Journal of a Juice Fast with Kombucha Tea: A Juice Fasting How To Guide
by Chet Day
Introduction
The day after Christmas, 1995, I embarked on a five-day juice diet supplemented with Kombucha tea. At that time, I documented this experience for the Kombucha Tea Digest. Since then, I've pondered this particular health experiment quite a bit and have added a few thoughts here and there in the original text that surfaced in hindsight. Other than these brief additions and some quick polishing of the prose, this version that you're about to read pretty much remains the way I wrote it in December of 1995.
By the way, to do a juice fast, you'll need a quality juice extractor, like the Champion juicer.
Day One: K-tea/Juice Fast -- 26 Dec 1995
I've been drinking K-tea for a couple of weeks now and have noticed some interesting mental results more than anything physical, though I have definitely slept more soundly for four-five hours each night during a hard period of uninterrupted slumber.
As a person who keeps his stress down and his harmony up with meditation, I sit for 25 minutes observing my breath both at night (just before going to bed to get those above mentioned hard hours of sleep) and in the morning when I get up. I've been drinking about 6 oz. of K-tea just before sitting every evening, and I've noticed a couple of times that I sense a "connection" or "awareness" of sorts with the chi or life force or energy of the Kombucha.
I suspect what I just wrote sounds odd, and I assure you I play with a full deck (at least most of the time), but I mention this experience because I'm curious if any other Kombucha tea drinkers have sensed or felt something like it. If you have, please let me know by email as I've quite interested in any mental and spiritual results of Kombucha tea drinking.
To try to improve this connection with my Kombucha, I started on a K-tea and juice fast almost exactly 24-hours ago. As I write this note, I've had about two 6-oz. glass of K-tea, 32-oz. of freshly squeezed orange juice, and one 16 oz. glass of freshly extracted carrot and spinach juice. I've also had probably half a gallon of pure water.
Although I'm been writing all day and also jogged three slow miles just before sundown, my energy level remains fairly stable. I do note the nasty taste in my mouth and coated tongue that comes with fasting, juice dieting, or minimal eating. I don't usually experience sewer breath and gutter tongue until well into the second day, so perhaps we have here another instance of anecdotal confirmation of K-tea's detoxing properties?
As soon as I finish with this entry, I'll have another 6-oz. of K-tea and then sit down and meditate for my usual 25-minutes and maybe more than that. When I go on juice fasts like this, I try to spend as much time as possible after the first or second day sleeping and resting so my body can use its energy for detox purposes.
Since my wife and children are visiting relatives the next few days and I have some time away from my job, this seemed like an ideal opportunity to document for the Kombucha Digest a K-tea and juice fast (or juice diet as we Natural Hygienists would call it). At the moment, I plan to stay on this K-tea and juice fast for five days and maybe six, but I'll go off it if things don't feel right.
Lest you worry, I have considerable experience with fasting on pure water alone and with juice diets, so I know what to watch for in terms of danger signals. And, yes, not only will I drink lots of juices and not go overboard with K-tea consumption, but I will also consume plenty of pure water. And I'll resume eating immediately if suddenly the process doesn't continue to feel "right" to me.
As the editor of a monthly alternative health newsletter, I do considerable experimenting with natural health and longevity enhancers, and I must write that I've had more fun with my Kombucha experiences than anything else in years. I've also enjoyed very much the open sharing of ideas and thoughts on the Kombucha Digest.
From my reading of the Kombucha literature available, I haven't seen anything about fasting with K-tea other than a warning in the FAQ to be careful and to consume plenty of water. Hopefully my experiment this week will add something new and interesting to our budding knowledge of constructive uses for Kombucha tea.
If you have questions you'd like me to answer or things you'd like me to document about what's happening to me and my body during this experiment, please post whatever you're curious about, and I'll do my best to provide answers or thoughtful speculation.
Day Two: K-tea/Juice Fast -- 27 Dec 1995Written at 8:16 a.m.
After having 6-oz. of K-tea, I went to bed last night a little after midnight and slept very soundly until about 7:15 this morning. I experienced none of the usual restless sleep that I usually have when beginning a water-only fast. I did wake up, however, with stiff legs--probably a result of jogging in the unseasonably cold weather last evening down here in Central Florida (for almost a week I'd skipped my usual asphalt pounding every night). Although I consider the lack of exercise the major cause of my stiff calf and thigh muscles, I must also consider the possibility that the result may have come from lactic acid build-up from the fast, possibly the consequence of increased detox aided by the K-tea? I don't know but will monitor the "sore muscle" feeling to see if it spreads beyond the calves and thighs.
I also noted this a.m. relatively clear urine, which surprised me as I expected the ole yellow river on the first visit to the bathroom. Then again, I drank so much liquid yesterday I may well have flushed myself relatively clean before going to bed. (As an aside, I have noted during my 2.5 weeks as a K-tea drinker that my urine has featured a yellowish tint on many occasions, and I haven't had anything but very clear urine since changing to a predominately raw food vegan diet approximately three years ago when I first read of and started living by the tenets of Natural Hygiene.) Note: While on the subject of urine, I need to check my references and look up negative nitrogen balance because I have a vague recollection that it has something to do with yellow pee. [I've since been told that the yellow pee probably results from the body excreting excess B vitamins.]
One other item to report: I woke up with a hard, boil-like itching and red swelling on my right buttock this morning. Because most days I try to get 30-minutes of sun exposure, I have a tan everywhere except the area covered by running shorts. Guess where I get pimples when I get pimples? Right, where I have no tan on my buttocks, where my body has the unhealthy-looking white-belly-of-a-fish skin. I wonder if I'll get a major outbreak of zits on the cheeks or a massive boil during the rest of this fast? (As a teen, I would have preferred the zits there than on the facial cheeks where I always had them! But I don't want any boils!).
Nothing else noteworthy. Time to drink my first 6-oz. of K-tea of the day and to meditate for 25 minutes.
Written at 11:00 a.m.
Right after I wrote the first entry, I had my K-tea but didn't meditate. Too much to do this morning. I also squeezed 16 oz. of fresh orange juice. Picked the oranges from the tree in the backyard. Because of temperatures in the thirties last night, I had naturally cold and freshly extracted OJ this morning without touching a refrigerator. Wow, I could dig hunter/gatherer behavior. Seriously, that OJ tasted good!
About ten-thirty, my wife poured too much K-tea for herself, so she brought in to my office what she didn't want. I consumed approximately another 4-oz., total 10 oz. K-tea for the day so far.
Energy. I've been filling a few requests for sample newsletters this morning as well as catching up on correspondence and putting the finishing touches to a book on diet I'm editing and publishing for Dr. Stanley S. Bass, a nutritionist with more than 50 years experience. I got a lot of work done in a short amount of time and felt very energetic.
Now, while the laser printer cranks out the final draft of Dr. Bass's book on diets that support the body's powerful and innate capacity to heal, I can feel myself sinking a bit. I started with loads of energy this a.m., but, as usual when I don't eat, the "brain work" of writing starts sapping me pretty quickly. As an aside, Upton Sinclair, the author of "The Jungle" and one of the great muckrakers of his time, made a big thing out of brain work requiring more energy than manual labor, and he never wrote when he fasted because it took too much out of him. Indeed, after many years as a vocal and committed vegetarian, he went back to eating meat (Salisbury steak on the recommendation of Dr. Salisbury himself) so he would have the energy to write long hours. I've not noticed this problem myself unless I'm fasting or juice dieting. On my usual vegan diet, I have plenty of energy to put in long hours each week, both at writing and at my full-time job as an English teacher. But I digress.
