thought that way - until I started investigating the classic old healers.
Interviewer: So, this is the therapy that people never do?
SCHULZE: That's right. Everybody in America, we have this conveyor belt that's going from the health food store or the herb shop into our mouth, and we think, "Well, it's chromium and kola nut."
Or it's goldenseal. Or it's garlic. Or it's cayenne. Or it's a colonic. We're all looking for something more, but very few people actually stop eating. The old herbalists didn't have the juicers. Juicers weren't a common household item back then. But nowadays - everybody should have a juicer.
Food is the foundation of healing.
But doctors are unbelievable. According to them, drugs are the foundation of healing. And according to the healthfood people, vitamin tablets are. They're all wrong. Food is.
I just want to say that I've done several juice fasts. My longest one was 45 days long, although I did nibble on a piece of fruit or a handful of organic raw nuts on some days, I drank a vegetable broth with some added sea salt, and drank herb teas as well.
Every time I have gone on a juice fast, I have felt amazing.
Nobody has to go on a juice fast in order to do a colon cleanse, but if you want to see some fast, eye-brow raising results, go right ahead!
Thanks again for the great question! Keep them coming! Please feel free to leave a comment if you have experience with juice fasting or just want to say hi!
Necessary legal disclaimer: Nothing I write on Bluebonnet Natural Healing Therapy is meant to cure, heal, or treat anything. All of the content written here is for educational purposes only, to help readers make their own informed decisions and take full responsibility for their own health. I am not a medical doctor or a licensed health care provider and I do not pretend to be. Anything a reader chooses to do is done at the reader's own risk.
