By Trish Robichaud July 20, 2011 - 9:48pm

By Loren Lockman

Listen to Trish’s interview with Loren about water fasting here: www.OptimalHealthSeekers.com

Twenty years ago, when I first heard the term “water-only fasting,” I was quite ill with chronic fatigue, irritable bowel syndrome, candidiasis, sinusitis, and 57 allergies. The idea of going weeks without food sounded both radical and potentially harmful. Today, having done more than 3 dozen fasts of one to three weeks and having taken more than 2000 others through similar processes of up to nine weeks, I see this natural process as the single most potentially-beneficial thing that most people can do.

I’ll do my best to explain, briefly, why I believe this, what fasting is about, and what can happen via fasting.

It’s important to understand that we are affected by the toxins around us both from the outside and from others manufactured in our own bodies. Regardless of the source, though, these various toxins have the ability to poison the body and make proper functioning impossible.

An exacerbating factor is the significant dehydration which is common today, regardless of how much water one drinks. I will go into dehydration in more detail on another occasion, but I mention it here because water is the universal transport medium, and regardless of the preferred channel of elimination for a particular toxin at any given time, lack of proper hydration will often thwart the body’s best efforts to cleanse itself. At the same time, the body’s toxicity makes it hard to properly hydrate, creating a vicious circle.

Ultimately, the human body is both self-healing and self-cleansing. The best we can is to learn how to get out of the way, so that the body can do what only the body can do.

But doesn’t this require nutritional support? While it’s true that a starving body has a hard time meeting the extraordinary needs of cleansing and healing, fasting is not starving. What differentiates the two is the simple fact that when we are fasting, the body is getting all of its needs met by consuming reserves, ie, long-term fat stores, as well as anything material that doesn’t belong, including tumors, lipomas, cysts, etc.

We often forget that this is why animals have most fat cells in the first place – to provide food when food is not available in nature (due to floods, droughts, fires, etc.)

It’s also important to understand that processing food through our system each day requires roughly 50% of the body’s daily energy. When we are eating, the energy to cleanse and heal is simply not available. When we give the body a chance to really cleanse and heal itself through fasting properly and long enough, amazing things happen. At my center, we’ve had 100% success in eliminating both hypertension and type two diabetes as well as amazing success with MS, arthritis, poor vision and almost every condition. Unlike virtually anything else one can do, we see universally excellent results because we are just getting out of the way so that the body can heal itself.

It’s also important to point out that going more than 5 days or so without eating is potentially dangerous and should be done with experienced supervision, and ideally in an environment that encourages rest and healing.

Loren Lockman is the founder and director of the Tanglewood Wellness Center and has taken more than 2000 clients from 32 countries through this process to much higher levels of health and vitality. You can learn more at www.TanglewoodWellnessCenter.com