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Fasting

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Benefits of fasting.
1. What is fasting and can it be beneficial? Many of us know it as a protocol the doctor prescribes before blood testing.

2. For others, it may mean giving up a favorite food for a period of time or not eating food at certain times of the day or year out of respect for various religious holidays.

3. Strictly speaking, fasting is the voluntary absence of food. While the idea of missing even one meal might put most of us in misery, fasting does have many benefits for the body.

4. Fasting has been called the "miracle cure" because the list of physical conditions improved by fasting is long and varied. Cited most often are allergies, arthritis, digestive disorders of all kinds, skin conditions, cardiovascular disease, and asthma. Because fasting initiates the body's own healing mechanisms, any ailment may show improvement.

5. Fasting frees up energy so healing can begin.Fasting is a wonderful antidote for our usual over-indulgences. There's nothing wrong with enjoying our food, but excess food on a continuous basis does create a burden for the body. When it must handle more than is comfortable and appropriate for it, it will suffer.

6. Imagine at work how you feel when you're handed a huge work load--more than you can handle in your 8-10 hour day, more than is comfortable and appropriate for your job title (or salary level). You're under duress. But you will cope. You must cope. You must make decisions. You attend to the most important and urgent of matters and set aside those that can wait for another day.

7. During fasting, we rest our system from the constant onslaught of food stuffs. We usually think of food as giving us energy, so it can be a new way of thinking to understand how the food we eat actually requires energy. Digesting, assimilating and metabolizing,these activities require a great deal of energy. It is

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