The Detox Bible
In 2008, I updated and revised yet again my 80-page collection of the best detox routines that I've experimented with since 1993 when I started my natural health journey. Click here to check out The Detox Bible, which contains fourteen of the best detox programs on earth. - ChetPhysically, the common "sinking" feeling associated with water fasting and/or juice dieting hit about fifteen minutes ago. For me, location-wise, this feeling rests in the pit of the stomach and in the back of the throat. Those of you who have no experience with fasting or juice dieting probably need more details.
Hmm, it's hard to explain. Try this. Think of the "empty" feeling you get when you're "really" hungry as a result of missing at least two meals the same day. In between hits of juice, that's what I feel like now and will feel like a lot more for many hours during this K-tea and juice diet experiment. It's not, thank God, the horrible and deep exhaustion feeling that comes with fasting on pure water alone--that feeling drives me to bed in a hurry. I don't recommend fasting on water alone for more than three days until you've had several positive experiences with juice dieting. Oh well. I'll ignore the feeling until noon when I have my next 8-16 oz. of fresh orange juice. That will provide enough sugar to take the edge off this semi-uncomfortable "hollow" feeling.
Just looked in the mirror. Gads, when did I get so old and gray? Still feel like a teenager in terms of health, disposition, and mental power, but, Lord, I don't look it! Can't wait until the Kombucha drinking brings back my own brown hair. (I ain't holding my breath on this happening, by the way.)
The coating on my tongue has increased considerably since getting up this morning. Nasty, yucky-looking white gunk. Mouth feels and tastes like a septic tank too. During this period of juice dieting, I will keep my distance from other people. The breath that comes out when one fasts or lives on a juice diet must be experienced to be believed. Even though I haven't had a cigarette in close to five years, sometimes when I fast or juice diet at certain points I start tasting nicotine and once again experience smoker's breath. Weird, huh? But nice experiential proof that the body does indeed store deep within it all the crap and gunk and bad things we do to ourselves. Anyway, everyone will be out of the house except me and the cat in a matter of hours. And cats dig bad breath.
No question about it: I'm definitely detoxing. I can feel some of the cells unloading junk into the bloodstream. This is a subtle feeling, but one you learn to recognize after fasting or juice dieting often enough. Good riddance to all those Christmas holiday indulgences on cookies and chocolate and other high-sugar, highly processed, so-called foods. No more until my 10 p.m. report. I'm writing too much to upload to the digest.
Written at 7:00 p.m.
I had to come to my back bedroom office to write an unplanned entry because I opened the refrigerator just a few minutes ago to juice some veggies after my 25-minute jog and shower.
Reached for the carrots and found two leftover, eight-inch subway sandwiches that my wife bought last night for dinner. The good ones, the vegetarian specials with stone baked whole wheat bread and guacamole dressing and new sprouts layered with fresh sunflower seeds. Apparently the subs didn't get eaten last night, and my wife forgot to take them with her when she and my two sons and my brother-in-law drove away at noon for five days in Pensacola to visit her parents.
Talk about temptation! I pulled the butcher paper wrapped sandwiches out and hefted them carefully, one in each hand, weighing my options. Hmm, I thought, I could chomp them down real quick and restart the K-tea and juice fast again tomorrow.
By this point I was salivating, and what a shame because minutes before finding those sandwiches, I hadn't been at all hungry.
But I occasionally show some self-discipline, and my commitment to continuing this experiment overpowered my desire to wolf down the subs, so I took a deep breath and put them back in the frig. I should probably take them to the garbage can out in the garage so I don't have to think about them for the next three days or so, but I'll keep them around "just in case."
For those who have never fasted, my account of this sandwich episode probably sounds exaggerated. Not so. The first two to three days of a water-only fast or juice diet are usually the hardest days in terms of food for me. After that, I usually don't experience hunger at all. During past fasts, I've even made meals for my family when I hadn't eaten in days. I felt not the slightest hunger while cooking and preparing their food. Wild, eh?
From what I've read and heard, most people experience the same lack of hunger after two or three days. Interestingly, once the body shifts to its built-in fat-burning metabolism and starts living off its own stores, all hunger completely disappears. Tests have shown, by the way, that the body uses selective intelligence while consuming its own stores and digests inferior parts of itself like tumors and cysts and so on while simultaneously living off the fat of the land, so to speak, stored so neatly away.
Contrary to popular belief, the body doesn't start eating your heart and brain when you stop chomping down on Big Macs and/or whole wheat toast. When your body has consumed everything it has to consume within without harming itself, it'll let you know big time, and in spades, with a raging hunger that apparently is something to behold. I've never fasted that long myself so can't write from experience, but I've heard it often enough from other people to believe that the body won't allow itself to starve to death.
And though saliva practically leaked out of my mouth when I found those subs, now that I'm in a different room and writing a quick treatise on fasting, I no longer want to eat them. Indeed, the 16-oz. of carrot and celery juice that I had after my 25-minute jog satisfied me up quite nicely.
Hunger really does exist a good 90% in the mind. Sitting down and watching the news on TV doesn't help either, what with every other commercial trying to sell one kind of junk food or another. Or else trying to sell the antidotes for eating the junk food. If you tune out during commercials, try this: tune in and watch very carefully for an hour of network TV and keep track of how many commercials flash for so-called "foods" and how many slither past your eyes for so-called "pain relievers." The first time I consciously did this, I couldn't believe it. You'll find this an interesting "enlightenment" if you haven't already discovered this for yourself.
Now that I have a different awareness of how our culture encourages us to eat our way into illness so we can then try to buy our way out of it with various drugs and therapies and expensive doctors and surgeons, I have an even stronger appreciation for computers and the Internet and the opportunities so many of us have now to ignore what the management would want us to believe and instead find out for ourselves by communicating with others though the magic of something like the Web and the Kombucha Digest.
Off the soap box. Sorry. Fasting and juice dieting really revs up the ole brain. As the body uses energy for other things, energy usually used for digestion, one of the many benefits of a juice diet is a much sharper clarity of thought.
Upton Sinclair writes about this a lot in his classic book on fasting that I mentioned earlier. The first time I read that book, I knew I personally had to try going without food. Although the idea scared me, especially when I had no encouragement (to say the least) to live without solid food, I tried it anyway and realized on the fourth day into my first juice fast that nothing, and I mean nothing, had ever cleared out my mind as fully as staying away from solid food for a few days. More on this in the next day or two. Mentally, I expect to feel much sharper tomorrow than I do today. We'll see.
Typing the above made me think about the man who posted to the digest a few days ago that his wife felt like she was losing her memory from drinking K-tea. I've thought about that since reading it and don't recollect running into any other report of that happening to anyone else. I would wonder about the age of this man and his spouse? I will definitely report any memory changes that I may notice during this experiment.
Back to the sandwiches. Thank goodness I didn't give into the temptation to sink my choppers into those subs. If I had, then I'd have to sit down here and admit that I'd given up on my experiment with K-tea and juice just so I could have the momentary pleasure of chomping down on a sandwich. Silly. The power food and images of food have over us never fails to amaze me. Enough for now. Gotta have some space left for the end of the day's final report at ten p.m. I've written my way completely out of the temptation, so now I'll get back to work and will write the final part of today's message at ten p.m. and then mail it to the digest.
Written at 10:00 p.m.
As of a few minutes ago, I've gone 48 hours without any solid food. At this point in the past, without the K-tea, I didn't feel nearly as good or as energetic as I do right now. So far, I find this K-tea and juice fast as easy as any of the fasts and juice diets I've done in the past. Tonight will tell, however, since invariably it's during the wee hours of the third night when I start feeling hollow with low energy. Think of how you feel when you're coming down with the flu. The third night of fasting usually presents a quite similar feeling.
It's also usually on the third night when I start having trouble sleeping because of sore muscles and overall blahs. Mood? Usually deteriorates and I start feeling sorry for myself.
I have little of these usual effects so far. If anything, I feel stimulated right now from the 16 oz. of fresh orange juice that I finished drinking just about an hour ago. I'll give that juice until 11:00 to digest and then I'll have an 8-oz. glass of K-tea before meditating and retiring.
Tomorrow I'll cut back on the orange juice intake and start mixing it with pure water. I like to overly juice the first two days I do this sort of thing because I want adequate liquid in me to flush out the initial rush of toxins. After 48 hours, however, I cut back on the juice sugar intake so I can lose extra weight and also so I can unload more toxins.
Here's something noteworthy. When I showered after exercising this evening, I realized that my body has apparently absorbed what I thought this morning might be a large boil coming up on my backside. Interesting. I've never had anything quite like this happen before and don't know what to make of it. Perhaps I excreted in one of my many trips to the bathroom today whatever my body had temporarily stored there during the night?
I'll stop here for Day Two. If I'm writing too much, please let me know and I'll edit before posting to the digest and thus spare you the digressions and various thoughts that pass through my head as I skip meals and consume instead the manna of mind and self-indulgent writing. I chose to leave everything in this first time so you could see what goes through the mind of some middle-aged guy when he spends his vacation fasting on Kombucha tea and juice. Weird, eh?
The Champion Juicer
Dr. Ben Kim is offering the fantastic and extremely versatile Champion juicer for a very low price. Click here to discover the Champion.Day Three: K-tea/Juice Fast 28 Dec 1995
Responses to questions or comments generated by my first two reports, both in private mail (source will not be mentioned) and here on the list :
>Please begin with how much and what to do.
I don't have a specific answer for that other than to tell you what I do on this particular K-tea and juice fast. There are no time limits or schedules locked in stone for "elimination" or "detox" diets like this one, and to my knowledge no one has definitively told us the exact amounts of which juices you should consume and when. These things you should figure out for yourself, though I can provide some guidelines and will below.
The same holds true in terms of adding K-tea to augment and support the juices. I'm sure other people have fasted with K-tea, but I haven't heard or read about their experiences, so I'm pretty much breaking ground with this experiment. Anyway, I'll report for the duration of this experiment exactly what I do, feel, and think about, but you'll have to decide whether a similar routine would work for you.
Before you try fasting or juice dieting, however, I suggest some reading and thinking about the subject and then going with whatever your mind/body complex tells you to do. Although that's easier said than done when you're first starting out on the detox through fasting and juice dieting road, it's the best advice I know to give.
Let's start with the length of juice dieting with K-tea. I plan to go five full 24-hour periods with my first experience with this program. Since K-tea has a "medicinal" quality to it and since I stand wary of medicines and drugs, I plan to move slowly and cautiously because augmented detoxification symptoms could be unpleasant. On the other hand, I work with the hypothesis that I've done enough juice dieting and water fasting in the past that I won't notice a huge difference with the added K-tea unless I drink a substantial amount of it each day, and I have no intention of doing that.
Back to how long to stay on a juice diet. On regular juice diets and on water fasts for that matter, I've read of folks who have gone over 100 days, usually to lose massive amounts of weight. I first started cleaning myself out with a seven-day juice diet over three years ago. I was very toxic then, full of the garbage of 45 years of wrong living, including 14 years of drinking more than my share of beer, wine, and hard liquor; 20 years of smoking at least two packs of cigarettes a day; close to that many years of getting no physical exercise; practically existing on highly processed junk food (NO greens or fruit to speak of other than maybe a bite or two of salad or frozen peas when someone else put the stuff on my plate). At 5'7", I had to bend over to see past my belly to read the scale and view the 190+ lbs that it read every morning. I looked like a huge pear with legs. I also had terrible range of motion problems in one shoulder and both wrists (bad news for someone who makes part of his living as a writer). I didn't enjoy life much and moped around feeling sorry for myself, thinking often (and resentfully) that the man upstairs had dealt me a bum hand.
In short, I felt like shit and looked it too. Although I don't go to doctors because I've seen too many folks in my family ground up by the monstrous medical machine, I went at this point in my life because I desperately wanted someone to "fix" my shoulder and wrist problems. When I asked what caused my problems, the doctor shrugged his shoulders and told me he didn't have a clue, that I should get used to it, that I had hit middle age, and that what I was feeling was felt by just about everyone at 44. He then offered to shoot me up with something "better than cortisone" for my shoulder and wrist problems and that they'd work "like new" for a while. He also implied that I would probably have to take pain killers and anti-inflammatory drugs to keep the symptoms "under control." I thanked him kindly, declined the miracle injection and life-time addiction to pills, and decided I had better start taking responsibility for my own health.
Since I couldn't quit my job and leave my wife and children to pursue a degree in medicine, I did the next best thing: I drove to several health food stores where I purchased at least a $100 worth of books and started researching health. That research led me to, among others, Norman Walker on juices, Herbert Shelton on Natural Hygiene, Paul Bragg on regular fasting, Arnold Ehret on fruitarianism, and Max Gerson on cancer.
Anyway, being an eclectic sort of guy, over the past three years I've gathered ideas and things to do from the natural health movement that made sense and "felt right" to me and have slowly but surely put together my own health program. I have one absolute requirement: to get added to my routine, the element must be entirely natural. I take no pills, no supplements, no shots, no acupuncture needles, no chiropractic manipulations, no colonics, no nothing if it ain't natural. Indeed, if I couldn't make K-tea at home from natural ingredients (stretching that a bit with the white sugar, for sure), you wouldn't be wading through all this, and I wouldn't be juice dieting with the stuff as a supplement!
Lest I sound too dogmatic and overbearing, I want to point out that I support each individual in what he or she does to acquire superior health. I have my path; you have yours, and we all need to support each other lovingly, kindly, and with respect.
Within six months of beginning my new way of life (and believe me, I had to make some major changes), my weight had dropped to 145 lbs, and I was feeling like a million bucks. ALL of my physical problems with wrists and shoulder were completely gone (never to return I might add), and my improved mental state and newfound energy absolutely amazed me.
But this whole road is a process, a long process involving close examination of cause and effect that requires commitment to change and enough self-discipline to live unconventionally. One also has to give up some of the so-called "pleasures of life."
I think a juice diet is an excellent way to start this process, but I reiterate that there are no quick fixes on the way to superior health and there are those who I respect who don't like juice diets because of the way they can upset sugar metabolism in the body, which can cause big problems for certain people.
Finally, to specifically answer your question. Below you'll find the routine I plan to use today, the third day of my K-tea and juice diet:Kombucha tea:
Morning - 8 oz.
Noon - 6 oz. (I normally drink about 12 oz. K-tea per day)
Night - 8 oz.Any time I feel the sinking feeling associated with fasting and juice dieting I'll have 8 oz. of freshly squeezed orange juice mixed with 8 oz. of pure water. I'll sip slowly on that and replenish if necessary.
In place of dinner around six p.m. I've have 16 oz. of freshly extracted vegetable juice, usually 10 oz. of carrot juice and the rest spinach, celery, green bell pepper, Romaine lettuce, whatever else happens to be in the vegetable bin at the time.
Whenever I feel thirsty I drink as much pure water at room temperature as thirst demands. During this experiment, I've been making myself drink more than thirst demands because of all the warnings to drink lots of water if one also drinks Kombucha tea. At this point, the third day of this K-tea and juice diet, I am closer to being over-hydrated than dehydrated. Probably a wise situation to be in. I do think, however, that this business of all the water drinking with the K-tea needs a closer look. Why does the tea dehydrate the body so much. Can this be a good thing? Or is it a bad thing? Or does it matter?
What kind of juices should one use on a juice diet with K-tea? I consume at least 16 oz. of orange juice every day of the diet, both because I like orange juice and because the body uses it to support rapid and efficient cleaning. Some folks find orange juice too efficient. If you haven't done juice dieting in the past, be careful with orange juice because you may get a lot of cleansing reaction symptoms as noted in reply to the next question below. If you find yourself having too many of these "healing episodes," cut back on the orange juice and go to apple juice or grape juice or strictly vegetable juice, especially combinations of carrot as the base with added ounces of celery or green bell pepper or beet (easy on the beet) or Romaine lettuce or whatever you have that's fresh in your vegetable bin. You should preferably use organic vegetables if you can find them. If not, wash thoroughly and peel carrots and other root veggies.
I have at least 16-oz. of freshly extracted vegetable juices each day. You can make just about any combination you want. If you don't have a juicer, you can pick up what I call a centrifugal cheapie for $20-$30 in most K-Marts and discount stores. These aren't great juicers, but they'll serve the purpose. Once you know you're going to continue to drink fresh, real juices the rest of your life, then you can shell out the big bucks for a quality juicer. Though I have a Champion and a Vita-Mix, I use an Acme centrifugal juicer most of the time even though juice experts say not to use this type of machine because the rapid spinning supposedly destroys too many enzymes. Since I'm not chronically ill, I don't worry about destroying too many enzymes because I know I'm getting a whole lot more of them with my Acme juice than I'd be getting if I were still wolfing double cheeseburgers and Big Macs every night for dinner. If I had a cancer and wanted to try to get rid of it and if I had the money, I'd buy and use a Norwalk (about $2,000) or Green Power (about $695) juicer.
Note: you do not consume the pulp on a juice diet. The pulp goes to the compost heap or the dog, if your dog digs vegetarian eats! If you make "total juice" with a Vita-Mix, strain it before drinking when on a juice diet. Juice diet means juice diet. It doesn't mean juice with pulp.
If you don't want to buy a juicer, purchase unpasteurized vegetable juices from your local health food store. Do NOT mistake products like Welch's grape juice or Heinz tomato juice for real juices. They ain't. They've been heated and stirred and pounded and poured until most of the life-giving enzymes have been blasted into the next dimension.
Forgive me for a moment of zealous preaching: There's no excuse for drinking bottled, canned, or frozen concentrated orange or grapefruit juice when going on a K-tea and juice fast! Spend a few extra bucks and make your own juice. You are worth it! And once your body gets used to consuming real, live juice, you'll wonder how you were ever able to drink the supermarket stuff.
What about the K-tea? Good question, and since I'm a real novice with the whole Kombucha scene, I don't have any definitive answers. This week during my experiment, I'm drinking standard recipe K-tea brewed for eight days right here in the comfort of my own home. The batch I'm consuming has a good head on it and tastes wonderful. Based on taste alone, I could easily down this refreshing beverage in the quantities I'm drinking the other juices (in 16-oz. shots many times during the day), but I don't want to go overboard since I still have some qualms about precisely what is in the K-tea that I'm consuming.
>Please describe a few of these [danger signals] to watch for. I'm going to start [a juice fast] on the first.
I wish you luck on your first juice fast! What a good way to start the New Year. Which is what I'm doing too! :-)
Regarding danger signals, first, consider the overall state of your current health. If you've been taking strong prescription medicines for a long time or if you've abused yourself with alcohol, smoking, junk food, sedentary life style, and so on and so forth, THEN you must approach juice dieting and water fasting slowly and thoughtfully. In other words, take it SLOW and EASY.
When you're as toxic as I was, you can make yourself very uncomfortable by trying to clean out too quickly. Using myself as an example again, I've been fasting and juice dieting periodically for three years and quite seriously expect to have to spend at least three more years before I'll have most of the junk in me out of me.
Danger signals? Here I quote one of the venerable old saws of the alternative health movement: When you fast, you lie on nature's operating table. Obviously, even on such a metaphorical rack, when you deprive your body of its usual food, you can expect a reaction of some sort. Cause and effect again.
As an aside, the simple key to achieving health with the Natural Hygiene model lies with the fact that every effect has a cause. To get well, remove the cause of illness. To lose weight, remove the cause of adding fat cells. To gain energy, remove the causes that make you tired.
Anyway, the effects of fasting and juice dieting depends on the individual and the individual's current state or health or current state of dis-ease. Most people can expect to experience some, all, or none of the following symptoms: headache (ranging from mild to skull splitter), clamminess, dizziness (especially when standing up from a sitting position), fainting, rash, fatigue, acne, rash, diarrhea, muscle aches, plugged up nose, running nose, cough, shivering from being cold, and so on.
Interestingly, any, all, or none of the above may well come and go in a matter of minutes or hours. I work up this morning, for example, with a terribly plugged up nose. After blowing it about eighty (well, maybe five) times, it unplugged and has been dribbling a bit ever since. Do I run and take a decongestant (as the commercials would have us do) to stop this flow of mucus? Absolutely not! I want the mucus to flow. Same with diarrhea (which I haven't experienced during this experiment except for one quick gush just before I went to bed last night). When the body produces a runny nose or a diarrhea, the body wants to throw off some of the gunk inside of it. So why do something to counteract what the body wants?
How simple, how elegant!
How we Americans ignore this basic law of life. Sigh.
Got a temperature? Knock it down with Tylenol and do it in a hurry! That's dumb. If the body wants to raise its temperature, it's doing it for a reason, so leave the body alone and let its innate intelligence accomplish what it's trying to accomplish with this period of so-called "fever." Coughing? Why do you cough? Because the body wants to expel crap in the lungs. Does it make sense to keep the crap there by suppressing the cough?
Farting all the time? Your body's telling you the foods you're eating don't agree with you. Instead of downing metamucil and antacid tablets by the truckload, simply change your diet and quit eating burritos laced with Jalapeno peppers and drowning in sour cream. Remove the cause of the gas expulsion and, guess what, no more rooty toot toot from your backside and no more of those fun bubble noises in the tub!
The Natural Hygiene model represents the most natural model for achieving superior health that I've yet to discover. And it has one overriding tenet: the human body knows how to take care of itself and will heal itself in most instances without therapies, surgeries, drugs, or voodoo if we give it a chance and if we provide it with the elements it needs to reestablish proper homeostasis.
What are these elements? Simple and natural: a predominately uncooked, vegetarian, live food diet; some sunshine on as much of the body as possible each day; clean air to breathe; clean water to drink and bathe in; emotional peace of mind; adequate rest and sleep. All simple and all full of sense when you think about it. Also, most are hard to do on a regular basis.
The Detox Bible
In 2008, I updated and revised yet again my 80-page collection of the best detox routines that I've experimented with since 1993 when I started my natural health journey. Click here to check out The Detox Bible, which contains fourteen of the best detox programs on earth. - ChetBack to the original question. Yes, all kinds of symptoms will result from fasting and juice dieting. When do they become dangerous? I don't know for you. I do know for me. Every fast or juice diet I've been on (over twenty at this point, ranging from three days to almost three full weeks) has produced some of the cited symptoms. (Although so far this K-tea and juice diet has been remarkably symptom free.)
On only one fast did I ever consider myself in danger. This was early in my health change program, and in my hubris I had decided to go on a month-long water fast. My first water fast. At about four a.m. on the morning of the fifth day, I literally thought I was going to die. I experienced a weakness so intense and an emptiness and hollowness so vivid that I get goosebumps sitting here now three years later just recalling it.
"Something has gone terribly wrong," I thought to myself that early morning. I woke up my wife and asked her, in a whisper because I was so weak I literally didn't have the energy to speak with a full voice, to please make me a cup of orange juice. She did, I drank it, and shortly afterwards started to feel better. I broke the fast that same night. Was I really in danger? Knowing what I know now, I would answer NO, that such weakness is pretty common among water fasters, especially if they are as toxic as I was then. But, at the time, YES, I was in danger because I was frightened. And every fasting authority I've read has said that you should not fast or should break your fast if you experience fear of fasting. Particularly if you chose to fast alone and at home.
So, bottomline, if your symptoms are too severe or if the whole scene suddenly just doesn't feel or seem right to you, that's the time for you to stop this particular fast. YOU have to make this decision.
And, yes, of course, you can turn that responsibility over to a doctor or fasting specialist, and for many people this is the correct choice.
Me? I'm a do-it-yourself guy, and I don't let anyone do anything for me who won't guarantee his/her work.
Ever have a doctor offer you the same guarantee your car mechanic gives you?
Me neither.
And that's why I trust my car to a mechanic while not trusting my body to a doctor.
>I did a lot of fasting, sometimes up to 19 and 21 days, so will be very
Ross, thank you for your comment. You've fasted on water alone a lot longer than I ever have. For ages I've wanted to do a 40-day water fast, but I don't know if I'll ever have the two months in my busy life to get it in this time around. Something about mirroring the Biblical fasts of old seems very attractive to me. And, wow, would it be cool to write about.
>I bet if you focus your awareness on anything you will feel the Consciousness that is in everything.
Yes, on the Consciousness in everything! Love exists there too and peace as well, of course.
"The consciousness of the Kombucha drew us to it," eh? Interesting. Reminds me of the old saw that when we are ready our teacher will arrive to teach us. Perhaps that's what's happening with all of us and Kombucha? Next question and a pretty important one: what will the Kombucha teach us? Well, it's sure teaching me some interesting and helpful things about using it in an elimination diet routine.
Written at 11: 23 a.m.
I slept like the proverbial log last night, and, boy, does that surprise me because, as I mentioned in the Wednesday report, I usually sleep less and less soundly when fasting. Woke up with a stuffy nose and feeling very cold. But I always get cold when I fast, and that's why many people only fast in the summer when it's hot. Makes sense.
My first 8-oz. of K-tea this morning tasted better than usual. This happens during a juice diet- the clarity of taste, smell, sight, sound, and touch becomes quite exciting. Each of the above seems to improve a bit with each passing day of no solid foods. Another sign, I think, that all of us eat our way into oblivion and consequently miss probably at least 50% of the things we could be appreciating through this marvelously sensitive and keenly attuned organism our souls walk around in. And this morning's first taste of undiluted orange juice? Oh, heavenly nectar of the gods!
Other observations. What I thought might become a boil yesterday morning but that disappeared by last night did not return during sleep. Sleep was keenly deep and refreshing. I meditated for 25 minutes prior to going to bed and fell into a very deep sleep almost as soon as I crawled under the covers. The cat started meowing at 7:30 a.m. and I popped right up and felt terrific. None of the usual vacation desire to roll over and sleep another hour or two. Very high energy after this length of time with no food intake. I attribute this improved state of post-sleep condition to the K-tea element in this experiment.
Also, the sore legs of the past two days aren't with me today. Well, the legs are still with me, but the soreness has left. Nice! If I continue to feel as great this afternoon as I feel right now, I'll go out and jog a few slow miles today instead of taking the planned nap.
Written at 8:42 p.m.
My afternoon did not have the joy and high energy of the morning. I started feeling sluggish, and I've gone progressively downhill in terms of energy ever since. A headache arrived, and it lingers as I write these final notes. To try to knock the headache, I jogged 25 minutes and then took a hot bath. I did feel better for about a half hour, but now I feel worse. Cause and effect again. I feel very cranky and am glad I'm home alone. That's another side effect of fasting and juice dieting: wide mood swings from great euphoria to bleak despair. I'm somewhere in the middle of these right now; thanks to this nasty headache, closer to the latter than the former.
So I stop Day Three's report on a negative note. And that's appropriate because juice dieting has its fine and subtle shares of ups and downs. So far, you've seen mostly ups. It's good that I also write a bit about the down.
Dr. Ben Kim is offering the fantastic and extremely versatile Champion juicer for a very low price. Click here to discover the Champion.Day Four: K-tea/Juice Fast -- 29 December 1995
Written at 6:30 p.m.
When I ended Thursday's report, a skull popping headache had taken the enjoyment out of what up to that point had been a pleasant experience and experiment. Right after uploading yesterday's report around nine p.m. last night, I drank 8-oz. of K-tea and went directly to bed. I tossed and turned with the headache, which got progressively worse, most of the night. It was still with me, though not as bad, when I woke up at 7:30. I decided then to not have my morning K-tea because I wanted this detox slowed down, not accelerated! I meditated for 25 minutes, which didn't help the headache. Feeling sorry for myself and asking myself why I ever decided to ruin my vacation juice dieting with K-tea, I went back to bed and drifted in and out of a restless sleep. I also had a slight fever and chills, like a mild flu. I woke up at 11:00, and the headache was about gone. The fever and chills had left entirely.
Hallelujah!
Hey, juice dieting with K-tea may not be so bad after all, I decided right around noon, after a hot shower and a 16 oz. glass of 8-oz. of orange juice mixed with 8 oz. of pure water. I then drove to the printer and picked up the January issue of my newsletter (my Kombucha special issue, by the way) and came home and addressed and stamped the issues and then around four p.m. drove them to the post office.
I'd decided earlier in the morning when I woke up feeling so bad to complete this particular fast without any more K-tea, but feeling so much better in mid-afternoon I decided to continue with the K-tea and consequently had a 4-oz. glass around two o'clock.
I realize now that I probably had been taking too much K-tea in the early days of the fast. Tonight I'll try one more time with an 8-oz. glass before bed because I do want to accelerate the night time detox, but I don't want to accelerate it so much that I feel as bad as I felt last night. As long as I don't have a headache or other overt or painful signs of too much elimination, I'll stick with between 4 oz. and 8 oz. twice a day of the K-tea for the duration of the experiment.
Speaking of duration of the experiment, I originally planned to go five days with this, but if I continue to feel as good as I feel right now, I may do an extra day or two. My wife and kids don't get back until Sunday night, so I have room to play with should I decide to stretch this to a full week. I will play it by ear, er, by how I feel, I mean.
I've cut back on my orange juice intake and so far today have had the juice of six oranges. When I finish writing this entry, I'll make my 16-oz. of vegetable juice and that will probably do juice-wise for Day Four.
Typically, each day of this fast I've had less and less hunger. I've had less juice today than any of the other days, and I haven't had a single moment when I desired food. Indeed, when I opened the refrigerator to pull out a couple of oranges and spied the still-wrapped submarine sandwiches that I wanted to wolf so badly just a few days ago, the thought of eating them almost made me shudder. How could I have wanted those sandwiches so badly? Now the thought of eating that heavy bread and cheese seems the very opposite of attractive. Fascinating, no?
Last night, one of those Dark Nights of the Faster's Soul, reminded me vividly of the price one has to pay for one's dietary and lifestyle choices. I only wish I'd known when I was a teenager what I know now. Lord, I would have made some very different choices in terms of what I put into this old soul shell. I also remember thinking at one point last night when it felt like the center of my head would pop open the way the guy's stomach did in the first "Alien" movie that fasting and minimal diets sure extracted hard coin from the purse of a person's life. In other words, why am I doing this to myself when I could be watching a late night movie on the tube while munching down on a double cheese pizza with a cold can of coke close aside.?
The answer of course lies with how I feel right now--downright wonderful. Because I bore down and took the pain from the headache and didn't cave in and pop a headache pill, I gave my body time and energy to pump the toxins out of me into my bloodstream (which caused the headache). Had I taken the tempting Tylenol, my body would had to concentrate on dealing with expelling the Tylenol as well as expelling whatever toxins it was trying to expel when it initiated the headache.
I was definitely detoxifying. I drank close to a gallon of pure water last night and got up and urinated five times. Tell me the old bod wasn't unloading some stuff it wanted to unload! Of course I had to feel like hell for close to 18 hours to get rid of that crap, but now that I feel so much better, I'm glad I bit the bullet and bore the pain of that very nasty headache and the other symptoms. The payoff was feeling so good today that I did the work that usually takes me three hours in two and a half.
Although not as high energy tonight as this afternoon, I still feel very good as I write these words. Because all the leg soreness has disappeared and because I felt so energetic, I even went out and jogged three miles just before sunset. The weather here in Central Florida has warmed up, and I got out early enough to catch some rays of the sun, so I also felt recharged after the exercise.
Think about this for a second. Since 10 p.m. Christmas night (Monday), I've had nothing but K-tea and orange juice and 16-oz. a day of carrot and veggie juice. Each day I've jogged approximately three miles and, except for today when I slept through the morning, I've also put in a full day's work (at least nine hours) at the computer either writing these reports or working on my newsletter. I've done all this on no solid food. I don't write this to brag, understand, but to use myself as an example that so clearly points out how overfed most of us are most of the time. When I get low energy, I usually get it because I've stuffed my face with too much food.
When you get low energy, guess what, you're probably food drunk too. (Wish I could claim the phrase "food drunk" but it comes from a 20th century physician named Tilden who practiced natural hygiene with his patients rather than allopathic medicine.) Unfortunately, I find it very hard to not overeat when I do eat. I don't mean that I binge because I maintain a normal weight for my size, but I all too often dig into second servings when I know intellectually that one serving would suffice quite nicely. Habit, habit, habit.
Juice fasting helps to break these habits. Like a computer, when you fast, you essentially hit the reset key on the human CPU. Coming off the fast, you find yourself in the mode the Manufacturer intended for you to be in. God really didn't design us for Big Macs and double cheese pizzas and coca cola and high test coffee and wine and bourbon and beer and 24-oz. T-bone steaks. No, I think our design specs call for much simpler fare to keep us running in crashproof mode.
Well, juice fasting resets you. Your taste changes, your desires for foods change, you really do return to default values! The secret of course lies with not giving into that first slice of key lime pie when it sticks itself under your nose at the dinner table. Easy to say, hard to do.
It's now 7:15 p.m.., and I will stop and go juice my veggies. See you for a few more lines around nine.
The clock now reads a quarter to nine, and I have nothing else new to report. The veggie juice tasted wonderful, and I marvel at the increased sensitivity of my taste buds now that they too have started to reset.
Enough for Day Four.
The Detox Bible
In 2008, I updated and revised yet again my 80-page collection of the best detox routines that I've experimented with since 1993 when I started my natural health journey. Click here to check out The Detox Bible, which contains fourteen of the best detox programs on earth. - ChetDay Five: K-tea/Juice Fast -- 30 Dec 1995
Started writing at 5:30 p.m.
Well, it seems hard to believe, but five days have passed already, and I'm at the end of my K-tea and juice fast experiment. Let me bring things up to date.
As I had mentioned in Friday's report, I decided to again drink an 8-oz. glass of K-tea before bed last night. I did just that and ended up with another bad headache that persisted most of the day today, only easing back some about a half hour ago. I also drank close to a gallon of pure water again last night, and I've noticed yesterday evening and today that my skin has dried out some.
I definitely learned this week that should I ever try K-tea and juice fasting again that I will keep my K-tea consumption down to a maximum of 4-oz. in the morning and another 4-oz. in the evening. Being such a staunch believer in nature and the innate power and intelligence of the human body, I may well forego K-tea while fasting or juice dieting in the future. I must think about this before deciding for sure. I also need to learn more about what constitutes K-tea and the effects its various constituents may have on the human body. K-tea may well be a wonderful daily dietary addition; it may well not be such a good thing to use while juice dieting or water fasting. Obviously more work and experimentation needs to go on in this area.
Stupid of me to continue to drink so much K-tea this week, actually upping the amounts as the juice diet progressed, but I tend to overdo, figuring that if a little is good for me then a lot will be a lot better. I've learned that this ain't the case often enough during my life that you'd think I wouldn't keep repeating the same mistake. Wrong. Anyway, I paid the price with a couple of major headaches.
Slow and easy, slow and easy: a key mantra for this sort of self-cleansing experience. Had I not overdone the K-tea last night and made myself feel bad, I'd probably be sitting here planning to continue for another day or so. But since I don't feel terrific and since I want to feel that way when my wife and kids arrive home tomorrow night rather than grumpy and cranky with a headache and bad breath, I'll break the fast right after I finish this report. That way the odds are excellent that I'll feel like a million bucks tomorrow.
I did go the planned five days, so I feel good about that. And I brought my weight down from 158 on Monday night to 152 this morning, an average weight loss of about a pound a day. Typical for most people while fasting or juice dieting.
Except for sending out a few sample newsletters to folks who requested them, I spent most of this day in bed, resting and dozing, so I don't have a lot to report in terms of specifics about what I did. I rested and dozed and got up and whizzed about ten or fifteen times and that shot an entire Saturday. Now, in hindsight, I wish I had worked even though I didn't feel well. And that of course is stupid Type-A behavior that can undo half the good of a process such as this. If you ever do a juice diet or water fast, please rest as much as possible and give your energy over to detoxing instead of writing about detoxing.
Unfortunately, I'm such a well-brainwashed, middle-aged American guy that even though I know better I still feel like I'm slacking if I'm not working nine or ten hours every day of the week. Stupid, huh? Sometimes I wish I'd been born a bushman. You know, one of those guys who spends two hours and nine minutes a day gathering food and the rest of the time either conversing, napping, peeling bark off sticks, or making love. I used to think such a life couldn't possibly be fulfilling. At this point in my fast it sounds downright wonderful.
Breaking the FastI need to give a few details on this. Different folks have different ways of doing it, but there's one key: don't overdo with food intake the first few days off a fast.
Easy to say and hard to do because once you start eating again, your body will typically be ravenous. I've fasted enough to keep a modicum of control over myself, but I do have to work at it. I remember one juice diet of ten days right after I started my health changes three years ago. As I ended the fast, I felt great and swore not to overeat because all the experts I'd read had warned against doing so. I had an apple and was suddenly so hungry I thought I'd explode. So, completely out of control, I made a huge plate of bean burritos smothered in cheese and lettuce and wolfed the whole thing down. An hour later, I suffered stomach cramps you wouldn't believe, and I thought I would die most of that night. As usual, I had to learn the lesson the hard way.
So, to break this five-day juice diet, tonight I'll have my usual 16-oz. of veggie juice and about a half hour later will then eat either an apple or a single uncooked corn-on-the-cob. On other fasts such as this one, I've broken them with all kinds of fruits: a single orange, a single banana, a delicious pear, and so on. For some reason, when I went to the store just before I sat down to write this, the white corn-on-the-cob in the produce section looked wonderful so I think I'll have an ear of that for my first solid food in a week. And that will be it for tonight.
Tomorrow I'll try to eat lightly. Banana for breakfast. Apple for lunch. A green salad for dinner with tomato, cucumber, grated carrot and grated beet with an avocado and lemon juice dressing.
Monday I'll start eating my usual predominately uncooked vegetarian diet and will try to celebrate the New Year by eating lightly and well instead of stuffing myself.
Day Six Juice Fast Journal Entry
I had several letters in my mailbox on the last day of 1995 inquiring to make sure I felt all right, so I decided I'd suffer your patience one last time regarding my juice fast and give you a brief and final update.
Yes, thank you, I feel the best I've felt in months and months. I woke up this morning after a very solid night's sleep at a few minutes after seven, roaring with energy and anxious to get up and start my day. Even though I'd only had two ears of corn-on-the-cob last night to break my fast (yeah, I know I said I'd only eat one, but, geesh, it tasted so good I couldn't resist a second ear).
And I didn't eat as lightly today as I said I would. I had the planned banana for breakfast and then two more unplanned of them right after it. At this point, I felt really energized, so I vacuumed the entire house and mopped the kitchen and bathroom floors and did two loads of laundry. Wow, such an enlightened male some of you females may be thinking. Well, do remember my wife and kids get back tonight, and I always try to fix the house up nice the day they return. Not that I slob it up while they vacation, you understand. Actually, my Type-A personality gets a kick out of straightening up the house every once in a while when I get these incredible energy bursts from juice dieting or a minimal raw food diet.
Anyway, besides the rest of the house I also straightened up my back bedroom office and ran off some booklets and stuffed some envelopes with requests for a recent issue of my monthly newsletter. Oh yeah, I answered some email too. The house and office work killed several hours.
Lunch time at this point. I said an apple, and I had an apple. A luscious, large Fuji, my favorite type of apple. If you've never tried them, try them. They taste the way Red Delicious used to taste back in 1966 when I drove a 1958 fire engine red MG and bagged groceries for 85 cents an hour to keep it in gas and spark plugs.
After lunch, still full of energy and ambition, I grated five heads of raw cabbage and started a new crock of sauerkraut. Took a couple of hours to do this, and I must have nibbled down at least half a head of cabbage while I grated and sliced and diced and sang aloud to Judy Collins singing Bob Dylan hits. Another benefit of a juice fast like this: vegetables taste so good you can't believe it. Indeed, all natural foods have a taste that simply blows your mind. Even the idea of eating corn chips crusted with salt out of the bag kind of makes you feel queasy inside. And I used to hate cabbage. Today I banged it down like a cow grazin' in Eden.
I read a little bit at this point, settled back on the couch, listening to some good Mozart in the background. Mind very focused and still and one pointed, another benefit of coming off a juice diet. It'll stay like this until I goof up with my eating and stuff my face or get into some junk food or fall prey to a slice of key lime pie. I hope this time around to not blow as quickly as I usually do the resetting that I've done on myself. Indeed, it would be nice to feel this way for the length of 1996.
Someone asked in this morning's digest about breaking a fast on stewed tomatoes. Yes, I've read that many people break fasts this way. As an advocate of uncooked foods, however, Natural Hygiene recommends fruit as being more natural and easier on the digestive system. I went against that last night by having uncooked corn on the cob, but, believe me, I had absolutely no feelings of discomfort from those two ears of corn and woke up this morning with so much energy I thought I'd go through the ceiling of the house.
Hey, we're talking a Sunday morning too. I didn't even want to sleep in!
Back to breaking fasts for one more second... from my reading, it seems like fasts have been broken on all kinds of things down through the ages, from a handful of popcorn to a steak. I believe I read that the guy who ate the steak had to go to the hospital, and that I would definitely believe. Please, use fruit to break a juice diet the first few times you go on one. During later attempts, after you know what you're doing and what to expect, you can try other alternatives that your body signals you to try.
But be moderate the first couple of days. Remember, the longer you go on a juice diet, the longer you need to ease back into re-eating. By easing in, you keep off the weight you lost during the fast, and you'll also feel more energetic.
Conclusions
1. K-tea definitely accelerated detox in me during this juice diet; indeed, it accelerated the detox more than I would have liked. K-tea intake should be kept to a minimal while not also consuming solid foods, probably 4 oz. twice a day at the most and possibly much less than that.
2. When juice dieting with the K-tea support, you MUST drink ever more water than usual. I cannot emphasize this too much. I drank gallons of water and lots of juice and still feel and see some signs of dehydration on this last day of the experiment. So BE careful and drink PURE water -- not tap.
3. In my opinion, after this experiment, people who have never fasted or juice dieted before should NOT use K-tea during their first attempt because it could well cause them big problems. For a first attempt at a juice diet, try it strictly on juices for three days. Then a month or two later, try it for five days. Then, if you've found those experiences pleasant and beneficial, then perhaps try three days with juice and minimal amounts of K-tea. I can't emphasize enough that I believe it's best for most people to begin slowly experimenting with juice dieting and fasting. Arnold Ehret wrote almost 100 years ago that Americans should not fast on water alone for more than three days at a time because they were so toxic that doing so would probably kill them. He exaggerated, in my opinion, but we are a toxic people, and we must fast and juice diet with intelligence and caution, especially if you're doing it home alone. Try it without the K-tea at least twice, please!
4. People who have never fasted or juice dieted before should consider doing so under the supervision of a qualified professional who will be able to help them through the rough spots.
5. After this experiment, I consider K-tea a potent addition to the juice dieting and fasting process, but it is an addition that deserves plenty of respect. I didn't respect it enough, I don't think, and consequently I suffered some strong detox symptoms that I may have avoided had I had the sense to use less rather than more. Again, if I ever juice diet with K-tea again, I'll keep the K-tea consumption to a maximum of 8-oz. a day and possibly less than that.
6. One should also consider juice dieting or water fasting without K-tea at all. Both of the above have a proven track record of success. Adding the K-tea to the process, to my knowledge at least, has not been done. Or, if it has, literature about the experience is not readily available. Indeed, juice dieting or water fasting with K-tea may well cause harm to the human body in ways not yet known, so one must proceed with care and understand that breaking new ground often has its drawbacks as well as its rewards.
7. If you've never juice dieted or fasted before, you should educate yourself about the process before doing it. Good books on fasting and juice dieting are available in most health food stores. I especially recommend the books on water fasting by Herbert M. Shelton and Paul Bragg and books on juice fasting by Paolo Airola and Steve Meyerowitz. Those with serious, chronic conditions should read Max Gerson's book regarding juice therapy for serious cancers.Day Six: K-tea/Juice Fast Aftermath -- 31 December 1995
I had several letters in my mailbox on the last day of 1995 inquiring to make sure I felt all right, so I decided I'd suffer your patience one last time regarding my K-tea and juice fast and give you a brief and final update.
Yes, thank you, I feel the best I've felt in months and months. I woke up this morning after a very solid night's sleep at a few minutes after seven, roaring with energy and anxious to get up and start my day. Even though I'd only had two ears of corn-on-the-cob last night to break my fast (yeah, I know I said I'd only eat one, but, geesh, it tasted so good I couldn't resist a second ear).
And I didn't eat as lightly today as I said I would. I had the planned banana for breakfast and then two more unplanned of them right after it. At this point, I felt really energized, so I vacuumed the entire house and mopped the kitchen and bathroom floors and did two loads of laundry. Wow, such an enlightened male some of you females may be thinking. Well, do remember my wife and kids get back tonight, and I always try to fix the house up nice the day they return. Not that I slob it up while they vacation, you understand. Actually, my Type-A personality gets a kick out of straightening up the house every once in a while when I get these incredible energy bursts from juice dieting or a minimal raw food diet.
Anyway, besides the rest of the house I also straightened up my back bedroom office and ran off some booklets and stuffed some envelopes with requests for the Kombucha issue of my monthly newsletter. Oh yeah, I answered some email too. The house and office work killed several hours. About mid-morning I decanted K-tea (including my first batch of ginger K-tea) and bagged babies. It looks like I'll have to track down a used refrigerator for the garage because the babies now occupy one entire shelf of our icebox along with the egg bin. I should add that I drank a 6-oz. glass of the ginger K-tea, and as everyone has reported, it tastes wonderful. Almost as good as the ginger ale in the brown bottle I purchased the last time I visited the local health food store. With a little tweaking of the basic recipe... hmm...
Lunch time at this point. I said an apple, and I had an apple. A luscious, large Fuji, my favorite type of apple. If you've never tried them, try them. They taste the way Red Delicious used to taste back in 1966 when I drove a 1958 fire engine red MG and bagged groceries for 85 cents an hour to keep it in gas and spark plugs.
After lunch, still full of energy and ambition, I grated up five heads of raw cabbage and started a new crock of sauerkraut. Took a couple of hours to do this, and I must have nibbled down at least half a head of cabbage while I grated and sliced and diced and sang aloud to Judy Collins singing Bob Dylan hits. Another benefit of a juice fast like this: vegetables taste so good you can't believe it. Indeed, all natural foods have a taste that simply blows your mind. Even the idea of eating corn chips crusted with salt out of the bag kind of makes you feel queasy inside. And I used to hate cabbage. Today I banged it down like a cow grazin' in Eden.
I read a little bit at this point, settled back on the couch, listening to some good Mozart in the background. Mind very focused and still and one pointed, another benefit of coming off a juice diet. It'll stay like this until I goof up with my eating and stuff my face or get into some junk food or fall prey to a slice of key lime pie. I hope this time around to not blow as quickly as I usually do the resetting that I've done on myself. Indeed, it would be nice to feel this way for the length of 1996.
Someone asked in this morning's digest about breaking a fast on stewed tomatoes. Yes, I've read that many people break fasts this way. As an advocate of uncooked foods, however, Natural Hygiene recommends fruit as being more natural and easier on the digestive system. I went against that last night by having uncooked corn on the cob, but, believe me, I had absolutely no feelings of discomfort from those two ears of corn and woke up this morning with so much energy I thought I'd go through the ceiling of the house.
Hey, we're talking a Sunday morning too. I didn't even want to sleep in!
Back to breaking fasts for one more second... from my reading, it seems like fasts have been broken on all kinds of things down through the ages, from a handful of popcorn to a steak. I believe I read that the guy who ate the steak had to go to the hospital, and that I would definitely believe. Please, use fruit to break a juice diet the first few times you go on one. During later attempts, after you know what you're doing and what to expect, you can try other alternatives that your body signals you to try.
But be moderate the first couple of days. Remember, the longer you go on a juice diet, the longer you need to ease back into re-eating. By easing in, you keep off the weight you lost during the fast, and you'll also feel more energetic.
Finally, I have resumed drinking K-tea. I've had two glasses of approximately six ounces each time of the ginger K-tea, and I'll probably have another six ounces of it with my wife tonight when she gets home. We'll use ginger K-tea to celebrate in the New Year. Nice, eh? And, yes, I've continued to drink plenty of pure water today.
Dr. Ben Kim is offering the fantastic and extremely versatile Champion juicer for a very low price. Click here to discover the Champion.Final Summation
Through personal experience and reading and listening to others, I know juice dieting and water fasting can help many people achieve better health. People need to have "how to" information on these topics so they can at least consider fasting and juice dieting as alternatives to traditional therapies, drugs, surgery, and the like.
Finally, I reiterate that I offer my ideas and experiences in this report to share personal experiences of what I do for myself. I do not offer this information to prescribe or attempt to treat others.
As they say at the end of a Loony Tunes' cartoon, "That's all, folks!"
Nah, that's not all. I gotta go peel myself another ear of that luscious-looking white corn! Man, is it gonna taste good!
I wish you a happy, healthy, and spiritually rewarding life.
Chet's Comments
The Detox Bible
In April of 2002, I finally put together in one place the best detox routines that I've experimented with since 1993 when I started my natural health journey. Click here to check out The Detox Bible, the special report that you can use to choose the detox routine that's right for you.
Click Here to share this page with your friends, website visitors, ezine readers, social followers and other online contacts.Disclaimer: Throughout this website, statements are made pertaining to the properties and/or functions of food and/or nutritional products. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration and these materials and products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.
Health & Beyond Online
P.O. Box 755
Earl, NC 28038-0755Contact Us
License, Terms of Use, and Privacy PolicyClick here for Other Chet Day Websites
H&B Online and Content © 1993-2009 by Chet Day
